Wow, hey, what a great evening that was! First of all, Ithaca turned out to be a beautiful town with a lot of great stores. We got a whole lot of use books. One of them is full of photos taken around 1900 of Nez Perce and other Indians on various reservations out west. Stunning pictures...the Native people still looked very much of their own culture. You can see how much has been lost when you look at those pictures, and you can also see the pain in their eyes. They had been rendered powerless and dependent for some time already in 1900, but they had not forgotten who they were yet.

Another book was on Origami...for Hesperis.

2 cookbooks...one on East Indian cookingk, one on Chinese...YUM!!! Can't wait to try out these recipes.

An original hardbound first edition of Joan Baez first book, "Daybreak". Yowsa!!! I can put it alongside "Tarantula" and "A Voice To Sing With".

Then the drum store...that was great!

Then to Moosewood. There was a guy playing guitar and singing for a bit, so I played some harmonica with him.

Then our fellow mudcatters showed up, for the best part of all...

Praise turns out to be a GREAT listener. Just quietly takes it all in. She's also got a wacko sense of humour which threw me a couple of times. Hardiman is a thoroughly likeable gent, and he told some hilarious stories, plus the lyrics to a parody of the old Mel Torme Christmas song that was one of the funniest things I've ever heard. MMario showed up later and turned out to be lots of fun as well. What a bunch of characters we all are. Pity flattop couldn't be there.

I thought Praise was crying because she had finally met the legendary Little Hawk...??? (Joke!) Actually, she didn't cry at all, except when she saw the bill... (another joke!).

Well, all I can say to add to that is....It's kind of cool to be back in New York State again...and I think that Mudcatter getogethers are the greatest idea since having opposite sexes!!!

Thank God for the Internet.

- LH