Sunday, July 15, 2007

BFP's 4th Jam, Jam-a-lam, way down in Alabam, bam-a-lam!

fTuscaloosa, Alabama is the 4th destination on our runaway hamster ball tour de force! I say hamster ball because between an rv bathrom full of all our veggie oil paraphenalia, Julia's unwashed dreadlocks, a half-functioning refridgerator full of dubious leftovers, and a leaky wastewater pipe, we have a ongoing need for deodorizing. Unfortunately, all we have is a ceder-scented all purpose cleanser, so the ladyhawke smells oftentimes, like a stinky hamster cage, and there's some days where I imagine all four of us running in the wheel and some are the big hamsters who operate the wheel while the other two get spun around and around. You get the idea.
Tuscaloosa is currently home to the exuberant and talented Alyson Greenfield. She's itching to get the hell out of dodge and move to New York, which we don't understand, because in our typical style, we've been nothing but pampered and coddled and well fed by everyone we meet, but we're glad she's here for now. She booked us a show with her at the Bama Theater. She's the girl in the white dress in this picture. The Ladyhawke started to get cranky about 7 miles out of town and about 10 minutes before our show, but all our anxiety dried up like our pitstains when we saw our name in lights. It was our best show yet thanks to Alyson, Geoff Hug and David Allgood.

During our stay, we met Alex Chambers and Kit Boulding who hosted a modern day salon-style lecture series. We showed them ours and they us theirs.
Here's a picture of us going in to play some tunes. We learned about some sweet old timey cameras. and Alex shared the findings of Erasmus Gould, a scientist and thinker, whose documents he discovered in an old trunk in Chicago and whose eccentric scribblings about the history of high-fructose corn syrup only Alex can decipher. Or so he says. We also met Erin and Erik of The Left Hand Soap Company. I don't know why we don't have any pictures of them. It's a shame because they've got the sweetest dog named Bettie, 8 cats, and one tough-ass parrot and are the coolest family of anarchists I've ever met. Their soap, salves and lipbalms are dreamy. They gave us a bunch of free samples, which is just what a pack of stinky hamsters like us needs.



We spent the day in Birmingham and bought a basket of peaches from Mr. Kenneth Easterling a bona fide peach and tomato expert, who, along with his son Kenyon, have continued to grow these unbelievably delicious fruits on their farm in Clantow, Alabama. We talked about how important it's been for them to focus on just the peaches and tomatoes, their best sellers, even though Kenneth's father always grew a variety of fruits and vegetables.

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We also went to the University of Alabama Arboretum in Tuscaloosa,



And of course we still gotta filter our vegetable oil. Here's me, showing Alyson how it's done.


2 comments:

ap hawthorne said...

Hi Kids, Say, that was super, what a wonderful collection of pictures. The people of the South are very special, and I am so grateful to each of them for their care of this band of adventurers.
I love you, "m"

ap hawthorne said...

Dear Kids, Keep up the good work, it is very interesting to see what people in every part of this big country are doing. Love, "m"