Barbara Adler

Hi-Hi!

This comes to you from Toronto, where I am cooling my heels for a bit in preparation for the Words Aloud Festival in Durham, ON. After that, The Fugitives gear up for a Western Canada tour. The Isle of Vancouver, all the way to Winnipeg. Just think of the micro-climates and ecological zones we will pass through!Oh, come on...think of it...

I have been a bit tardy updating my solo site, because it is full steam ahead with The Fugitives' brand new home on the internet. We are still at www.fugitives.ca , but there is now so much more. Check out our new music video, a public performance art project, news from the road, as well as music from our new EP. For more regular (but vague, and pretty useless) information about me, you can follow me on twitter. I promise to relay as much celebrity gossip as I come across. My name on twitter is (wait for it)...BarbaraAdler

Hope to see you all very soon, somewhere! If you are in the Toronto area, check out the calendar for some cool shows I am doing here between now and Nov. 6th.

Hearts! Barbara

ps. 10,000 Bonus Points to the person who can identify\name\catalogue the bizarro facial expression in the photo above. What am I doing? Do I make that face often? Should I get rid of my face? Seriously! Thanks to Mike Love for capturing this moment of weirdness at The Fugitives' St. James Hall show, Sept. 5, 2009

Here is my first trip journal for The B.C. Memory Game. A dedicated website is coming soon. For now, read about the project, view pictures, make comments, and share your stories at: www.facebook.com/thebcmemorygame

May 3, 2010

I just had a beautiful magic-hour walk, punctuated by flushed-out duck couples, and the white rears of Invermere's roving Mule Deer. Most of the deer in the groups had soft, velvety antler buds-- young guys just hanging around. I had my very first sighting of a mule deer licking its anus! Coincidence? After travelling across Canada with a carload of men, I think not. (Note: The Fugitive men don't actually lick their rear-ends, in public. I'm making fun of them in a sexist way. Shame. Shame. The Fugitive men are better people than me, they would not stoop to this...).

I found an irritating sports bar to have a beer in. It used to be called The Station Pub, because it's housed in an old railroad station building. Now it's called Ray Ray's Beach Pub, "where the girls go." Tonight it's mostly young men, with just a couple of girls. There are more than four board shop\beach sports apparel stores in town. I think I'm hanging out with their clientele. Golly, where would I go to buy my skinny jeans and little scarves? I would perish here, I know it. 

Listen, I'm just being nasty, because there are speakers blaring bad radio in every corner of the place, and I'm sensitive to that, because I recently had romantic moments with mule deer and loving duck couples. I'll get over it.

Before this, my walk was the kind of peaceful, aimless walk I've been craving for the entire month on the road with The Fugitives. It takes the band about 20 minutes to make the decision to leave a room, then another 15 to actually do it. When I said goodbye to my billets this morning-- a very sweet couple in Cranbrook-- I felt a giddy rush. "I'm about to be alone. Wow. Maybe I'll walk places without having to debate about it." 

I walked up and down the railroad tracks, skirted the edge of the river, read informational signs about wetlands and the hundreds of dragonfly species that make them their homes. All under the shadow of mostly empty resort home condo complexes. Big, brutal things that make me feel grateful to be here before the Season. At this time of year, Invermere is the kind of place where you can jaywalk without even pretending to check for traffic. There is one main drag that SUVS take fairly quickly, but once you're up the hill and downtown, the streets are yours. 

I saw a man walking along the railroad tracks with his camera. I left him more or less alone. For a second, I felt like it was my job as a temporary pseudo-journalist to try and interview him--get his personal stories about the valley. That's what I'm here for, after all. Fortunately, my moral impulse as a human being kicked in, and I applied the Golden Rule. If anyone wearing a small scarf and skinny jeans had come up to me on this walk, and asked me to tell them about the town, I would have punched the welcoming smile right off their face.

