Memorial Day is about getting the dock in. A little rain from time to time will not keep me from that. The ice destroyed our old landing, and I am using the old dock pieces as a new landing. Positioning the dock is one of the major negotiations of our life together. The idea this year is to step down with a couple of old dock pieces so that the ramp to the actual dock won't be too steep. Also I flipped all the decking planks to the other side and it looks like new cedar.

In the meantime Jim is shoring up our decks and replacing the tops with new red cedar. We want it to be as safe as possible for June 21 when my sister Georgette and her partner July are coming up to get married here. They live in Alabama and although the states are moving right along in accepting marriage equality, we all know which ones will be last.

Friday evening we hosted a wine & cheese Friend Raiser for Shenna Bellows who is running against Susan Collins for senator. It's a David and Goliath race for sure, but Shenna is a terrific candidate, sort of the Elizabeth Warren of civil liberties, and she could surprise a lot of people. I have urged my republican friends to host meet-the-candidate events for their contenders as well. Invite'em all to Unity and lets put them through their paces. Maybe it would be nice if we didn't have political parties and we just had candidates.

At least mud season was over when we returned, but winter has left some things in need of repair. Dock and deck and walkway and garden raised beds all need major attention. At the same time I need to catch up on my web projects. Life is busy like that great song by Tune-Yards: "Hey Life, why do you keep me around?"
Today I met with an English/Journalism class at Mt. View High to show them the web app they will use next week for the project of taking photos of gravestones in one of Unity's cemeteries and uploading them so that they will be available in this Cemetery Search thingy at the Unity website. Mt. View is a gorgeous new campus with some pretty stuff we didn't have when I was teaching. What looked like a projection screen for the computer was touch enabled. It was so odd to be back in a high school classroom that I had to stop at the Amish store on the way home and reward myself with a doughnut.

Earlier I met with Deb and Faith about the Language Symbols project. Whole different set of skills there. It's a website and some story book apps using their symbol sets. Now I'm working on some minutes I took at the TIF Committee meeting last night. I have offered to take minutes for that committee and for the Comp Plan Committee as an exercise in listening and capturing what people say and what discussions are about, especially those that wander all over the place. Sometimes I get involved in a discussion and get distracted from minutes-taking. In a bit, I'll put in some work on a web app I'm writing for a client who will actually pay me. Getting a good export of their Access database into MySql is the major headache here; the Java and ajaxy javascript is the smoother part. I'm looking for incremental progress in all things.

It's a cloudy, chilly day and at some point I will find a warm spot and get back to reading the Thomas Piketty book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. I love books that take me on a tour of history from the viewpoint of a thesis. Malthus, Ricardo, and Marx, oh my. Here's the thesis: "When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based. There are nevertheless ways democracy can regain control over capitalism and ensure that the general interest takes precedence over private interests, while preserving economic openness and avoiding protectionist and nationalist reactions." It's a highly readable and discussable book which is why I sent a hard copy to the CPA Bourgs and MBA Soleaus of New Orleans.

A great day of festing on Friday in perfect weather got us some Hurray For The Riff Raff, The Gloryoskis! (Helen Gillet, Debbie Davis, Myshkin), Eden Brent, Tom McDermott & Evan Christopher, Sunpie Barnes, Chaka Khan, and the Alabama Shakes. On Saturday night our friends Julie and Aimee took us to the Dr. John Tribute show at the Saenger. Bruce Springsteen opened it with Dr. John on "Right Place Wrong Time," and the line up went on from there: Blind Boys, Anders Osborne, Chief Monk Boudreaux, John Fogarty, Shannon McNally, Ryan Bingham, John Boutte, Irma Thomas, on and on, and all backed up by Bonerama horns on the left and the McCrary sisters on the right. A pretty amazing show. When it ended at 1:30 am, the streets were still alive with people hanging out and moving about. I think that was our country mice moment of the trip.

Thanks for all the mohitos and visits with friends, for those transubstantiational cosmo's that Julie makes, for the family gathering with oysters and shrimp on the grill, for baby Martin milestones, for wedding planning for Georgette and July in June, for great spring weather and blooming things. Today we are packing it in and preparing to return to life as productive citizens, but not before some Popeye's and one more hit at Morning Call in City Park.