dreams

i started therapy at the suggestion of a couple's therapist gabriel and are seeing to work out our issues. he suggested i write down my dreams. i've never tried this before. my knee jerk response was that i don't remember my dreams but it turns out i can remember them with clarity if i do a couple things. i either have to jot a few notes down right after the dream or repeat to myself a few key things from the dream for me to be able to remember the dream in detail in the morning.

i was skeptical that recalling dreams would have much value, but right after i started writing them down i had a few humdingers that woke me up, literally, and which have reverberated for weeks. one was about roger, the other about gordon. since then i've had some interesting dreams and i hope i have some more humdingers. i've found recalling the dreams and bringing them to consciousness during the day connects me to my unconscious during waking hours which gives moments like my hike today a magical texture. my senses are more alive, smell is amplified, colors sing and i find myself feeling slightly stoned, which is a pleasant sensation for me. it may be that acknowledging my dream world, giving it purchase in my daily life, somehow balances me. i feel better prepared to take on the ups and downs of the day and to respond lovingly to situations that i might have previously reacted to aggressively or hatefully. tuning into my intuitive/non-verbal side feels really, really great.

santa barbara hike

water caught

a pool along the trail

sage, the dog, who travelled with us the whole hike.

water tank. industrial objects make easy subjects.

this picture reminds me of lovers

moi

we hiked under lots of beautiful fog

nephew dario tries out his wooden boat

fallen eucalyptus bark

intact euclyptus bark

mom, dad, marlene, frank, dario, dela and i hiked into the santa barbara hills today. we made our way up the san ysidro trail to the mcmenemey trail that took us steeply uphill and west to the hot springs trail that i hiked a couple days ago. had it not been foggy we'd have had spectacular views of the ocean but instead we got magical and mystical moments the whole way with beautiful light for taking pictures. plans have changed. i expected to be in los angeles this evening. will travel there tomorrow. i'm glad i stayed here today.

xmas 2

paper whites

light in a tea cup

paper whites 2

magnetic motto

my portrait by nephew dario

more snaps from christmas dinner and thereabouts.

xmas

santa barbara, california: it's hot here, about 80 degrees days. i'm walking around in tee shirts. went for a hike up in the santa barbara hills yesteday afternoon. visited an abandoned hot springs hotel whose foundation is the last remnant along with a private property sign that no one respects. the sulpherous spring water is piped away somewhere but locals who like to use the waters have inserted various diverting devices into the piping to fill small rock walled pools. i was so hot after climbing up to the spings that i didn't feel like taking a dip. the water is 116 degrees.

christmas is over, at least the present opening part. my niece and nephew ripped through their presents in about half an hour. i wondered if i ate through presents as fast when i was a child? last night went to a christmas celebration at the local vedanta temple. i enjoyed the reading of the christmas story in a buddhist temple.

tomorrow i head back to los angeles.

some travel pix

california

no picture this time. i'm in california. flew into los angeles a couple days ago, rented a car, drove to my friend marco's house in west hollywood, where i stayed the night. got in touch with my other los angeles friends, brad, bill and anne. bill and anne are, ironically, in vermont. in fact, as i was leaving LAX they were arriving there to fly out. brad and i are going to get togther after christmas. i'm in santa barbara now staying with my brother and his family.

on the plane out i read three books—it was a fifteen hour trip. first was star girl, a novel that danny and roger gave me. it's targeted, i believe, at teens, but i loved it. it's about a girl who doesn't conform to small town teen life and who insists on being kind to everyone, including the opposite team during sports events. at first she's seen as a freak, then her popularity blossoms as everyone suddenly wants to be her friend, then events turn everyone against her and a love interest in a boy at the school brings her to put on a mask of conformity which ulitmately fails and she learns to simply be herself again.

then i read places of the soul. it's about what makes buildings lovable, meaningful and lasting. i found it interesting, and it shed more light on the use of intuition and feeling in design for me. the universe seems to be pointing me at intuition lately, from all angles. i also read drawing from the right side of the brain, an old classic that i've heard referenced since high school but which i've never read. there is a new edition out. it too focuses on intuition and "defeating" the analytic and lingual part of the brain so that the perceiving/feeling side gets a chance to control drawing.

today, at the natural cafe on state street in santa barbara, i picked up reading the timeless way of building by christopher alexander, who—why am i surprised—began talking about intuition and feeling as the benchmarks by which universal patterns can be distinquished within cultures. he argues that opinion, thought, argument and values are all fallible as metrics for determining what will create a place people like because they're contaminated by ego and divide people, whereas feeling, when it can be discerned seperately from analytic thinking, nearly always, in his research, brings people together in near universal agreement (he says 90-95% of the time).