I said "hi," and made a comment about the light this time of day,then left him with, "I don't want to waste your light." Walking back towards the vacation homes, which sit on the edge of the marsh, all three stories of them waiting to be filled with summer weekenders, I thought, what I really mean is, "I don't want to waste your time alone."

Photos of the condos and other wonders of Invermere (which, let's face it, is absolutely gorgeous, otherwise no one would want to build condos in it), are up in the mobile uploads album.

Hullo All,

Just getting the word out that there are two new ways to keep track of projects, news and gong-showmanship of all kinds.

The first is The B.C. Memory Game's official facebook page. This is a great place to send me ideas about where I should go in B.C., look at photos of my travels in the province, and generally nerd it up by loving where you live. It's important. If we don't love where we live, and where other people live, we basically become jerks. Take part by becoming a fan, or saying that you "like" this page: www.facebook.com/thebcmemorygame

Also new on the scene, all of our dear Fang Fans can finally become members of The Official Fang Club. Currently, to do this you have to search for "The Official Fang Club" on Facebook. Then become a fan. We will have an official page name very soon. The Official Fang Club is your dedicated resource to all things Fang: accordions, eccentric drum solos, greasy breakfasts, straight shots of rum, and hand-holding. There are photos, links to video, and discussions for you to take part in.

In other news, if you live in The Windermere Valley, or environs, you can come visit The B.C. Memory Game between 12pm and 5pm at The Pynelogs Cultural Center, on Sunday, May 2nd. I'll be upstairs, talking to folks about the area, and gathering stories for the project. This first trip coincides with the Wings Over the Rockies Bird festival, so please send all birdy and anti-bird types my way. Of course there will be photos and trip blogs on the Facebook page, and on the upcoming website for the Memory Game.

The Fugitives are on the last legs of their tour! If you live in Lethbridge or Calgary, come out tonight as we Lethbridge, or Calgary on the 30th. I will be posting a tour high-lights blog here and elsewhere soon. It's been a trip. The country is big. We're exhausted. But life! It's rad.

Smooches from rainy Lethbridge!

Barbara

Hello Hello From Winnipeg!

This comes to you, hungry from a computer lab in Winnipeg. The Fugitives are on tour this month, going across Canada, all the way to P.E.I.

So far, the incidents of note are:

1. Chris Suen, our new banjo player, SPEAKS LATIN!!!! He also doesn't go ANYWHERE without a flask of whiskey. Our street cred is officially bigger than planets.

2. We are dealing with a 25% Sade infection of our brand new cd. Huh? What? The story has been picked up by some on-line blogs. See what I mean here:

http://www.guttersnipenews.com/2010/03/30/the-fugitives-sade/

Or, for the funniest picture in the world: http://exclaim.ca/articles/generalarticlesynopsfullart.aspx?csid1=142&csid2=844&fid1=45486

3. I hunger! I can't think of more. More soon. I hunger.

There will be Fang video shortly, and there a bunch of new dates now. It's all happening on my calendar page. It's the place to be. So is food.

hearts to and from Winnipeg's broad shoulders!

Barbara

Well Well!

The Fugitives' brand new full-length album is officially unleashed today! It is called 'Eccentrically We Love," and man are we ever excited for you to hear it. We worked our sweet little bums off to make it. We think it's good. We are self-deprecating, doubtful people. We say things, and immediately think, "did I really just say that?" We wonder about who we are, and what we're doing on the planet, and if we are decent people. But we actually think this album's good. Yeah! Horray for not being existential and shit for once!

Check out our antidote to dark hearts and self-inflicted worry.

The singles, photos and stories about 'Eccentrically' at:

Our Website

Even more tracks are up at: Our Myspace

And, Dearest Fang Fans!

Never fear, Fang is marauding about with as much intensity and verve as ever. We have a couple of new dates to yelp about, a bold game plan for recordings, and elaborate initiation rituals to teach you.

Watch for us in May and June.

The Fugitives! & Fang!

