Friday meg and I went over to Miss Audrey’s to do some work. We really lucked out when she didn’t answer the door. Instead of calling Deborah to see what we should do, we took it as a day off and happily went to the park. We climbed a big ol’ Louisiana tree. Their branches grow out and touch the ground so it makes for some good climbing.



Saturday we met up with Deborah and she bought us 80 dollars worth of groceries. We are so lucky! She brought us to a local family owned business. We got all sorts of fresh goods. Deborah introduced us to Creole cream cheese, a regional food that’s not all that easy to find now.



Monday night Meg and I went to a café that’s close to our place. They had a documentary playing and the director was going to be there. We figured it was a free opportunity to catch some local color. It was an ok film. The director was really funny and interesting, but there were angry people spouting silliness so we left. After walking around the area a bit we were passing the front of the coffee house and the director spotted. Maurice offered to take us out to Café du Mode for beignets and coffee. The beignets were great. I’m not much for coffee, but I found it a pretty delicious combination. Maurice is a 5th generation New Orleans, Creole man. It was fun to hear what New Orleans was like in his when, and really bizarre to hear him talk about the places around us he wasn’t allowed in. He plays jazz cello, upright bass, and does jazz poetry. While he was driving he had us laughing so hard, at this one poem he performed for us. Of course this evening I chose not to take the camera.





These are the people we're working for. The "da condom father" is pastor Bruce, and "lady STD killer" is his wife, Deborah.

quick update:
We're in New Orleans! Odd place, different from everywhere we've been. An overview would include that nothings underground on account of the high water table, trolley cars, neutral grounds -that is the median where the trolleys run and cars cross, when driving one has to simultaneously look out for cars from either side and oncoming trolleys. Above ground cemeteries. Two great couchsurfing hosts. Cool trees and neat moss that looks soft but is more plastic feeling up close. Catfish we've had, craw fish-still haven't. We've been here since Saturday and are still having trouble finding everything- we like to call it bazaaro land, cause it's tricky and I think the streets move. Louisiana is broken up into Parishes instead of counties. And since Kentucky verbal directions are nearly incomprehensible.
our first night here our host Connie- great person- took us out to Bourbon st. It reminded me of this panel in the triptych: The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Bosch.

We're volunteering, currently working with sheet rock in a house. And we have a big apartment to ourselves for two weeks, totally free, well except for the work. Pretty sweet deal. We got a great tour of the city with Debra- the woman we're volunteering through. Driving through all the wards seeing empty fields where there were houses, closed schools, ridiculous brad pitt houses, ridiculous barnes and noble houses, where the levees were blown, and water marks on buildings that survived.
Here's our place:

Today's highlight: chocolate ice cream topped with fresh Louisiana strawberries accompanied with a local brew of strawberry beer.

Jonathan’s a boob. Meg and I had offered to put the clothesline up, seeing as Rebecca has to go out into the garden to hang clothes on the fences where there are chickens everywhere. Anything you do here includes birds everywhere. I went into the house the other day and there are chicks squeaking and walking about. I collect them and put them outside, I figure I ought to give them some food and water while I’m at it, and what to I find in the bag of feed? More chicks, just eating and shitting right there in the bag. Lovely.

Getting back to why Jonathan’s a boob. So were sorting though piles of clutter looking for a functioning drill and drill bits. Miraculously, we found what we needed minus a charger. We asked Jonathan where we can find one and he says, “I’ve got an eagle scout coming, let’s leave the big projects to him”. Yea ok. I don’t quite see how this fellow would be any more capable. I guess it’s a man’s job.

Rebecca had mentioned bringing us to live music and readings at a local bookstore in Oxford. That’s a nice thing about Mississippi- every town we drove through had loads of individually owned stores. It’s so refreshing. It also gives the towns a sort of preserved-stopped in time feeling, which is pretty neat. We didn’t see any chain bookstores till we drove way south through Jackson.

So we went into town and Rebecca said she’d meet us at the church afterwords and do a reading for us. The church is a lovely little New England church, very old. The same church William Faulkner went to infact. Rebecca told us it was one of the few that hadn’t been burnt down during the civil war. She performed Shingles for the lord by William Faulkner. I was blown away- Rebecca is an amazing storyteller. Afterward she took us to a couple of graveyards and Faulkner’s grave- he’s a big deal here. We also got to see the site of a mass burial right on the campus grounds of Ole Miss. We talked about the civil war. I realized everything I know is from a northern point of view. It’s very strange to me that I’ve never heard of the civil war other than a unit or so in grade school. Here there are reminders everywhere, and it was not that long ago. Rebecca’s grandfather was a veteran, and she grew up with segregated water fountains. There are still a few of what Rebecca calls “honkey schools”-white private schools that avoid integration.