catch up

faith at dick and daisy's

feet after the hot tub

busy. finished my video for the opera tuesday morning about an hour before hopping amtrak to new york. on the train i read an excellent book about what makes us love buildings. it's called the old way of seeing by jonathan hale. i'll hopefully write about it when i get the time. tuesday evening tech rehearsal at new york university went well. hung out with faith, a friend of dick's, who is in new york for the naraya, a shoshone-bannock dance ritual. next day, met up with friends john and charles who were test screening their film at the quad cinema for a run early next year. it looked gerat. picked up the timeless way of building by christopher alexander, another excellent book, that echoed much of jonathan hale's book. visited friend wendy, who showed me all the risque cheese descriptions she's foisted on the general public (who seem to adore them) at the cheese shop where she works and told me how much she misses vermont and wants her house in brattleboro back. later, the opera played well to an audience of about fifty.

friday, daisy, cypress and i drove up to vermont for the radical faerie semi-annual meeting where we discussed the next year's work on faerie camp destiny. last night we trekked to a private faerie land, jay and dan's house, for a hot tub under the stars, er, clouds. i hung out with my friend john for bit who then also came hot tubbing. we drove back into burlington, met up with michel, another faerie who couldn't make hot-tubbing, who cooked us some delicious asian-ish veggies at midnight.

this morning we did a little more business. i left at noon to visit friends roger and danny in plainfield. they cooked up a delicious lunch, and we caught up. they played me a new madonna song and gave me a book called star girl. i'm going to read it tuesday on the plane to los angeles. danny shaved his beard, looks great. i love swift change. spoke to my friend marco in los angeles. i'll be staying with him for a couple days then driving to santa barbara for christmas. victory, my refugee friend from new orleans, who has been living at the mill for the past few weeks, left for new york today, and perhaps for italy, if things work out for him. that's the news.

decorated moose

here is president and chief curator and display-maker of the main street museum, the state of vermont's "strangest museum", standing below a magnificent and terrifying decorated taxidermy display at the museum. the museum will party with the moose and other inanimate objects next weekend.

i am off to new york for a few days to show my video. cya later!

falling asleep

i'm falling asleep at the keyboard as i'm dubbing "dubya" and all his pals in my howls for saddam video. i've had little sleep the last few days. the poster for the performance is pictured. if you happen to have nothing to do thursday and you happen to be in new york city, come see!

42 minutes

the howls video is 42 minutes rough cut, just 14 minutes to go and of that three are already done. my computer is rendering acts 2 and 3 right now--which will take about 3 hours it tells me. i'm enjoying this project. it's teaching me a lot. i'm trusting my intuition, giving up on big ideas and just putting one thing after another. my friend, jon appleton, a composer, has told me for years that this is his process. my painting teacher, clifford west, also hinted to me that if you just start doing and follow your gut you will create larger, coherent themes, often without realizing it.

i'm attracted to this shot of a picnic table i took a couple years ago. i've cut it into sequences in several places in the piece which has begun to make it symbolic--of what i have no idea, but it's definitely saying something. then, i found some online clips from the department of defense of bomb hits in iraq with informative voiceovers such as, "yeah, we nailed that one." i noticed the tracking videos all have crosshairs and some other info overlayed on the image. so i got some plans for a picnic table and superimposed them over lots of footage leading up to the climax for act 3. the table tilts, wiggles, moves and blinks, chasing birds, people, and ultimately is dropped like a bomb into a matrix of faces. staring at this picnic table for about ten hours today i'm beginning to grasp its significance. the fun part about this process is discovering what things have meaning to me and why. when i'm looking, searching, the editing is smooth, effortless. each thing suggests the next.

howls

this is a still from the video i'm producing for an opera in new york entitled howls for saddam by bill le page, which will be performed at new york university next thursday night, just six days away. i find myself amazed by how often my creative process repeats and how much i dread the process. i start with a lot of ideas, mostly vague and pick one or two to play with. i'm excited. i work on specific aspects of a piece, usually a detail of some sort. in this case i investigated slow motion. then comes the disillusionment phase when the slow motion, for instance, doesn't work and i find myself at a total loss. this throws me into the next phase, denial. in this phase i do anything but work on the piece. fear of failure and the unknown creeps in but, as i should well know by now, the unknown is where the solutions lie. i rediscover this in the next phase, which is often preceded by an accidental discovery of some sort, in this case, matting a series of images. i have a big "aha!" that compels me to open the door to the uncharted and creativity blossoms. it feels like the triumph of the unconscious over the conscious. work begins in earnest, hopefully not too late. this process requires tremendous pressure, kind of like the geology that produces oil. if i didn't have a deadline it is nearly impossible for me to produce. if i could internally generate the pressures deadlines impose i could really make something of myself!

