A MAN AFRAID OF HIS HORSE

Anyone familiar with the stretch of M-46 rolling east/west through Tuscola County, Michigan will know this odd little landmark, sitting on a crossroad next to a small cemetary...

BE VERY AFRAID OF THE TEN FOOT TALL CLOWN WEILDING AN OVERSIZED AND POINTY CARROT!!!

I spoke with the elderly gentleman in the doorway shortly after taking this photo and couldn't understand a single word he communicated...almost as if I were listening to that special language, unique to a set of twins, had they been raised by raccoons for the first eighteen years of their lives. I fought the urge to ask him driving directions to Twin Peaks. He smiled alot and nodded his head in positive agreement when I asked him permission to snap some digitals. I'm not sure he understood a single word I slowly unfurled before him...I began to slightly bob up and down, wanting to bow, to give him that sense of subordinance which could possibly prevent Leatherface from appearing through that dark doorway.

There were pissed off llamas in the back, spitting and hissing about the menu, lack of amenities and benafflicted by that weird hillbilly strain of Gangsta-plague...28 Days Later style...

I had to get out of there...the lonely old guy, presumably still searching for his twin brother, wanted to take another crack at communication...I had to get to Twin Peaks for a cup of coffee and pie.

FROGS EVERYWHERE...

This wonderful little creature showed up on my sunporch door one evening in early June. Living on a swamp (save for the mosquitoes) has been a joy this summer. I have never seen so many snakes, hummingbirds, frogs, fireflies, butterflies, salamanders... The spiders, however, are black, fat and fast... and apparently Aurora finds them quite tasty. One of the oddest sights I have seen was a robin catching a rather large bullfrog and trying in vain to fly away with it... I immediately thought of coconut-laden swallows (African and European) and of air-speed velocity.

MORRIGAN AND AURORA

I adopted these littermates last June, on the full moon, from Jackson, Michigan's Cascades Humane Society. That's Aurora in front and Morrigan in back. Morrigan, not "morgan" as some have called her, is named after the Irish Mother Goddess of Creation and Destruction...she is an aspect of the ancient 'triple goddess' tradition. She lived up to her name quite beautifully...

This past July 12th, Morrigan had a sudden and severe reaction to a rabies vaccine that she was scheduled to have. The doctor asked that I leave Mory there with them and that I should go home and wait for a phone call. About an hour later the vet called to tell me that Morrigan seemed to be getting better. Fifteen minutes later, the crows in the trees around my home began cawing in way which I had never heard before. Ten minutes later the vet called again....

LOVE LIES BLEEDING IN THE MOONLIGHT GARDEN...

Just taken this afternoon, the love lies bleeding plants (on the right) are just beginning to bloom. Eventually the drooping flowers will reach up to two feet in length.

More pix of my cool night-blooming garden (datura/angel's trumpets, vining moonflowers, nicotina, evening primrose, 4 o'clocks, morning glories and love lies bleeding) coming soon.

THE BEST ALT-PSYCH-FOLK-APPALACHIAN-DUB BAND YOU'VE NEVER HEARD...

The Buzzrats are an Ann Arbor-area psych-folk, alt-country, appalachian-dub, (you fill in the next hyphenated, trendy music tag) band often compared to a vocal amalgam of Petty/Dylan/NeilYoung and musically to that of the electrified, hazy and druggy banjo jams of an "Appalachian Floyd"... Their forthcoming CD, tentatively titled Willow Tree, is due out later this year.

The Buzzrats are the last remaining pack of their kind, rarely sighted performing in public, preferring the cool, smokey ambience and good acoustics of dan's den of digital delights (and damn fine beer)...and only coming out at night to feed on Maria's cookies. They play and record because it's for the joy of creation and to hang out with friends...and because Steve Leggett, who often sounds like the narration in a Ken Burns documentary on great, blind, armless claw hammer banjo players, threatens them with Grandpa Simpson-esque stories of how Willie only had one beer at the Eight Ball before he mysteriously disappeared into a flash of bright green light....all in order to get Dan to do his vocals...

Seriously, the buzzrats are Ann Arbor's best kept musical secret and are my wonderfully weird friends. Watching them learn and grow into the buzzrats in the dank and drippy basement of Ashleys, ten years ago, and trying, as drunk as they were, to cover Tom Petty's "Girl On LSD" was a blast. It didn't matter about playing the right notes or remembering which verse was next that evening...they were having fun and the unusually unpretentious and forgiving crowd had fun right along with them. I also seem to recall the barkeep in Ashley's basement always played Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage or Hot Rats on the sound system once the live music had ended...which always kept me, sometimes with Joe B., there for another round or two. Those are some of my favorite Ann Arbor memories.

Allmusic.com has rated at least one of their albums, JOHN TRAIN, 4 & 1/2 stars out of a possible 5... The buzzrats, fat on poverty and thin on ego, rarely promote themselves outside of making sure that copies of their CDs are in stock at Stairway To Heaven and Flat, Black and Circular. Please visit their website and download some of the free MP3s and listen for yourself... (PayPal them a ten or twenty spot and get a couple of their discs...I hear that some of the artwork is pretty damn good as well... ;-)

TEN YEARS AGO...

This past Monday (July 17th) was the tenth anniversary of a UFO sighting I had outside of Saline, Michigan. The 1996 sighting was the third close-proximity encounter of something strange that I had over the course of four evenings in the Washtenaw County countryside. The sighting of this barbell-shaped object left me extremely upset for several days. Finally, I contacted the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) to report the sighting. I was soon contacted by investigators from Michigan's chapter of MUFON and was soon meeting other UFO witnesses and 'experiencers' and finding eerie, unnerving connections with some of them...and with this, a strange journey through my 30's had begun.

Ten years later, after reaching my 40th birthday and investigating the UFO phenomenon by reading everything that I am able and talking to other souls who have had similar experiences, I am no closer to the truth and reality of what occurred that evening outside of Saline than I was moments after the craft departed upwards through the low grey evening clouds. The phenomenon, as I often describe it to those that ask, is as real and elusive as a soap bubble.

It is these UFO-related encounters that have inspired me to seek further knowledge about the nature of reality, of the cosmos and of our place on this beautiful but troubled blue and green oasis in Orion's Arm of the Milky Way.

THE MORNING AFTER

Sometimes the remnants of a Friday night, viewed in the light of a new day, can be quite beautiful...