going crazy

It's 100 goddamned degrees outside, ambulances are driving around picking up the dead. Some 23 yr old kid died yesterday trying to work outside. We go to work on the boat at daybreak, but two hours later we have to crawl back to our little apartment and sit in front of the AC waiting for the sun to go down. We go swimming every day but the water gets hotter and hotter and smells like rotting mud, that would be the Gulf of Mexico. 

Happy Birthday Muz!

Summer's Here

Happy birthday Nick

and Happy birthday Joyce!

Joyce just got back from RI last night, she went up for a reunion and an unexpected funeral of her aunt Kate. She's been scurrying about the apt cleaning up my mess of the last week. Lovely to have her home again.

She says all are asking about the boat and particularly WHEN?

Good question. Things are going well, the engine is fired up, still trying to get someone to install the hydraulics, working on the electrical, the kitchen is pretty much set up, nav lights are arriving, and John and I are  working away. 

The real problem is that once again it is HOT AS HELL down here in the swamp. I'm talking 100 degree heat and 100% humidity. It's hard to understand why people live here.

The whole boat project is of course an ongoing thing and it will never be finished, but in about two months we will have it together enough to get on board and leave Louisiana in the broad daylight.

. That leaves us pulling out into the Gulf of Mexico in the middle of hurricane season, which I actually look forward to. Being tied up in the swamp is a lot more precarious than being able to get out of the way. 

LOCK  'N LOAD and Om Padi Padi

Scarborough Maine

Lynn Sparling's house

The engine roars

We fired up the 8/71 Detroit Diesel this afternoon to check it out; it sounds great.  Joyce was very happy with it.  The picture is Matt the mechanic.

Leland Mississippi

Honeyboy Edwards
Cedric Burnside and Lightnin' Malcolm

Looking across Hwy 61

Bill 'Howlin'-Madd' Perry

someone's guitarist

Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes

This was so much fun- ever since we got to Louisiana, I've been waiting to hear some blues.  It's just not as popular as zydeco and cajun fiddle music- and you have to go to Mississippi!  This was a little festival- maybe 20 acts, and a couple of hundered attending- out in a field next to the tracks.  Mostly people our age- or older, counting the musicians.  Leland High was holding its 40th reunion at a nearby picnic table.  And then there's this European faction that loves the blues, plays the blues, and travels to hear it.  We were talking with some people who raised $5300 for the Leland Blues Museum at a benefit in Amsterdam last winter.  Some of them come back every year.