late nights

i'm working on a video piece for an opera that's to be performed next week in new york city. i'm cutting it close but i've got confidence it will come together! i've been staying up late working on it and find myself driving home when no one else is on the road, a pleasant experience. the piece plays in extreme slow motion—1/50 normal speed. if i had to give advice now i'd say: don't try this at home. specifically, with the work i'm producing, i've found no way to get the slow motion effect i'm looking for. so, i've begun writing a piece of slow motion software myself. whenever i start something like this i begin with foolish confidence that i'll tackle the problem in just a few hours. now sitting with some code that i've been working on for over a day, i'm humbled, as usual. but, i don't mind running into technical problems, they engage me and get me into the project and i find that technical thoughts inspire creative ones.

row cloth

some of you dear readers out there have asked about my greenhouse. i'm happy to report that it seems to be working. all my winter crop is green, happy and apparently doesn't mind freezing, to my astonishment. when it is below freezing the leaves tend to flop over but as soon as it gets above freezing they perk up. i recently placed row cloth over one of the rows to see how it improves things for the plants. within a greenhouse it is supposed to raise the temperature beneath the cloth seven degrees.

the book that inspired me to create all this, four season gardening, by eliot coleman, says that you need at least four hours of unobstructed sun to make a winter greenhouse work. unfortunately, the sun at this time of year just barely peeks above the land and it's light has to make its way through a lot of trees that, though leafless, block most of the light. so, i'm afraid i'm not going to be seeing high temperatures in this greenhouse until march. being on the south slope of a hill makes all the difference. if i ever buy land it will be south facing.

clean sweep

an organizational god from louisiana descended upon me here in white river junction this weekend. his name is victory and we set upon my studio with religious fervor. out went chairs, a couch, endless old papers, wires, clothes, rags, books, magazines, drawings, paintings, phones, a coffee maker, a dead rat, and a couple dirty light bulbs from the local burnt down strip club (i donated them to the main street museum. everything is arranged according to use. there's a computer area, a music area, an architecture area and a lounge area. i can't thank victory enough for helping me out. it feels great to be here. this cleanup was therapy.

second life

so, while in the midst of pondering my identity, a friend and fellow filmmaker, liz canner, introduced me to a way to remake myself: second life, an online world in which you create a persona, dress it up and wander the miles and miles (meters and meters actually) of user-built environments with mountains, forests, cities, skyscrapers, bars, clubs, teleports, flying saucers, motorcycles, bonfires, stores and casinos, amongst other things. you can meet people (aliens and animals too) and trade stuff with them. creating your first character is free. it costs for more. my character is named aloofdork fasching. he's tall, as you can see, enjoys fishnet and doesn't mind showing off his tight tummy. many aspects of physique are adjustable, including "package." you can purchase more detailed genitalia if you like but not wanting squander my meager L$250 allowance on vanity i chose the free, but vague, standard package at 100%. you can walk or fly and if you want to travel to a completely different part of the world you can teleport. land can be purchased, buildings built and what you create can be sold or traded. people are generally nice, but my outfit seemed to scare away most guys. for all the possibility of a fantasy online world, modesty seems to have an upper hand. guys mostly elect to keep the default denim and white tee outfit. a sassy black girl sitting on a staircase said to me, "honey, i love fishnet but you have to moderate!" she gave me some clothes to try on. later, i found a dance club full of less inhibited people, stepped in and stood watching everyone groove wondering, how do i get in on this action? the answer: F9, F10, F11, and F12. they're dance keys. soon i was gyrating like everyone else and found a hot cutie in chaps to strut with. my heart fluttered.

slamdance=no

from slamdance programming:

There's no good to tell you.  I could rehash the most volatile moments of the final programming meetings, recounting the gallant attempts to get your film in.  I could remind you of the incredibly high number of submissions for the very few amount of slots.  Finally, I could offer solidarity, revealing that I got a rejection myself yesterday and another on Friday.  But I can assume none of this really matters.

