Belonging

I have fully developed my most recent theory,
Theory Number 1503:
Belonging and Why People Are Happier When They're Hanging With Their Posse (or their country or state or band or class or family.)
I've found myself being all proud and patriotic today, since it's Independence day and whatnot. I'm glad to be an American. I believe in the possibilities that come with living here. In other countries I was called "That American Girl" or "America" and I completely dug it. I was part of something much bigger than just me.
Safety in numbers.
And, yea, I know - I smack talked our elected leaders for the better part of 10 years, but I'm over it. I'm being the Change.
Dial that down a notch, and all over America (as some point in the last few years) people who hadn't quite remembered my name would call me "Kansas." I'm fine with that. Kansas is big and generally nice and chill. Sadly, also a little judged by the whole uptight, haaaaard right conservative way it shows up on the radar. I'm okay with that only because I know that is no real indication of my team.
(Kansas being that team - in case I lost you.)
Look even closer and I'm a musician, an artist and a writer. Oh yea. This could be one of my most favorite places to belong, seriously. This is one huge and constantly growing group of good, alive, diverse, stimulating, over-caffeinated and outside the box people.
In spite of having probably taken them for granted for a bit now, I really need my love bunch. I am related by blood to some of them, and by honor and love to others, but without them I lose my definition. My edges get all blurry and I don't make much eye contact or offer quality hugs. Without this part of who I am, I cease to be who it is that I am.
At the Solstice Party in Kansas City a couple weeks ago I hung with a bunch of people I had never met. Even though I wasn't a due-paying member of their posse, I caught the vibe and had a blast. I belonged there just long enough to remember what it was that I needed.
Then I realized that I've got it.
It's a good day to be me.

Stella Yellin Non-Get-Alongs

For about as long as I can remember I have attended the Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival in Winfield, Kansas for most of the months of September.

It's been years now since I attended but I still have a completely romanticized warm and fuzzy feeling about it.
One of my very first years there I came upon a camp of musicians who were in the newspaper industry and from Joplin, Missouri. Among them was a man named Jim Moss.
While most of that festival in particular remains something of a blur, I have been having really vivid memories of the time he shared with me and the key to the John Prine universe that he unlocked.
He taught me a huge chunk of the songs that I'm still playing today. I can play those songs (and have) with almost anyone, almost anywhere - and I find people to sing along and play amazing leads and share stories, food and drink till well past sunrise.
I don't know where Jim Moss is anymore (although I suspect he's still somewhere near Joplin) and I doubt I'll ever be able to thank him for the gift he gave me ~ But, almost every day I play something that he either taught me or showed me that I could learn and, for that, I'm grateful.
If you are one of the thousands that saves up your precious vacation time for those moments in the Pecan Grove, just yell "Stellllllllllla" for me sometime around 4am and then start singing "That's The Way That The World Goes Round."
I think you've only got about 100 more days to build a plan that involves that request.

Life in The Slow Lane

The town I'm calling home now smells of sweet honeysuckle from one end to the other. I see more tractors and pick-ups every day then I ever see cars. There is absolutely NO ethnic diversity and I think it's reasonable to assume that everyone I meet is related to someone else I've already met.
I have yet to see a kid wearing a helmet or protective gear on their bicycles as they ride down the middle of the "busy" street (busy in this case being defined by the fact that there are TWO whole stop signs.)
I haven't seen this many men sporting mullets since sometime around 1982. On any given night I can walk around and smell fried chicken, roasting brats and the occasional whiff of sulfur from some precipitous bottle rocket fights.
The sum total of today's 18 hours passed like minutes. We talked about sustainable hardwoods and opportunity costs. We shared stories and took hours to eat half a sandwich.
I thought about all the Twitters I'm keeping, the blogs that are maybe days overdue and the social networks that either do or don't need to be tended to. I weeded the flower beds and played catch with the Lab. I wrote. I researched. I organized and alphabetized. I made and broke deadlines.
I good vibed my grown children and their partners and babies and dogs. I offered up little prayers even though I'm no longer a disciple of organized religion.
I talked endless smack to and about my computer.
Today was one of the sweetest slices of magic I've known in a very long time. I laughed and I cried and I laughed till I cried. I'm in love with this life. In spite of knowing that all things will change and there will be some wicked bad days, I'm finally free enough to bliss out completely and love the moments that come and go so freely. And, in so doing, I'm glad you're here because this moment rocks.

Breaking The Rules

I've always been a big fan of breaking the rules.
At some point I chose to say, "Drain the break fluid and drive 100!" instead of "Have fun storming the castle," or "Be careful and call me if you're going to be late."
I've participated in illegal activities since I was able to walk (it was all in the training...years and years of practice).
Today I remembered that my grandfather taught me how to make "Jailhouse Gin" (he spent most of his life, and therefore certainly most of MY life incarcerated in a federal penitentiary) when I was way too young to even know what gin was. That was the same weekend that he taught me how to play poker and run a line across the Missouri river to catch fish so I wouldn't starve to death.
Y'know, priorities were just different back then. We didn't EVER wear helmets or elbow pads when we rode our bikes. My parents smoked Kent cigarettes like fiends in the car while we rode on the back dash all the way up to Topeka every other weekend. They never rolled down the windows.
Ever. NOT once.
My mom told me that the Flint Hills were all just a huge cemetery for giants, buried long before we were born, and that's why the grass was so green and the hills so attractive.
Blood and scabs and ropes and splinters were just a small fraction of the stuff that went into building our character. Almost nobody got busted for anything - from child abuse to tax evasion and felonious contraband.
We all had an errant uncle living with us. Good Catholics went to confession on Saturdays, received communion on Sundays and nobody was gay.
All the phones were rotary dials, the internet was far from even being a twinkle in somebody's eyes and we could go to the drive-in on Saturdays if mom never had to say the words, "Don't make me tell your father about this."
I still refuse to buckle up. I wear cut-offs and go barefoot at work. I smoke this and that (much more of This than That) - and I'm serious: Do you honestly think that Monet could have done what he did...and Kerouac, and Picasso, and Rembrandt, Emerson and William Burroughs ... without breaking the rules? I'm thinking not so much.
It's all a gamble. You never know what's going to happen. In that Dustin Hoffman movie ("Little Big Man") that old Indian said over and over, "It's a good day to die," meaning that he had lived well THAT day and it was all good by him. I think that may well be the way we are supposed to take this: One falling star at a time.

