The news of Earl Scruggs’ passing yesterday broke my little folk music lovin’ heart.  As a North Carolinian, former Appalachia resident,  and music fan, bluegrass is really important to me and I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to reflect on it.

 The first time I really felt and knew and understood bluegrass was by the side of a river in some small town in the mountains I don’t remember the name of. I was maybe 14, and I’d driven up to the mountains with some friends for a camping and whitewater rafting trip. My hair was tightly French braided on my head so three days of not showering wouldn’t make me appear quite as gross as I actually was. When we arrived at camp, it was raining a good North Carolina summer rain and we waited in the car a moment for it to pass. When the sun came out, the air was cool and crisp and somehow still hot and humid – in the way only the North Carolina mountains can be.  We set up camp and meandered into the town, where there were a few gear outfitters and an art gallery, and musicians toting cases to a field where an impromptu bluegrass jam session was taking place. So we did what any rag-tag group of teenagers on a road trip would do, we followed them and danced wildly, barefoot, feeling only the dewy grass and not the mosquito bites. Ten minutes into the trip, and I took out my braid because greasy hair be damned, I was going to dance and I was going to look wild and free while I did it.  I’d never really heard bluegrass before then. Not like this, anyway. Not like it was supposed to be heard.

I fell in love that day. With the banjo, fiddle, autoharp, with the mountains, the dosi-dos, the singing repeated lines of songs I’d never heard. Appalachia has a culture all of it’s own, a magnificent, wonderful, colorful culture of language and music that I hold so dear.

There’s the time an old roommate and I drove the Crooked Road Music Trail listening to the accompanying CD as we stopped at a fiddler’s convention and bluegrass museum, or the time, after moving back to Raleigh, I listened to bluegrass records and cried missing my beloved mountains. There’s even the time I threw up dangerously close to Doc Watson in the ER waiting room after a bout of kidney stones. But mostly, there’s that first encounter, silly, uninhibited, and love at first listen.

 And that’s what bluegrass is. We can talk all day about how much Earl Scruggs revolutionized banjo playing. Because he did, and that’s important. The sound you hear today in not only bluegrass, but indie folk, and any band that uses a banjo (with notable exceptions like Abigail Washburn), is because Earl Scruggs decided three fingers were better than two when he was ten years old.  But what’s more important is to remember the kind of feeling bluegrass gives us. Earl Scruggs didn’t do that - hundreds of years of front porches, community, and struggles did that. We can remember him each time we hear his influence in modern pop song where the banjo can be heard just faintly in the background, or we can honor him by gathering around instruments and singing in unison and dancing barefoot in the grass like every day is a North Carolina summer.

 Rest in Peace, Earl Scruggs. You’re off to the great big Foggy Mountain in the sky.

Today’s Weird Thing is this vintage Kodak camera.

I have a love of old things that were once used to create things. It’s why I love my old typewriter and why when I saw this camera on a back shelf in an antique store in a sleepy mountain town, I knew I had to have it.

This is a Kodak Jr. Six-20 Series II camera, made between 1937 and 1940. I literally spent my last $15, a week before payday, to buy it. I was living in a small town in Appalachia at the time, where antique stores full of awesome things were every few miles and probably owned by the same person.

Even though I know few people share my penchant for weird old crap, I love giving carefully picked antiques as gifts. So for Christmas, an old friend became the third person I’ve ever given a vintage camera to as a gift. When my then budding and now professional photographer roommate declared me the “coolest girl in the world” I knew I’d nailed it.

Three people, and I had yet to buy one for myself. But that changed the day I ran to the bus stop as my bus pulled away and I just decided to walk the two miles to work instead, passing my favorite little antique store. I decided to duck in quickly. And there it was just waiting to be bought.

A few days ago, I bought two rolls of film for the camera, and though I have no earthly idea how to use it, I’m taking it to Europe with me as part of a little experiment in time travel. How do I decide what to document if I can only photograph 16 things on two rolls of film?

