Hooray for hosta and the way they go from zero to sixty in about a month. Every year. Hooray for summer. Hooray for the historic week we just had. Ezra Klein (it takes him and about 5 others to make up for Andrew Sullivan's absence) just posted: "If you had told me in 2004 that by 2015 we would have a black president, a near-universal health-care system, gay marriage, and a new relationship with Cuba, I would have laughed at you. But here we are." It was an amazing week for change and wonderful to watch the reactions to it all on social media. It was like the Saints winning the super bowl. Melissa's (and 6 million others) health insurance will stay. Georgette and July can now get the homestead exemption on that house they are buying in Mississippi. Adorable wedding pictures are all over the internet. That miserable-ass confederate flag is being taken down in a lot of places, and people are standing up to the truth that the civil war was about slavery. Obama's Amazing Grace eulogy in Charleston was like nothing else a president has ever done. Yup, it was a fabulous week. Yay us!

In our local political microcosm, things are better too. At a public hearing tonight I noticed how the tone of meetings and public hearings has changed for the better. Our select board has a good mix of skills and they work well together. With Emily, we get spreadsheets and written explanations; with Penny we get a peace maker, and with Chris we someone who can talk about roads all day. Since Clem is gone, it's more about consensus and working with people rather than his selectman-as-emperor attitude. They produced a nicely written document explaining the need to pave the road by the cemetery rather than just handing down an edict. And I'm super pleased to see the Budget Committee become a real working committee. That is a recommendation in the comp plan. Nice thing about meetings in Unity: there's usually a dog wandering around getting pets from everyone.

And one more hooray: for techology catching up to just what I need at the moment: an interface to set up and control a virtual cloud server where I can host my Java database apps for clients. I get to be the sys admin with the frigging root password.

I am writing this just at the summer solstice moment where perfection of light lingers for a time before starting its slow fade. We are in an all day rain, otherwise I would be putting this kayak in somewhere to see if I'm worthy of it and if it works for me. It's lightweight and easy to get on and off the car. I just have to see if I feel stable in it and generally if it rocks my world. If it works, I'll buy it from Vickie B. I've been talking about buying it from her for a while and now she's making me do it!

The Charleston massacre in the church has been on my mind since it happened. I can't say why it hit so hard except that I grew up in Louisiana and that the nine people he killed were so beautiful and productive. I've signed petitions to get that miserable offensive flag taken down from any government building. And no more talk about heritage not hate. Hate is your heritage. Wake up and change.

At the Ukelele Picnic in Belfast recently, I went to a workshop where someone taught a Roy Smeck arrangement of 12th Street Rag. I decided right then to buy a regularly tuned uke to learn stuff like that. After a bit of shopping I bought this Ohana spruce top concert size uke. It has a bright happy sound. There is a world of free charts, videos, tutorials out there for the regular uke and a much smaller amount for the baritone which is tuned like the last four strings of a guitar. The concert size will let me play nice with others. I will check out the strumming groups nearby, but I'm not sure I'm groupable. Remember, I belong to a reading group where we all read different books. On the baritone, I continue to work at the Jobim stuff; I'm good at chord progressions, but terrible at the complex rhythms. But there are Clave apps for that.

There's a lot of great new music out this month, some of it by old favorites. On my July mix, Sonny Landreth mentions Buffy Sainte-Marie whose song follows his, and the chorus to the Indigo Girls song about their New Orleans years says Put on Lil Queenie and bring me another whiskey. The new James Taylor album is a special treat. It seems to tie all the years together from Sweet Baby James in 1970 to our present amazingly still alive selves.

It is the season for sunsets on the dock and exploding hosta and clenched peony fists.
In the last year there were three times I was in a public place and heard some great song and everything had to stop until I had shazammed it.
-- walking into a bar on Banks Street with Julie and Aimee about 3 pm looking for a new kind of king cake. The song was Mr. Grieves by TV on the Radio.
-- listening to In Tune By Ten on Sunday morning, there was a cut not on the song list, because the engineer had stuck it in to fill up some time. It was Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap.
-- having the bacon-brie-apple breakfast sandwich for lunch in Selah Tea. The song was Woods by Bon Iver.
All were amazing vocal arrangements.