Thanks to the weather and the plant sales around town, the first Market of 2008 just POPPED.

Thousands of people, people. Vendors sold out of stuff, the vibes were good, the teevee news was there (I was not interviewed, thankfully), almost no one complained, and I can’t believe the only crisis I had to deal with was as minor as it was. I felt completely comfortable and like I belonged there.

One Saturday down, 26 to go.

I am very swamped these days and won’t be writing much.

However, I just wanted to let you locals know that one of C-U’s favorite institutions will be up and running on Saturday (and for the following 26 Saturdays):

Click the image for more information.

In season now: asparagus, salad greens, rhubarb, early herbs like cilantro, radishes, and maybe a few surprises. You can also pick up meat, eggs, and cheese from vendors at the Market, plus baked goods, arts and crafts, and a musical performer or two.

We go from 7-noon!

Bring yr mom!

The President had a news conference yesterday. He said a lot of stupid things, as he is wont to do, and then he said this:

“One thing I think that would be — I know would be very creative policy is if we — is if we would buy food from local farmers as a way to help deal with scarcity, but also as a way to put in place an infrastructure so that nations can be self-sustaining and self-supporting. It’s a proposal I put forth that Congress hasn’t responded to yet, and I sincerely hope they do.”

A proposal HE put forth? Helping other nations be “self-sustaining and self-supporting”? I know it’s early and I haven’t had my coffee yet and maybe I’m just not reading as closely as I should, and I’m sure that he’s talking about food internationally as opposed to the US (I see “local” and “farmers” and my radar always pings)… and really, this is the same administration that’s destroyed seed banks during conflict in the Middle East and backs companies that creates seeds that can be used only one season (the better to force the farmer to keep purchasing seeds year after year), so….

…. what’s this all about?

11. The Replacements, Hootenanny (1983)
12. The Replacements, Let It Be (1984)

During our years at Chaska High School in Chaska, MN, my friend Lisa F had THE BIGGEST crush on Tommy Stinson, bass player for the Replacements. He seemed accessible (unlike, say, John Taylor of Duran Duran) for a couple of reasons: a) he was born in 1966, so he was close to our age and b) he was reasonably local. I’d look for him at Shinders whenever I snuck into town, but I never saw him, not once. His brother, Bob, was another story entirely.

But oh! What a privilege to have BOTH these records serve alongside Duran Duran, Journey, Foreigner, and Prince as the soundtrack to my teenage years! How awesome that the Replacements (and Husker Du, and Prince, and the Suburbs) were my local music scene in high school (thus providing an entree into the local music scene whilst in college, which included Soul Asylum, the Jayhawks, Run Westy Run, etc)! How well both these records have aged - they’re seriously timeless. Timeless! They were the best band - badly behaved some (much?) of the time, unpretentious, brilliant, troubled, troubling; you’d be so disappointed in their behavior or the occasional bad live show.. but the first to vigorously defend them to a detractor.

So. The Replacements’ catalog is being remastered and reissued with bonus tracks/outtakes this year by Rhino. The first half of the catalog (through Let It Be) was reissued this week; the latter half (starting with that old heartbreaker, Tim) will be released later this summer. I’m rebuilding my collection.

Now Cody has whatever Lilly had, with slightly different presentation. He’s out of school today. Jim has it too, but it attacked just his voice instead, leaving him to squeak over the phone at work. I have a touch of it too, also in my throat, but I just sound like I used to sound all the time back when I smoked (I quit almost 4 years ago, and still think about having a cigarette every day). Lilly has recovered, but the cough sounds terrible, just like the doctor said it would.

There’s a guy at the Wall Street Journal - not some doom-and-gloomer survivalist website straight outta 1999, but the Wall! Street! Journal! - advising people to, yes, stockpile food:

Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you’ll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

And if you are hoping they will pass, here’s the bad news: They may actually accelerate.

Amazing stuff. I’m hoping for high yields in the garden… and stocking up on lids and rings for canning jars. It makes you wonder (well, it makes me wonder) if this really is the beginning of the Long Emergency…

I have a big pile of work on my desk at work, because ‘TIS THE SEASON and all that, but getting any done today was hard.

I was consumed with worry for my daughter, who has been sporting a pretty decent fever for most of the last three days, plus juicy cough, plus general malaise (but a decent appetite). I got home from work today and decided to just haul her in to the doctor’s office (fondly known as “Inconvenient Care” at our house) because, well, she had pneumonia when she was a babe and she’s always had some restrictive airway action as a result, and while no one has diagnosed her officially with asthma, I worry about it when she gets sick. I have to be pretty worried about my kids to take them to the doctor, and even more so to accept the doctors’ prescriptions, if any. To actually purchase the drugs… ! So my daughter is on a couple of drugs and is doing better, which means that I might be able to sleep tonight. Which means that I might be able to get some work done tomorrow. Whee!

In other news, I really want this Democratic primary season to be over. Let’s get this show on the road.

It was a weekend filled with spectacular misfires (involving, among other things, an altercation with a dog, pampering a feverish child, and a busted water pump) and even more spectacular weather.