We Cometh!

Fang's First Tour: A Report

Dearest Fang Fans!

Fang has triumphantly high-stepped back from its late February tour of Montreal\Ottawa\Carleton Place\Toronto and is now recuperating quietly in a safe Vancouver location. There are stories to tell.  Read on for a short photo essay on Fang's First Tour, complete with anecdotal information, documentary fact, and dietary recommendations!

Fang, Historically: Understanding the Contexts of Fang in a post-Fang world

This from Wikipedia: Fang is a punk rock band that originated in 1981. Fang was originally part of the punk rock scene in Berkeley, California in the 1980s. The band broke up in 1989 when key member Sam McBride was sent to prison for killing his girlfriend, Dixie Lee Carney. Upon his release, in 1995, McBride changed his name to Sammytown and reformed Fang.. Their albums include “Rat Music for Rat People,” and “These Boners Be Poppin.”

What? How can this be? Who’s the real Fang?

Fang, WE really are.

In 2009, an alternate current of Fang was brewing in the basement suites and apartments of East Vancouver. Barbara Adler and Ben Brown were spending their Christmas break doing homey things. They got a cat together, roasted fowl, decorated trees, and drank Lambs out of the bottle. Little did they know these domestic meanderings would soon coalesce as the iconic bond that is the center of Vancouver’s premier drum and accordion duo: Fang.

Formed with no knowledge of a pre-existing Californian punk band full of murderers and drug addicts, Adler and Brown’s Fang struts in the face of danger and beatings.

“Yeah? There’s already a punk band named Fang? They date girls named Dixie Lee? They kill people? Yeah? So What.”

Fang doesn’t care if you wear a loin clothe and sing in front of a giant spider web. Plans are in the works for way bigger spider webs, and way smaller loin clothes. Fang doesn’t care that you killed your girlfriend. Well, actually, it really does. Fang is not down with murder.  Fang also knows that there are way more punk rock things to do than kill people.

Like Swooning!

Swoon gently, Fang appreciates scenery

Fang arrives in Montreal on February 20^th, following a trans-Canada red-eye. After sleeping all day, the band ventures out, only to be punched in the face by the beauty of a Montreal sunset. Tres Punk Rock, non?

Sometimes it feels like the sky is a gigantic beer bottle, smashed against a curb, and brandished at our throats.

Fang Works 

 Over four days of intensive rehearsal, the band solidifies its aesthetic with drummer Ben Brown’s fill-in, James Meger (double bass). Fang is confused by how little its audiences are fazed by the fact that an upright bassist is filling in for a drummer.

Fang wonders if anyone has been reading its many facebook posts.  Most audience members seem content that the double bass is very large.  Fang is happy to give everyone lots of large bass. 

Alert your talent agent, Fang has played shows!

Fang’s first show is in Carleton Place, at CP Cinemas. Youtube footage of this show maybe found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VKRcZSbng

There are highlights:

• A duo poem is read by Emily and her best friend about their ex-boyfriends. We learn that one of them did not have eye-lashes! Yikes!
• The band meets young Fang fan, Meghen
• Fang begins the strange ritual of photographing the bass and accordion in their cases, and nude. Tour records reveal the existence of dozens of pictures in this genre. What is this? Perhaps Fang is also impressed by how large the bass is. Perhaps Fang just wanted a break from carrying these large instruments, and used “visual art” as a convenient excuse for a rest stop.

Prepare your Massage oils, Fang Aches!

A note on carrying large instruments. Upright basses are big. Accordions are heavy. It would generally be a good idea to know where you’re going before you start walking somewhere with one of these two instruments on your back

Secondary note on carrying large instruments: it’s nice to walk past subway buskers and exchange sad smiles.

