This morning, West Virginia and Tonight, Pittsburgh

Good morning, West Virginia!

That's me, about fifteen minutes ago in the kitchen. Unshowered and unshaven. See the five o'clock shadow? I'm looking out into the backyard at the remains of our garden and the multiple painting projects that I still need to get to. The garden gate? She will be painted a sunny yellow soon--and not that flourescent business I bought from Ollie's on sale this spring. Yes, I agree with you. That safety orange was a little excessive. But we learn from out mistakes, do we not? Yes we do, and we also give the neighborhood something to talk about. Everyone's happy.

Now, a picture of the front door because our late-growing blue morning glories--in comparison to the purple "Grandpa Ott" variety, which sprout first, bloom early, and croak by late August--are still in full bloom. Yes, sorry humming bird friends, I never filled your feeder. It sits still on the porch, taunting your little beaks with a lot of nothingness. You can plan an ariel assault on our heads when we sit outside the next time.

But seriously, "Ain't them flowers purty, Jim?"

"Well, Cecil P. Sloane thinks so." (<--who is this? Savannah also has no idea. She has simply made this name up. But she thinks it has a nice backwoods ring to it, no? She also digresses. However, today is her "day off", so this is entirely legal and perhaps even expected, just as making a loud exclamation of surprise and excitement when she saw, last night at Half Price Books, a William T. Vollman anthology with a foreword by fellow author and former Hobart contributor Michael Hemmingson--a noise for which she felt the need to immediately apologize as it involved a very unlady-like snort that reminded her of Jerry Clower's impersonation of his father's bird dog--was also warranted and perhaps even expected.)

Did you get all that? It was kind of confusing even to me while I was writing it. *shaking head* Where's my coffee? Oh, yes.

This weekend is Small Press Fest in Pittsburgh. And to celebrate this properly, we New Yinzers will be holding a special SPF edition of TNY Presents tonight at The Beehive Coffeehouse, which invited us to have an event there a few months back. I'm excited to have Burning River Press founder Chris Bowen back to read. One of his stories, the beautiful and resonant "How We Are Alone", will appear in the fall issue of The New Yinzer. Sunnyoutside Press' David McNamara will be coming in from Buffalo to help promote two of the press' authors, Micah Ling and Noel Sloboda, both of whom will read at tonight's event.

While I'll be manning the New Yinzer table at SPF on Sunday, I won't be able to make it back into the city on Saturday because I'll be at the Mother Earth News Fair with Michael and my brother-in-law Glenn, who has begun talking about beginning a colony of bees at the farmhouse (perhaps in part because I use honey for just about every sweetening opportunity that doesn't require more solid sugar, in which case, I use brown because it's got the iron content of molasses). Our homesteading increases every year, but we're waiting to buy animals. Personally, I want chickens, but my Mom reminded me that their feed tends to attract rats. Still, organic eggs and clean, antibiotic-free chicken meat seems to trump that concern. As long as we don't get rats like the one in my story, Revolutionaries, we're okay.

Okay, over and out for now. Expect pictures from the Mother Earth Festival and from SPF. For once, I've plastered the word 'camera' to every solid surface leading out of the house. I dare not forget it.