A NEW ADVENTURE...

Like the song says (one of mine), “The future can change in the blink of an eye.” Got offered a job Monday night, as interim city administrator in Lafayette, Oregon, and I accepted. I start Wednesday (they needed someone right away, and I can do right away). It’ll restrict my movements a bit, and I expect to enjoy every moment of it.

I’ve received tons of well-wishes, from all sorts of folks, for which I am grateful. Thanks, everybody. Like another song says (not one of mine—it’s by John Denver), “My bags are packed, and I’m ready to go.”

I will get to find out whether all the maneuvering I did to enable music, et al., to accommodate a job if one happened is going to work. It should. All the Concert Season gigs except one are on Saturdays, so I can do both work and music—it will just be necessary for the band to practice on weekends, too (but three of them have jobs, too, so we’ve kinda had to do that anyway). The first performance of our Contra Band is on a Saturday night, too (July 31), and so is either the Arts Center Open Mike or “Rockshop” band concert (I still don’t know which one is happening, but it’ll be Aug. 7). And the new job is relatively close: if there were good roads between here and there (which there are not), I could commute. I expect to do that some of the time, anyway.

In the same vein, I should be able to compress typesetting the SOSA Newsletter into weekend work, if the folks will be efficient about getting me stuff; it’s mostly a set piece now, that doesn’t take much time. Designing posters, flyers, &c., is quick and easy stuff, too (I’ve finished off one I was doing for the 2nd Street Public Market tonight). Once I’m settled in during-the-week digs in Lafayette, I’ll have a computer there that will let me do graphic design in the off evenings (I’m expecting there will be a few)—but initially, I’ll be taking an old laptop that won’t be able to do much besides word processing and e-mail. I can still do the column for the paper; I won’t be able to do news articles, but those didn’t pay much of anything, anyway.

The only performance piece I need to worry about isn’t a music one—it’s the Great Intergalactic Puppet Show I’d arranged for the Arts Center staff to do at the Garibaldi Library Aug. 18 (which is a Wednesday). I have written the script—this time, it’s the legend of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, performed by the sock-puppet cast of “Pig Wars” (Luke, Leah, and Hansolo as the Gruffs, Yoda as their mother, again, and Darth Vader as the troll under the bridge)—and that’s getting peer review as this is written. I expect the crew can pull it off without me (and hope they’ll want to). It is a paying gig, after all.

(I do enjoy writing these plays. I’d like to do a musical. I could see the sock puppets doing “The Wizard of Oz,” with Leah as Dorothy, Luke as the Scarecrow, Darth Vader as the Tin Man (of course), Yoda as the Wicked Witch (since he/she is green), and Hansolo (who always acts like he knows everything) as the Wiz. We could have a Cowardly Wookie…)

Over There, I won’t have much free time for a while—there’s a lot of work to do—but there is an open mike I’ve been wanting to get to in Newberg, and Newberg is close to the new job. I don’t need to pursue the Music Work Plan I sketched out over a year ago in anticipation of relocating to other jobs: I will be relatively close to home, and it’s a relatively busy Concert Season on the Coast, and the new job is a temporary one, lasting maybe four months. (While I’m there, a couple of really attractive jobs will be opening up, and I will be applying for those, too.)

So the adventure starts. There’s probably a song in it…

Joe