Back to Kansas

I've traveled a few thousand miles to be here. And, here is so fundamentally good and soul restorative I find myself having trouble wrapping my brain around it (much less trying to put it into words).
So rare are the moments when I wasn't able to articulate something (read: I never shut up) and since I've been pretty elusive in my tweets and status updates, I'm going to attempt to bring you up to speed and NOT lose you in the details.
The shortest story I can think of goes like this: A few years ago everybody I knew started to die, within a couple years everybody was gone but my kids and a couple of faithful friends. But, in the three years that it took that holocaust to pass, I'd buried my mom and my dad and more beloved memories than I've ever cared to count.
The best and only response I could come up with was to sell everything I owned (but my guitar, laptop and cell phone) and hit the road. I really didn't care all that much about much at all, and it had become abundantly clear that that which wouldn't just freakin' kill me forgodssake, would just make me stronger.
With a completely unfounded belief that I was unstoppable, I traveled. Then I traveled some more, and a little bit more for good measure.
I've met so many people and seen so many things, that I can only smile a bit and shake my head from side to side.
Seriously. For real.
I think it's imperative that we all step outside our comfort zones, and my adventures have proven that we are all way more resiliant than we think we are.
I am a horrible homeless person. I can suck it up and do the stiff upper lip thing as good as (well, technically: MUCH better than) the average bear. But, I simply can't ask anyone for anything. It just kills me. So there was that.
And then recently I remembered that I could write well enough to sell that talent, and not everybody can do that. Some people do algebra, some knit - I write. I did what I've done for 3 years: Craigslist. Long story short, I'm sitting in a 70 year old limestone building in Perry, Kansas. I am now paid to be a Marketing Director.
I can drive the old red Dodge beater truck with a manual transmission. There's a sweet brown lab named Rachel that comes in and I can pet her and throw her sticks.
Out the front door the trains roll by with certaintity, out the back is the Delaware river (no mamby pamby river either, it's way bigger than the Arkansas.) Go a mile either of the other ways and it's nothing but milo and soy and fields of tart prairie grass. There are a lot of guys on tractors.
If I'm so inclined, Lawrence is just 20 minutes away and there are all kinds of attractive things to be had there.
There is a herd of Red Deer (who look just like Reindeer to me) and they're having babies. I've heard of the sheep, but have yet to see them. Supposedly it's not the best lamb you can eat, but it doesn't suck either. I learned that you can't wrangle deer, you have to trick 'em. That could be fun.
The concern for whom I write is a well-established family business and it reminds me so much of what I knew and learned to love growing up in a family-run business. I can swear AND take showers here. I have a room and a soft padded place to lay my head at night.
Just up the street is the Perry Bar and Grill where they still allow smoking indoors. On Thursdays they have $5 steak nights. I don't even like steak, but I'm really looking forward to Thursday next - my son and his wife and my perfect grandson are meeting us there for dinner. And, I have never in my life been so grateful to know that I can buy them all dinner.

Ode to the Hobo

As far as I can tell, through countless hours of research, there is no definitive line that separates the Hobos from the Homeless. The statistics (which I consider to be somewhat outdated) indicate that on any given night here in America there is between one and two million people sleeping on the streets, in boxes tucked away in alleys and in the drainage ditches available in almost every city in the country.
From my personal research, I've found these misplaced and discarded humans to be considerably more generous and beneficent than the average middle-class American. They've given me their last ten or twenty cents and I've returned the favor every time I have any change in my pocket (which, much to my dismay, is not all that often anymore). The times I've felt unsafe have been few and far between.
I am beginning to believe that the disparity between privilege and poverty is most clearly defined by the kindness of those who've known poverty. Back in the day (the late 1800's) the very first Hobo Convention was held and a code of ethics was developed that still holds true today. I believe the consequences of our economy have increased the homeless/hobo numbers ten fold (at least) and there are now new considerations and symbols.
I am a hobo who travels with a laptop and a pre-pay cell phone. I have had great success in finding free wireless in every city I have jungled in, thanks to warchalking.In addition to those symbols, there is a whole new set of symbols that make it easier for the modern day hobo to identify safe harbor from danger.
The vagabond lifestyle is not something that I'd wish for my best friend, but it has provided me with an entirely new perspective on our culture and our priorities.
While there are times that I miss owning stuff (clothes, electronics and a cat) there are more times that I am ridiculously grateful to know that I'm not a burden to my children. Should you see a homeless, humble and dignified person in your path, don't go out of your way to avoid them. Even a smile given freely to someone sitting on a street corner can make a day so much better.

Mother's Day Eve

This is that night when we set out a plate of cookies and a glass of cold Whole Milk.
If we go to sleep early, she'll show up.... looking like Jackie Kennedy.
Moms all across America are thinking they will get roses or breakfast in bed or a phone call.
Maybe chocolate... maybe beer.
I miss my mom.
Almost every single day.
She was all that and more.
Happy Mother's Day.
WaHoo.