I don’t know what people who haven’t lived here think of my little corner of the world. But it’s not true that nothing happens here or that we live some kind of uber-provincial life or that it’s boring or in any way less full than anything anywhere else.
Like today when we had barely even defragged from yesterday’s music / farm festival, and we washed the kids up and put together a birthday present for a five-year old’s party (a “shark’s tooth necklace” my son created out of tiny eye-screws and a pink lace of rickrack – the present, I mean), and then Ralph and Sophie go and pick up the violin player for his band from the bus station, and then the kids and I get on the bikes and head down to the On Track Art Festival, where we run into S. and her three kids and have lunch with them, and then we see our friends J. and C. and their daughter E. who meet us at Ralph’s first show, along with our City Council member (and housemate J.) who I’d just had a couple clove cigarettes on the porch with that AM, and along with us our friend I. has come down from Seattle and he records the show on his fancy recorder, and I talk to our City Planner and her mom Mickey who is also a volunteer at the local old theatre that we’re planning on showing Food, Inc. in October, and as Ralph and co. plays their music Mickey takes a bunch of pictures of my family while all the abovementioned kids are dancing and Ralph dedicates a song to my daughter, and my mom and her boyfriend show up to drop my kids at the aforementioned birthday party, and J. and M. show up and sans kiddos we walk down to the Gallery that has the kids’ art pieces hanging where Sophie’s sold one of her two paintings and Nels’ harp and snow globe are featured, and then Ralph and I pick up the kids at the birthday party then come home and my family gets on our bikes to meet up with three friends for dinner and we bring home a young man who’s doing a bike tour from Fairbanks to the Arctic Sea way down to Eugene, OR who is presently doing his laundry and taking a shower and will be sleeping over here tonight and taking some fresh bread of mine on the road with him tomorrow.