Later Rebecca headed home and Meg and I went to walk around the town square. We hung out at the bookstore for a while where they have southern literature and southern history sections. It was a good night.

The following evening Rebecca told us she had planed on taking us to a gallery opening and then visit her friend Wendy’s for a last hurrah before we leave the next morning for New Orleans. We’re all sitting at the tiny table eating breakfast together. Jonathan’s gone to Arkansas on a fishing trip, leaving this silly eagle scout without instructions. Meg and I delegate some chores, did a small amount of work ourselves, before we went town for a bit.

We all piled into Rebecca’s car to go into Watervalley for the opening- Rebecca, Eagle Scout, Patty Bell, Meg, and Me. While we were driving I noticed a lovely set of blisters on Eagle Scout’s hands, which made me smile. Watervalley is an adorable little town, we heard it’s like 1959 there and that’s pretty accurate. We get to meet some of Rebecca’s friends- really funny, nice people. Johanna’s there with one of Rebecca’s friends, who she’s been staying with. It was good to see her again before we leave.

It’s a pretty wide rage of stuff at the gallery. The main attraction is in the back. A man dressed kind of like a ventriloquist’s doll is performing-I’m not sure what. There’s synthesized/organ like sounds and strange astral projections on a big screen next to him. He’s standing in the corner doing something with his hands, something that looks like a little radio is in front of him. It all seemed a little eerie. There was lots of delicious food and drinks. Kudos on that, Watervalley. Brie and Chevre-so good.

We’re standing outside, the eagle scouts hanging out with us because he’s out of his element. He was polite and conversational. Turns out he knows all about the man in the back room. He was playing a Theremin, a strange device that plays tones according to what the musician does with his hands without contact. I’ve never heard of this, pretty neat.

Afterwords we all go to Wendy’s house, one of Rebecca’s friends. We take a long gravel driveway into the property, lots of trees-very private. Wendy’s husband meets us with a flashlight and leads us to the house. The downstairs has all glass panels so that you could see right in. All exposed wood, a stone fireplace, and very neat and cozy inside. Outside there’s a dark wood porch the full length of the house with a built in screen house. We sit outside in the screen house on cozy furniture, lit by candlelight. Wendy brings out the best goat cheese I’ve ever had and some grapes.

Wendy and Rebecca perform, a piece they’ve done together in the past. It was the story of Robert Johnson. Rebecca told the story while Wendy played the guitar. Again I was blown away. They were amazing and I feel so lucky to have experienced it all.

Friday afternoon we decided to leave Memphis and go into Mississippi. Up until this point the scenery was still related to upstate New York, but Mississippi is completely different. There are bog like areas where buttress-rooted trees stand in chalky pale green water, and then there are burnt out flat landscapes with yellowed- reds and muddled greens. It is bizarre how abrupt the change from Tennessee is.

I call the farmer on the way. I don’t know if it was the connection or my phone, but I feel like he heard me clear as a bell and I hear a little southern man under a mattress. He was trying to give me directions. I struggled not to laugh; it was a lot like our encounter in rural Kentucky. After taking a left at the bi-pass I was to pull over at a place where there are tractors and lawnmowers out front. Does it have a name? No, you’ll see it. Well, every place on that road had tractors and lawnmowers, we passes a blonde family of four with three kids under the age of seven all riding on a four-wheeler. So naturally we passed right by it. After another phone call we found him, and we followed him by car back to his place.
As we pull into the yard there are chickens, turkeys, and other foul scurrying out of our way. There’s a small house, a chicken coup, some gardens, a goat pen, and a yurt. Jonathan introduces himself and begins to show us around the property. There are a few beds of fruits and vegetables growing. He shows us where he wants us to hoe. Then he showed us the edge of the property where there’s a little creek running though- it was very nice. We shoot the breeze for a while they have lots of ticks and mosquitoes, and while they don’t have lime disease, people here do occasionally die from west nile virus. He gets around to telling us that he hadn’t told the other WWOOFer we were coming. Apparently she’d been here for 2 months already and has been living in the yurt by her lonesome.

Joanna turns out to be very nice but exceptionally messy. The yurt is a very cool structure; great circular space inside. There is a good amount of clutter and filth everywhere. We get talking to her and she offers to show us the house. There are goats, roosters, and chicks wandering about the porch as obstacles to the front door. Turns out everyone living here is exceptionally messy by my standards. The house is modest and overrun with crap. They have two dogs: a hound dog, which I could expect, but the ridiculous looking giant afghan hound that I’ve only seen on those dog shows on television -that was bizarre. The afgan is old, so it moves like a person in a big funny suit trying to pass as a regular dog.