Alert the CBC, Fang is a good Canadian

So many punk-shouting-accordion-drum duos today do not appreciate the rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship. Not so, Fang. Fang is Vancouver’s first accordion and drums duo to do a tour of the parliament buildings. It matters not that the visit started out as an attempt to find a bathroom. It matters not that the attempts to find a bathroom in our Capital City became a Challenge: What is the fanciest building we can take a dump in?

Fang could have taken a dump in any number of buildings with Neo Gothic turrets, but it selected the parliament buildings. We calmly await the arrival of the bouquets of Official Provincial Flowers, hand-plucked from the Governer General’s hothouses.

Put your hands over your hearts, Fang is non-partisan

Here are photographs of a bunch (two) of the Prime Minister paintings, from several parties. Prime Ministers get to choose their official painter, their costume, and how they will be posed. Fang cannot recall the name of the Gentleman Wearing the Beaver, so we will assume for this point, that he was a Conservative. Fang only wants government officials to work together productively, for a better Canada! Please note that the Trudeau painting was wicked, but since it was appropriately placed in the shadows, the photo didn't come out. Note 1 : It was in the shadows because the painting is bad ass! Trudeau is wearing motorcycle gloves, and has a black coat flung about his shoulders. Yeah! Trudeau plays shaker in Fang! Note 2: This is a gesture of respect. Shaker is hard.

Lay Down Your Social Networking Tools, Fang is the Network!

Following the example of young Fang fan, Megan, audience members at Voices of Venus contributed their artworks to the ongoing online exhibit of Fang-inspired art.

Feed Fang.

Should you ever see any member of Fang loping down the street, twirling their cigarillo, popping their collar, and challenging random thugs to musical fights, please remind them of their other great love: food.

Here are examples of a well-rounded Fang diet.

Note the difference between this last breakfast, and the photographs in which James Meger is wearing a checkered shirt and eating something delicious. For fun, try to guess which photograph was taken in Montreal, and which was taken in Toronto. Just guess. Interesting Cultural Discovery: The jam company, Smuckers, makes a caramel breakfast spread which seems to be distributed solely in Quebec. Caramel for breakfast! Oui! 

Fang Does Other Things 

To be a member of Fang's touring line up you must have a love of animals, including those species which have not yet been domesticated and those which are actually made out of quilts. Here James Meger demonstrates his ample qualifications.

Fang Appreciates and Loves

Fang appreciates gifts of small cakes and mix tapes! Fang Salutes Stephanie of Ottawa for her offerings of both!

Fang loves to raid your cupboards and get rides from your brother! Fang bum slaps Ken of Lanarck County for both!

Fang adores sleeping late and sucking back grease for breakfast! David Silverberg of Toronto joins Fang as MVP for both!

Fang also thanks Willow Rutherford, Luke Vajsar, Faye Estrella, Danielle K. Lanoire, Ernie, Omar and Ando for invaluable contributions to the tour, life and happiness.

END OF TOUR REPORT

Say Fang. We will come.

Photo by Evil Patrick Shannon, Thank you Patrick

Hello Hello!

Happy February! There are crocuses or possibly snow drops starting to thrust themselves out of my front porch, and the birds are back. It is obviously the start of the world again, and boy, am I happy to welcome it.

Speaking of birth, the eternal circle of life, and exciting things in general, I am very happy to introduce a new project. As many of you have probably guessed, the accordion has taken over my life in a pretty delirious way. I've been spending a lot of time holed up in my East Van apartment, torturing the neighbors and confusing the cat. For the past year or so, I have been bewildered by the fact that I'm not writing poetry. Questions have arisen from this, including: "Am I creatively dead? Will I ever perform new material again? What the hell is wrong with me?"

Well, the answer to all of those questions is: Ha! I have been writing tons! Except that all of it is accordion material! Turns out that my favorite thing in the world to do right now is write weird accordion things with pop-choruses, pseudo-rap, and singing. Dear god.

