Swing Music

Today we drove around stopping at numerous yard sales, including one at a church Carrie had been to previously and bought some spiced pear preserves she wanted to buy again. They didn't have any this time around, but she still found a few things to pick up. And she found a few more at the other places we stopped at. I had very little luck until the very last one where I found the above for a buck. I'm a big Tarzan fan and I was willing to pay the buck for this without any idea what the music is like or even if it's playable. But now I have another reason to wish our house buying was over, so we can get unpacked and I can try and play it!

Color My World

A couple of weeks ago we noticed a few trees had one or two leaves or groups of leaves that were starting to change color. This past week it has become quite noticeable that Fall is upon us. The trees are still mostly green, but there is no denying that is changing and changing fast. Because of all the rain we had over the summer, we're hoping we'll have another season as spectacular as last year.

Yesterday we spent the morning at a huge "yard sale" held outside the raceway in Scarborough, then stopped and bought a few comics at Casa Blanca Comics in Portland, and finally took Pandora out for a long walk on Bradbury Mountain.

Today, Carrie is at work. This morning I'm trying to get computer things done, like scanning and emailing documents, transferring photos and music, and posting to Facebook. This afternoon I plan to draw a panel for Watusi.

Open Lighthouse Close Encounters

Saturday was Open Lighthouse Day in Maine. Carrie and I decided to take advantage of it and go see the ones participating along the Kennebec River on Arrowsic Island. Doubling Point Lighthouse is visible from the bridge from Bath, if you know to look. It was also possibly the biggest of the ones we saw today, but not by much.

The Kennebec River Range Lights are a pair of lighthouses that ships coming up the river would line up in their sights to know they were sailing through the deep part of the river. The photo is the view from the back one towards the river where you can kind of see the other, pale against the pale background.

The final light, Squirrel Point Light, isn't off the beaten path, but the half hour hike on the path is how you get to it if you don't have a boat. It is in the process of being renovated but is not yet safe enough to allow people to go inside.

Click on any of the lighthouses to enlarge the picture.




Afterward we continued down route 127 across a few bridges and islands, including Georgetown until we hit the sea.

One Giant Steps For Maine

Last weekend we took Pandora and headed out to Bailey Island. We'd been to Bailey Island before, but didn't know about the cliff walk until a coworker of mine who had stayed in the area for a while told me about it. It was a very picturesque and pleasant walk which Pandora greatly enjoyed. The special feature was what was called The Giant Steps. A regular step-like cutting into the cliff face that I climbed down. Carrie took my photo from the top of the stairs.

I took the video from the bottom.

Folk Off

Last weekend was Bangor's American Folk Festival and we went! We planned on going Saturday, but it was such a rainy day we figured it wasn't worth the drive. Fortunately, Carrie also had Sunday off, so that's when we went.

The music acts were starting at noon, but we arrived earlier than that, so looked around the vendor tents a bit. Nothing too exciting, though Carrie did buy a couple of things.

The first act we went to was Nikolay Kolev, who played Bulgarian music on his gadulka. It was interesting enough that we wanted to see him perform with the rest of his group, Bulgarika. We walked over to the stage they would be on fairly soon afterwards and caught the tail end of French Vocal Traditions and Carrie heard her first Acadian music. Kind of like Cajun Celtic. We both like it. Bulgarika had a huge crowd and when they got going they really rocked the house!

After that we meandered off to the far end of the area to the Children's Stage (there were six stages total, so you know there was a lot of music going on here!) We caught three acts here, Gene Tagaban, One Crazy Raven, pictured above, was a Native American story-teller. His picture, dressed in Tlingit Raven garb, was on the show t-shirts and programs, and certainly caught Carrie's eye.

Also on this stage were Music From China, an ensemble that played, well, music from China. And they interacted with the children in the audience as often as they could. And the last group we watched here was Andes Manta. They had about three dozen different instruments that they kept switching around on while they played music from the Andes Mountain region. One guy was extraordinarily speedy on his little guitar. Check him out on this clip. And, no, I did not speed it up at all.

We left them a little early to go see the India dance troup featuring Mythili Prakash, but unless you were in the front row, a lot of what they did was completely lost behind audience members' heads.

Still, it was a fun day and we intend to go back next year.