Did you know baby goats are healthier when they are cuddled regularly? It’s perhaps the only way baby goats and I are similar.

Yesterday as part of the “Don’t Say No” challenge (wherein you don’t say no to any opportunities presented to you), I accepted an offer extended to me by the goat cheese guy at the farmer’s market to spend a day feeding newborn kids. And they are even cuter than I thought they’d be.

The baby goats sleeping in a bucket was cute enough to make even this city girl consider moving to the country. For about two hours, we helped wrangle the goats that were old enough to drink from bottles on their own, and hand fed those that weren’t quite there yet. I fell in love with a little girl goat named Fern, and I was so ready to take her home with me.

I could fit a goat in my apartment, right?

The class I teach Thursday nights was cancelled tonight so my student could watch his wife graduate from a class she was taking.

Antsy and bored, I packed up my fancy new camera and took a stroll through my little part of town.

Standing under the railroad tracks, noticing how like piano keys they looked as I snapped away with my camera, a man in a suit caught me off guard. 

In what was somewhere between a question, a statement, an expression of excitement he said “Seeing the beauty?”

“I’m trying!”

I don’t know what that meant. It could have meant I was trying to get a hang of this $1200 camera I’d been toting around for weeks - trying to figure out the ways to make my photographs shine and glow the way real life did, trying to figure out the angles and practice the way my favorite photographers can make desolate scenes of snow and concrete seem delicate, trying to practice on things in a city where I will be for years on things that will be there tomorrow. It could have meant I was trying to explore alone in hopes that the cities in Europe where I will be in just three weeks will be as forgiving as the one I live in now. I could have meant I was still trying to shake the little bit of anxiety that still plagues me while alone.

Or it could have meant what I think it did. Things are hard now. They’re really hard. And we’ll get through it, with optimism. We have to see the piano keys in the train tracks. And that’s that. It’s not up for debate.

I walked home, down a street I drive all the time but seldom walk, noting the way the light from a streetlamp cast shadows on my favorite graffiti, the presence of a house in the middle of a construction site that I’d somehow never noticed. And then as I walked across the bridge I drive on every day, I noticed my city in a way I hadn’t before. The city skyline I sigh over every day as I drive on to my street and try not to drive right off the bridge as I admire its beauty. Between the train tracks, there it was in all its glory, all light and shadows and blue.

Two train tracks diverged in downtown, and I sorry I could not take both, stared straight down the middle and looked at that beautiful city that welcomed me home every day.

It’s that time of the week again! Weird Stuff Wednesday, the day when I bring you a weird thing from my ever growing my collection of weird things.

Today’s Weird Thing is this little angel statue.

This little lady didn’t come from anywhere exciting. Originally, she probably started out in a factory in China, but when I came to know her she was from the dollar store in the mall near my house. She was a gift from my Girl Scout Leader, who I still keep in touch with, is now a grandmother, and whose birthday is today. It was given to me around a campfire for being so well behaved at our Scout meetings.

Since then, I’ve held her dear as a tiny good luck charm. Though I’m not a particularly religious person, I’ve always found a little bit of comfort in having an angel right beside me. She’s always been on my bedside table, and I often will wrap her in cellophane and put her in my suitcase for good luck. Just in case. Her wing broke during the move to my new apartment two years ago and I was heartbroken, though the little angel is finally starting to show her age.

Good luck charms are sort of silly, but everyone’s got one. What do you take traveling?

Colcannon is one of those foods I feel like I should have grown up eating, but didn’t. It’s a simple, traditional Irish dish made from potatoes and kale that served as a staple in most homes. In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I attempted colcannon and boxty (one of my favorite foods) for the first time. Boxty is kind of like the Irish equivalent of a knish or latke. How can you go wrong with fried potatoes? You can’t.

Colcannon is so common, there’s even a folk song about it.

Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?
With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream.
Did you ever make a hole on top to hold the melting flake
Of the creamy, flavoured butter that your mother used to make?

