GinohnNews

G: On Friday we had a surprise visit from Kerry, a friend who lived in Greenbelt but about 3 years ago and moved to Germany. She called in the morning and I picked her up in the evening. We went to the party at Diana McFaddens. Fun. Lisa made a lot of vegan food. Kerry slept on our couch that night and we spent some time with her in the morning before her mom picked her up. Since she was jet lagged, she woke up and took a walk very early in the morning and found a tiny baby snapping turtle on the sidewalk somewhere. She took it with her when she left to release it at a lake near her parents house. I'm not sure we'll ever see her again - she and her boyfriend in Germany are going to have a baby soon!

Saturday night we went down to the Fall Harvest Festival in town to see Danbert Nobacon. He used to be a singer guy in Chumbawamba! You remember their hit Tubthumping. In the video he's the guy singing into a megaphone. We'd gotten word through the grapevine from Jeff Aug that it would be a cool show to see. I told a few people about it too. I figured Dorian would be going around town saying, "Chumbawamba is coming to Greenbelt!" the way he used to go around saying "The Monkeys are coming to Greenbelt!" whenever Peter Tork would perform at the Labor Day Festival. But very sadly, it looked like John and I were the only people who actually showed up on purpose to see him. So before the show John went up to him and said, "On behalf of your fans everywhere, I'd like to apologize for the low turn out." He said, "Oh yeah, no problem." There were a few various and sundry people hanging out in the center, and most of them listened and clapped, but some were talking during his show. I felt awful for him, and a bit miffed that the dude behind us wasn't cognizant enough to take his conversation elsewhere.  It was an interesting show with great satire of our two countries' military-industrial complications. Danbert put all his energy into it. John bought his cd.

Sunday I went to help one of my studio mates with her Artful Afternoon project at the community center. We did bas-relief clay tiles inspired by the murals on the side of the building. I slipped away after a while to briefly attend a luncheon in memory of Barbara Tannen, a former Greenbelter, friend, mother of my friend Jessica, and one of my best pottery customers. She died last week.

J: I recently realized that for the last fifteen years I've been complaining from time to time about being old. Then I looked at pictures of myself 15 years ago and didn't know what I was complaining about. If I keep grumbling about growing older, my future self—fifteen years from now—is going to be really annoyed that I wasted my precious time making useless noises about something that is just not true, relatively speaking.

So, no more whining about age.