This newsletter covers August to October 2001. It was released to an unsuspecting world on October 19th, 2001.		Mid term report, October 2001 Well, a lot has happened in the 2 months since our last update so we thought it would be good to do a newsletter now, with another one just before Christmas. I expect most of you will be reading this on our web site, so the news that we we're now on the web at http://home.earthlink.net/~dshuttleworth/ is probably redundant. When we signed up for the fast Wireless Broadband link into the house we got a chunk of free web space (without any of those annoying banner ads!) so it seemed silly not to use it. (It also tied in with some stuff we're doing at work re web traffic log analysis so it wasn't all just for fun.. honest).  I'm gradually learning some of the intricacies of HTML, CSS and other exciting new abbreviations, not to mention how to slow down web page loading by including gratuitous graphics and annoying animations (more of which later). You'll also see that we've recently added to the web site a caption competition - go on, give it a try; you might win some champagne! If you're on the website you can do it by clicking HERE. In any case, keep checking back from time to time when you have a minute, we’ve already started using it to do transatlantic photo-sharing and for on-going gossip between the big newsletters, and while the general plan is to gradually build up archives of photos, newsletters, etc, there will be transient pics and current gossip in the ‘News’ section which won’t always end up being stored long-term. So, apart from us leaping headlong into the 1990's by getting 'wired', what else has been happening? Obviously we've been feeling the repercussions of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC. We normally aim to be in the office around 7:30 am (so we have a bigger time overlap with the UK and other more eastern parts of the US), so we have the alarm set for 6:00am. On Sept 11th we turned the TV on soon after 6 as usual and saw the second plane hit the World Trade Centre. It was very weird listening to the TV commentary.. at that early stage there were still discussions of some 'bizarre air traffic control accident' - while of course Lynne and I had jumped straight to the 'terrorist' conclusion. We headed into work as normal (might seem crazy now, but remember that New York is almost as far away from us here on the west coast as it is from you in England – certainly in flying time), only to spend the next couple of hours watching the emerging horrors on the web (all the US news sites were swamped but the good old BBC live video feed was working OK) while simultaneously listening to local news on the radio. Several of the taller buildings in downtown San Francisco were evacuated pretty quickly (including the Transamerica tower, which we heard later was a potential target). Michele's school was closed down so she came to the office, then we all tried to head home to the island, only to be stuck at the bus terminal because they'd temporarily closed the Bay Bridge and recalled buses to the depot. We eventually got home around midday and then spent the rest of the day watching CNN. I now flit between CNN.com and the BBC audio/visual web feed when something significant happens, it’s illuminating to get both sides of the transatlantic perspective on some stories. Interestingly (but not surprisingly) a story that was not carried over here was one discussing the question of the status of the IRA following the ‘war on terrorism’ announcements. For the last couple of weeks there's been a strange mix of 'almost normality', but against the constant background of the escalating threats, bombings and now the uncertainty re the recent anthrax cases - and amid the confusing announcements from various bits of the US government advising us to a) carry on as normal, b) be more vigilant and alert, c) go out and ‘buy stuff’ to help the economy and d) be nice to people in beards and turbans. Using my normal approach of trying to optimize things and kill several birds with one stone, after much deliberation I’ve decided the most efficient thing we can do is go for massive meals at the most expensive Indian restaurant we can find, while of course staying vigilant and alert for those nasty anthrax symptoms (which WebMD tells me are sweating, nausea, possibly vomiting and diarrhoea… hmmm.. better lay off the meat vindaloo then).   