Even after making Colcannon, I have no idea what pickled cream is - but it sounds gross. Here’s how I did it.

Colcannon

Ingredients:

• 5-7 pounds of potatoes (I used red new potatoes)
• Four spring onions (you can use scallions as well)
• Two sticks of butter
• Cup of whole milk
• 1 pound kale, stems removed

Instructions:

1. Put on the Dropkick Murphys Station on Pandora and pour yourself some whiskey or a porter.
2. Boil potatoes in their skins for about 30 minutes. If you’re like me, you will get up and check them every three minutes, but don’t. There’s probably an Irish expression about it, but I don’t know what it is. Just let them boil. When they’re done, let them cool for a few minutes and peel off the skin. If you used a thin-skinned potato, it will come off on it’s own. I like to leave a little skin on. 

   

3. While the potatoes are boiling, boil the kale in a saucepan for about 20 minutes. It will turn a gorgeous shade of green.

   

4. Put the chopped potatoes back in the pot, and let sit on low for a few minutes to steam out any of the moisture in the potatoes. Toss in butter, milk, spring onion, and mash. Or use a hand mixer, which is what I did much to the chagrin of my Irish ancestors.
5. Drain the kale and toss in with the potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste.

Variations include adding leeks, ham, or bacon.

Boxty

Ingredients:

• Cup of mashed potatoes
• Cup of grated, raw potato
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/3 cup milk
• Grated onion or scallion

Instructions:

1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix. The consistency should be thicker pancake batter, but not solid. 

   

2. Drop batter on a hot, buttered skillet and cook until crispy and brown.

   

My intention was to make it like an omelet, fill one side with sauteed veggies and flip it over. Traditionally, boxty is stuffed with meat, but as a vegetarian that did not appeal to me. Unfortunately, I’m a pretty bad stuff-flipper and it kind of fell apart. That said, it was still delicious - just not pretty. I served the broken up boxty pieces over the veggies with a spoonful of sour cream and cheddar cheese.

Ugly, but delicious.

This is my great grandmother, with my grandfather before he left for World War II. It’s the only picture we know of her, and I love it. Don’t they just look so cute and Irish? Her name was Josephina Sullivan before she was married and adopted an even more Irish surname (the one I still have). I can just imagine her spouting Irish expressions in an adorable County Cork accent. She left her family in Ireland and immigrated through Ellis Island with my great grandfather. She became a single mom raising two kids during the depression in New York City, constantly moving between apartments when she couldn’t afford the rent. She was a seamstress and a union organizer for garment workers, no doubt a terribly dangerous position to be in. Basically, she sounds like a super cool lady, and I wish I could have known her. I also wish I could have known my grandfather, who died very young but by all accounts sounds like an amazing man.

The Irish are a pretty tough, and pretty awesome, group of folks. For all the rumors of shillelagh law and a row and a ruction that soon began, we know how to stick it out together with a sense of humor and a few prayers on those rosary beads. We’re tough, but we’re warm and welcoming too.

When I was growing up a wee lass, my dear dad didn’t know many lullabies. Instead, he sang my sisters and I to sleep with what he knew - Irish drinking songs and sea shanties. It’s admittedly a weird way to grow up, but I can’t help feel nostalgic for my childhood anytime I hear “What do you do with a drunken sailor.” My dad, of course, changed the words to “What do you with a drunken baby? Put her in the crib until she’s sober.” When my parents got called in to my sister’s school when she was singing “Whiskey you’re the devil” in kindergarten, and when I boasted “The Moonshiner” as my favorite song at age 7, they couldn’t help but to laugh. With my speech impediment it may have been “I’m a wambler, I’m a dwambler,” but I still sang it with heart. Roadtrips with my family have always involved a few rounds of “All for Me Grog,” and family vacations often involve an attempt to find an Irish band playing at a local pub. That’s just how we roll.