This year Slamdance received more narrative features than we ever have before.  We saw such an eclectic mix of films.  Thank you so much for submitting to Slamdance.  I sincerely hope you will continue to send us any future projects.  I wish you the best with your ongoing festival applications.

Congratulations on making a film!

is this confusing or what? i'm pretty sure they're not going to show my film ;)

you're who?

do you ever awake wondering who you are? what you are doing in your body? which thoughts are yours, others? this happened to me this morning. i reminded myself of those fuzzy parts of old new york city apartments, moldings, plaster medalions, anything that once had detail but which over the years had been obscured and blurred by layer upon layer of paint. who painted me? did i paint myself? a lot of questions this morning. even my breakfast check seemed to ask. who is the "you're" that they're so glad is here? who does that check see? sitting on the toilet, i cracked open a magazine and the first sentence i noticed proclaimed, "the foundation of all lasting relationships is deep self-understanding." it's not as if this question of identity hasn't bothered me before. since i can remember i've noticed it hovering about me like a fly about a light bulb, buzzing me, irritating. my habit has been to simply turn out the light or run to a different place. perhaps the only way to find out what's chasing me is to stop, let it come, to sit still, let it approach me, join me, catch me, delight me, torture me—whatever it may do, i need to accept it.

power

i spent the morning taping talk shows of powerful people at michelle and michelle's. sal, their cat, with whom i have a challenged relationship, and i got along really well even as i sat on the floor in his territory. i realized sal is a top and that i simply had to let him make all the moves. i have no problem being submissive. it can work wonders. after a couple hours i gave up on the video taping. i was looking for a short clip of karl rove but he wasn't news. i need a new scandal! i got a few clips of about everyone else in washington, including henry kissinger.

in the afternoon, i drove up to roger and danny's new place in plainfield, vermont, a house they moved into last week that they share with a nice guy named matthew. it's high up on a hill with beautiful somewhat open land all around. their bedroom is nearly all windows on two sides with views off to the distant hills. it's beautiful. it made me want to have a bedroom like that. i love waking up to morning sun shining in on me. on the drive up i listened to the witch, the lion and the wardrobe by c. s. lewis, which i'd not read since i was a kid. lately i've re-read books from my childhood and have been surprised by how they not only bring back memories, textures, smells and experiences but also by how rich these books are to me still. i find that things i read now don't make as much of an impression, that somehow the books i read when younger affected me more profoundly and continue to do so even today. they feel like keys to brighter and more intense energies within me.

roger, danny and i sat near their woodstove and shared a delicious lunch, news and experiences. roger's just come back from kripalu, the yoga center, where he assisted a teacher training and to where he'll be returning to assist further programs. danny may assist a teacher training program too. i was happy to hear that kripalu is moving toward a more spiritual focus. the spiritual aspect of yoga is, for me, the strongest part—what keeps me returning to it and what draws me to teach it.

if anyone knows of a harmonium doctor let me know. i'll pass the name off to danny who needs his harmonium fixed!

i ate meat

turkey day—the one day a year that i agree to eat meat. and it was not just any old meat. this meat i ate was free range organic turkey from vermont prepared by the skilled mary ford of lincoln, massachussetts, mother to david ford of the main street musuem as well as warren (slugo) ford. libation, cheese, crackers, white fish pate and gluten free twists preceded the meal of the organic turkey, onions in cream, mashed potatoes, beans, and a plate of relishes plus cranberry sauce. this was all followed by three pies: pumpkin, mincemeat and a chocolate walnut with ice and whipped cream.

after dinner several of us simply lay on our backs while daisy, the dog, trampled about us licking fingers and faces. david and i spent the night at slugo and denise's beautifully renovated home in newton where rosco, their dog, entertained us with his winsome glances. this morning we arose at six and headed north to vermont, where i sit this moment.

