Tag Archives: reggae on the river

Reggae on the River 2010

Even while I was still in the grips of the ‘cough’ we managed to go to Reggae on the River at Benbow, 2 day event put on by Mateel Community Center. It was in the 100s the first day and very hot the next. But we kept a slow pace and had a place for our big chairs under some shade trees. Met up with the usual reggae posse that we often sit by, some wonderful women from up north, it’s always fun to see them.

Joellen Clark Peterson 2010 ROR

Reggae Women

We also met up with old friends and new friends. And it was great to see ROR go to 2 days, sell out, and be irie!

I only had 2-3 coughing fits and didn’t feel any worse for being there, it was great to finally get out and about.

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WP and FB

(Ages since last post.)

I have been working on a new install of WordPress as a CMS.
I remember when I installed MT here for this blog, took some time, but was relatively easy.

The MT forums at the time (2003) were active with friendly people who wanted to help..not just point you to an outdated Codex file.
Word Press, for all its popularity, doesn’t do some very simple things well at all. I started the dev 2 months ago, at version 2.8 since then there have been 4 major upgrades of the software!

Because I hand code, I know how to do everything I am asking WP to do for me, but trying to get WP to do it, well is another thing.
The reason I chose WP, was the client wanted to be able to ‘write their own info’ (post) and upload photos and such, so i needed to give them a back end that was user friendly.

I don’t know how that will work out in the long run, but it’s been a summer of WP learning curve and frustration. And it doesn’t look like this site will ‘go live’ for at least another month!
[the site did go live HumCPR]
[I have continued working with WP and learning constantly..)

(life)
We did get away for our anniversary July 27, just a short trip to Ruth Lake, some swimming and a bit of fishing.
We also did Reggae on the River, the one day event now at Benbow State Park, very irie and fun.

Russel is really making some progress on some of the homesteading projects we have, so that is good. School starts soon and time will be short.

I talk with Dad’s widow, Sue a lot. I miss the Michigan family, after being there for so long, I got used to being able to see everyone.
Not to good about keeping in touch, but making an effort.

Facebook as become my hang out, lots of my cousins and nieces are on there so I can keep in touch that way. And many locals who I don’t see all that often, so now we can at least play a game of Lexulous (scrabble) every now and then. I have also ‘friended’ with lots of Bruce Cockburn Humans, some old friends, and even made some new ones.

I guess the neatest Facebook story I have so far is this one:

Background:

I went to high school and was friends with a group of brothers (4), D,G,J,R. Both D and R have passed. I have pictures of us from 1966 to 1971.

Well my cousin on FB, had a friend with the same last name as the 4 above, he ‘friended’ me and said, “hey won’t J & G be surprised by who I found on FB!”

So I connected with him, I vaguely remember him, as he is the youngest brother of the 4 I mentioned. Come to find out that J (who I was friends all through school) has some kids with girl I went to school with. (who also has passed on)

So they fb’d me..and they wanted the stories, because they had never met their uncles.. dying so young and all. And they didn’t have pictures.

So I spent a weekend digging though old photo albums and year books, scanned a bunch of photos into FB and told them some stories about their uncles, even the youngest brother didn’t know a lot of this stuff and had never seen most of these pictures.

The gratitude and thankfulness I felt from them for doing this little thing lifted me up, when I was very down and still grieving heavily for my Dad.

So when you wonder if you should pitch all those old photos, well, maybe not. Maybe find the persons who will treasure them and pass them on.

Anyway to me it was the neatest FB connection so far.

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Home at last

We had a few glitches and Kaya had to live out side in the heat and smoke while we were gone, but we came home to a good garden:

july garden
 
july garden
 

Harvesting: 4 kinds of summer squash, basil for tons of pesto, eggplants, tomatos, red and yellow potatoes, lots of salad greens.
Peppers on – waiting for them to go red.
Carrots, beets and green beans a bit slow, planted late.
Peaches so heavy breaking the tree limbs, but I have my doubts as to whether they will ripen.

We also made it to Reggae on the River at Benbow, a one day event this year and quite comfortable, good food, good music and a great crowd.

A couple of visits to Eureka,saw “Iron Man” and “Hancock” on 2 separate visits. Got sushi and bought some stuff for the house, including a door for an interior room.

It has been hot and smoky this past week, but we had good cool weather and little smoke for several weeks.

We also got the storage shed cleaned out and BIG NEWS Russel got the electrical water pump to work with our little honda generator… this means that I can pump water from here… no having to go down down below to the holding tanks with gasoline to run the pump. (he always does that job)
So this is a good thing, it has been in the process for a couple of years, lots of lines and wires to run between here and there and lots of little issues… but it’s working!!!

I haven’t been swimming all year. Most days I wanted to go up to the Van Duzen River, it was too smokey. And the Eel is so low and full of algae I wouldn’t put my toe in it.

And that’s about it for now. I will leave you with Bucky-boo…
who is sporting a much larger rack now than when this was taken a few weeks ago!!

buck
 
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Spring into Summer

The weather has been great.. a bit too hot a few days and then just right. Garden is evolving, put – off chores and projects are getting done.

Went to a healing circle for Carolyn last Sunday. It was an awesome empowering and powerful circle of women. I am so glad to have been invited.

KMUD has a new website, built with Joomla. I was talking with Simon, the station tech manager about all things web and actually felt some excitment in that area again. Perhaps I will get more into it as time allows this summer.

Tickets are purchased for a trip to Michigan to visit Dad and Sue and see the family. I am really hoping the Kelly and Laurie (my nieces) make the trip down from Alpena to visit. Going end of June till July 10 or so. Going to be hot, we were there the same time last trip.

