Blue Sky

Ah, the perils and tribulations of blogging.

Attempting to load a poem earlier, I couldn't make it align properly on the page, probably because I was copying and pasting from Word, which is not the best method of doing things based on my limited understanding of Blogger...

And I don't feel like retyping it to the Blogger text box because, frankly, it's too long and boring.

Hey, no one said this is an easy gig, I know.

I also have a belated case of spring fever. Looks like spring has sprung here in the early days of summer, after an unusually wet June. Record rainfall and blah blah blah.

Watch, I'll be bitching about the heat in another month.

I'm just hoping it doesn't rain over the 4th. I like to spend an afternoon or two at the blues festival, which is held on the waterfront in downtown Portland every year. I don't even bother looking at the schedule, I just show up and something sensational usually happens on one of the stages constructed at each end of the concert space.

A great throng of people gathers, gets naked, and smokes barely legal pot. Well, not quite naked, but close.

There are a lot medical marijuana card holders in Oregon, as you may be aware. And they are the only people allowed to smoke at the festival, or anywhere else for that matter, because by God, we are a nation of laws and these laws must be upheld and blah blah blah.

I generally don't care for crowded events, but the festival is world-class, so it's tough to miss, unless you're not interested in hearing a guitar solo by someone channeling Duane Allman.

Seriously, the range of blues styles is diverse, with Delta and Chicago and other styles aplenty. The old-timers and the newest phenoms are represented during one of the few times ageism is told to take the day off.

So if you're my one visitor from Tampa, or my only friend in Dallas, or my one reader in Beverly Hills, or my fan in Chicago, or the fellow in Colorado who likes hairy armpits, or a visitor from the Great Plains, or an FBI agent in D.C., you still have time to make it out to Portland for the festival.

You can't miss with the festival unless you dislike the blues in general.

Or hairy armpits.

TS

P.S. That's Mississippi John Hurt.