But seriously (folks), who knows what else will have happened by the time you read this? Speaking of the economy, it seems that (even before Sept 11th) the dotcom bubble had most definitely burst in SF and silly-con valley. Each week brought new tales of lay-offs, closures and the knock-on effects.. we heard that there was a shortage of ‘U-Haul’ rental trucks in San Francisco area, as so many people had packed up their stuff and done a one-way trip to somewhere cheaper.. and this exodus is certainly confirmed by the numbers of ‘apartment for rent’ signs going up around the city. Also recently a local high tech company floatation made big news purely because it was the first IPO for several weeks – and not so long ago there was a weekly magazine in SF listing all the upcoming local high tech IPOs!! Interestingly the company involved was PayPal – a service that provides a way for individuals or small companies to manage secure credit card payments on the web. It makes some sort of sense to me that the survivors of the general dotcom demise are the ones with some basis in actual money changing hands for some useful product or service (as opposed to some speculative ‘gee-whiz’ get-rich-quick thing). Perhaps reality is kicking in at last. In the immediate aftermath of Sept 11th and following nationwide TV announcements asking for blood donations, Lynne decided to see if the new situation meant that the US Blood Transfusion Service would now take some of her most excellent Welsh blood (in case you aren’t aware, British people aren’t allowed to donate blood in the US following the BSE episode in the UK)… but no, they still sent her away after muttering some stuff about mad cows. I told her not to take it personally. Perhaps there’s a market opportunity out here to open up some ‘ethnic blood banks’ (a bit like the ‘ethnic’ section in the local Safeways where we find things like ‘English style sausages’). Another casualty of the current situation was the annual Fleet Week celebration here in SF, when the US Navy come to town for a week and put on various demonstrations including the Blue Angels air display over the bay. Apparently (despite the aircraft carriers, F-16 fighters, cruisers, destroyers and thousands of marines that would be in town) they ‘couldn’t guarantee security’ this year, so I’ve put some pics from last year’s event on the website to make up for it. Can’t help thinking that the Sept 11th thing has been used as an excuse for many cost-cutting and ‘downsizing’ exercises that were overdue or imminent anyway. Anyway, I'm not going to dwell any more on this - I'm sure everyone has already heard and read enough. There was an interesting article in the New York Times about a week after the World Trade Centre attacks called ‘The End of Humor’ (sic) (or was it ‘The end of sick humor’?). This commented on the lack of Internet and e-mail jokes in the immediate aftermath of the WTC attacks, saying basically that in just about every other case of disaster, jokes were flying around the web within hours - whereas in this case it took over a week (which I suppose must mean something). However I must say that I had to smile when I saw on the BBC live web news ticker (I now check this at least a couple of times a day) that Tony Blair had announced a 'diplomatic offensive'. Hmmmm... could only be in England, methinks (a bit like that old joke "The meek shall inherit the Earth... if that's OK with the rest of you chaps..."). But I'm glad to see the more usual 'humo(u)r offensive' is now in full swing... I think my favourite so far is a cartoon showing some Taleban leaders reading with horrified expressions a note from the US saying 'Hand over Osama Bin Laden…. or we'll send your women to college'. On to lighter things… we’ve been doing more stuff to our garden (there may even be some ‘before and after’ pics on the website by the time you read this) and things are starting to get established. We’ve had a bit of a ‘trial and error’ time while we sort out which plants like sun/shade/water in the right amounts for our little ‘yard’. Some plants have now been moved twice! Surprise star of the show is something called Pineapple Sage (Salvia elegans in case you were wondering) we’d put in the ‘herb corner’ (or more correctly over here, ‘ERB corner’)… and it did indeed have a scent of pineapples. Anyway, this thing promptly took over that whole area of the garden and then sprouted loads of red flowers which seem to be very popular with our hummingbirds. We’ve now moved it to it’s own area so it has more space and also means we can watch the hummingbirds scoffing their food as we eat ours.. We’ve also splashed out on some greenery for inside the house (we didn’t do this before our UK trip as we assumed they’d all just die while we were away for 3 weeks). Michele has decided to give the plants names, and so far has come up with Ern the fern and Pamela the potted palm. We’re currently debating what to call the bromeliad and the orchid.. (my votes go for Barry the Bromeliad and ‘Orace the Orchid in case you were wondering… either that, or just call them all Flora to save confusion). It also occurred to me that we’d missed a golden opportunity during our UK trip – the motor-caravan thing we rented for our trip would be known in the US as a ‘Recreational Vehicle’ (pronounced ‘Vee-hick-ull’ - never use 1 syllable when 3 or 4 will do). So we could have christened it Harvey (the R.V.). Next year, perhaps. We’ve also treated ourselves to some new toys – in my case a nice new drum kit (now taking up most of our ‘family room’ next to the kitchen, so Lynne and I can have a quick stab at the odd tune or 2 while keeping an eye on our dinner cooking). I’m having the usual tribulations breaking in the new drum kit (ie getting the various bits set up in positions that feel ‘right’ and playing with the tunings to get a sound I like.. not as easy as it might sound (really!), especially given new cymbals, different tom configuration and a double bass drum pedal to contend with (Lynne: and I didn’t even know double basses HAD drum pedals..). Good fun though – if a little noisy!). Also for me, some wizzy 3D graphics and animation software so I can slow down access to our web site (hence the reference above). If you want to see what I mean, take a look at the Morris Dancing pages in the Pictures section and you’ll see some of my early attempts at animation. (Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll improve eventually). Lynne’s new toy is some music transcription software – Cakewalk Scorewriter to be precise – so some evenings recently have taken the form of a cosy scene of (21st century) domestic bliss as all 3 of us camp out in our 4th bedroom-cum-office, DSL link and internal network humming, tapping away at our respective PCs - Lynne hacking out tunes, Michele doing teen chat room stuff and me making cartoons perform silly gyrations on my laptop. Whatever did we all do before PCs and the web?? Other new news is that Lynne and I are both now regular gym-goers (and I can hear from here the gasps of incredulity and exclamations of ‘Bullshit!’ from my UK pals). But it’s all true! There’s a 24-hour Fitness place a couple of blocks away from our office and so it seemed like a good (and convenient) thing to do. Lynne started just before our UK trip and I signed up afterwards (having piled on a good few pounds on the 3-week UK road trip!). It’s sort of fun (in a masochistic way), being tortured for a while by personal trainers and learning EXACTLY how much discomfort each set of muscles can give... I particularly enjoy the soak in the outdoor Jacuzzi at the end of each session. Can’t see any evidence of the pounds falling away yet though (just the dollars so far), but since we’re told that muscle weighs heavier than fat, we’re content that we haven’t actually put any on. On the music/morris front, we seem to have kept up our attendance average in terms of concerts and other events. The ‘official Morris season’ here is relatively short (“because it gets too hot to dance” we were told) – but there seem to be more events outside the official season anyway. Recent jaunts have included the Solano Stroll and the local incarnation of the Renaissance Faire (which is big business over here). The Solano Stroll is a bigger version of a typical (?) neighbourhood street fair. These take place most weekends throughout the summer in one or other of the San Francisco or Bay Area districts, and usually take the form of 3 or 4 blocks of the main street (also known as ‘the main drag’ in the Castro by the way) being cordoned off and populated with various local bands, arts, crafts, organizations & food stalls etc, and a parade complete with cheerleaders, marching bands, baton twirlers and the like. Solano is one of the major ones, with a mile and a half of stalls and hundreds of thousands of people attending. With admirable forethought, Berkeley and Appletree Morris had carefully obtained a prime performing spot in front of Schmidt’s pub, so we camped out there all day and let the parades etc wander past, having a great elevated viewpoint from the pub terrace. There are pictures and links on the web site if you want to find out more, and I’ll hand over to Lynne for some comments about the Ren Faire..… Lynne: Saturday 6th October was my chance to discover the delights of the Renaissance Faire. For details on the Faire itself, see http://www.RenFaire.com, but briefly, it’s an Elizabethan ‘town’ built for the summer season and peopled with volunteer attendants and performers. The setting is a town fair, with period houses, shops, fair attractions, market stalls…. The entire thing is in place for several months before being completely dismantled, returning the whole area to a parking lot. Berkeley Morris were invited there to Appletree Morris’ day of dance/ale and five of us were able to join the motley collection of members from Goat Hill, Bufflehead, Sunset, Emperor Norton’s, White Rats and possibly others at the Ren Faire. My first mistake was assuming that since this was a morris day of dance we would be wearing morris kit. I met the other Berkmos in the Ren Faire car park and discovered that they all had Elizabethan costumes to change into. Luckily, Rocky had very thoughtfully packed an extra outfit, so I was able to exchange my anachronistic garb for more authentic peasant attire.  Rocky had decided that she wasn’t going to spend another year trying to morris dance in a tightly laced bodice, so had decided to dress (more comfortably) as a man. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately in my case) her bodice was too small for me so I escaped the dubious pleasure of being laced very tightly into it…… So, bodice discarded we made our way into the Ren Faire enclosure to find Appletree and the rest of the morris contingent. Many of the faces I’d previously seen only in morris kit, I now recognized among the various groups of performers around the Faire - some actors lending authenticity to the village scene, others among the various street performances. As always, we found places to dance near the various drinking establishments… It was a great fun day, if slightly unnerving. It was a bit like finding yourself on stage in a play you hadn’t rehearsed. On several occasions I was left speechless as I was addressed in Olde English – I wished I’d paid more attention to Shakespeare’s turns of phrase and taken more advantage of Julia’s improvisation sessions at our previous Berkeley practices…. Other abiding memories from the day – the number of ladies who DID manage to get themselves laced into extremely tight bodices – I’m surprised there weren’t prizes for the plumpest cleavage!  Similarly, prizes should have been awarded for the largest and most ornate cod-pieces. My vote went to two young ladies carrying furlined black leather handcuffs on their belts. Not sure how authentic that was, though. Music-wise, we’ve done the usual mix of BIG stuff (Eric Clapton at the Oakland Arena this time) and more intimate venues. Highlights since our return have been the wonderful Waybacks at the Freight and Salvage (our current favourite local band) – a sort of ‘Newgrass’ acoustic band, who can equally turn their hand(s) to swing, celtic folk, jazzy stuff or whatever they feel like at the time. They do a great version of Archie Fisher’s “Witch of the Westmereland”, and apparently Archie is writing a sequel to that song for their next album. See www.waybacks.com for more info and some MP3 samples – and you can even now get their CD from amazon.co.uk – I highly recommend it! Another great (Scottish) evening at the F & S was when Burach and Old Blind Dogs played there. Both excellent, especially some of the more rocky raucous accordion-led tunes from Burach (referred to by Sandy Brechin the accordionist as a ‘Jimmy Shandrix Experience’ which I thought was a good description – and quite witty for a Scotsman). Lynne’s dad and Jennie were over at the end of August and one of the things we did was head up to a place called the Mountain Winery about 40 miles south in Saratoga to see Nanci Griffith… a spectacular setting (an old winery on top of a mountain with stunning views out across Silicon Valley) and an excellent concert from Nanci. Even the stage there was spectacular – the backdrop is the stone frontage of the old San Jose cathedral which was the only thing left standing there after the 1906 earthquake. Paul Masson (who owned the winery at that time) had the whole thing moved up to his estate on top of the mountain. Very impressive, and it makes for a really atmospheric concert setting, especially for a gentle, acoustic-ish artist like Nanci Griffith. Lynne: I think Jennie enjoyed the chance to chill out for a couple of weeks after her 3-month back-packing expedition in Oz. She took the opportunity to go through her collection of photos of the trip and make an album of her travels, and even got a chance to debut her presentation by showing it to some of Dave’s Holding Company pals who are planning to do something similar in a few months time. Dad, meantime, relished the opportunity to revisit the ‘Streets of San Francisco’ once more and search out some new previously un-explored (by him) corners of the city. At the other end of the scale was another ‘house concert’ at Sally Greenberg’s place in Berkeley, this time Brian Peters (who I’d not come across before). I really enjoyed his playing, singing and inter-song patter (tales of old Glossop and Chapel en le Frith in a very familiar Derbyshire/Lancashire accent). Took me right back to my days of the end of term pre-bypass journey ‘over the tops’ between Manchester and Mansfield, when I’d occasionally stop for lunch in Chapel (“the home of Ferodo Brake Linings”) There seemed to be many UK people in the audience – I hadn’t heard so many Brit accents in one place over here since I was last standing in the Virgin check-in queue on the last trip back. I also managed to win the raffle, and chose a Dick Gaughan/Paul Irvine CD as my prize. A couple of weekends ago we re-visited Sebastopol (that’s the one an hour north of SF, in case you’re wondering) for their annual Celtic music festival – we went up there last year and were very pleasantly surprised by the small, friendly, low key festival (but especially by the large number of excellent performers they managed to attract). This year was more of the same, with Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill, Tabache, Dick Gaughan, Kevin Burke and Cucunandy (to name but a few) all giving excellent performances in (yet