Seems like my life is mostly the same, when I look back through archives, it’s mostly the same old same old, perhaps with just a few new things here and there. I am looking forward (again) to seeing Bruce Cockburn at Solfest in August.

Usually I would be looking forward to Reggae, but this is the year of Reggae hell. Too many long stories about why, if you really want to know, read from the beginning (meaning scroll down and start reading up) here and from links there to the other blogs. It’s such a fucking mess. I really really don’t plan on going. It hurts my heart the way this is. Reggae is what brought me to Humboldt to begin with, and I am a 21 year vet of Reggae on the River.

I also started a myspace space, I had so many people who wanted to communicate that way. I find it a bit cumbersome to use, I can hand code the page I want faster than I can use the ‘myspace’ method, but I am learning 🙂

I haven’t tied it to my sites or this blog yet. I really want to redo all my sites (been saying that for years now!) before I do that. Time will tell. I want to be able to blog again and have and control comments, with out the spam. If I get a different blogging tool, and transfer this site, maybe I will tie it all together.

Health wise I am good enough, the tendonitis in my right elbow is back hard, started a few months ago when I was moving tubs of stuff around. And my back and left hip are painful most of the time, but I have also weaned myself almost off the advils, down from 2400mg a day to maybe 800mg. Hope I can get those things under control.

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Michael Franti at Reggae on the River

6 August 2006

Reggae on the River…is in a new location. I had bought tickets for Reggae and Bruce knowing I would miss one or the other. Reggae lost, I was there briefly on Friday before going to the city to see Bruce Cockburn. I didn’t really like the new layout or space, more on that at a later time.

I was fried from the week end and drive home on Sunday, but determined to go see Michael Franti at Reggae. I got to the site about 45 minutes before he came on and stood about 20 feet back from the stage (in the pit) waiting. Although I have been at shows where he has performed in the past, I have never actually ‘seen’ him in daylight… what a treat.

Michael Franti at Reggae on the River 2006
 

(this photo from newspaper so not too good)

The pit filled up with thousands of people, but I still had a good view. Michael is a power-house of energy, jumping, jumping jumping.. and engaging the audience constantly. Spearhead, his backup band is awesome as well. His new cd, Yell Fire has many great songs on it and he performed most of them. I was jumping and grooving and dancing and singing and was surprised I could keep going. But it was so good to see him so close.

And to see my 2 favorite music-poet men in the same weekend was just superb 🙂

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Fall is in the air …

School is starting here, Russel hasn’t lined up all his jobs yet, (teaching Aikido to kids in the local schools) but we know they are there for him. Hurricane Katrina is barreling through the south.

This past month went by in a blur. I made it to Reggae, but only Friday for Michael Franti and Sat late afternoon for Prezident Brown. Why? Well I woke up Sat morning with vertigo! Never had it before and don’t want to again, very nauseated, light headed, couldn’t walk.. just awful. It let up enough for me to go down a bit on Sat, but I came right home and didn’t go on Sunday at all. For a $150 ticket, that’s not much fun time.

We did get the floor painted, 3 coats and Russel wanted to do 2 more, but I said no! It will do for now. I brought in and cleaned a lot of the flea market furniture, dressers, kitchen hutch, bar and stools, and got them in place. Then unpacked all that was packed out and put most of that away, still have some to do. But the painted floor really helps the house feel bigger and cleaner and brighter.

Russel split and stacked about 4 cords of wood..we borrowed a log splitter and hired a high schooler (that would be Issac) to help 2 days. So with what we had, we have about 2 years worth of wood unless the winter is really cold.

The hot hot weather has finally broke to mid 80s and looks like that will be the trend this week, nights are getting into the 40s so it cools way down.

Kaya had to go to vet this morning for annual and a worming (yuck), she handles it pretty well.

I nixed Dish .. what a hassle it was just trying to get an installation, imagine what would happen if we needed service? Seeings how we will be keeping the town house office for at least several more months, I can just tape off TV like I did last year, the new fall schedule will start soon.

Good news is that finally G4 has brought back LEO Laporte and CALL FOR HELP!! for all us in the US. I am taping that too, as it’s on here at 8am.

Ok, gotta run..more later 🙂

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44 Days ’till Reggae!

This may be the LAST Reggae on the River in it’s current location on the Eel River in Piercy. The producers are looking for a new home for it, and one way or the other the show will continue. ROTR was started to rebuild the community center now know as Mateel Community Center. It offered a venue where all the local non-prophets, like the schools, fire departments, and health organizations, and local artists had a place to make money while making the operating costs for the Mateel. If this event is moved away from the area, it will be beyond the reach of most of these non-prophets to take part.

We will see what happens.

This year’s line-up pleases me.. both Prezident Brown and Michael Franti are going to be there!

Along with some other favorites, but to have 2 of my most favorite artists in the same place is awesome.

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Survived Reggae .. again!

Fridays line up of music was quite good…very roots for the most part.
I did come home (no camping on site for me!) early so I would have the energy to do 2 more full days and nights.

Saturday, with a few exceptions, the music was NOT roots, and made me want to leave several times.

Sunday was a mix, but Michael Franti and Spearhead made it all worth while, I need to really check out some of his music thoroughly. [did that.. he shares my player with Bruce!]
And there is a good write up with pictures at the
North Coast Journal by Bob Doran and more pictures and info at Mateel.

Especially fun was meeting and hanging with Joellen and her tribe of friends. I wish I could remember every ones names!! I hope those of you who got my email addy will keep in touch.

Pictures coming..sometime soon!

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