Dewey Beach Music Conference 2011

I love the Dewey Beach Music Conference for "filling our streets" with an influx of musician culture. Just taking in the on-trend fashion is high entertainment.

This year the British Invasion continues for the guys: with skinny jeans, and a well-worn but cool-cut dark tee-shirt.

Surprisingly for both the guys and gals long-long hair is out, most cuts were neck length. Most surprising was to see the women who still had long hair had it braided and piled up. My favorite was "Heidi Gone Bad-Girl or Bad-Girl Gone Heidi": with germanic model looks, blond hair braids a la ballet dancer, fringed black leather coat over a drab-tan tissue-thin fabric shepherd-like tunic worn over a slightly longer black slip. Ankle black leather boots finished off the look along with her video-camcorder.

Last year over the knee boots ruled. This season a few knee-high boots worn were shiny patent leather with any outfit that was non-shiny fabric: distressed jeans were favored.

Rudder is my goal where I almost always find my "Find", this year it was on the deck with, Brooklyn New York's: "Under The Elephant. I'll assume "Heidi" was the lead's girlfriend.

Seeing the deck set up for at least 7-8 musicians I was hopeful of a good performance. Instead I was wowed with a great one! Capable of zooming between House Dance Music with impressionistic soaring lyrics, hip-hop funk to New Orlean's Revival the crowd was awed and gave a standing ovation!

Mission Impossible #2: Find Hurricane Irene Survivors!

This is Part Two of: Mission Impossible. Look for and Read First: Part One in September 2010.

Sing the Theme Song, please!

My Mission which I chose to accept: look for survivors of Hurricane Irene: Endangered Species: Wild Beach Amaranth @ Tower Beach.

Just weeks before on a 90 degree day, for a 5 hour "Search and GPS Plot" Mission, myself, another volunteer, and my Director of Endangered Species Beach Nester Birds (and plants) surveyed Conquest to Tower Beach. We were in giddy-Amaranth mode as it seemed every few feet we were finding our quarry! My self-appointed job was to mark it with found objects of shells and reeds and orange flagging while measurements were recorded.

As a child I walked the dunes. Doing so now as an adult for the good State of Delaware is SWEET!

30 Degrees less, in the 60's, and windy, wearing my field boots and a fleece jacket, my mood was not sweet as I surveyed; there would be no survivors of Hurricane Irene.

The tides washed to the foot of the dunes decimating the Amaranth and all accompanying annual vegetation. Dune grass and the PVC pipe fencing made it thru just fine.

The Amaranth set seed in August and thus a seed bank awaits under the new accumulation of 6-12 inches of sand.

I'll see you again, August 2012!

Beach Blessings,

Sunday Cook Outs @ Que Pasa!

This is why we Love Dewey Beach: $7.00 Sunday Cook Outs inside "the glass" @ Que Pasa! Earlier in the day I checked it out, and conversed with Chef Joe! Early evening I showed up with a friend, immediately asked for two portions of the Ahi Tuna reserved for our dinner and started to settle into the scene, including the scenery.

The dinner gives you a choice of the above or marinated steak or chicken, pork loin or chicken wings. I bet if you ask sweetly Chef Joe will do a combo! Sides are: grilled red onion, roasted corn, red rice and hot tortillas!

I will not be cooking another Sunday Dinner until Que Pasa mothballs the grill!

After one of the most traumatic election weekends in memory: having the Sunday cookout at such a "very-Dewey venue" soothed my Dewey-beachy soul..... even more than a shot or two of whiskey!

Beach-time with the Birds Goes for Fall

A dear friend calls the tourists: Tourons. He said it, not me. But you get the idea and now I too look forward to having the place once again "all to ourselves". My commute to and from Cape Henlopen will be back to less than 15 minutes rather than 45 minutes.

Labor Day Weekend Cape Henlopen State Park was packed until Monday when it was near to deserted.

My Piping Plover Bird Police gig Bay-side is now given over to Hawk Watch. Now I can wake up late, get to Hawk Watch by 11:00 AM and be certain of getting into the park and my favorite parking spots.

No longer am I sitting low near the water, wearing my big straw hat, sweating, and sometimes fighting off green-head flies, staring at mostly loafing and foraging Shorebirds.

Now I am standing on a platform high above the ocean, wearing my waxed-cloth Brit-style hat trying to stay warm, occasionally bit by ladybugs, counting the Nascar-like Raptor Migrating Show.

Watching the Shorebirds was a movie in slow-motion, my heart beat slow and steady. Hawk Watch is a participatory "sports event" with an adrenaline-rush racing heart: spotting the incoming racing-raptors and cheering them on!

Fall is when I adjust my heart, and my eyes.

