So here we are on the precipice of another exciting semester with our hands in the air or our eyes closed depending on how you handle such excitement, or in Sue's case, a constant stream of obscenities intermingled with startled sideways looks as if someone was sneaking up behind her. I kid I kid, but Sue is under quite a bit more pressure since being awarded (is that the right word? I don't think so) the position of Division Chair. The division thing is new at Newman, they used to have departments and then they put some departments together and called it a division. And so, the position Sue is wrestling with is also new which has made for some challenges, but she is rising to meet them if she has to strangle them with her bare hands. Sue is excited to teach latin this semester, the first time in a number of years that it's been offered at Newman and another opportunity for Sue to demonstrate her smartyness (I know, not a word. Ask Sue, she'll know what word I meant) She's also teaching another Origami class.

I'm psyched to get underway. Looking forward to Printmaking, Layout and Production (my only Graphic Design class this time around), and Contemporary Art History. Not looking forward to Algebra (there goes my 4.0), and mildly intrigued by Intro to Psychology. I crammed in two more classes this passed summer session: World Civilizations 2 and Intro to Scripture. Completing a semester in fives weeks is pretty

insane (especially when you have five papers to write) but it brings me one step closer to being an unemployed college graduate. Along with teaching a class, Sue also took a class this summer, anatomy! What did I say about smartyness? She aced it, though she only audited the class so technically it never happened. Forget I said anything.

It's been an action packed summer. A few days after finishing up Intro to Scripture, Sue and I were on a plane for our three weeks in the

Northeast. We visited with Nan and Pop in Pennsylvania and managed to hang out a little with friends in the area. Thanks to the Folkerts for putting me up for a few days so I didn't have to sleep on Nan & Pop's vertebrae rearranging couch. We managed to get up

to Boston to visit with friends Diana and Vitali and the twins

Nadia and Kai and we got to see their new house, bought roughly

around the same time as ours. I have to say, as a seasoned New York driver, Boston is insane. The roads are faithfully modeled on the original colonial street plan: traffic circles instead of traffic lights and not a straight line anywhere in the city. Put this together with Northeast style congestion and I'll take my NYC kamikaze cabdrivers any day. But traffic was one thing we didn't do without. After three weeks, you almost expect to see actual tumbleweed on Wichita streets after all the traffic we contended with. Yes, I'm spoiled already.

Anyway, we spent a few days in beautiful southwestern Vermont with Sue's uncle Hall and aunt Clare surrounded by lush green mountains and relatively cool temps. They have a beautful piece of property right next to an old inn. Highlights: our visit to Hildene, Robert Todd Lincoln's grand estate and my breakfast with uncle Hall and his buddies the ROMEOs (Retired Old Men Eating Out).

From there we made it to Corland NY and the surprise 40th birthday party for my oldest friend Greg. Greg, Stacey and their son Calvan moved upstate late last year and it was great to finally see their place and their cool

little town. It was also a rare opportunity these days for me to see nearly all my friends in one place. We spent the last week of our trip

in NYC and on Long Island. It was nice to visit some of my old stomps like a tasty meal at Uncle George's, one of Astoria's best Greek restaurants, not far from where I used to live. We visited the

Noguchi museum in Long Island city and Sue took me to see the musical Fela, about the life of afro-beat legend Fela Kuti, which was a lot of fun, awesome music and dancing. We even managed to stop in Flushing to visit the Shaolin Temple where I used to study.

But we also got to see some cool new things like the newly opened Highline, a section of elevated track on the lower westside of Manhattan

that used to be bring freight trains in and out of the Meatpacking district. The last train ran in 1980 and since then it has gone to ruin, the track bed covered by weeds. Then, after community pressure, the city renovated it, turning it into a cool public space, an elevated park and walkway, adding places to sunbath or hang out and leaving sections of track along with the weeds and other plants that they've added. So far, they've only opened Faze One, the southern-most section, but the rest of the line is set to open in the coming years.

Sadly, a few weeks before our trip, we found out that our kitty Sara was sick with lymphoma and as her health was deteriorating quickly, we were forced to put her to sleep before we left. She was a great kitty, always sweet, never acting out or giving us attitude. I had her for fourteen years, so it was naturally hard to make the decision, but it was time, she had a good life.

Finally, we are a week away from the arrival of my mom, who has retired from the Post Office and is set to relocate to Wichita. She has her apartment picked out in the Riverside area, right next to the Keeper of the Plains, close to parks, museums and downtown. She'll be able to live so much better here than she could manage if she retired in NY and, of course, it'll be great for Sue and I to have her around.

Check out new tune Busted above, also a silly little video for Primordial.

I admit it. When it comes to music, I've been a little bit of a snob since we moved to Wichita. Nothing's good enough for the guy from Neeeewwww Yoooooork. I'm not a bad person,

just a victim of circumstance. But it does take a little while to get to know a new city, to discern where the "cool" kids hang out. Well, it may be Africa Hot outside right now, but COOL is on the rise in Wichita, mark my words. Yesterday was the first annual LIV Festival, an all day music shindig featuring some of the coolest sounds I've heard since we've been here. Held at Market Street, an industrial deadend by the highway overpass where they've turned a bunch of the warehouse buildings into art galleries, the fest included two stages set up at either end of the street along with the work of some local artists and grilled goodies a whole lot cheaper than festival food anywhere else. One stage featured local bands and the other was out of

town acts and, encouragingly, I was more drawn to the local stage. Styles ranged from noisy indie

rock, electronic, hip hop and breakneck bluegrass. My new local favorite, Powerlifter, who make noisy dance/thrash electronica using Nintendo Gameboy consoles, put on a delightfully sarcastic very punk performance, technical difficulties and all. Turn-out wasn't bad for a first go, just enough to make two stages playing simultaneous acts not feel too barren. It was a good day, hot enough to cause delirium but isn't that a required component of all summer festivals?

