I had a great time yesterday hitting the various parts of the town with Leah. We performed first at the Warehouse Cafe in D.C., and then followed that up with a bout of shopping at Guitar Center. If you knew Leah, you would realize this is a Big Deal and worth celebrating in itself. Then we went on to the final round at the Austin Grill’s SXSW Songwriter Contest, where we unfortunately fell to the awesome talent and presentation of one Rob Thorworth, and believe me, it was not bitter in the least for us, since he was a tremendously talented soul and very deserving of the top prize. Thanks to Chris at the Austin Grill, and the other sponsors at Red Bull, Southwest Airlines, OnTap Magazine, and Guitar Center for their work in putting the series together!

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p>Today I can’t stop listening to that song “These Days” by Nico. I think Leah and I’ll probably try to cover it for our many acoustic duo gigs upcoming. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to e-mail them to me, at which point we will likely ignore them and do whatever the hell we want (nothing personal, of course).

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p>Wow, a bit of steam blown off there? Leah is getting a little flak from certain parties who apparently don’t put enough faith in her instincts and abilities. In my experience they’ve been spot-on. She started off our “mini-set” last night with a musical joke taking a dig at the pop idol set, and it deflated the whole ego-stroking, angst-ridden self-absorption that tends to coalesce any time you put more than two singer-songwriters together in the same room (much less on the same bill). The entire crowd got the joke, and were in her pocket for the rest of our stage time. It was a great idea, in a long line of great ideas, and that’s why I plain dig her. Now step off, fools, before we deals ya the smackdown!

I have to say, I am not proud of our President today. While I certainly respect his strong religious beliefs, I think it’s sad and maybe even shameful for him to stand up before the nation and deny equal rights to a significant part of our population. In my opinion, homosexuals should have the same rights as everyone else, including marriage. Why anyone would want our government to place itself in between two people who love and want to commit to each other, I simply can’t for the life of me figure out. Mr. President, I respect and agree with most of your decisions, but not this one. You are wrong and I am very saddened by how you have forgotten your pledge of “compassionate conservatism.” What is compassionate about treating homosexuals as second-class citizens?

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p>If we in this country really wanted to keep marriage meaningful, we would make it more difficult both to marry, and to divorce. What truly devalues marriage in our society is the haphazard and casual way we heterosexuals treat it. With divorce rates at around 60%, it is obvious that very few people are treating the institution as the lifelong bonding which it is supposed to represent. People routinely marry and then divorce shortly thereafter, either because they experience (heaven forbid!) the first signs of discontent and don’t have the fortitude to ride it out by working with their spouse to solve their problems, or because they were getting married for the wrong reasons to begin with.

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p>I read an interesting book at some point — I think by Sheri S. Tepper — in which marriage was a contractual agreement between two people lasting, I believe, five years… maybe it was ten; I’m not sure. At the end of the period, the two people had to make a mutual decision to renew the contract, which made each “renewal” an important event and a meaningful commitment to the same person. Plenty of people in this society renewed their marriages to the same person over and over, until death did them part. Some used their renewal as an opportunity to seek greener pastures. But because it was a contract, breaches such as adultery were very severely punished in the same ways as other civil transgressions.

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p>I’m not saying this system would work in a country where we tie religion so closely to so many public institutions (as much as we decry same), but it’s an interesting thought. If people were as worried about the consequences of adultery, abuse, and alienation as they are concerned with material crimes or breaches of civil contracts, then perhaps marriage would return to a higher priority in people’s daily lives.

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p>I’m very happily married, and I know how happy it makes me to see the person I love most in the world every day, and know that I have the right and the ability to provide her with not just emotional support and stability, but also the transfer of important economic and social rights. The thought of denying that to people who love each other as much as I love my wife simply makes me sick at heart.

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p>This page is an excellent deconstruction of some of the fallacious arguments being proffered to justify the denial of civil rights to homosexuals. Arguments are welcome.

