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January 05, 2008

The Village Beautiful

We have been absent but not idle. Since returning from Missouri, a number of things have happened. As part of our ongoing research into small, young people, we hung out with "Baby Joe" on New Year's Eve.

Baby Joe is the son of our friends Yarwen and Hsu. Baby Joe is two months old. He was not much of a conversationalist, but he was awfully cute.

He gave small but very nice hugs.

Also on New Year's Eve, we opened our Christmas presents from Bob and Seiko. The Berhs don't do anything the "normal" way.

Robbi got a very special shirt from her Aunt Mimi. At first it seemed too small.

But further investigation revealed it to be quite expandable. And so I had to try it on.

We came to the conclusion that it is really more of a lady garment.

After the New Year's Eve Christmas party, Robbi finished putting together the layout for Volume 12.

The next day, I trimmed and stapled 200 copies.

Then we had a traditional Japanese New Year's Day lunch with Bob and Seiko.

We packed. We drove to Baltimore with our cats in a box. We dropped off the cats with Supi Loco, ate some pizza, spent the night with Chris and Emily, and the next day drove to Williamstown, Massachusetts, where we will be living for the next three weeks. Williamstown, also known as the Village Beautiful, is home to Williams College, where Robbi and I went to school and met so many years ago.

We are teaching a class on collaboration between artists and writers. Over the next three weeks, we will do our best to help them think about the possibilities inherent in combining pictures and words. We had our first class on Thursday, our second on Friday, and I am pleased to say that we have an outstanding group of students.

To celebrate after our first class, we went downtown to the thriving hub of Williamstown's pulsing commercial district. Our destination, Papa Charlie's deli.

All of Papa Charlie's sandwiches are named after famous people. Quite a few of them are actors who have acted in the Williamstown Theater Festival over the years.

Many of these people have actually designed the sandwiches that are their namesakes. You can either order your sandwiches as a show of solidarity for your favorite actor or because you like the ingredients. I usually go the ingredient route. Which means I usually order the Zonker Harris. Not a real person, I realize, but still the inventor of a damn good sandwich.

After class yesterday, we met my sister Andy for coffee.

Andy lives in Haiti, where she is doing good for the world. Should you want to keep tabs on her goodness, you may do so by reading her blog.

Her Christmas present to us was this Haitian object, which apparently has something to do with our child. I'm not sure what it's for or how it works.

However enigmatic it may have been, I was pleased by the gift.

But Robbi was unimpressed.

Later that day I headed to Dalton, Massachusetts with my good friend Gina Coleman, who in addition to being a Dean of Williams College, the Executive Director of an educational nonprofit, head coach of the Williams women's rugby team, and mother, is also the lead singer of Misty Blues, a band of which I am lucky to be an occasional member. We were heading to Dalton to Derek Studios (a recording studio where the likes of Arlo Guthrie and David Crosby have recorded albums) to record Misty Blues' new album.

On the way, we dropped Gina's son Diego off at his grandma's house.

He spoke with great passion about the virtues of "Shrek Third", which he had just seen, even sharing the titles of some of the songs from the movie in a spirited attempt to persuade me to watch it.

The hills along Route 43 were covered with snow.

In the studio, I caught up with the band.

Bill, our bass player, is also a stained glass window maker and electrical engineer.

Jason, who does things with a guitar that can only be described as "tasty."

Bassie, who firmly believes that a man's drum kit is a reliable measure of his manhood.

And Gina, our leader and spiritual core.

Here is Bob, not a full-time band member, joined us on the piano. The album is a kind of honky tonk gospel/blues record with a loose and carefree sound meant to suggest a bar show. Bob's playing added a lot to the gospel side of things.

And here am I, in my lonely isolation booth.

It is a well-established fact that harp players get no respect.

There were a number of small vintage tube amps of the variety that are highly sought after by harp players looking for that fat blues tone.

I tried them all but decided to go with my own, a Gibson GA-5 from 1951. I spent a long time being very geeky on Ebay to get it. I love it. If you come to my barn, I will gladly play it for you.

Last night we laid down the recordings and today we added a few solos, tweaked a few endings, and did the mastering. The disks will be available in time for our gig at Liston's roadhouse in Savoy, MA on January 18. If you are anywhere near Savoy that day, do drop by. We'll also be playing the Williams Faculty Club Martin Luther King, Jr. event on MLK day, but I think that you have to be employed by Williams to attend. This gives you about two weeks to contact HR with your resume.


Posted by bogenamp at January 5, 2008 08:07 PM