More Cowbell!

Today I went to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. I've been hearing about it since I was a teenager living in the middle of nowhere --sorry Gaylord, but it's true -- and now I can just hop on the train and show up there! It's like a magic portal in a video game. And the best part is that except for the food it's completely free, so anyone can go.

The Folklife Festival features the music, crafts, food, and oral traditions of a different set of cultures each year. This year the music was from South and Central America, the crafts were from Wales, and the oral traditions were from African-American culture. There was food present from all three, but I didn't have any. It sure smelled good though.

This is a band from Puerto Rico that is made up of six guys who play percussion instruments and sing. I am in awe of their abilities. Classical composers put rhythms like these down on paper for people like me to imitate, and while I can play them with some practice, it'll never be as heart-felt as when these guys go after it.

This Welsh gentleman was demonstrating the carding and spinning of wool. I would soooo love to learn to spin, but I'm afraid that's a gateway activity to moving to a farm and raising sheep.

Some of the people gathered were shocked to see how easy it was to join in a new piece of roving (the fuzzy ropes on the table) if the yarn being spun should happen to break. Wool has a natural tendency to stick to itself since it's covered with tiny hooks -- part of what can make it so itchy. When knitting with pure untreated wool, saliva and some palm friction are all that is required to join two ends of yarn.

I'm already waiting for next year to see what countries will be featured!

Well, it *is* made from light sweet crude.

I bet this darling S4 consumes a lot.

Those blue ones are teases.

Today I went with a photography group to the "Wings of Fancy" exhibit at the Brookside Gardens. I was amazed at how easy it was to get some pretty decent photos. The Blue Morphos posed a challenge for all of us -- we wanted to get a picture of them sitting still, instead of fluttering around. One of the docents pointed out to me that when they are sitting still, they look completely different because they hold their wings closed and the undersides of their wings are brown. They also prefer, unlike many of the other lepidopterans present, to get their nutrients from over-ripe fruit. See the tinge of blue on one of the bugs pictured below? A few more favorites...

(Above)Notice the contrast between red and blue on this little guy.

So velvety soft -- soft-looking, of course. We were told that if one lands on us, we were to summon an attendant to brush them off of us.

Ooooh, one more treat! Watching a monarch butterfly go from chrysalis to ready-to-fly. They can fly after about 10 minutes, I was told, although it takes about 2 hours for their wings to completely dry.

Pumpkin's Breakfast Routine

Here's a video of my latest strategy for limiting Pumpkin's intake -- although this is more to make him eat more slowly, which seems to cut down on begging.

WARNING: There is music, so you may want to have a finger on the volume control.

My mother's oven has superpowers.

I was looking through some old pictures this evening, and I rediscovered this picture of the buttons on my mother's new oven. She's always been a really good baker, but apparently her new oven has a power that humanity has been dreaming of for millennia. Look closely.

If only I knew the perfect time to call up and ask her to press the button! Although some days at work I feel like someone has certainly been using it. Might come in handy to meet the clients' requests sometimes.

The phone number at the Abeel house is available to members of the inner sanctum.

It's been a very soggy couple of weeks.

Kris, Kevin, and I went for a walk at Great Falls this weekend to see how they look after all of the rain we've been having. The water is translucent brown and moves like it has somewhere to go. We also saw a Park Police helicopter flying super-low through the gorge downstream from the falls, tiny waterfalls cascading everywhere, and many knobby-kneed sharp-eyed herons hoping to grab something from nature's snack bar.