Enter Fang. Fang is Vancouver's premier accordion and drums duo, featuring myself (vocals, accordion) and Ben Brown (drums, vocals). I think we are Vancouver's ONLY accordion and drum's duo, so I feel pretty comfortable saying that we are the best one you will ever see. I will do some research and find out if I can make this claim nationally. Fang plays disastrously energetic word\song\squeezebox mash-ups. I get the crazy eyes, and Ben drums like he's having a seizure. We show up sober; we stagger home. Think of The White Stripes, Patti Smith, Geoff Berner. Go watch Ford Pier play guitar. Drink rum mid-day with your roommate, harbor obsessions for pointy, confusing, composed art-house music, talk about sex too much.  Now you understand Fang.

Fang will be touring Ontario this February (with James Meger on bass, filling in for Ben Brown on drums). Check out dates elsewhere on this site. We will also be opening for Brendan McLeod at the Cultch. Plans are in the works for a March show with some shit hot Balkan bands. Check out my facebook page for pictures from our latest show.

Yell Fang! whenever you feel it.  We will come. 

In other news:

- The Fugitives have finished their latest full-length album. It is called "Eccentrically We Love," and will be released Nationally at the end of March, and in Vancouver in early May. We will be touring across Canada in April. Check out www.fugitives.ca for up dates, and to hear new tracks soon. We are very excited. It's like nothing you've heard from us.

- I have a Northern B.C. tour coming up, and dates around town. Check out the dates section for more about this!

- The Fugitives just shot a music video for a new song, "Snail Shell." It is being edited as we speak. There is dancing. Holy. Watch The Fugitives' web site for news about this

- The B.C. Memory Game received a Canada Council creation grant to tell stories and create visual art about places in B.C. I am currently scheduling the first trips, which will start in May. A website is in the works. Watch for more news about this project here!

- I have to go take my cat to the vet now. Um. Stay tuned possibly for "my cat's vet bill was HUUUGE" fundraisers in the near future. Uh-oh.

xobarbara!

Hi-hi!

The big seven-week Canada Extravaganza is officially over, and we are home, home, home! Mein Gotte. It's good to be back. I sincerely missed my deer tracks through the city, not to mention the luxury of being in the same time-zone as my friends! Seriously-- how weird is it be eating dinner when your home is eating lunch? 

That said, best tour ever. Here are some highlights.

1. Montreal with The Fugitives: Le Divan Orange. We played with The United Steelworkers of Montreal, and dear lord, the place was PACKED. Big ole' thrust stage, thrusting into the arms of drunk fans. We felt like Gogol Bordello. We were onstage for 30 seconds, and instantly drenched in sweat. Ah-mazing. Also amazing to note that we have fans in Montreal, because high school students we played for in Vancouver have migrated to Montreal to be college students! 9:00am shows at senior secondary schools are the seeds of screaming choruses in Montreal. I LOVE it.

2. My solo lay-over in Toronto. Oh man, living two minutes from Kensington Market? Coffee at Manic Coffee every morning? Big hang-outs with Dave Silverberg, Amanda Heibert, Krystal Mullin, and the perfect shit-show of Toronto poets? Hey! And getting my favorite performance shots EVER of myself taken at Spooky Improv... Yeah! See above!

3. The Canadian Spoken Word Festival with The Fugitives. Oh, come on, how heart-warming to play for all of our friends from poetry across Canada, and to realize that we all have been hanging and traveling and knowing each other for years? Seriously amazing to perform for our community. And to eat 5 or 6 breakfasts a day.

4. Watching "Kissing Jessica Stein" with Elyse in London, Ontario. The Fugitives had a rare night in. Instead of boozing it up, we cuddled slumber party styles, as a neurotic Jewish girl flitted about with the hottest bisexual woman in the world. "Oooooh, I couldn't possibly kiss you, it repulses me...oooh, but I want to...no, I don't want to...I want to..." For chrissakes, have sex with the hot bisexual woman already, you neurotic, neurotic Jessica Stein!

