Today I’m sixty-one. We spent a couple of days in Door County, and I came back first; Mark stayed – so I had the house to myself on my birthday eve. I woke up with just me & the fluffy kitty, and tried to get motivated to go out for a walk. That didn’t happen, instead I kind of puttered around, graded a few papers, ate some breakfast, talked to Rach on the phone.
That breakfast consisted of melon from Tipi, from my CSA box, and I blanched and sliced the peaches I got at last Saturday’s market. I ate one, and made a fresh peach jam to eat with yogurt with the rest. I picked apart the last two prune oat spelt scones to get to the prunes.
I had to head out to the Comfort Inn past East Towne (garden spot of the universe) to pick up our new AFS student. I wanted to get flowers for her, and we were out of milk, so I thought, “oh, I can bike to the Wednesday market and get nice local flowers, and buy the milk at Sentry”. Completely forgetting it’s Thursday. I got as far as the entrance to the Sentry lot, where I could see there were no market booths, realized my error and turned back to Whole Foods. Where I got milk and bananas and still made it home before the rain, so the good birthday karma was holding.
I collected our student, and we completed the confusing online pre-registration for the Madison Schools, then she napped and I graded for the rest of the afternoon.
I made a version of the burst cherry tomato tart, with sungolds and yellow squash and a layer of pesto on the bottom, and slaw for dinner.
We went over to Gates of Heaven to see Sam Amidon, where we got to sit with Steve & Heike. Amidon was the headliner; he was preceded by a saxophone and tape loop performance that was a little bit of an endurance act – but Amidon made it worth it. As Steve & Heike say, he’s the real deal. He sings traditional folk songs, but he researches and puts them together his own way. I was struck by one of his songs, As I roved out, that has images from about 15 different old songs – starting with “as I roved out” – cold winters day, cheeks like red roses, wish I’d never been born, and so on. And he did Cold Rain & Snow, (faster than this version) and Pretty Saro, and something that was like Banks of the Ohio.
I came home and played Lucky Cloud, in the kitchen, since I didn’t have the courage to yell it out as a request at the show. It was a small enough show that we all filed out and shook Amidon’s hand and said thanks, and he said he would’ve played it if I had.
