March 18th, 2019.

If I was Dorothea Lange… Hard-working Heather on the plains of Ohio…

Good morning Pittsburgh! We’re here a little earlier than expected and a little longer too. I’m not sure if that’s WHAT SHE SAID or not, it seems a little 50 / 50. That’s where we ARE – let’s talk about where we’ve been….

Waking up this morning in Findlay OH – we’d had a HORROR-style hotel with a FLICKING noisy bathroom light and a forever-midnight bedside clock…. we were grateful to see the sun again!
Growing acclimated to our hosts in Litchfield OH involved coming to terms with these little guys watching us in the bathroom….
And the house band…
And the house butler…
By the time we made it up to our room we were prepped for all brands of weirdness – so it was time for a more normal surprise!
Ye olde College Pal by Slingerland! A cool tenor guitar that had me playing blues licks and enjoying its dusty presence.
Outside the backdoor they’ve got some little bit of farmland, growing vegetables and chickens in mutually exclusive rows.
Everything’s set up and ready to rock!
This is Winston. He was yappy at first but we grew on him.
Our host’s poetry book… Laura Grace Weldon’s “Blackbird” (she uses her middle name because apparently ‘Laura Weldon’ writes books about how awesome Nazis are…)
Winston’s eager for people to hurry up and get here… AND START DROPPING SOME DAMNED FOOD!!!

Saturday we played another house concert – Wheldon House
Concerts in Litchfield, OH renewed a lot of my faith in humanity and we had a
really wonderful time. The people were great and we probably could’ve made
pretty good friends there if left there for a little more time – the bed was
great too! Seemed like a giant sledge with a mattress on it… the food was
great, the pets were great, we played great, the weather was great… everything
was great except Kristen got bit by SOMETHING while we were playing and she has
these two immense welts that are…

… throbbing…

I think we’re not TOO worried about them yet, but if they
hatch we may be down by a cellist.

Loving the light here – we’re in the path of the setting sun and I’d forgotten how beautifully the sun sets in the flat flat lands of Ohio. It took forever to vanish, leaving us lingering in oranges and reds through our entire first set.

I shouldn’t joke. We’re keeping a close eye on them and it
seems like the swelling’s going down. I especially shouldn’t joke because the
reason we’re in Pittsburgh early is that the family we’d planned to stay with yesterday
had a parent suddenly get very, very sick. They don’t expect her to last long
at all and were obviously not up for visitors. I got the call Friday night that
our Sunday plans were going to have to change – and it sounds pretty brutal. I
was really looking forward to the visit, but it’ll have to happen when Life is
calmer.

The guardian of the shows at the Wheldon House Concert in Litchfield, OH. You probably can’t tell by the footwear but it was a wonderful crowd that felt more like an east coast crowd than what I think of as rural Ohio. Progressive and chatty and ready for good music!

Good morning in Litchfield! The grandkids have dropped in for a visit changing the footwear demographic.
Wandering Medina, OH we encounter this Christmas Stargate.
And this alien landing site…
… and this holiday bird village…
Hell, is this town square w. gazebo the only NORMAL thing in town?? (I’m not complaining!)

We wander the town square and I can’t resist a gourmet donut shop… here’s a chocolate cake donut from Circles on the Square in Medina, OH.

Happy Donut-Eatin’ Weasel.

But our friend Brad Yoder was able to take us in – or at
least, was able to instruct his house mates to take us in – and after a visit
to Medina, OH (which is kind of a wondrous town – certainly they’ve got
spectacular donuts, a Christmas City, an alien village and a toy train museum,
and that’s damned close to wondrous) where we took the time to go catch Captain
Marvel – it was a welcome and familiar place to rest our wearied selves.

Captain Marvel was great, though I know in reviews it’s
pretty polarizing – and as with anything that’s the slightest bit subversive,
you can’t tell the honest reviews from the reviews by people who just can’t
stand to see a woman as a superhero, or you can’t tell the honest reviews from
someone who’s so divorced from reading female expressions that they think Brie
Larson is wooden and emotionless… I don’t know. There’s a lot to drill into with
that movie and though it had some legitimately powerful moments (rise up rise
up rise UP) and I Love the additions to the overall mythology (I feel like it
coloured in the universe in a pretty good way, much more interestingly than
most prequelly kind of timelines do) I think my ISSUES with it aren’t easy to
cleave away from my fatigue with the brand. It’s the 21^st (?) movie
in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and I THINK I’ve seen them all… it’s legit for
them to begin to seem a little lukewarm by now. The fact that they’re still
holding my interest at all is a real testament to how great they are… (hrm,
maybe 20^th – I don’t know that they should count Edward Norton’s
Incredible Hulk movie in the current “universe”)

Anywho, waking up in Brad’s… commune (?)… was welcome. The
sun is shining, the birds may well be tweeting. His chickens are clucking and
the housemates are shuffling around. One by one we make the trek to the third
floor where their tiny, powerful, HOT shower Lives and get our act together to
battle one last day on the road. We play at Mr. Small’s tonight and then drive
home. We’ll probably be about a hundred miles from home by this time in the AM.
Though it’s been a good trip, you can tell that I’m literally counting the
hours…