Weekend Update

If I were a better activist, I'd have gone to NYC to the anti-war demo this past weekend. Instead, I cruised around the Tofu Valley where there were bargains galore and the weather was glorious.

Saturday started out with a stop at the Pioneer Valley Roller Derby's tag and bake sale at Sacred Heart Church on King Street. As the team members skated around the wooden parish hall floor, Erin and I checked out the clothing. I passed up a pink handknit cropped cardigan with angora trim and went for a simple gray skirt that I can wear to work ($2). Erin got a vintage skort dress ($5).

Our next stop was Shelburne Falls, where the first thing we saw when we started walking around was a disconsolate Moose Boy sitting on the curb. A camera crew of teens was shooting (and reshooting) photos of a girl running down the sidewalk towards him. We couldn't figure out what it was all about. After looking at the crafts at Salmon Falls Artisans Showroom, crossing the Bridge of Flowers, noodling around in a bunch of shops and taking many pix of the glacial potholes, we had tapas and cocktails at Tusk 'n' Rattle, a great little subterranean restaurant recently purchased by my pal Yanina. The place is warm and cozy, the service was friendly, and the food was fab. (Erin had lentil cakes with a mango salsa and I had grilled shrimp with cilantro lime sauce -- yum!)

The day we'd long been awaiting was Sunday, the opening of the flea market season. It couldn't have been a nicer day for exploring the trash and treasures. And what a great haul: Erin got a cast iron skillet ($2), two mid-century shallow stainless steel serving bowls with wooden handles ($1 each), a plastic necklace ($1), and a ceramic floral wall plaque circa 1940 ($6). My flea market finds included four generous bags of vintage buttons ($1 each) and a lime green and blue necklace ($2). We ran into Amy and Baby G there, and had a swell time looking at the wares.

See my Flickr page for more pix of the weekend.

1000 days -- and counting down

According to the Backwards Bush Countdown Clock, there are now 1000 days left of George W's presidency. He could still do a lot of bad shit in that amount of time. That's the storm cloud. The silver lining is that 1000 days is the maximum amount of time that we'll have to put up with him. Maybe he'll be gone before that. Look what's been happening to his evil little pals lately: Card's gone, Rove's been demoted, Rumsfeld's under the gun, and Cheney's running around with a gun. George W. could be impeached. We can dream.
(The photo isn't mine -- I got it by e-mail sans credit)

I'm not hallucinating

Yesterday morning on North Maple Street in Florence, I saw a car with a McGovern-Shriver bumper sticker. It was a newer model minivan, not a vintage car from 1972 that had been taken out of mothballs. There was also a Kerry-Edwards sticker and one that said "Yankees Suck" on it. If I see the van again, I'll try to get a picture to prove I'm not making this up. What's the message here? That McGovern-Shriver are better than anybody the Dems will be able to put forward in 2008? I don't want to be that cynical. But they are definitely a whole lot better than the gun-loving pair who are in charge now.

I need some new pals

Don't get me wrong -- my current pals are swell. I have a small cadre of all-purpose pals, and then there several music listening pals, flea market shopping pals, knitting pals, and reproductive rights activist pals. But I don't have a group of photo pals. SBSB and I took the digicam class together recently, and we've been thinking that we'd like to find 4-6 other people to go with us on photo shoot adventures every so often. The group could pick a western Mass scenic destination for each outing, and then we could look at each other's photos afterwards and give feedback and advice. I'm imagining that the group would probably be mostly women, but we would invite Spooner to come along when he's stateside. One other pal who is more novice than SBSB and me has said she might be interested. We need to find a few more people, and it would be great to include a couple of digital photo mavens who don't mind traipsing around with a bunch of newbies. Let me know if you're interested.

Factory Photos

My group photo shoot with the digicam class the weekend before last was a bit disappointing. The sky was overcast, the grass was still brown and the trees were bare. Of the 60-some pix I took, only 3 or 4 were Flickr worthy. This past weekend, the sun was out and the sky was blue, so I went to Easthampton to wander around the factories and take pictures. The Easthampton Industrial Properties, One Ferry Street, is a wreck of a building. It's in the process of being gutted, but I'm not sure what it will become after renovation. Maybe loft spaces, in which case I'll let my expat pal Spooner know. He's making noise about wanting a loft to store his stuff in.

I just put four of the factory pix on my Flickr page. Although I'm not much of a joiner, I've become a member of two Flickr groups -- Pioneer Valley and Noho -- and have posted a couple pix on each. So far, no other members have reached out to say, "Welcome, comrad." I guess that's the difference between an anonymous online community and the Socialist Party. I think I'd actually like to be part of a photo group, the way my quilter pal is in a quilting group. It would be fun to do occasional group photo shoots, then look at each other's pix over beer and snacks.