I’m writing this from a place called Port Townsend, Washington. It’s more Northwesty in the great United States than even Seattle is, but just shy of Olympic National Park. This is Twilight territory. Like the movie. You should watch that first one again it was really pretty good. Did you know Fifty Shades of Gray started out as Twilight fan fiction? I digress. But look it up.
I’m here for an event called Mule Barn Camp. It’s a campout event (tents and campers on a flat treeless field that is otherwise the local fairgrounds) where people that all like the same kind of music camp and play a lot of it together. It’s my kind of thing. I would do more of it, but I have a pretty full life as it is! Plus, while it’s technically a perfectly family-friendly affair, it turns out “watching dad play a banjo for 10 hours straight” isn’t the most fun thing for everyone else.
Here’s what three minutes of a tune I liked (but now can’t remember the name of! dammit!):
This event is adjacent (physically and spiritually) to another event happening at the same time called “Fiddle Tunes”. I’ve never done Fiddle Tunes, but I would love to. It’s more like classes and events and stuff and not just pure camping. Lawd knows I could use some more actual banjo training. I’m just learning about this organization Centrum. They have this spot that was clearly an old military base. I rode my bike up and around “Artillery Hill,” which is all these old concrete bunkers and spots where they used to mount giant guns. Apparently, we were worried enemy ships would come down into the Puget Sound and fuck up Seattle, and this spot was a good one to stop that. Anyway now Centrum owns the whole spot and does really rad art / writing / music events. I even got to see Allison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves one day who are the literal best.
The day I arrived here, I was holding up my phone to people’s faces and showing them a picture of my wife and daughter on a camel. “Why were you showing people a picture of your wife and daughter on a camel?” you ask. Well, you see, my wife and daughter were on a camel, and I found that to be significantly newsworthy. They are in EGYPT. The camel lives in friggin CAIRO, EGYPT, and has the job of hoofing around tourists through the PYRAMIDS AND STUFF.
I’m sure you knew this, but those pyramids (and other stuff… there is a sphinx too, I’m sure you’re aware) are old. LIKE FIVE THOUSAND YEARS OLD. They made those things without iPhones. That’s how old they are. But for real, I like the theory that the pyramid makers were actually highly paid skilled workers that were treated well. Isn’t that nice to think about? I feel like bad movies and video games made it out to be this “slaves built the pyramids” thing which is much sadder to think about. When you’re just making up stuff about the past, why not just believe the better story? Isn’t that what Life of Pi was about? I dunno — there are probably repercussions for inventing history but when you just have no possible way of knowing I feel like it’s OK to think about Ancient Egyptians as all just being super nice to each other and having sleepovers in huge beds with nice sheets.
So yeah Miranda and Ruby are in Egypt. For almost a month! Huge trip. Trip of a lifetime really. I’m at a banjo thing. I’ll probably head back toward Bend, Oregon (that’s where we live) tomorrow or maybe Sunday if the jamming is good on Saturday. I’ll probably eat at a gas station on the way home. That’s the kind of thing I do.
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