Rebecca, Jonathan’s mother, is on her way home with Jonathan’s daughter Patty-bell, and her friend Lill, who’s staying the night. We’re outside trying to milk a less than willing goat when Rebecca pulls up. Two little girls, Patty-bell 4 and Lill 10, come running over to greet us. Both have very thick southern accents. They are adorable. We go back to the yurt to clean and organize before we shower and eat. Before long it gets late and dark. We go in the house for a late dinner and the 6 of us gather round a table the size of an end table or coffee table, all with miss-match chairs and stools. (Rebecca who prepares the meals, eats in the kitchen) We’re eating some kind of rice-a-roni with chicken, vegetables, salad, and fried peanuts. There are chicks in the corner of the room chirping. One gets out and is walking around our feet. Jonathan says it’s fine. Lill tells us “Ya’ll watch out for patty-bell, she bites”. All at once sitting there at that dinner I feel like I’m sitting in one someone else’s life and have no idea how it happend. After dinner Rebecca offers to put some rockin’ chairs out on the porch. It’s strange when stereotypes turn out to be pretty accurate.

We slept well through the night in out yurt. Well before dawn we woke to a cacophony of animal sounds. We had fresh eggs and pancakes for breakfast and had our first day of hard work. After hours of hoeing and digging holes our hands are blistered, shoulders sunburnt, and I can not believe we’re in Mississippi.

We're in Memphis now. We had intentions to stay longer in Nashville, but not much was going on there. From what I gathered there was one main strip that had lots of neon and boot shops, but that's about it. After driving around a while I spotted a pretty neat park/sculpture mosaic we played there for a while, that was fun.



Then we drove around looking for downtown parking and decided to hit the road again. Later that evening we got to drive through a really neat thunderstorm. It was absolutely incredible.
The farmer really messed up our plans. We were supposed to stay there for 2 weeks. Once we had regrouped, we started looking into farms and couch surfers. Luckily there's a family farm in Mississippi that will have us despite the short notice. We'll be staying in a yurt with another wwoofer. Should be great!

Hey, Meg here. Guest blogging.  This was written yesterday, but we lost internet, currently, we’re in Memphis:

So we left Louisville, Kentucky yesterday morning. Said good bye to our wonderful hosts, with whom we stayed for a few days.  Our plan was to then drive a few hours to the outskirts of Williamsburg, KY and farm for 2 weeks at a farm we found through WWOOF (World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), where we would work on the farm every day in return for food and housing.  We mapquested the farm before we left and three hours later found ourselves in rural, rural farm country in 89 degree weather, lost and nearly out of gas.

Up till this point we felt pretty comfortable and not too much like stand-outs. This feeling ended abruptly when we pulled over at a small mini-part in Corbin, KY to ask for directions.  We pulled our 2009 Chevy Colbalt with New York plates into a parking lot full of old Ford pick-up trucks and walked in. The place was full of locals having lunch, accents were thick and I really can’t describe how it felt except that we were a long way from Long Island from where we left.  I believe we both felt suddenly self-conscious of our accents and lack of orientation.  I felt a bit like Marissa Tomai in “My Cousin Vinny” despite being from rural upstate NY myself.

We asked a couple women standing around the counter how to get to the farm. A friendly, middle-aged thin woman, with a crutch and a thick accent was willing to help us, but her directions went something like this: “Go out here, take a layft, take a raht, drahve fur awhile, go straight to the bipass, drive fur a while, take anuther layft, drive fur a while…” There were no road names or numbers and the culture shock of the whole scene was so ridiculous that part way through I started laughing and said, “I’m really sorry, I just don’t think I’ll be able to remember all that.”  She recommended calling the farmer.

“There’s yer phone,” said and pointed to a pay phone on the wall. When was the last time I’ve used a pay phone and not a cell?

Heather said to her, “Perhaps we should buy a local map?”

The woman chuckeled and said, “Huh. Thur ain’t one.” 

We got out to the parking lot and laughed for awhile and how ridiculous we felt. Called the farmer and found out mapquest can’t provide directions for areas that are still somewhat off the map.  We were about 45 minutes out of the way. 

Found the farm out in the middle of no where, further south than the last stop.  Drove through many winding roads and up a dirt path, and passed a garage until we hit a dead-end and a couple young men told us we’d passed it.  We turned around and realized that the garage was the farm.

We pulled up and a man yelled out to us.  It was Dave, the farmer we’d spoken to over the phone.  He had a cane from having had a horse fall on him, badly injuring his hip a few years ago.  We started a patchy, aimless conversation, he introduced us to his animals (the only animals on the farm) his huge black Shepard aptly named “Bear” but we called him Kujo, and another dog that I could tell was once an Austrailan Blue Shepard but now could barely be categorized as living. The poor animal was thin, covered in dirt and sores, with over-grown toenails that caused it to limp, but it did pull itself up to greet us and sauntered over with it’s nose pointed to the ground.

The man pointed us to “the garden” which was a few rectangular patches of dirt and leaves, one of which had some garlic.  We exchanged skeptical glances before he lead us to the other side of the big garage which contained the living quarters.

