Yes I have been feeding the jackrabbit and the tortoise. Is that so wrong? Let me explain. And, yes, I know. It has been a while since I wrote to you all. That is because I have not had much to say that seemed to be of interest to anyone but Kip and me. Just not much new going on here. I see my musician colleagues of the past and present creating new material constantly. Yet my pen seems to have run dry. I have a new song, one that I had started in Española, and finished after we moved away from there. Kip and I have been working on a song. That's all though. I guess we all have periods in our lives on which we look back as having been more or less productive. If I am lucky enough to live long enough into the future to look back on the present, it will be placed on the shelf marked "less productive." Kip says I am still recovering from what they did to me at the little college in northern New Mexico. If you get a chance to read it, Rubén Martinez's book Desert America is worth checking out. He lived in Twentynine Palms, Velarde (just next door to Española), desert Arizona, and west Texas. The part about northern New Mexico was so spot-on that I could barely get through it. Still trying to figure out whether he got it right about the high desert (Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms, Yucca Valley, Wonder Valley). It seems like he did. What's funny is we have been meeting many of the local characters he mentions in his book. And they are really cool people. Thanks for introducing us, Rubén. Productive or not, we continue to enjoy our little piece o' the desert. Recently, we have had the honor of being visited by a desert tortoise. He/ she shows up for a little while in the morning or late afternoon and we are made aware of his/her presence by Luna's incessant barking. There ain't a whole lot for her to bark at around here, so we always check to see what it might be that has her so excited. Additionally, I might add that she can't see and she can't hear, so what the hell?? Somehow she knows there is something wandering around outside the fence that isn't us and isn't herself. I do believe this tortoise is, in fact, befuddled by our fence. Someone told me that these critters follow the same paths every spring when they come out of hibernation. And our fence is new since last June. There you have it. We have placed an obstacle in front of what I consider to be my totem animal. And I KNOW we aren't supposed to feed the wildlife. But when I handed over a wilted rose from our little container garden, the tortoise chomped it right down. Same with the beet greens. It was the least I could do after having barricaded it from its territory. Photo of Tortoise is attached. We have named it Nick because of a nick on its shell. Now, about the jackrabbit. We eat plenty of carrots. And we buy organic carrots. I don't believe in buying organic versus "conventional," as Whole Foods puts it (also known as Whole Paycheck, and, once upon a time, as The Food Hole). But carrots and potatoes seem to actually taste better if they've been raised organically. Whatever. This jackrabbit feasts fairly regularly on organic carrot peelings. Whenever I have veggie scraps I place them just outside our fence and wait for the rabbit, who usually shows up just at dusk. If you are watching a jackrabbit feed, you can't move a muscle. Any little twitch or wiggle will send it careening out across the flats in its zigzagging you-can't-catch-me trajectory. These rabbits do have an evasive way of traveling. They fake left with their heads and hop right, and vice-versa. They zip around, following the pattern (and yes it is a pattern) of the creosote bushes' placement on the sand. Kinda crazy, they are. Kip has work now, which is great, and we are both still playing. I get to sub for the keyboard player in the Pappy and Harriet's Sunday Band every once in a while. I dig that. And Kip and I are beginning to play out as Arroyo Rogers. We are still playing the drinking songs that we played with Forty Miles of Bad Road, plus some originals. I do admit I have a dream of making one more or maybe more than one more album—but I want to record in New Orleans. OK. Wanna hear my dream? My dream is for Kip and me to ride the Sunset Limited, which leaves Palm Springs at 12:30 a.m. and arrives in New Orleans at 9:40 p.m. the following evening. Just the right time to hit the clubs. I want to write songs on the way, record them in New Orleans, with Kip on bass and with my brilliant New Orleans musical soulmates on everything else...and, well, that's it. So that's my dream in a pecan shell. My New Orleans years were my MOST productive song-writing years ever, which should not come as a surprise. The muse is located there I guess. Oh and I want to record the vocals outdoors, maybe on the levee near the Maple Leaf, with all the outdoor night sounds included on the tracks. We shall see if I can make it be so. I did apply for that Amtrak writer's residency, but I think that might be sort of a scam. If anyone has successfully used Kickstarter or some such like, please tell me