Harried Potter

Talk about roots music! Three young groups with roots in Vermont and an affinity for infusing folk music with their own unique spins are coming to The Church in Brattleboro on Wednesday at 7 p.m. for what I think is going to be a pretty hip show.

Dubbed the "Midsummer Folk Show," the concert features Red Heart the Ticker, Voco and Samamidon.

Tyler Gibbons and Brattleboro area native Robin Macarthur make up Red Heart the Ticker, an alt-country duo who recently moved to Marlboro from Philadelphia. Good move.

Voco is calls itself an ensemble devoted to "post-folk vocal symphonies and dance songs." I don't what that means, but it sounds enticing. Based in Los Angeles, the group features Moira Smiley, who grew up in northern Vermont.

Last on the bill is Samamidon, feturing, you guessed it, Brattleboro's own Sam Amidon, who now lives and plays in New York, and childhood friend Thomas Bartlett.

The amazing thing is that this concert came about because MacArthur and Gibbons happened to meet Smiley of Voco in an L.A. restaurant and quickly discovered their common Vermont roots. They also discovered that Amidon was a mutual friend, and the idea of a show of all three groups was born.

With that kind of serendipity going for it, not to mention all that talent, it should be a great show. Tickets are $10 at the door. For information, e-mail samidon@gmail.com, call 917-922-3936 or e-mail info@rhtt.net or call 802-258-2648,

The story in Monday's Brattleboro Reformer about the Brattleboro Rat, a unique rat mutation that has been useful in medical research, prompted considerable banter in the office about what to do to celebrate this claim to fame.

Ultimately, the idea of Ratfest came up, and I think it's a winner. Pick a weekend or three or four days and devise events both serious and good-natured to celebrate the Brattleboro Rat. There could be music (Bob Weir and Rat Dog comes to mind, or the band Ratt), and food (there are many artisan cheesemakers who could "bait" tasty traps), as well as some scholarly presentations on the Brattleboro Rat and the latest research associated with it. There could also be fun events, like a Rat Race, where speedy little rodents, or more humanely, people dressed in costumes, could compete against each other. No doubt, the folks from PETA might want to weigh in, and I'm sure the Brattleboro community would respond to a chance to engage in a first-class ethical debate.

While this is mainly a joke, there's no reason to think it couldn't turn into something. After all, look what we've done with the heifers.

Aug. 13 is not one of the bigger holidays, but it's cause for celebration in my house.

Today is International Left-Handers Day, and I, my friends, am a full-on, proud-as-a-peacock left-hander.

There's something a little quirky about lefties — some people would say odd. I don't care either way, I wear my left-handedness as a badge of honor. I'm proud of it, and the few inconveniences of it (in our house, my wife laughed when I said the coffee maker discriminated against lefties, until she tried making a pot left-handed) pale when compared to the pride of being part of his select group.

And we're no mere conversation pieces. Five of the last 11 presidents (Truman, Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton) have been left-handed, not to mention two of the top three home run hitters of all-time in baseball (Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds). It makes me sorry in more ways than one for Hank Aaron.

Some of the other proud members of our club include: Ben Franklin, Joan of Arc, Fidel Castro, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo and M.C. Escher, both Letterman and Leno, Hellen Keller, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Mark Twain and Curt Kobain, Carol Burnett, Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx (perhaps my personal favorite), Simpsons creator Matt Groening, Jimi Hendrix, two of the four Beatles (Paul and Ringo), Casey Stengel (another candidate for my favorite), Marilyn Monroe, Ted Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Whoopie Goldberg, Robert DeNiro, Jim Henson ... the list goes on.

It is my dream one day to organize a parade that goes the wrong way up a one-way street to celebrate this group of independent, offbeat, creative, unique people. In the meantime, I'll drink a toast this evening to the only club I'm proud to belong to.

Here's an interesting passage I came upon last night:

"The Republican Party ...has degenerated into a mere spoilsmen's camp. It has centralized political power and wasted hundreds of millions to maintain authority. It has centralized wealth, making a few millionaires and many tramps. It has made our government the creature of great monopolies. ..."