the boss

a very old boring machine, known as "the boss", arrived today parcel post. at first i thought it was an ebay disaster. it would hardly turn, it appeared broken and my heart sunk. but some investigation and careful twiddling and a healthy dose of wd-40 brought it to near perfect operation. i could tell it was happy to be lubricated again. it cried rusty stains from all its joints kind of like the tin man after the rain storm. a boring machine is a turn of the century device to bore holes in timbers. they were commonplace years back but today they're rare. i noticed one sell for $700 on ebay today. a boring machine is primarily used to prepare mortises. you place it on a beam, sit on a paddle that's connected to it, align the auger bit over where a mortise will be cut, drop the mechanism so the bit bites into the timber and rotate the handles. after several turns you'll have a nice vertical hole in your timber and you can move on to drilling another one very nearby until you removed most of the wood that occupies the mortise. the remainder wood, the small sections between holes, is removed with a chisel. with this delivery i'm pretty well tooled up to timberframe. i have three chisels, an axe, two drawknives, a boring machine, two bit and braces, two planes, a couple squares, lots of pencils and a broad axe. i picked up sharpening stones and a strop as well to keep all these razor sharp. i still need a fro. i'm going to be setting up a studio in the mill as a shop for producing the frames for faerie camp destiny. i can't wait to get started!

timberframe!

i'm back from yestermorrow, the design build school in waitsfield, vermont. pictured is the frame we built and erected at the knoll farm, also in waitsfield. i came away from the class feeling awe and appreciation for the power of working by hand. eleven of us, novices, cut the frame in five days with the help of two excellent instructors, josh jackson and skip dewhirst. it tooks us just a couple hours to erect it on the site and despite all our little mistakes it went together beautifully. i've put more pictures and an expanded description of the course on another blog that i keep here.

yestermorrow

sorry, no picture. no cell phone access here in the mountains of vermont near waitsfield where i'm learning how to timberframe with 10 other people and two very talented instructors. tomorrow we raise a small building that we've hand-sawn, chiseled, planed, mortised, drilled, and contemplated all week. i've got lots of pictures that i'll post when i get back next week.

yestermorrow is a building school with a focus on sustainable construction techniques. there are lots of great courses to take here and i highly recommend checking it out if you're interested in construction or alternative ways of living. yestermorrow.org.

honing

tomorrow i take off for the north and will be away a week. today i prepared some of my tools for the journey: i honed my two planes. my instructional video to the right shows you my superb technique!

when i first got the planes i naturally tried them out. they worked—to a degree. not easily. then i took them apart and looked at their blades. they had nicks, weren't square and looked like they'd been filed. i googled "plane sharpening," found lots of opinions and learned that sharpening a blade is called honing. i like learning these kinds of things. the japanese method calls for a completely flat bevel on the blade. another method calls for two bevels, one at 30 degrees and a smaller cutting edge at about 25 degrees. i chose to try the compound. to hone you can use stones, wheels, or simply sandpaper. you progress from rough to smooth. one site suggested gluing sandpaper to a sheet of glass for a very flat grind. this works great, i can say now with experience. i honed first with 80 grit (very rough) to take out the gross errors and progressed to 320 to create a nice shiny flat bevel at about 30 degrees. this took time and some practice. i discovered that if i moved my whole body my hands could remain fixed holding the blade at a single angle that produced a very flat and even grind. then i worked the second bevel with 600 and 800 papers which create a near mirror-like surface.

i placed the blades back in the planes and gave them a try. wow. beautiful paper-thin shavings and almost no force required.

i'm excited about this timber framing course. one of the instructors called me today. we chatted for a few minutes about what i wanted to get out of the course. he told me we'll be building a 10 x 16 foot pavilion for an earthen stove. i can't wait to put the planes to real use.

therapy

four months ago gabriel and i decided to separate so that our energies could settle, so that we'd each have space to figure out what to do next with our lives. we agreed come november we'd check back in to see what had happened with each other. last week we decided to hire a psychotherapist to help. friday, we met with a therapist. it went well, no great revelation, but we're going to continue with it for a few sessions. neither of us know where this will lead us and both of us seem excited about exploring, throwing caution to the wind. the sense of determination we had about our relationship we had four months ago depressed me, consumed all my energy. gabriel looks a lot better now. people say i do too. giving into the universe is so much more relaxing than desperate attachment. why is it that so many of us cling to relationships that aren't going well? do we get to a point after being in relationship where we fear ourselves more than the pain of an unsupportive relationship, where the relationship can replace a healthy sense of self? when we can't face ourselves our our partners, do we then have so much diversion in work, consumerism, entertainment and sex (at least in the gay world) that we're completely alien to ourselves? maybe so. i feel as if i've re-met myself.

tooling

i spent the afternoon tooling around west lebanon. i bought an aluminum framing square, a twelve pack of pencils, a combo square, a few blades for my utility knife, a book on hand tools and a chai latte. the yestermorrow timber framing class starts sunday. i'm geared up. i sometimes wonder where i am going with all this? diesel fuel is expensive at the moment.