how it went. I know one of you has used it—or at least I think so...I found their web-site to be very difficult to navigate, but then I am a tortoise... I have been thinking of New Orleans because two old friends there have died recently, one old friend is now confined to a wheelchair, and because I always think of her (yes, I am assigning a gender to a city) anyway. Jesse Winchester has moved on and maybe he is up in heaven singing with Steve Goodman. I can imagine that if I want to. So here is a song from Steve and a song of Jesse's performed by Allen Toussaint—just to keep company with my dream theme. Ruby and Marty, these songs are for you: Jesse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXvBD5T9za4 City of New Orleans : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ0JgqoF2W4&feature=kp And a tortoise poem I found online (is that cheating?) Chelonian Conservation and Biology, 1997, 2(4):635 [chelonian |kəˈlōnēən|Zoology noun a reptile of the order Testudines (formerly Chelonia); a turtle, terrapin, or tortoise. adjective relating to or denoting chelonians.] Wake, Methuselah! (Tortoise in Midwinter at the London Zoo) AUTHOR UNKNOWN Come from the hole where the dark days drew thee, Wake, Methuselah! Wag thy tail! Sniff the snare of the winds that woo thee, Sun-kissed cabbage and sea-blown kale. To the salted breath of the sea-bear’s grot And the low sweet laugh of the hippopot Wake, for thy devotees can’t undo thee To see if thou really art live and hale. Leap to life, as the leaping squirrel Flies in fear of the squirming skink; Gladden the heart of the keeper, Tyrrell; Give Mr. Pocock a friendly wink! Flap thy flippers, O thou most fleet As once in joyance of things to eat; Bid us note that thou still art virile And not imbibing at Lethe’s brink. Art thou sleeping, and wilt thou waken? Hast thou passed to the Great Beyond, Where the Great Auk and the cavernous Kraken Frisk and footle with all things fond; Where the Dodo fowl and the great Dinornis Roost with the Roc and the Aepyornis, Where the dew drips down from the fern tree shaken As the pismire patters through flower and frond? Art thou sleeping, adream of orgies In sandy coves of the Seychelles isles, Or where in warm Galapagos gorges The ocean echoes for miles and miles? Of sun-warmed wastes where the wind sonorous Roared again to thy full-mouthed chorus, Far from bibulous Bills and Georges That smack thee rudely with ribald smiles. Dost thou dream how, a trifling tortoise, The hot sun hatched thee in shifting sand, Before the wrongs that the Roundheads brought us Set Oliver Cromwell to rule the land? Of an early courtship, when Pym and his earls Were making things lively for good King Charles? Not one left of them! Exit sortis (Horace), but thou art still on hand. Grant, thou monarch of eld, a token Of blood now fired with the breath of Spring; For the crowbar’s bent and the pickaxe broken With which we endeavored to “knock and ring.” At the warm love-thrill of the Spring’s behest That biddeth the mating bird to nest, Wake to the word that the wind hath spoken, Wake, old sportsman, and have thy fling! Editorial Comment [Peter C.H. Pritchard]. – While cleaning out my attic, I found this poem that I laboriously copied out in the library of my boarding school in Ireland about 40 years ago. It came from a bound volume of Punch (the British humorous weekly magazine), decades old—probably from around the tum of the century. The poem consists of the thoughts of someone contemplating a cold, immobile, hibernating, or possibly dead giant tortoise seen in midwinter at the London Zoo, when Mr. Pocock and Mr. Tyrrell were in charge of the Reptile House. The poem has the form of a Mock Heroic worthy of Alexander Pope, and is remarkable not least for its unusual rhyming scheme. In each stanza of eight lines, lines 1, 3, and 7 rhyme, as do lines 2, 4, and 8. Lines 5 and 6 rhyme with each other (although with a classical asonance in the fifth stanza). In terms of literary devices, the poem is gloriously overdone. It is, for example, positively festooned with alliteration—dark days drew thee, sniff the snare, leap to life, flies in fear, squirming skink, flap thy flippers, frisk and footle, roost with the Roc, dew drips down, pismire patters, flower and frond, Galapagos gorges, trifling tortoise, shifting sand, wake to the word that the wind hath spoken. One can almost picture the now long-forgotten (and surely long-dead) author smiling to himself with glee as he crafted his clever composition. Parts of the poem suggest some uncertainty as to whether the animal in question was an Indian Ocean or a Galapagos tortoise. Indeed, up to about the mid-nineteenth century, it should be remembered that it was common to call all giant tortoises Testudo indica. Certain phrases (flap thy flippers, sandy coves of the Seychelle Isles, hot sun hatched thee in shifting sands) also suggest confusion between giant tortoises and sea turtles. But no matter, the poem is magnificent. Published in Punch Magazine, ca. 1900, original title and author unknown Submitted by Peter C.H. Pritchard