again) glorious sunshine. Also interesting were a local collection of celtic musos called ‘Wake the Dead’, who play sets of traditional celtic jigs, reels etc that also include folky versions of Grateful Dead songs…. Only in San Francisco, I guess.. but it actually works quite well – I’ve even bought the CD! (another recommendation, and also available from Amazon UK)  We’re thinking that this CD might be a good one to use in our alarm clock/CD player to get us up in the morning.. (“Wake the Dead”… geddit?) Appletree Morris and excellent rapper side Swords of Gridlock, who share some members with Berkeley Morris, were also performing in the shimmering heat (perhaps disproving the point about it being too hot to dance here in the summer). There is a rumour that Swords of Gridlock may be venturing across the pond to England during the festival season next summer – watch this space for news and DEFINITELY go and see them if you get chance, they are very good and extremely entertaining. It had been so hot (and pretty much wall-to-wall music) for the whole afternoon that we decided to duck out of the evening concert in favour of going to a party given by the AppleTree morris folks that we'd been invited to. We all absconded back to Bruce and Deyna's very spacious house in Sebastopol where there was a good gathering of local folk/morris musos so an impromptu session started up.. at one point there were massed ranks of accordions, melodeons, concertinas blasting away at 'Speed the Plough' prompting the description 'a wall of reeds' from the banjo player. At least, I think it was ‘Speed the Plough’ - or perhaps something similar – they all sound the same to me.  Though I’m getting better, I’ve recently learnt that there’s no F in melodeon – at least I think that’s what Lynne said. Anyway, all in all a great day! The following day we went to another one of those street fairs that they do so well over here. We were spoilt for choice since the Folsom Street Fair (Leather, S&M and Fetish theme) was also on in SF, but we did that last year so this time we tried the 'How Berkeley can you be?' parade - another blistering day and a very 'Berkeley' occasion, with lots of wild and wacky floats (not to mention a fair amount of naked flesh) in the parade. There are some pix on the website including the tickets we got from the 'Berkeley Fashion Police' who were circulating in the crowds. Lynne was ticketed for ‘loitering with clothes on’ and I got done for ‘Over accessorizing’ as I had my camera around my neck (at least I think that’s why). Have a look at the other possible offenses on the tickets - very funny. We’re having a bit of an Indian summer (or should that be ‘Indigenous native American person summer’?) here currently – the last weekend in particular was very hot (a record 93 degrees in downtown SF!), with light onshore breezes. Based on the forecast, we’d rented a convertible for the weekend and on Sunday we had a leisurely drive up Route 1 (the coast road) to Bodega Bay (famous for being the place where Alfred Hitchcock filmed ‘The Birds’). Had a very pleasant lunch stop watching pelicans, cormorants and sea lions do their stuff just outside the restaurant, then a drive back ‘overland’ through cattle ranches via yet another part of California we hadn’t seen before… (California is BIG!). Having been rabbiting on about heatwaves, I’ve just received an e-mail message from a colleague who I’m meeting in Kansas City on Wednesday – he says that temperature there has dropped suddenly (the joke in KC is that they have 1 day of spring and 1 day of autumn – apart from that it’s either baking hot or very wintery – except that it’s not really a joke, based on my experiences there last year). Snow is forecast for Wednesday. Now, where did I put my coat???? When did I last use it?? (Probably last year in Kansas..) Think that’s covered most of the main stuff for now… Halloween soon, which is always a laugh in SF, and we’re looking forward to having all Lynne’s daughters with us here for Thanksgiving (or ‘Turkey Day’ as the locals call it) this year, and hopefully a few more visitors taking advantage of the current cheap air fares (all welcome!). Lots of good music on the calendar, including more Waybacks, Dougie Maclean, Jez Lowe (and we ARE determined to make an attempt to discover more local bands rather than just going to see visiting Brits!). The first weekend in November will see a return trip for Berkeley Morris to the Jack Russell Brewery up in the Sierra foothills for their Bonfire Night celebration – regular readers will remember that this will mark the anniversary of Lynne’s debut dance-out with them (doesn’t time fly??). The next newsletter will probably be just before Christmas, and I’ll finish off for now by sharing with you a ‘bumper sticker’ (very popular over here) we saw recently on a friend’s car during one of our Berkeley trips - it said ‘Imagine whirled peas’. Very apt. Best wishes to all… D and L. © Copyright Cooke-Shuttleworth Enterprises 2001