Tonight we had a real treat. Our friend Averie was playing  a show iat FireFolk n Waitsfield along with her old UVM roommate Blair Borax and traveling musician Bethany Ann Tranbaugh .  Blair and Bethany are touring the east coast and they met up with Avery for the first show. It was a very cool building.. lots of interesting  art and botanical cocktails. Very vermont !  Lots of friends there, Averys parents, Jane, Joe and Morgan, 

The evening opened with an original poem by Harmony (whom I just found out is the youth poet laureate for the state of vermont) 

Avery was up first.. playing original songs..with a clear voice, great energy and .. I’d never seen her play solo before and she was wonderful !!!   As I watched her play I was thinking about how she and Jane Keir (also in the audience) play “Keepsake” but State Radio at Sam’s memorial. She was only 14 then.. so was Sam.   I still listen to it sometimes.. Har do believe that was 17 years ago). You can listen to it here .. or below.. Always makes me cry to hear it.. .. (just did)

Then up was Bethany. she labeled  herself as ‘queer americana’..   She was super fun.. Great lyricist and great guitarist.. You can check out some of her stuff here. 

Then Bair Borax came up.. she was also a great songwriter. She had been Avery’s college roommate about 10 years ago.. at the time she couldn’t sing or play guitar.. now she does both really well. We loved hearing her too !  Check out her stuff here 

It was a real special night.. 

nite all, nite sam

-me

Things are getting back to normal after an insanely busy last week.. Today we spent putting finishing touches on some of our carbon fiber demos for  our hiring fare next Sunday.. 

I love working with this team. 

nite all, nite sam

-me

I took Max in to catch an insanely early flight this morning.. it’s been so great having hime here. !

 I guess the eclipse helped  us get the first signs of spring ..   

Nite all, nite sam

-me

Well… That was amazing!… Today was my first total solar eclipse. Jonesville was right in the path of totality and we had over three minutes of total darkness. It was amazing.. …… absolutely amazing. ! With all the hype about becoming eclipse, I was wondering if it would feel anticlimactic… It did not in the least.

It was really special having Max back here, so Max Diane and I sat in the back.… And I know this might sound weird… But we had Sam with us… (his ashes)  and several samstones. Picture above is from our friend Marie.. with he crest sun shining through a colander. 

I set up my telescope with a solar filter and camera to try and record the actual image of the sun.. it sort of worked.. what’s below are some pictures of my phone as it tracks the sun’s occlusion . Max is going  to help me put it together as a movie (I hope 🙂 

We watched the sun slowly get more bites taken out.. as it did, the light changed.. it was cool and freaky ! ..

One fun thing is that we could see many images of the cresant sun as it shined through all the wholes on our fire pit (which I’d made of an old dryer drum).. Look at all those little suns ! 

Then it happened.. the sun slowly just disappeared !.. Everything got quiet… there was like a sunrise glow all around the horizon, birds stopped speaking . ..bugs appeared !  

The whole sun turned into just a ring of fire !!!!! It was magical !!!.. 

Even some of the really bad pictures came out as interesting.. check out this unintentional double exposure

Then the sun started to peak back out.. as soon as it did.. it was instantly brighter !

Then things slowly got back to normal-ish.. I say normal-ish because all of a sudden all the roads got packed.. in a few minutes it was back to back traffic on the interstate, and on route 2.. a few minutes later, a ton of traffic started going down Duxbury rd. I checked google maps and sure enough.. the mapping app was counting people down the 10 mile dirt road..  just after mud season.. Diane  even saw a semi truck go down there !

The rest of the afternoon was peaceful.. in the evening a bunch of our/maxs friends came over for a post eclipse dinner..  Jaq and her friend were in town,. As were Alex and Chris. .. Super nice way to finish  this day . 

What a memorable day !
so amazing…

Nite all
-me

Also managed to capture eclipse on one frame of the time lapse we have of our house ~!