Last night after work and supper I made a dash up I-80 to Davis, having been invited to participate with the Davis Pickers and Singers (Joe Offer connected me). Dick and Carol Holdstock hosted: I'd met Dick at Quinn's Lighthouse in Oakland and at the Starry Plough in Berkeley, and heard him sing both places: a fine singer and a great host. I got there a bit late, confused by the streetnumbers on Pole Line Drive, and when I got there about 20 participants were strung around the den: I got there just when a woman clockwise of Joe was leading a song, so I missed at least one of his--but next time around he showed off his great songleading skills.

I managed a couple of songs: "Times Are Gettin' Hard" and a Georgia Sea Islands Singers spiritual, "Free Grace," and played banjo or harmonica backup for most of the other songs--and nobody threw anything at me (not even dirty looks).

Davis is a funny town: Its major industry is the University of California campus, once primarily an aggie school, but now a full university, but despite the presence of tens of thousands of students, Davis rolls up the streets soon after sunset. The song session ended right at 10:00, so I could have been home in bed soon after 11:00 (El Cerrito is less than an hour away--but some people felt I was so far away that they offered me a place to stay) but Joe suggested we go for coffee afterwards and I was happy to join him (there had been one brief intermission, so we'd had little chance to express any more than greetings upon our first face-to-face). I followed him into downtown Davis, all four or five square blocks of it. The first place we went had been closed for ten minutes, but we finally found another place where we had coffee (decaf) and pie a-la-mode (three berry), and talked for an hour--I especially enjoyed hearing about FSGW and Camp Harmony and the Muddies Joe had met at them. We spent a little (very little) time talking about our different feelings regarding B.S. threads.

Anyway, Joe, I look forward to seeing a lot more of you--and in the Bay Area as well as the Sacramento Valley (I plan to try to make the Davis sings at least once a month--and maybe I'll gather up the energy to make it all the way to Sacramento soon).

--seed