I’m a living embodiment of that rumored Irish feistiness that isn’t so much a rumor. I know a handful of words in Gaelic, though I’m sure I mispronounce them all. I have a love for whiskey, porter, the fiddle and the concertina. I have my green eyes, round face, freckled nose, and these wild Irish curls, untameable and frizzy and everywhere that give me the unmistakable mark of an Irish American. I have my name that binds me to my roots, to Ireland, to my family, and reminds me of my heritage each time I sign it.

Thanks, great grandma Josephina for coming here, sticking it out, and starting an incredible family. I’m proud to be a third generation Irish American.

Sláinte, agus Sásta Lá Fhéile Pádraig.

It was 105 degrees that day in Belize, and we’d just hiked several hundred feet up rickety stone stairs to the top of ancient Mayan ruins.

At the bottom of the ruins, a man with a baby alligator and a bottle of cashew wine greeted us.

“Best drink in all the land!” he told us as he poured us a shot glass sized sample of this strange drink.

He would let us hold the alligator and take pictures “for a small donation,” but regardless of how cool it would be to have a picture holding an alligator while drinking strange wine at the bottom of Mayan ruins, I declined.

We toasted to Belize and safe travels and sipped the wine out of tiny plastic cups. It was sweet and delicious and unlike anything I’d ever had. I paid $12 for a bottle to take home, which I thought was a good deal but was immediately told by my cab driver, who looked strangely like Samuel L. Jackson, “You paid too much! I wish I’d been there. I would have told them what’s what.”

The cashew wine tasted like magic. It tasted like a hot summer day in a foreign land feeling like a more touristy version of Indiana Jones. I stashed the bottle in my bag and clutched it carefully, all the way down our bumpy ride back into town. It was to be saved for a special occasion.

Cashew wine. It just sounded so exotic, and I imagined myself pouring it into tiny cups and drinking with a large group. “Yes! Belize!” I’d proclaim, and they’d all want to hear of my adventures and travels.

I decided this Thanksgiving that 11 members of my family flown in from all over were enough to call it a special occasion.  After the turkey had settled, I brought out the pie and cashew wine, telling everyone about its splendor and sweetness. I poured it into tiny 19^th Century toasting glasses my dad had picked up at various antique stores, and we all took a sip.

My older sister reacted first, yelling “Oh my God, eeww!” Then, my little sister made a face and said “Oh. Wow,” and slid the glass away from her. My mom then made a series of gagging noises and proclaimed. “Woah. No thanks.” Followed by my aunt who politely said, “It’s not…terrible.”

The rest of the family, not brave enough to try this mysterious drink, sat around the table and giggled at our reactions, each more dramatic than the next.

Surely they were all mistaken. This wine was delicious! At last I took a sip and reacted in the same way.  It was bad.

My aunt could see my embarrassment. I’d been talking about this wine for months, just waiting to crack it open.

“It’s okay. She said. I’ve done the same thing. There’s something about traveling that makes everything seem like the best thing you’ve ever had.”

I shrugged. It was really hot the day we’d had that. We were really dehydrated, and we’d just survived the scariest cab ride of our lives. Maybe anything liquid tasted good.

But maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was that adventure really does make things taste better. Maybe our wine was infused with a little ancient magic and mystery and all the healing found in the jungles of Belize.

But it made me wonder – was my pizza in Chicago really as good as I remember it, or was it just the excitement of finding food after being on my feet for 10 hours? Were my empanadas in Mexico as good as I thought they were, or was it just cool to be eating them in the Mexican jungle practicing my Spanish?

My sister confessed, “I wish you’d never brought this home. I’ve been excited about trying it for months. You should have left your memory there.”

Each time we replay our memories, we make them just slightly better. We forget the sweat dripping down our foreheads and the blisters on our feet, and we just remember how amazing it was to be standing on top of stone structures thousands of years old, and looking down at the jungle below. Our taste buds are kind of like that, too. It probably wasn’t that good that day, but I believed it was.