5. Illan from Nanaimo feeding The Fugitives pre-show at his restaurant, The Hungry Camel. Very possibly the best food of the tour. Hey! And it turns out that there are amazing, fun people to hang out with in Nanaimo, and that you can have great shows, and not go home lonely, and miserable, hating the world because no one came to your show...People came! THANK YOU, Ilan! And then we almost got into not one, but TWO fist-fights! Culture and violence, late night pizza, and cover bands! Nanaimo, we knew you not!

6. Brendan McLeod turning 30 in Midway, British Columbia. Brendan drove us through a snow storm on his 30th birthday so that he and I could perform a couple of high school shows in Grandforks and Midway. We had his birthday dinner at a fast food Greek place, guzzling souvlaki from plastic baskets... At the DQ, the ice-cream girl refused to guess his age, and then presented him his blizzard with a big, campy Happy Birthday song. Not bad.

7. Lydias, Saskatoon with The Fugitives: By this point we are traveling with Kinnie Starr, who is HA-larious. We all start saying things like "it's time to shut'er down." "Ya, giv'er." "That's our 'effin' guitar, eh?" We play two bar-band sets, going on at midnight, playing 'til 2 am. Our encore is "Sandwiches," by Fred Penner, which the Saskatoon-ites manage to mosh to. Oh man, but they get'er done in Saskatoon. Best Saskatchewan show, EVER.

8. We DRIVE. We drive from Vancouver to Calgary. Calgary to Brooks, Alberta. Brooks, to Winnipeg. We drive from Winnipeg to Saskatoon. Saskatoon to Edmonton. Edmonton to Canmore. Canmore to Calgary. Calgary to home. By the time it's over, we rack up 5,300 k. According to mapquest, you could drive from Victoria to Fort St. John in just about that many kilometers (if you take a short-cut through Michigan). Into one, average-sized station wagon, we fit: 2 hard guitar cases, 1 hard banjo case, 2 soft guitar cases, one accordion, 1 merch bin, 6 suitcases, 4 lap-tops, a snack cooler, and 5 people. By the end of the trip, we have discovered that we are invincible and made of light. Or pain. Depending on the giddiness of the moment. Kinnie Starr does hilarious porn impersonations, Adrian does Werner Herzog, and Daniel Day Lewis in "There Will Be Blood." 

9. We come home. We release our EP at the Biltmore. 300 people join us. Oh dear, we love you Vancouver.

10. December 7th finds us in the studio for a month making our next album, due out in March. We are delirious with the coolness of the people who will be playing with us on it: Veda Hille, Kinnie Starr, Jesse Zubot, Skye Brooks, endless gangs...And, Lordy, we are excited to work with Matthew Rogers for an entire month. Guys. Steve Charles is playing the banjo on "City of Rain" right now, and it is wicked. We are excited about the surprises we have in store for you. We are a little bit kooky. We are little bit lotta tired. We are very happy. See you soon, and Merry Holidays.

Hearts!

Babs

I promise to try to always have as much ragged good fun as I did this weekend...

Hey Everyone (Mom),

The Fugitives shot their video for the new song, "Breaking Promises," this weekend, and holy jumpin'! I'm still getting over it. We started off the festivities by having a house concert chez moi. We performed songs in the order of most to least required sobriety, and found out that we have a surprising number of songs that we can be totally tanked for. Hey! Every good contemporary folk song should get insanely fast at the end! We SHOULD shout all the lyrics all at the same time, and slur the poetry. VERY European, somehow.

The whole idea of the house party was to kick off a fun Fugies Slumber Party. Folks didn't leave until 3:30 am though, so instead of painting our nails, we all hustled off to beds, with filmmakers Tony Massil and Ryan Flowers kindly agreeing to wake us up at dawn.

Dawn??? Why??!! Because the premise of our video is that we are running around all day together, making promises and keeping them. It was someone's bright idea to have the first promise be "I promise to see the dawn." 