turkeys on nylon squares

i received carpet samples from interface, the carpet company i mentioned a few posts ago. after choosing the carpet i want i found this use for them: turkey miniature bases. the turkeys prefer hard surfaces, though, and because my place is old and wobbly they fall over a lot. but if you get their feet enmeshed in the weave of the carpet they will stay upright. gobble gobble.

mill kitty #1

our household cat, named f***head, affectionately, and known as "frannie" or "fh" at the vet's to avoid an inquiry by the pc receptionist, is here seen skulking across the floor at the mill. it is difficult having a pet whose name you can't reveal to everyone. we love him and he is lovely.

along cat lines, rip bernie, the other main street museum cat who sometime last weekend took the road as his bed and some car as his grim reaper. the museum, it seems, is not the best place for fearless animals.

my new camera

after seeing art bell's movie, ride, made with an earlier version of this camera i succumbed to impulse and bought one. i can record about 16 minutes at full video resolution with it. i love the way its video looks. i can carry it everywhere. how many times have i been somewhere an wished i had my video camera. so, i add yet another object to my collection and to the mess on my desk. there are actually two cameras in the image, just one cowboy.

solar

if you've been thinking about installing either solar electric panels or solar hot water heaters now might be the time to do it, especially if you live in vermont. my farmer friend, chuck wooster, of the sunrise organic farm, wrote to his subscribers today and let us know that new federal and restored vermont incentives can cut your cost substantially. i'm definitely going to think about it for the tip top and my other building.

here's what chuck wrote: The Feds have a 30% tax credit (up to $2,000) for PV or H2O systems installed in 2006 and 2007. (This was part of the recent energy bill, the main feature of which was giving production tax incentives to the oil companies that are currently enjoying the greatest profits that the world has ever seen. But I digress.) VT is also back in the game, offering the same 30% capital cost share that led us to electrify Sunrise in '04. This time, there's $800K in the matching pool, meaning it will probably last until summer, at the latest. In general, new H20 systems cost $6K. After using both credits, your cost would be $2K. New grid-connected PV will run you $22K or so. After credits, you're at $13K.

feet movie

i find looking down a textural delight. there's so much on the ground that's beautiful and worn. this little film is a stroll from the tip top building to the polka dot restaurant.

p.s. let me know if it doesn't play for you.

our own little film fest

last weekend we had our second white river junction film festival. turnout was good with most shows filling at least halfway and three sellouts, even a line down the street the first night. two films inspired me: milk of many years by a very young filmmaker, billy sharff, and ride by art bell, which you can see online at dreamlikepictures.com. art shot ride with a $300 cannon still camera in movie mode. it inspired me so much that i went out and bought one myself, ironically, during a film about walmart's predatory practices—i didn't buy it at walmart, but nearly: best buy. our local camera shop closed a few months ago. billy sharff's films are beautifully shot and beautifully colored. he uses pattern, form, motion and lighting to produce deep emotional resonances and connections. he's just finishing high school, i believe, but keep an eye out for this very talented young filmmaker.

strip mall

i spent a good part of the day on our local expanding strip mall, a piece of the universe that's definitely contributing to entropy. here i am at a light behind a support-our-troops flag adorned american car. it has lots of spirit and a burnt out tail light. seems emblematic. i picked up some posters i designed for our film festival from the printers, had a sandwich at panera (with chai latte), hung out at borders for a half hour, found a cool book on proportions, noticed how run down the place is starting to look and drank the borders version of chai latte (made-from-powder—you have to continually swirl the liquid to keep the powder from settling). got a call from a composer in new york who wants to use video that roger and i shot a couple summers ago in his most recent opera. he found the films on my website, unwatchable films. see for yourself! taught yoga at the health club. ate dinner with david in hanover. saw the tiger lillies, an irreverant uk band at dartmouth at 10pm. they sang a song about crucifying jesus titled pounding in the nails. lots of folks walked out but they missed the climax that followed in which the drummer pulls out jumbo plastic hammers and proceeds to pound his drum kit off the stage and into the audience who, very politely, handed pieces of it back up to him when he needed a few cymbals for the encore. thumbs up!

new old tools

i'm getting ready for my timber framing course by acquiring some tools. all the timber framing books i've looked at recommend buying older tools or extremely expensive new tools. i've been on ebay bidding away on old things like this old stanley plane. the most exotic thing i've bid on is a mortise drilling machine. it looks like something out of frankenstein and it's expensive! but, i've seen these at work and they make mortising quick and accurate.