What's noteworthy is that these words were spoken 123 years ago, when a Philadelphia reporter interviewed a man who had joined the Republican Party in its nascent days in the 1850s and found out the man was switching allegiances to the Democrats.

It's a passage found in "In the Shadow of the Civil War," a new book by Nat and Yanna Brandt about an incident prior to the Civil War in which a prominent white Philadelphian went to jail for his role in helping a slave escape to freedom. The plight of Passmore Williamson, the 100 days he spent in jail and his shabby treatment by the justice system of the day became a cause celebre and helped to put a human face to the painful truth of slavery for many people.

It's a story told with passion and precision in the capable hands of the Brandts. I'm sorry I missed their reading at Brooks Memorial Library last week, but I'm glad to have read their book.

In the epilogue, the Brandts make an excellent case for the study of history and the relevance past events have on our own times. Slavery's powerful undercurrents, the Brandts write, still exert their pull today — evident in the ongoing struggles we have over race. "In that sense, slavery survives, omnipresent, the subtext of today's racism," the book concludes.

And Passmore Williamson's comments on the Republican Party have a certain ring to them, too. Don't they?

One of my favorite folks in the Brattleboro arts scene is guitarist Draa Hobbs. A jazz musician and former student of Vermont Jazz Center founder Attila Zoller, Draa has stayed in the area, and seems to be playing locally quite a bit these days.

My wife and I have fond memories of him. We asked to play at our wedding, and he did, accompanying the ceremony (my wife marched down the aisle to his version of the Pachelbel Canon) and later supplying some mellow jazz licks as background for the reception before a DJ took over the dancing. It was a hot Indian summer day, the last really nice day of the season, it turned out, and the yellow jackets were out in force. I have a crystal clear image in my mind of a yellow jacket sitting placidly on the strings of Draa's guitar, and Draa fingering madly around it, trying hard to keep playing without getting stung. It was a pretty stunning display of professional musicianship - those are skills they don't teach you at guitar school.

Since then, we've held fond feelings for Draa. It is in that spirit that I'm writing about some upcoming gigs of his, in the hopes that you'll check out a man who is equal parts fine musician and fine human being.

He has a regular gig Monday nights at Alici's Bistro and Martini Bar on Harris Place in Brattleboro, but I guess he's having trouble attracting a crowd. Monday night is a tough night, I guess, but why not treat yourself to a fine evening out and some fine music at a place that is rapidly gaining a reputation as a very happening and high quality establishment. Draa and some guest musicians usually perform there from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m.

Later on this week, Draa welcomes guitarist John Stowell to town for a concert on Saturday at the White Church in Grafton. The two will perform standards and jazz classics in an intimate and acoustically perfect setting. The music begins at 7:30 p.m., and admission is $10. Stowell will join Hobbs for his Alici's gig on Monday, Aug. 27, as well.

If you miss all this - and you shouldn't, Hobbs often joins Howard Brofsky for his Tuesday night gig at Gillies in West Brattleboro, and the two of them always sound so nice together - old friends catching up with each other through the language of jazz. And you get to listen in. What could be better?

The way home was straight ahead, but I took a left turn yesterday, and boy am I glad I did.

We don't often take time in our busy lives to simply take time, to pause and do something that is different. We don't take detours on our way from one place to another; usually we don't have time for them anyway.

But I did take a detour on my walk home yesterday. I stopped dead in my tracks, backed up, turned to cross Western Avenue, and walked into C.X. Silver Gllery. When I left a half hour later, I felt refreshed, renewed in mind and spirit. I felt like I had gone to church.

Their exhibit of "Kiri-I Paintings by Hiroshima Youth of 1945" is simply beautiful. These works of art were created by Japanese schoolchildren in the aftermath of the atomic bomb attack. These students were challenged by a teacher to make something beautiful out of tiny strips of cloth; to create some order out of lives filled with chaos and to remember beautiful things about their lives before the bombing.