The cashew wine tasted like victory, like the feeling of accomplishment that eating a giant plate of mashed potatoes just doesn’t have.

The Irish have a way with words. No doubt you’ve heard the famous Irish blessing that so many have cross-stitched above their beds.

“May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind always be at your back.  May the sun shine warm upon your face…”

If you grew up in an Irish family, you know that the rest of that blessing is “and may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows your dead.”The Irish are charmers. Standing opposite the lovely Irish blessings are a slew of incredible curses, to be used jokingly at friends, farm animals who won’t behave, potatoes that won’t boil, and all enemies of the beautiful green hills of Èire.

10. May the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase you so far over the hills of damnation that the Lord himself can’t find you with a telescope.

9. May the cat eat you and the devil eat your cat.

8. May yourself go stone-blind so that you will not know your wife from a hay-stack!

7. May the curse of seven snotty orphans be upon you.

 6. May your friends have a fine day for your burying.

5. May the enemies of Ireland never eat bread nor drink whiskey, but be tormented with itching without the benefit of scratching.

4. May you all go to hell and not have a drop of porter to quench your eternal thirst.

 3. May those that love us, love us. And those that don’t love us, may God turn their hearts. If he can’t turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we’ll know them by their limping.

2. May you have the runs on your wedding night.

1. May his pig never grunt, may his cat never hunt
May a ghost ever haunt him the dead of the night
May his hens never lay, may his horse never neigh
May his coat fly away like an old paper kite
That the flies and the fleas may the wretch ever tease
May the piercin’ March breeze make him shiver and shake..

Number 1 is actually from the folk ballad Nell Flaherty’s Drake, in which the singer details all the things that should be done to the person who murdered the beloved pet duck. Like many folk songs, it’s actually an allegory about Robert Emmet, an Irishman hanged after a rebellion in Dublin.

In the times I am not traveling, I like to be surrounded by things that remind me of interesting places, times, and memories. In other words, I like stuff. I like weird stuff. And since weird and Wednesday have a nice sound, I bring to you Weird Stuff Wednesdays, where I will be presenting you with one weird thing from my collection, and the story that goes with it.

Today’s weird thing is this piece of coral from Grand Cayman.

When you grow up in North Carolina, you know what a beach is. From the time you are young, you are ingrained with the belief that our beaches are the best beaches in the world, and anyone who disagrees better be prepared for a fight. Our waves are big enough to be fun, but not too big to be scary. Our people are friendly, the seafood is fresh, and after the tide goes out you walk on the beach collecting conch shells to put in a basket on your coffee table.

Then there’s this Other Kind of Beach in the Caribbean that people talk about, where the water is flat and clear. For whatever reason, people seem to this this is better. I’ve always thought they were wrong.

But then I met Grand Cayman, easily the happiest place I’ve ever been. The ocean is crystal clear, and it turns out knowing what’s swimming at your feet is actually more appealing. The people are even more friendly then those in North Carolina (is that even possible?). Because it’s an island in the Gulf of Mexico, there’s no tide or waves to chart for when to beware the smell of low tide or the best time to fish or collect shells. There’s just calm, always, on the ocean like a sheet of glass.

My friends had paid a striking Argentinian woman with bright blue eyes to take them to see some stingrays. At the end of my budget and craving a day to just float, I opted to stay at the beach alone. I was told not to touch the coral reef with my feet, and in my lime green snorkel mask - the mark of an American tourist if there ever was one - I dove down expecting bright colors and lively sea creatures. I got some slimy brown coral and ugly brown minnowesque fish.

They’d arranged for the Argentinean woman to pick me back up at the beach a few hours later. Lacking a watch or any sense of time, I headed back up to a purple and yellow picnic shelter to put my dress back on, do some yoga, and catch up on some reading. There, under the shelter, was this piece of coral just waiting for me to take it home. Here were my waves and my low tide conch shell.