Tony and Ryan woke me up first off, which was maybe a risky choice, since I completely forgot that we'd had that dumb-ass idea, and may have broken the documentary fourth-wall by repeatedly asking the "invisible" camera, "huh? what? what time is it?"  It didn't help that they were in disguise, wearing toques.

Eventually, we all stumbled out to greet the dawn, and then back into bed. My next promise was to make breakfast for everyone, so I fried up immense quantities of bacon in my wok, and fed some initially grumpy Fugitives and filmmakers bacon and eggs. Tony was upset that the bacon was sizzling too loudly. That should give you the picture of our overall health in the morning.

It didn't take long for us to get to the spirit. We shot down to the Purple Thistle for a photoshoot with Kris Krug and a bunch of youth photographers. In exchange for being models, we got some creative photos taken of us, AND we got a bunch of cool looking youth dancing to Steve's insanely complicated dance routine for the video. OK, it actually wasn't that complicated, but it was fast, and maybe some of us aren't so coordinated. I really liked the part where we pretended to be fish though. I'm not sure how it fit into the video conceptually, but it was the part of the dance that I could do.

Other highlights: carrying people across Main Street in a chair (I promise to carry you); petting a truly foul cat (I promise to always love you); roaring down Main street with Brendan screaming out of Adrian's sunroof (I promise not to hide my light under a bushel); a sunset swim at Kits Beach, and playing our song, instruments and all, on the 99-b line.

"Will you all sit down and stop that, especially the woman playing the accordion" was a true highlight of the second bus. I am interested in having two guys with cameras follow me around from now on. It makes you invincible.

Watch for the video on our websites of course, but even more excitingly, before films at Festival Cinemas for November, to promote our album launch (December 5th at the Biltmore Cabaret). At the very least, you will see Brendan ecstatically yelling biblical positivity down Main St. He was born to do that.

Huuuuge thank yous to Tony Massil and Ryan Flowers. Jeez, these guys are cool. You can check out Tony Massil's film: "40 Men for the Yukon." It is greatgreatgreat! Ryan Flowers iis part of the band In Media Res, and they are playing Saturday 26 at St. James Hall. If you ever see either of these guys on the street, give them big sloppy Fugitives hugs and kisses on the nose. You should do that to random men from now on, just in case it is one of them.

I promise to do the Grouse Grind tomorrow!

Bbbabs

 Hello Everyone (Mom), 

It's time for us to go back to school, so here I am, back at the website.  I'm waiting for a grey-haired, bored-voiced teacher to drone, "welcome back, students. I trust you've had a productive summer. Please take out a lined sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen." 

For now, my essay, "what I did this summer," is still pending. Here is the brainstorm list: 

This summer, I: 

- brain washed myself into loving the Grouse Grind (3 times a week, 'yo!)

- moved into the dream suite, future site of house concerts, slide shows, and introspective talks with the dream roommate 

- rode across the Rocky Mountain Divide on a horse named Percy 

- played my first folk festivals as an accordion player for The Fugitives 

- painted on silk for the first time 

- became addicted to submitting grant applications: Canada Council, B.C. Arts Council, Legacies Now... A world of fun! 

- bought my first pup tent, as well as an impressive array of dry bags 

- completed an EP with The Fugitives, called Find Me 

- made an unprecedented number of "to-do" lists 

- added Gillum Lake, Hudson's Hope, Toad River and Muncho Lake to my list of places I've had coffee in B.C. 

- got a pretty wicked tan in the shape of a Mountain Equipment Co-op racer-back tank top (now mainly faded. too bad. it made me look sporty) 

- babysat my nephew for the first time 

- changed my first diapers 

-used foul curse words in front of a 1-year old for the first time 

Phew! Guys! It has been busy, busy busy. I will be posting new photos soon, and hopefully a slide show that I'm working on for my horse trip. Keep watching for updates about The B.C. Memory Game. 

It's starting! It's happening! 

Recess, 

Barbara