Bleary-eyed and back in Boise

Well, we're back in the land of potatoes. Nevada was just awesome.



Friday night Shelley and I had fun while we fully embarrassed ourselves on the Zydeco dance floor. I know I am a bad dancer, but I've come to realize that I am a REALLY bad Zydeco dancer. It has a really fast tempo. I thought my mad polka skillz (<---the 'z' shows how badass I am) would carry me through but the beat is actually quite different. We held our own on the slow numbers. On the medium speed, well, it's amazing what you can adapt a two-step to. But the full-on, high speed songs.....wow.

It was a pretty cool scene. The band was great, and played for 3 hours straight w/out a break. We were definitely one of the 4 or 5 youngest couples there by 2-3 decades at least, which gives it the odd feeling of going to prom with your grandparents. This serves to make it that much more infuriating that we are the worst dancers out there. Seriously, we're bad. I don't know how many times you can forcefully collide with other couples before you should take a break, but I'm guessing an average of 5-6 times per song is well over the max. In fact, I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure we were dance-herded off the floor a couple times by the other couples.

Saturday

Saturday, we slept in. The day was overcast and brought in some wet snow. We caught some really interesting poetry readings (one of which was from Montana's poet laureate), a discussion panel comprised of Native American cowboys, and in the evening a show of 4 cowgirl singer/songwriters spanning in age from 7 - over 50. Each of them brought their own style and previous singing experience to the stage. It was pretty amazing to see.

One of them named Miss "V", lives by herself on a ranch in Wyoming. She goes into town for supplies once a year and is completely self sufficient. She also makes some of her own instruments. I've always wanted to try my hand at making a guitar, but after seeing and hearing her homemade banjo I think I might make that one of my next projects.

Here's a joke one of the old poets started his time with. It might not translate well on the page but here it goes. The poet who told the joke was an old-timer who had been to several of the festivals. Here's a description of the scene:

Old poet shambles up to the podium.

Old poet drawls, "Well, thanks for comin' out everybody. Before I get started I've just got a few announcements to make."

Puts on his reading glasses and looks at his notes, "But first, let's give a hand for Lester Brown who's here and is 111 years old. Let's give a hand for Lester."

Everybody claps, and cranes their necks looking around the room trying to spot the 111 year old man.

Old poet pretends to look more closely at his notes and holds up his hand, "Wait, I take that back he's not 111, he's ill."


Anway, it loses something when written out, but I liked the joke so I thought I'd share it.



Sunday

The last day of the festival there isn't really anything going on, but they do have an open breakfast of coffee, doughnuts, and finger food laid out for anyone who wants it. After grabbing a snack we headed out of town.

The drive home was pretty straightforward except for a weird encounter w/ a gas station attendant (more about that later).


Cool Stuff!!!!!!

Geno Delafose the Zydeco player has a Fan Appreciation Party every October at his ranch in Louisiana. Anyone can come. They have food and he and his band play Zydeco. This sounds awesome. I'm not sure if we'll make it down this year, but I definitely want to go to this.

You can see video and hear audio from this year's Poetry Festival here.

Kaz out!








I've posted some photos to photobucket. Click here to check 'em out.

Poetry Festival

We are in Nevada at the Cowboy Poetry Festival. Right now Shelley and I are sitting in a Starbucks using the WiFi and collecting our thoughts. Being in Nevada we are of course surrounded by the flashing lights and non-stop beeps and bells of countless slot machines. There is some sort of a casino in almost every building of this town it seems. Even the grocery store has slot machines. Odd. Although, it sort of adds to the excitement of the town. It always feels like there is something exciting going on in a casino. So much activity has to lead to something, right?

Anyway, we finished our shift volunteering and caught a really cool poetry/cowboy music performance before we headed out to find a coffee shop w/ WiFi. It's a great setup here. There are intimate performances of poets, songwriters, essayist, and storytellers all around town all day. There are also workshops you can attend on dancing, rawhide whip braiding, knot tying, basket weaving, and many other western crafts. Historical films play in several theaters. Round table discussions take place to discuss current events that affect the cowboy lifestyle and music/poetry trends. Many of these events cost nothing at all. Several of the better known poets and singers will have smaller free performances during the day and then the big performance at night will be ticketed. The central theme to all of these activities is to celebrate and educate about the cowboy lifestyle from all over the US, Canada, and Mexico. The performers range from full time musicians to real cowboys who write poetry and/or music on their down time at the ranches where they work. Some of them own their own ranch, while just as many work as ranch hands. Whether you have grown up living the life of a real cowboy or you have simply embraced your love of the life and history of the American cowboy all people intermingle to celebrate their passion for the cowboy lifestyle.

This year a Zydeco band from Louisiana is one of the artists from farther afield. Tonight is their big concert and dance. Earlier in the day they had a workshop to learn Zydeco dances which we skipped because it cost $20 a person. But even if we don't know the actual steps it should be fun to attend the dance tonight. I've never taken a polka class but dancing at the Viennese ball was always a blast, so how bad could this be?

Tomorrow, I'd like to take a class on something. Not sure what though. The whip braiding looked cool.

More tomorrow....

Bad, Bad bloggers

Well, in the recent efforts of getting a business website going I've decided to try and resurrect this blog. We'll see how long it lasts but, I'll give it the old college try.

Shelley and I are going on some cool outing in the next couple weeks so I'll have stuff to talk about even! yeah!

Anyway, more later.

-Kaz