Beach Earrings: Lost and Found

The Summer before I entered Kindergarten, my Mom and her girlfriend, whose surgeon spouse would do the surgical-honors, got the notion to do an earring piercing beach-party.

My Dad gifted me with the sweetest earrings I ever did and will ever see: reversible posts: with a 14 carat gold ball on one end and coral ball-bead on the other.

Of course as I leaned over the sink to swab my ears and the earring: the one earring's coral bead landed in the sink and was forever lost to The Ocean, Neptune and Venus.

I was devastated. I swore then to always change my earrings while sitting on my bed. Thus I never have lost a pair of earrings again...... except for the one nuzzled off my ear and chewed by my now-passed Labrador dog.

Yet, almost a year ago, at the beach, I lost a beloved pair of earrings; lever-back drops of Moonstone and with a fringe of Coral Beads. I bought them as a gesture to the ones lost, so long ago and still missed.

How did the earrings get lost? Again I was beyond sad. Had I swiped my hair back after putting them on? Maybe caught in the hair brush? I looked and cleaned the beach cottage for one year with no luck. I kept the one pair as I could not bear to throw it away.

One year later the missing Moonstone and Coral Bead lost-earring was found by my housekeeper, as if thrown up by a high-tide into the wrack-line.

I broke into tears as I put on again my beloved "Beach" earrings.

Neptune and Venus: the Keepers and Givers of Coral: Thank You for the Return.

Beach Blessings,

Piping Plover: The Bird Stories 2011.

Cape Henlopen State Park Piping Plover ( aka PIPL) Bird Police Duty-gig 2011 ended this week with the youngest chick fledging; flying the required 50 yards. The Piping Plovers having done their job are ready to party Southward, many to call the Bahamas their Winter Resort.

Time for me to Party TOO! Time to celebrate the PIPL success and the 125 hours of "Bird Stories".

Finding the PIPL Story Line was what kept me glued to my " At The Ropes ( actually it is twine) Spot". In my third year of duty: I had a clue! Amazing to me, this season I recognized individual PIPL-s.

This was the year our Bahama-Banded PIPL Male, having successfully nested on The Point just for fun would fly in ~ one mile to The Ropes just to duke it out with PIPL glamour couple, Beckham and Posh! One witnessed fight lasted a little over one hour.

Beckham and Posh nested early and failed and then nested late and succeeded; chick mentioned above. The late nesting cost them their nearest foraging cove which was claimed in the interim by the Parents of Sturdy Chick.

Sturdy Chick as a baby was hilarious-fun; loving to rest in upturned Horseshoe Crab Shells and loving water. Once this baby was swamped by wave action, came out fine and a bit stunned. The Parent was FLIPPED-OUT and instructed the chick to not repeat the incident. One week later Sturdy Chick was Wise To The World. Another week later the Sturdy Chick showed out-right teen-age aggression towards The Parents!

Bird Police duty is keeping the public OUT of the Federally protected area. This year I cultivated my own little fleet of "GOOD Kayakers" to yell at "BAD Kayakers" who disdain to enter the closed areas. Good Work, Kayak Team!

PIPL: Hope one day I see you in The Bahamas!

Dub Step Party and Planet Avatar @ Voodo Farm.

Not wanting to miss the first ever Dub-Step Dewey Dance Party, I bought my Bottle and Cork, DJ Dance Party ticket early in the week. I knew very little of this scene, and did not even know what to wear! I threw on a strappy floral beach dress and overtly flowery-boho silver and pearl earrings and entered the venue.

*I entered "Planet Avatar"!

I could not even take in the music until I met my fellow Avatars. Clean cut women and men in glamorous, deeply eco-conscious, but deconstructed art-house dress. Shredded one shoulder tops were favored; that sometimes flashed the audience with a now-naked view. Glamazon-sandals finished off the look.

The glamazon avatar's sported accessories: As the evening progressed they swirled a circus of lighted and flashing hula-hoops and strange and wonderful lighted string toys.

We were in-trance. But not drunk, less than 40% had drinks in hand. And how could you as you hula-hooped?

Earth's Flash Drive of Music landed on Planet Avatar and this is what they did with it.

Bashed it thru the middle and stretched it out Gumby-like.

Stroked it with a wobbly dissonant bass and drums with a reverberating rhythm so fast it can not be counted. Not with any human toes. Only with Avatar undulating bodies and hula-hoops.

On the stage the DJ's were on their own planet with a side-show of nearly-naked edgy-undressed women involved with their lighted props: hoops and more.

This is not electro-techo House Music.

It is Planet Avatar House Music!

The crowed loved Voodo Farm's "I Heard it thru the Grapevine" which was only recogizable at the begining and end of the set. This Human could clearly follow the Classic Dub-step hole punching and then gumby-stretching.

Dewey Beach: you are on the trend.