not in kansas anymore

A few blog-worthy items from my whirlwind (or should that be "tornado"...?) trip to Kansas over the weekend...

- got to spend some time with Ben and Andrea, saw their place, jammed a bit, and even played a few tunes with Ben at the Sunday evening concert in Newton... just wait till you hear what he does with his mandolin on "Take Good Care," one of the soon-to-be-recorded songs on the new album... now if we can just figure out how to manage the long-distance recording thing... (and by the way you can download a whole album of Ben and friends - "The Whizbang Shufflers" - great stuff - for free...)

- lots of great conversation over yerba mate with my host family and new friends Willmar and Hannah... (they do yerba TWICE A DAY - that gives you a clue, for starters, of just how cool they are...)

- snowflakes (flakes?) the size of my fist coming down in copious quantities on our way to the Kansas Relief Sale concert on Friday night... and then eating lunch outside in our shirtsleeves on a warm green prairie Sunday afternoon (to the refrain of "well, that's Kansas for ya...")

- a low (but energetic!) turn-out for the Saturday night concert, due to a wildly popular crop-insurance meeting at the local high school...

And my favourite hope-inspiring-quote-of-the-weekend, spoken with pride by a three year old girl to her mother, upon seeing an image of planet earth projected as I was speaking/singing at - wouldn't you know it - "view of hope" on Sunday morning:

"Hey! That's where I live!"