We began warming up the place when we saw the huge loft bedroom with skylights and two beds and dressers.  He encouraged us to get our stuff, which we did. He made mention of all the free home-made wine that was available to us. We could drink as much as we wanted!

He brought us out to the front garden to plant onions and we chatted casually about traveling while he made elaborate plans for all of us.  In the first hour he had offered (as a handicapped man, mind you) to teach us to fish, gut and cook fish, bring us hiking in several state parks, see waterfalls and moonbows, go swimming in his ponds, meet all his artist/guitarist friends, “shoot shot guns and hand guns,” meet up with us in Texas because he would be there around that time, make sassafrass tea, cook dandelion greens, teach us all about farming, traveling and current events and have wine, beer, wine and more wine.  That all sounded fine to us.

Then we got to work planting blue berry bushes and while Heath and I planted he offered to teach us about “the 12th planet.”  He started in about a library discovered full of ancient texts, then about a planet with a giant orbit that comes around every 3,000 years causing earthquakes and tsunamis, then that it would come back in 2012. He wasn’t saying like, “Oh, here’s this theory…” he was saying, “This is how it is and thank god you met me in time to prepare for it.”  Then he continued with talk of how the navy’s in on it, how there are underground cities beneath all of the US that can hold 2 million people and how only the rich will survive, and how Lowes no longer builds on coastlines because of it…  As he spoke it became uncomfortably clear to me that this man was not in his right mind.

I pulled Heather aside as soon as I could and told her my thoughts.  After some conversing a lot of insanity became clearer.  Nothing he said lined up or sounded right, he at once referenced many past WWOOFers and then said there was only one, the bathroom and bathtub were in the living room surrounded by a curtain and glass windows, he was on food stamps, he had several children’s toys sitting on the floor next to four shot guns (though he told us he didn’t hunt)… the list went on and on and suddenly we realized we were in the middle of no where, off the map, huge dogs and a crazy man who had many loaded guns and knew how to use them.  We were pretty nervous then and quickly brainstormed ways out that wouldn’t upset him.

So a couple hours later, after we got clean from a swim in the pond, we tip-toed up stairs while he watched tv, snuck out our book bags, sleeping bags and my guitar into the car in 2 nearly silent trips.  Without a word we jumped in the car and sped away in a puff of red dust and arrived in Nashville, TN by nightfall.

No word from the crazy man yet.  Last night we slept in a hotel parking lot and ate a delicious continental breakfast.  Thanks to the breakfast we were also able to load our cooler with biscuits, bagels, muffins and waffles. Currently we’re at a Panera Bread in Nashville, trying to set up couchsurfing in Memphis.  Overall I gotta say I think we’re pretty pleased with ourselves.

Me and Cujo/Bear by the "farmer's" pond.

 Heather enjoying a continental breakfast.

Hey there. So we've been in Louisville, Kentucky staying with Kyle and Andrew. They are a super nice couple we met through couchsurfing. The first evening they made us a home-cooked meal and chocolate chip cookies. What a feast. Kyle made yorkshire pudding- with gravy. I still can't believe how good it is, surely she is a culinary mastermind. Then on Easter our generous hosts invited us to Easter brunch at Grandma's. It was really nice. Really good food and great company.

A group of musicians were performing in a vacant gas station on instruction from random participants who conducted with improvised gestures. Pretty cool.


Red Boat Rex and I playing jump rope with some Kentucky bugs.

We left with no directions other than meg's handy road atlas. Turns out using a map is pie. Knock on wood we've been traveling without problems. The weather, my goodness, it's like we drove right into summer. The interstate we were planing to take through Pennsylvania -80 West I believe- had major construction and delays, so we got off and found a scenic route. It was a lot of fun and real pretty and we got to drive through all these weird little mountain dwelling towns, but took forever until our winding country road met up with another big road way, 81. Then we took that to 70 west.

12 hours and 5 states later we found ourselves in Columbus Ohio. It is a lovely city. I'm realizing my standards for cities is New York. The cities I've been to thus far have been really clean, very little traffic, and very nice people- not things I associate with cities. It's very refreshing. Meg and I have adapted to life on the road, we slept in the car the past two nights. The first night was rough, not really falling asleep and uncomfortable. But when we relocated and regrouped at 5 am we got some solid hours of sleep. Last night we slept straight through the night comfortably. When we wake up we find a McDonald's and go through our morning necessaries.

Yesterday was 82 degrees and sunny. Driving everything slowly becomes greener. It's like watching time lapse photography. It was rainy and windy today but It's clearing up as I type. We're in Louisville Kentucky. Driving into the city there's a big photo of colonel Sanders on the side of one of the buildings. In a bit we'll be meeting up with a couple who'll be hosting us for a few days here in Louisville.





Happy Easter everyone!