Santa Barbara, Central Coast, January 21st, 2012

Hey everybody! I can't think of many useful things to say, though a lot of mostly wonderful things have been happening to us, so instead I'll just read off a bunch of quotations, add some factoids, and put in some observations.

"you really have to be grateful no matter what is happening. I was once bringing my daughter to her boyfriend's house in New York. I dropped her off and she asked if I was coming in, I said no, I'll sleep in the van. About 3 am, a big truck drove past in the snow and rocked the van with its passage. I woke up, and pulled my woolen hat a little lower on my head, and rolled over and ate a bite of a raw onion. Then I looked to the heavens and said,

"Thank you god, that was quite nice."

and rolled back over to sleep some more."

- Geoff, an old and lovely artist, in Ventura.

"California is like Quicksand. Warm and wonderful quicksand. I have set myself a limit of leaving in eight months. You can learn a lot in California, but California doesn't need me like Wisconsin needs me."

- Alex, a permaculture acolyte in Ojai.

"I think, we are all learning, through travelling, how to make our heart our true home."

-Amelie, a member of the travelling Leslee family.

"You dirty dog, you pulled a couple of chicks and are leading them down the muddy path? I love this. You really make a former teacher proud."

-Gordon, my cob and natural building teacher

"With your height.. and you sing... you could come to Manila and make a lot of money modelling formal clothes for me."

-Armhand Remojo, a designer on the Santa Monica boardwalk.

"Everybody in Los Angeles has a hidden agenda. People look at you playing accordion on the sidewalk and they ask you for a business card because of course you've got business cards, cause you want to become THE Los Angeles Accordionist. Everybody assumes you want to make it big."

-Aimee and Whisky Kelly, THE wonderful ladies of Los Angeles

observations:

People are generally good, but they are often surrounded by clouds of habits.

Security guards mostly just want to keep their jobs, but sometimes they also want to get high by intimidating you.

Really, really, don't ask people for directions in Los Angeles. Get a map.

Good Events:

Ojai took such good care of us, we are going back for a week. The hotsprings smell like hard boiled eggs and the streets gather the good people together.

Because we are busking so frequently now, we are going to record a few songs, because two (!) recording engineers like us and want to record us for free. We will slap it up on a Bandcamp page and sell people little cards with Download codes written on them, because this saves the plastic of new CDs. We will also, because people can be old-fashioned, record them onto used cassettes that we buy in thrift stores. In this way we avoid getting into the whirlpool of irresponsible waste of resources that professional music can be. Call this holistic promotion.

Farmers' markets are feeding us regularly with fresh, local and organic foods, all of which treat our bodies very well.

We are going to work at a Cob Workshop in Mexico on Feburary 20th, for a month, after which I am considering coming back, because neither California nor Mexico needs me like BC needs me, or like I need BC, one of those.

Ye are lovely! Never discount it!