The ice went out the last weekend of March this year, the earliest time in my experience. We'll be planting peas and beans before we go to Louisiana. The arrival of spring here is like getting your life back, like getting your mind back from wherever you hocked it for the winter. So that you think This is who I am, not that. I turned the compost bins today and in the middle one I found this thing we had lost for about a year; it's a small spreader knife with a fleur de lis for a handle. It was good to see it again.

Melissa is a girl with a new grill; it only took 4 of us to put it together. Let the cookouts begin.

Music saves as always. Here's the April Mix. An amazing arrangement of Simple Gifts; a preview of Kris Delmhorst's new album of songs based on poems; two Eliza songs both of which she performed at her show here to an adoring hippie audience. The Peasall Sisters are those three little girls from O Brother, now grown to adolescence. They wrote Gray County Line which is an eerie prefiguration of that moment yet to come when they realize they are the spiritual children of the Roches, and leaving all that Jesus stuff behind, go off to find Maggie and Suzzy.

My new subscription to Offbeat Magazine came this week with a great Lousisiana sampler CD, including a Henry Butler piece and a great Los Hombres Calientes tribute to James Booker. The anticipation is intense. We'll do the first day of JazzFest on Friday, then go the Festival International in Lafayette on Saturday, then back to N.O. on Sunday for a party, then to the beach on Monday. For those of you unable to attend, check out the New Orleans JazzFest Schedule, and even better its amazing food offerings. And have a look at the FestInt in Lafayette schedule where the shopping for bands is actually better for us, because there are more bands in our money range and it's easy to get to talk to them. Last year we heard Le Vent du Nord there and later booked them here.