100 bands in 5 days May 29, 2008

Yep, just returned from our annual Memorial Day beach trip/music festival in Wilmington. This post title is a total misnomer, because even though Wefest boasts that many bands, I actually didn’t see that many.  In fact, I only went two nights (hey, someone had to stay at the house and drink gin and tonics).   I wanted to tell you about a few that I thought were pretty cool though.  Before I dive into that, a little background info.  Wefest is a 12 year old,  smallish festival.  Wefest this year asked various musically inclined alumni to host nights and pick the line up (they used to do the bookings by sending around mix cds and asking folks to vote on who should play!).  Its a great place to hear new bands.  The Soapbox Lounge, the hosting venue, isa fantastic 5 story venue in downtown Wilmington.

Some of 2008’s highlights:

Ear PWR

A duo from Winston Salem consisting of a guy who looks like Will Ferrell doing Napoleon Dynamite and a girl who looks like an elf with very, very large sunglasses.  They will have you dancing!  I LOVE “Sophie” because of the hilarious chorus.  Plus, I love when people write songs about their pets.

Midtown Dickens

Girl punk bluegrass.  I was so bummed that they did not play “Tetris” because that song was in my head all that day, but apparently they are moving away from cute and into bluegrass more.   They have a xylophone, AND they play the saw!!

Red Collar

This band reminds me of some of the newer Superchunk; rockin’ so hard (and boy are they great live, I have seen them a few times before, because my pal The Professor LOVES them) plus really tuneful and poppy.  I love Stay and the song with the chorus “we’ve been workin’ over time” that I don’t know the name of.  The version of Stay on the myspace page does not do the live show justice!

The other act that is newsworthy is Poingly, just because I found him so…..nearly naked as to be distracting.  And not in a good way!  Not sure about the music….

We had a great time with our usual gang of pals we vacation with: late night card playing, beach going, went and saw Iron Man (which is a great flick) and sleeping real late.  Fun times!

Yes, I speak Okie May 21, 2008

I just got back from the SPNHC Conference (we academics call that “spinach”) meetings in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City is really neat! We had a good time exploring, when not in meetings and at social events. The conferences were great, very motivating. It is nice to hobnob with people who do the same thing I do. In addition, bonding time was had with my own coworkers.

Here are a few things you should know about Oklahoma City if you ever plan to go there:

1) They have the coolest state bird ever, The Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Awesome!

2) They have a street named after The Flaming Lips

3) The city has done all these really neat urban renewal and art projects. They have built a new stadium for the baseball team, turned an area of old warehouses and puddles into the very hip Brickyard area, turned a vernal river into a nationally renowned kayaking/sculling center, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Its a fun place to hang out.

4) Being in the middle of a tornado area, they have a big research center at OU. You can pay to go chase tornadoes!

5) The Sam Noble Museum is really great, especially the trail of tears exhibit.

6) I found the Oklahoma Bombing Memorial very moving. They have made beauty and brought hope out of a horrible tragedy.

7) Our hotel ruled! It was very swanky, though I was bummed we didn’t get to meet the ghost.

Oklahoma is flat, and breezy. Apparently the weather there can be quite intense…very hot in the summer. We hit it at just the right time! A great conference, and a very nice city. And trust me, its not a party until someone does the limbo under the Wooly Mammoth statue….

Dispatches From the Swamp #1 May 12, 2008

I will probably have a number of swamp dispatches this summer, considering I am spending a LOT of time down there, chasing Swainson’s Warblers. The swamp I work in is on the border of Marion and Horry (pronounced oar-y) counties in South Carolina. Its a red water swamp, and filled with cool birds: Prothonotary Warblers, Kentucky Warblers, Summer Tanangers, Acadian Flycatchers, Swallow-tailed Kites, and of course, lots and lots of Swainson’s (SWWA). This past week I did radio telemetry, which is where you follow around a bird that is wearing a tiny antenna. When you get a visual of the bird you take a GPS point and a lot of notes. Its actually sort of fun, except that some of the birds are real weenies and fly across really deep sloughs or have territories that are really hard to walk through: full of briers and whatnot. Two birds (there are 11 currently with antenna) named Channel 2 and Channel 3 and are my favorites to work on. Paired up, they are always together being real cute, plus their territory is easy to traverse. Best of all, it is an area I know well enough that I don’t worry about getting lost. On my final visit, she was preening and he was foraging in vines around her. Sweet!

I did have some really cool Barred Owl encounters this week, which was probably the highlight. Barred Owls are active in the day and at night (we academics call that diurnal). They eat most everything, and make all kinds of bizarre noises. At one point, I was standing on the bank of a slough (slow moving creek that runs through the swamp) and one flew in, grabbed a frog from the bank 5 feet away from me and flew off. Later, after work one flew in and landed in the dirt road where I was parked and ate something (a bug, I think) and then flew off and stared at me until I drove off. Another I saw on my way back to Raleigh was taking a sun or dust bath in the dirt road.

Its worth describing our living conditions when we are working. We live in a trailer park, though, trailer park is a pretty fancy name considering its actually where trailers go to die. Its a hunt camp, so there really is not much going on in the summer, when people only come occasionally in to fish. Our project, over the last 8 years, has lived in nearly all of the trailers in the park. Most are single wides with an addition built on, some are true shacks, and some are pull behind the car trailers with additions on them. Quite a hodge podge. Birding is great in the trailer park though, its sandy soil and pine trees, so Orchard Orioles and Summer Tanagers and Chuck Wills Widows abound.

More to follow, as the summer adventures continue….