Napa Porchfest 2011 - part 1

While it is still the day after, making this yesterday's news, I wanted to reflect on Napa's first Porchfest.  Porchfest is a music festival bringing home-grown music out of parlors and garages and onto the porch.  The idea was originally spawned in Ithaca, NY. in 2007.  Louisa Hufstader brought the idea of porchfest to Napa through the wonders of Social Media.  Those are capital letters because Social Media has become such an important internet gorilla that it carries extra special weight.  Google especially would like to be a Social Media gorilla.  But that is another story.

Social Media in this case was a Facebook link to an article in the Somerville Patch about Somerville considering having a porchfest.  Thea Witsil, friend, book lover, and even bigger music lover - chimed in immediately with the comment "Let's do it here in Napa!"  The discussion blossomed - online - then we expanded it to a real face-to-face meeting with all who expressed interest invited.  Our ad hoc committee was born under the auspices of Napa County Landmarks, whose board had the unanimous good sense to see a great community event in our historic neighborhoods as a good way to carry out our mission. 


Between January 10 and July 31, 2011, Napa Porchfest was born.  (My daughter Anna Pfeifer is on the left). 

It was not an easy birth, because none of us had done anything like this.  Thea wrangled music; I wrangled venues, permits, and logistics; Louisa wrangled media, press and Social Media outreach.  When we found ourselves stranded with a web address but no web master, John L. Poole, aka "JLPorchfest" stepped in and built a database and Napa Porchfest website that could serve up information on not just the musicians, but photos of all the houses and a map combining everything.  Then he proceeded to make promotional videos, one of which serves up the houses like Anette's chocolates.

We could not foresee all the logistical problems and possibilities - which was probably a good thing during the process.  Sunday morning it felt like Yazgur's farm before the rain.  Fortunately, we did not have hundreds of thousands of concert goers, and the genial Napa crowds ranged up to the hundreds.  They took seriously our request that everyone "pack it in and pack it out", ride bicycles, and bring chairs and sunscreen. 


"Blonde on a bike"


We pulled off a free music festival on 28 private porches in residential areas featuring over 40 musical groups and over 120 musicians.  I attribute the success of the event to strong personal ties and relationships, and also to Social Media (Facebook), which brought this idea to a little "marketplace of ideas" where it could bloom.

Is Google arrogant?

Are you on the A list?

With a great media buzz fomented by selective invitations to media and online "influencers" to try out Google+, I of course was curious to try out the new applications myself.  Notice the past tense "was".  I spent time this morning instead watching the live feed of the facebook roll out of their new applications.

I was an early adopter of Google Wave, even going so far as installing an open source program providing similar applications.  Once it was finally rolled out to us commoners, I found Google Wave to be a robust and useful set of tools and was unable to share them with anyone.  A group of us collaborated on a project using Google Wave, but the other members of the group had to install the program and learn to navigate.  Other than that one project, which happened to be the City of Napa application for the Google Fiber for Communities grant - I have had no use for Wave.  I was waving to myself. 

Google Buzz, on the other hand turned out to be a disaster of a completely different sort.  I finally rationalized that it would be safe enough to upload all my contacts to gmail in order to more easily format them for use in "Vertical Response" for political email.  This was several thousand contacts.  What could go wrong? 

It seemed like a few days later (though I don't recall how many), Google Buzz was sprung on all gmail users and exposed all of one's contacts as "friends".  All visible to everyone on the list. As a careful facebook user, I kept my friend list to myself during the last election to prevent political rivals from "poaching" or mining the list for their own purposes.  Imagine my shock at seeing my political email contacts exposed in one click of the switch.  Of course this flaw was quickly noted by other users, and a work around, then patch deployed.  Nevertheless, I have not used Buzz ever.

This brings us to the unfortunate current circumstance where Google is rolling out a new product to go one or two better than facebook, but more slowly and more inefficiently.  By the time Google is ready to let the common folk past the velvet ropes, there may be few commoners remaining.  The Google+ group page has many threads and comments by frustrated geeks who cannot add their friends to their circles.  Oops.  Google did not seem to notice that Google+ is supposed to be a social application.  What good is it if your friends are not there?

Image via CrunchBaseAll us commoners will be video chatting on facebook - and not have to log into Skype to do so.  750 million other people + myself are on facebook's "A" list.  No wrist band, no bouncer. 

I like that.

Banana slugs in Napa

Napa County banana slug

On Saturday morning members of our Rotary Club were invited by one of our members to hike in the Moore Creek Preserve in Napa County.  This is a piece of property that will be part of the Napa County Open Space District.  The creek drains into Lake Hennessey, the largest water supply reservoir for the City of Napa.  The lake is located in the eastern hills of the valley near Conn Creek Rd. and the Silverado Trail, off of highway 128.

                                                             

Very unexpectedly, we came across banana slugs.  In 2009 we had a delightful hike in the redwood forest of Santa Cruz County - but Napa County is not a "coastal" county in California.  And our remnant redwood forest is predominantly on the west side of the valley, with a stand of redwoods near Angwin that are reputedly the easternmost redwoods in California.  Banana slugs seem to live in conifer forests.  While there are some second growth fir trees in the Moore Creek Preserve, this is not a redwood habitat.

