I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Edgar Allen Poe

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
- H. L. Mencken

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
-Bertrand Russell

What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
-James Branch Cabell

December 04, 2006 - 12:31 p.m.

Antje and Anais

I think I'm going to have spent more time preparing the slideshow for this entry than I will writing it. You better watch it! There will be a test.

Yesterday's adventure was going to see Antje Duvekot and Anais Mitchell at the University Café at SUNY Stony Brook. That's about an hour drive from me. That's not true. No matter how long I think the trip is I'm always wrong. It could be more or it could be less. I think they keep moving the campus.

They have a very nice series of Sunday Concerts there put on by Charlie Backfish. He also has a show on the school's radio station.

I got there at 1:30 for a 2:00 show and the doors weren't open yet. That is not the way things usually work there. They were way behind schedule. There were a group of us waiting outside and we heard Anais doing her sound check. I was talking to someone about how hard it is to find the café the first time you go there. While we were talking Antje showed up. She was really late. We thought that she might have gotten lost but that's not what happened. She took the ferry from Bridgeport and just missed the one she was planning on taking. The next one didn't leave for another hour.

I didn't really mind the wait outside. It was cold but I was dressed warmly. I had a nice conversation with a woman that was a friend of Antje and Anais. It turned out that she is a singer/songwriter too. I'm so proud that I remember her first name, Molly. I'm so bad with names. I used the mnemonic device of picturing her in a red background. Get it? Red Molly! She's going to email me a link to her website. I'll check out her music.

Antje and Anais go well together. Maybe it is because they both lived in Vermont. Maybe it is because they both have such unusual first names so you never need to use their last name. Maybe it is because they are both extremely talented rising stars in the folk world. Oh yes, they are both really cute too.

Before the show I got to talk to Anais and say hi for Lena. They were at a Middle East Studies program at Middlebury together.


Antje was supposed to go on first but because she was late she had to close the show. Antje joined her on number of songs. They have played together before and have worked up songs to do together. In the second set Anais joined Antje.

I somehow didn't talk about The Budgiedome with either of them. I first saw Antje when she performed at the dome's inaugural season. She knows that she has an open invite to return. I invited Anais last year but she couldn't make it. I'll write her again this year. I'm sure the Budgiedome crowd will love her.

OK time for some photos.
This is Anais:

This is Antje:

Antje painted her guitar. Aren't you jealous?

The aforementioned slideshow:

I'm late to class. I better run.


I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.





Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
Wise Madness is Now In Session - May 28, 2018
The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018



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Horvendile December 04, 2006
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