The works are small and when you look at them, you can see the strips of cloth and you can imagine small fingers paintstakingly gluing them into place, losing themselves at least for a time in a moment of art-making that helps them forget the excruciating emotional pain they must have been feeling.

The works depict many things - traditional Japanese figures, landscapes, dolls - and each conveys a little something of its maker. Some are whimsical, some are exuberant, some are wistful.

The whole effect is prayerful and inspiring - in a quiet, thoughtful way. To experience such beauty created from the ashes of a hell on earth is life-affirming and uplifting.

As I was there, I asked the folks at the gallery how attendance was for last Friday's shakuhachi flute concert with Elizabeth Rein Bennett and gallery opening where patrons got to meet Phyllis Rodin, whose collection of Kiri-I makes up the exhibit. I was told some 90 people turned out, and the gallery was filled.

I was pleased to hear that, but I was also pleased that I was the only one in the gallery at the time on Monday afternoon. The silence and solitude enchanced an experience which was wholly moving and prayerful.

The Kiri-I paintings are on view at C.X. Silver Gallery at 814 Western Ave., in West Brattleboro through Aug. 31. The gallery is open daily, from noon to 6 p.m. Call 802-257-7898 or visit www.cxsilvergallery.com.

Whoever said "second place is the first loser" didn't have the seed-spitting contest at the Deerfield Valley Fair in mind.

My daughter Margot, who is no more than 2, proudly took home the first prize she ever won, capturing the coveted silver medal (red ribbon) for the seed-spit in the ages 1-4 category. The competition was fierce (OK, not), but Margot calmly persevered and took home second with a "spit" of 6 and 1/4 inches.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that there were only two entrants in the age group, and I will also say that Margot did not technically "spit" her seed. The first seed the judges gave her, she popped in her mouth and promptly chewed it up and swallowed it. Given a second seed, Margot immediately crunched that, but then took it out of her mouth and flicked it — 6 1/4 inches for her prizewinning distance.

Through it all, Margot wore an expression of befuddlement, and I don't blame her. Why on earth were these strange grown-ups handing her a seed to put in her mouth, and why the heck were they then telling her to spit it out, and what was all the fuss about anyway?

But she bore it like a trooper and was pretty pleased when the folks at the fair handed her a bright red ribbon. She then celebrated with a few sips of snow cone and some waves of the balloon creature Robin Zegge had made for her.

I say all this not to trumpet the seed-spitting talents of my daughter. It's too early for that. The story is just indicative of the simple pleasures to be found at the Deerfield Valley Fair and fairs like it.

We ran a story in Monday's Brattleboro Reformer about the decline of small agricultural fairs, and I hope it's a trend that doesn't continue. There's not a thing wrong, not even the slightest hassle, about the Deerfield Valley Fair. Our kids enjoyed pony rides, cotton candy, carnival rides and games, the horse pull and just all the sites, sounds and smells. My other daughter, Marielle, came home with a red ribbon, too, earned, perhaps more legitimately, after a thrilling sack race. Margot also took home a giant inflatable "Nemo" fish that was bigger than she is — and that she insisted on taking into the tub with her. All this for about $30.

Long live the little ag fair. Now, if we could just convince Margot to stop spitting her food.

For those of us who don't have friends and loved ones serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, the war is a distant, remote thing. We may feel outrage and sorrow, but those feelings lack the depth of a personal involvement - like the difference between two-dimensional and three-dimensional.

Margo Sherman, one of the initial lead performers of the Bread & Puppet Theater, attempts to give us that depth of feeling with her one-woman show "What Do I Know About War?" Based on the actual letters of servicemen in Iraq, the show has been hailed by the New York Times as "brilliant" and "like eaves-dropping on a small, sorrowful town."

See for yourself. Sherman is performing her show in Brattleboro this Wednesday at The Tinderbox, 17 Elliot St., at 8 p.m. Tickets are $7. For information, visit www.myspace.com/thetinderbox.