It is beautiful country, with a still running creek in the bottom of the canyon, heavy oak/madrone/maple and fir forest - surrounded by steep hills covered with oak savannah.

The trail is rough and not quite finished.  The park will open next year - we hope in the spring.  The trail we took is partly an old logging road which crosses the creek a half-dozen times.  My feet were damp after the second crossing.

 Some of the banana slugs we saw were spotted like old, overripe bananas.  Their color was muted, not the pure electric yellow of the ones we saw in Santa Cruz at Big Basin Redwood Park.  Still, they are a sight I never expected to see on this little hike.

I also did not expect to see wildflowers, but a few clung to the edges of the trail and to the rocks of the hill.  Ferns filled the low areas next to the creek. 

There seemed to be some seams of serpentine rock, and a wild mix of trees that included gray pines - which like serpentine soil.  We missed the presence of Craig and Millie, birders who could identify all the birds we heard.

We had a jolly crew on the hike.  I had a weird realization today as I sat down to write.  I think I was the eldest member of the group. 

I'm sure this earns me no special distinction, but I was winded on the steep sections of the trail and obviously need more conditioning before setting out on a major hike.

John kept me company as I gradually started to fall back in the group.  I could always use "taking photographs" as an excuse for slowing down, but actually started to feel pain in my repaired hip.  

Thanks to John our host and guide for homemade oatmeal cookies when we got back to our vehicles.

Nocino part 2

A year ago I made some Nocino, or Liqueuer de noix - green walnut liqueur.   The traditional time to harvest the green walnuts is next week on June 24.  The previous blog post explains the method.  Making Nocino requires patience, just like making wine. 

We tasted the Nocino on Saturday.  It has been resting in the dark in the cool basement.  I actually forgot where I had stored it and had to do a search in the special rare foodstuffs (liquors) area of the cellar. 

At the time I bottled it, the Nocino had a bitter, bitter taste.  So bitter, it seemed like it had crawled out of a bile duct.  I questioned whether the bitter flavor would ever go away.  Now the Nocino has a complex spicy, nutty, tannic flavor and still has a somewhat bitter edge.  It needs a little more rest, but has become very promising.  Visualize this deep amber liquid poured over fresh vanilla ice cream.  Surely it will be worth the wait.

Limoncello

Meyer Limoncello is one of the ways we use up some of the hundreds of lemons produced each year on our old Meyer lemon tree.  I had the tree moved about 15 years ago to make way for the deck and re-built dining room.  While the backhoe was here doing the footing excavation, I had the backhoe operator scoop out the already root-pruned tree and placed in a large new hole near the garage.  The tree may be over 40 years old and is extremely vigorous. 

This recipe has evolved over the three or four times I have made it.  The original recipe I used had zest of 20 lemons. This was not enough.  I next tried 24 lemons, and had a better batch.  This last time I used 30 lemons and have a really great color and lemon flavor.  It may be that you can use as much lemon zest as you can cover with the vodka.

Meyer Limoncello
1.5 Liter bottle 100 proof good quality vodka
30 (or more) lemons, zest only, no white pith
Combine vodka and lemon zest in a large glass jar with a tight fitting lid. I use a glass jar with a metal bail and rubber gasket. Place in a dark cupboard, take out and stir or shake every day for at least 40 days.
____________________________________
simple syrup:
4 cups sugar
5 cups water
Simmer 5-7 minutes, cool.  Add to the liquor mix.  Let rest another 40 days+/- in the same cabinet.  Filter through cheesecloth into bottles with metal bails with stoppers or with tight fitting lids. Store in the freezer.


We still have many, many lemons, so stop by to pick some up for limoncello, preserved lemons or lemon marmalade. 

after dinner music

Cover of Ludwig van Beethoven











It appears that scribefire, a blog editing tool, is not supporting youtube video clips. Back to the onboard editor for this post.

Yesterday was an eight hands/two piano session which turned into a marathon of sorts, beginning at noon and lasting till ten in the evening. There were breaks early for lunch, for afternoon refreshment, then for dinner - but the pianists continued after dinner.


Music for the afternoon included Haydn, Mozart, Liszt, Joplin, Beethoven (two complete symphonies, including all repeats), and Wagner. In honor of my recent concert at the Napa Valley College where we had a chorus of over 100 singers plus orchestra performing the final movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony, John and friends played the entire symphony.  Launching into the chorus section prompted a choral outburst from at least two pianists - "Freude!"



For dinner we had southern California style tacos courtesy of John, Rancho Gordo beans, a fresh vegetable platter, guacamole, and olive oil citrus cake described about a year ago. After dinner, another light piece by Wagner:

Paeonia 3

Here are a few more images of peonies from the American Peony Society convention held in Oregon May 27-29, 2011.  Can you pick out the "best in show"?