the music of my childhood

So as I was driving back to DC this last time, I popped in a tape (yes, tape, as in...our car has no CD player) and was immediately brought back to my childhood. The tape was one L.J. Booth, and between him, Clay Riness, and Fred Small, I was transported back to Bluebird Springs Campground and the Great River Folk Festival in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Music can do amazing things...it can make you laugh or cry, forget your troubles, make you incredibly happy or incredibly angry. I remember being at a Fred Small concert and listening to him sing this song called Scott and Jamie. It had to have been 1989 or 1990, I don't remember. But the song was about a gay couple trying to adopt two previously abused brothers. It's such a sad song, one that ends with the boys being taken away from the couple by social services. As I sat there as a preteen, I just remember being moved to tears by the song.

As much as I love Fred Small's music, I have to say I love Clay Riness more. Some of my best memories of the Great River Folk Festival involve watching Clay in concert with my dad (watching the concert with my dad, not watching Clay and my dad together in concert). His best song ever is, in my opinion, Coming of Age, an incredible account of the trials and tribulations of growing up. Please, if you have some time and have never heard Clay Riness, check out the following YouTube videos (feel free to check them out even if you have heard of him!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqppURFXVmM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWKK05AKgc8

Keep in mind these are old school Clay Riness recorded in 1986 or so. I swear I could listen to these songs over and over and never get tired of hearing them!

I often thing about going back to the Great River Folk Festival - try to get the old gang together. We'd do some log rolling, browse the amazing selection of traditional crafts, attend the Friday night concert. I'm sure the music would be fantastic, but it just wouldn't be the same without Clay, Fred, and L.J. Maybe I'll start a campaign to get those guys to come back for a reunion concert.



ps - both Fred Small and L.J. Booth seem to be available on Rhapsody; and you can find a lot of Clay Riness on YouTube or the following websites.

http://www.myspace.com/clayriness
http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/ClayRiness

Here are some photos from our most recent time in the New England area. The butterflies are from the zoo in Providence, Rhode Island and the puffins pictures are from Maine.

jen's random ramblings part 1

Every time I sit down and try to post something on the blog, I stare at the screen, type a few words, then delete them and start staring again. I want to write about Madagascar, but that makes me miss it, and honestly it's a little depressing. I want to write about traveling the U.S. but don't feel like it's really that exciting. I want to write about jobs I've applied for but I don't want to get my hopes up.

So I'm going to talk about something not related to any of these. I'm going to talk about something that's been bugging me for a couple weeks now. I'm going to talk about the ridiculousness called Jon and Kate Plus 8. Now I realize that this show is heading into it's 5th season, and that since I've only been out of the loop for roughly 1 year, there were at least 3 seasons of this show before I left for Madagascar. But I had never heard of it until the end of March, when the drama shit hit the fan and there were accusations of affairs and whatnot. Now, I don't really want to hear about all of this, but I honestly cannot get away from it; it's on the morning news, in magazines, on the radio...everywhere. So when I was channel surfing a few days ago and saw the famed title on the DirectTV guide, I just had to tune in to see what the uproar is all about. Needless to say I lasted all of 1 minute before I had to turn it off. I really don't know what the appeal is. I think it's ridiculous and I think if you don't want paparazzi taking pictures of your children, you shouldn't have agreed to make a show out of their lives.

That's it. I just had to get that off my chest. I can't wait for the reality show craze to be over.

Oh wait, there is an upside to all of this attention to the Jon and Kate Plus 8 saga...I don't have to hear about the Octomom any more! Crap. Do you think I should I have put a trademark sign after Octomom?

Jen

yes, we are back in the USA

Sorry for everyone who has wondered the answer to this question for a while now. I kept meaning to write this post but just kept putting it off because, well, it's sort of depressing. For those of you that haven't heard yet, we were evacuated from Madagascar due to continued political unrest. The Peace Corps suspended the Madagascar program and all 120-something volunteers were flown to South Africa in mid-March. We spent about a week there before closing out our Peace Corps service and returning to the Unites States.

Aren't you so glad to be back?...everyone asks. The honest answer to that question is...no, not really. Of course it has been great to see family and friends, but we were also loving Madagascar and expecting to spend another year there. We miss our home and our friends back in Madagascar, who will undoubtedly suffer more from this coup d'etat than we ever will.

Homeless, jobless wanderers that we are, we've been spending the last 5 weeks traveling the U.S, crashing on people's couches, and looking for jobs along the way. We started out driving south through Memphis (yes, we were walkin' in Memphis, and yes, we had our feet 10 feet off of Beale), and on to New Orleans. I'd never been to the Big Easy and Dave was so excited for me to enjoy my first hot boiled craw fish.



From New Orleans we headed to Washington, DC, then on to NYC. We'll be heading back to DC soon to attend a career fair put on by the Peace Corps. So although our Madagascar adventure looks to be over, we still have a lifetime of adventures ahead of us and I will do my best to keep this blog updated with some of them!

A typical sunset from our front porch.

We'll hopefully be seeing those again soon!

Ino vaovao?

I don't know if any of you have heard on the news yet, but we are having some political unrest here in Madagascar. First of all, we (and all volunteers here) are safe! We have been consolidated to larger cities around the country and are currently waiting to see how things unfold. I'm not sure what's available on the internet as far as news, but here's what we've been hearing.

A couple weeks ago there was a radio interview about opposition views of the current administration, and the president shut down the radio station. The mayor of the capitol city has some major disagreements with the current president, and he subsequently called for non-violent protests that turned violent in the capitol, including burning down another (president owned) radio and TV station. The following days saw violence, rioting, and looting in regional capitols around the country.

The mayor has now declared himself president. The two have apparently said they will sit down and work throught this peaceably; in the meantime we are waiting at our consolidation point to see what happens. If things stay this unstable for the next two weeks, we may be headed to another country until things get sorted out. Again, we are safe here. We have seen no violence, only heard about it. Peace Corps is taking good care of us and have good emergency action plans in effect.

I obviously have internet at our consolidation point, and will try to keep everyone updated. However, there's no gaurantee the connection will work especially with the civil unrest.

This has not made headline news but if you look I guess you can find stuff on the internet. My parents have been staying somewhat updated that way. At the bottom right of this page there may be some links to current news stories about Madagascar.

at the market

Rice and meat...what more do you need???