If you’re free on Saturday night, Leah and I will be appearing at the Austin Grill in Silver Spring, MD, in the final round of their South by Southwest (SXSW) songwriters contest. A big part of the scoring is on audience response, so we could use some friendly faces in there to cheer her on. I’m probably one of Leah’s biggest fans but I can’t do much clapping from the stage (and have it count). Come out and support us starting at about 9:00 p.m. I can’t be sure when we will go on, because it’s by random drawing once everyone’s there. But I can promise you the other acts are quite good and you will enjoy the music — most of all ours!

Anyone have any idea how you can convince a locally-owned restaurant chain to open up a store where you live? I visited the Austin Grill last night, and not only was the food great, but they support local music too. WIth one of our town’s only local music venues going out of business, chances of getting local gigs are getting slimmer daily. It would be nice to have another good place to eat that’s not a mega-eatery cattle car like Outback or Ruby Tuesday. (“You’ve only got on 5 pieces of flair.”)

If you’ve tried to send me some e-mail from this page lately and it didn’t get through, try again. I found that I had inadvertently made a small error resetting my e-mail server a few weeks ago, so frields dot org was not accepting mail. It should work fine now.

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p>Our gig Saturday night went very well. Andy’s was a nice place to play and the proprietor was a pleasure to deal with, which doesn’t happen as often as one would prefer. Good food (and beer!), and a nice, cozy living-room type environment. Unfortunately, not as many people were out on a frigid winter night as we would have liked, but the owner was very happy with us and wants us back, so all’s well that ends well, I suppose.

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p>Leah and I have a special performance coming up in about a week where we’ll be competing to win a trip to SXSW in Austin in March. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

This is going to sound a little like an infomercial, but here goes anyway. I am what you would probably call a frustrated programmer. I did extremely well (grades of usually 100% or better) in computer science and programming classes, but I never got into the field formally. It hasn’t hampered my career, but I do think I missed making a vocation out of one of my avocations. Whatever.

But I’ve been doing a lot of reading on a language called Python lately. it’s not brand spanking new; in fact, Python is up around version 2.3 nowadays. But it’s really started taking the whole world by storm. Rapid application development, incredible scalability, and most importantly, ease of use and a very short learning curve — even for people who’ve never programmed before in their lives — makes Python very attractive for everyone.

You can find a lot of great information about Python at Ibiblio. You can also find a free electronic book there entitled How to Think Like a Computer Scientist. It’s written for people who’ve never programmed before, but will have you up and running small programs virtually overnight.

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p>Because Python is so much easier to learn and use than C/C++ or most other computer languages, it’s ideal for students and novices from ages 8 to 88. I’m going to start teaching it to Evie when she gets old enough. if she shows any interest in computers. Since practically all kids are learning about computers now, she might as well get exposed to open source software early on before the Microtools get a hold of her.

The trees are lovely today here in Virginia, draped with icicles, but the roads are hazardous. There was a pretty bad accident on the way to work… not on the interstate, where speeds are high, but on the access road to the office, where (supposedly) people are driving more slowly. The accident was roughly head-on in a 35-mph zone, but it was still devastating to both the vehicles involved. Ambulances, police vehicles, and fire equipment rushed to the scene. I heard that one of the vehicle occupants was lying on the road at some point after the accident, but no one knew if he had been launched there or collapsed after exiting his vehicle on his own. Be careful out there!

Voice is still not normal, but I suspect it has something to do with the ultra-low relative humidity brought on by this past week’s frigid temperatures. Trying not to talk at work is a lost cause, so I will just have to baby my voice for a couple days before Saturday’s show and hope for the best. Hot tea with honey and lemon has always worked well for me, but the side effects are less enjoyable than with Magic Voice Juice™.

Yikes! Ever since I got to work this morning it’s hurting to speak. It’s getting progressively worse, but I don’t feel sick or throat-sore, so I’m guessing it’s a bout of laryngitis. Hopefully I can battle this crud off by Saturday for our gig at Andy’s.

My old buddy and musical brother-in-arms, Steve McWilliams, has a new Web site. You can check out some of his latest music there; take a look.