I got to spend some time in the yard - we cleaned up last year’s unholy mess, moved a literal truckload of compost into the garden beds, and I planted a few things. People, I salivate (I know, ew) at the thought of truly fresh food. The neighbors’ asparagus is up, my greens have sprouted, etc, and after a conversation with one of the Market growers, I think it’s going to be a decent start to the season even though he is, by his estimation, at least a week behind. It’s going to be awhile before I eat anything out of my own garden, so BRING IT, market vendors.

So then I went in to work for a half day (when the kids are sick, Jim and I split the days) and everyone wanted me, just like the Billy Squier song says. I guess it IS that time of year, but heavens. I got home and was fretting about my girl child, grocery shopping, and general WHATEVER. I think I ate something for dinner with MSG in it because this is exactly how I feel afterward - crabby, puffy and needing everyone to do my bidding (with ensuing crabbiness when they do not).

Farewell, endless Monday.

Our farmers’ market was in the local paper yesterday, which was great, but even better, to me, is that my kid was in the University of Illinois student paper today talking about his opposition to the war, which has been in full effect since the day it started.

Not tonight, either.

I am a little le bored with the whole 365 Days of Music thing, to be honest. It’s not the recent lack of feedback (though I suspect the preponderance of boy-noise is an issue, and where are you, Steve??) as much as it is the tiresome task of scanning all the different CD covers and then uploading them to Flickr and then sitting here listening to the record, all the while being assaulted by a bunch of feelings when I really should be hanging with my kids and my husband or reading a book or plotting the rest of my garden or washing the dishes or sitting on the couch, doing sweet NOTHING. I am just not the kind of person who can commit to doing something every day that is relatively superfluous to the off-blog day-to-day life that I lead. I mean, I can barely do the stuff I’m supposed to be doing sometimes.

I will review more records, though. Eventually.

In other news, Ed With the Breakaway Head is providing me and my friend P with some weight training at the gym. We hung out in the seriously-testosteroned free-weight area and everything today. I am a total weakling - like I told Jim, I’ve turned into a person with a desk job with a body to match. Sore does not even begin to describe how I’m going to feel in the morning; I wish I could get more sleep. I’m very much looking forward to when my work schedule switches to Tuesday-Saturday, though. Mondays off, people. For 7 months.

My new local pal The Sandwich Life tagged me for that book meme, the one where you ask 5 of your pals to tell you what’s on page 123 - the three sentences after the 5th sentence. I don’t read much fiction, so you’ll be getting a selection from the wonderful (truly!) Kitchen Literacy by Ann Vileisis:

“Pettijohn’s claimed that, unlike other ready-to-eat ‘fad foods’, its cereal, was genuine, humble ‘whole wheat not altered in an attempt to improve on nature.’ Shredded Wheat ads plainly asserted in large boldface capitals: ‘MAN CANNOT IMPROVE NATURE.’”

“Transcending mere pleasantries, a dialogue about the grand existential question so pressing in the face of rapidly urbanizing culture - what was the place of people in nature? - occurred in so mundane a venue as newspaper food ads.”

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re not wrong, but I love it so!

Finally, an old high school friend of mine got in touch last night, praise Facebook. Among the pleasantries tossed my way was a link to a series of articles about the son of a pair of friends from high school. It made me feel feelings about my high school experience and my friendship with the female half of this union and gifted children and kids leaving home to pursue excellence and the opportunities available to kids whose parents have money and live in the suburbs and how maybe those opportunities are slipping away even from those folks and then, even, a little bit of pride in this child - he’s 16 - that I met one time when he was seven-going-on-eight and his father was the hockey player in the family.

Not happening tonight. I can barely keep my eyes open.

Cody claims he is processing photos. Lilly’s tooth finally came out. My hands are dry and my eyes are tired. Jim makes excellent dinners. The daffodils are blooming.

10. Monster Magnet, Spine of God (1992)

I used to work at a wee little indie record store in CHGO called Blackout!Records - I was there from spring 1992, pregnant with Cody, until sometime in 1995 or maybe even 1996. This record came out in the US while I was pregnant, working at the store and unable to decide between twee pop and dirty rock music and alt.country and le grunge (why I thought I had to choose is a mystery), and generally all kinds of pissed off, so I loved it. All the drug references - so forbidden! The stoner groove - so hypnotic! Bombast! Feedback! Psychedelia! References to Yes’ Fragile album! Oh, it made me feel feelings.

I felt feelings around this record even more after having Cody and after the Big Breakup when he was 6 months old - 1993, the year I fondly refer to as the nadir of my existence, had been ushered in, and I fancied myself a little bit of a badass. Monster Magnet had another record, Superjudge, come out in 1993 (more about that one further into the project), and while it sounded major-label great and carried some of the angry stoner vibe that I had grown to love, there were so many other records out that year. Plus, you know, DISTRACTIONS.

[ETA: I just remembered - I interviewed Monster Magnet main dude Dave Wyndorf in 1993. He was in a phone booth in Milwaukee, WI, and I was at the CAKE magazine office in MPLS on a little 1993-style jaunt (said jaunt may have involved Chank, driving all night, and hanging out at a Posies show at First Avenue, but I can’t remember for sure and my journals are out in the garage). It was a good interview, but just the fact that the whole band were huge fans of Mule has stayed with me for 18 years.]

Lilly hates losing teeth. The last week has been an ordeal… but the tooth! Is! Finally! Out!