Technically, Summer arrives tomorrow, but its been here for a few weeks at least, flirting with

100 degrees on a regular basis. I finished my first summer class (World Civ 2) and am ready to plunge into the

second one this coming week (Intro to Scripture). Sue taught a writing class first summer session but also took an anatomy class! She impressed some of her scientific colleagues who think that humanities folk are good for takin' up space and little more. Of course she got an A. I added a second raised bed to the backyard and hung a clothes line so we don't have to waste electricity using the machine. Besides, the hot Kansas sun dries clothes faster than the machine does anyway, and ya know something? My clothes smell delightful.

More on the cool music front: ska-punk-metal-funk-everything-else powerhouses Fishbone (!!!) came to Wichita a few weeks ago. They played at a little Mexican restaurant in the big catering room behind the place. The turn out was good and they kicked all kinds of A. I almost didn't go because I was a little tired, but good friend Julie convinced us to make it and we had a blast. The entire philosophy dept of Newman turned out for

the show as well, and you know philosophers can party.

Sue and I had a fun weekend last week as well when

we took a drive forty-five minutes northwest to Hutchinson (home of the state fair!). We were going to camp at a nearby lake but thunderstorms passed through the area so we wisely decided to skip it (lightning is scary when you're the tallest thing around). We stayed in a cheap motel in town and

visited the Cosmosphere space center, which has a surprisingly in-depth US and Soviet space program and Cold War exhibit. The Cosmosphere produced 80% of the props used in the Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13. They also have an IMAX and the classic

planetarium show. Then we visited the Underground Salt Mine Museum, an active salt mine 650 feet beneath the Kansas prairie. Interestingly, the mine,

because of the lack of moisture, is used by all the major movie studios to

store their reels, every state and even foreign governments or companies who want somewhere secure to keep valuable records or other stuff. The mine isn't cramped or scary like you might imagine (unless the lights go out), the interior spaces are huge and airy and always naturally 68 degrees. A cool experience and one of the many exciting things awaiting any persons who plan to visit our

humble home!

Anyway, check out the new half-video for Primordial and the new song Busted, at the top of the blog. Again, remember that we'll be in the Northeast last week of July to mid August. We'll be with Nan and Pop in

Pennsylvania, then to Boston and

Vermont and back to New York for the last week. Hope we can see at least some of you. Oh and happy Father's day to all the dads!

See you soon.

The video above is for a local band named Powerlifter. It was quite an exciting discovery to realize that there IS cool young music in Wichita after all! It just took a year a nine months to find it. Wichita has a 1000 classic rock cover bands and POWERLIFTER, the beginning of a revolution? I friggin hope so. If you're not into kids having a good time and acting like fools, then you probably should skip the video. It's fun though, theyz good kidz.

Thank you to all of you who expressed concern

and well wishes for my grandpa. To catch you up, we flew down to PR that Wednesday, arriving in San Juan and undertook the three hour drive to the Mayagüez Centro Medico on the west coast where he was being held. We found out in the parking lot of the hospital that he had passed about a half hour after we'd touched down. He

held on long enough for us to reach the island and that was all he could do. Even though we knew it could happen at any time it was disappointing to miss him by so little, but he did

know we were coming so hopefully that was a comfort. And, in a way, it was good that we arrived for this next stage of things to be there for Grandma and Aunt Manny. The viewing was an all day marathon from 9am to 12 midnight. Talk about grueling. We didn't stay for the entire time. Grandma has a great sense of humor and was dealing pretty well with everything. He'd been suffering for some time and she'd worked hard to care for him, so there was a sense of relief, mixed with the grief. He's finally at rest now. I also posted a short video above of the

beautiful song of the coqui frog of PR. You never see them, but you can hear them all over the island. Those cute little buggers can make quite a racket.

It was a good visit

over all though. Sue and I stayed in a Howard Johnson in Mayagüez that used to be one of the oldest convents on the Island. I've only ever driven through the city

at night so it was cool to actually check the place out for once. There's a nice

square lined with neat statues, a church at one end. Traffic was unusually bad even

for this normally crowded island because it just so happened that Mayagüez was hosting the Pan American games that week and the city was mobbed with cars and people. But mainly it was good to hang with Grandma and Manny and meet some relatives I didn't know existed before. Communicating in Puerto Rican spanish was surprisingly hard for me after the slower spoken Guatemalan variety. Different accent, faster cadence and different words for some things, like "chinas" for oranges instead of "naranjas" (oranges originated in China, so there is logic to it).

So the semester is over and everything went pretty well. I

enjoyed my classes and Sue even got to teach some fun

stuff. So far so good

good, but next semester I take on algebra, so I'm sure my streak of A's will come to a sudden halt. Here are a sampling of some of the drawing, design and typography projects I've

completed. The last typo project was to make up a wine and design a label for the bottle. The name had to be based on an idiom and so I called my wine "Youngblood"

and decided to go with a gothic, vampire inspired theme. It may be hard to make out from the photos but there is a pattern of wrought iron fence shapes in a very dark tone on tone in the background and puncture marks on the neck. The tag line below the initials says "Stay young, drink wine." Yeah, I know, a goth wine, surprise.

Yesterday marked the end of the week long River Fest, a big music event that takes over downtown every year. Unfortunately, we've had some cool, wet and occasionally severe weather

this week which dampened the festivities. Monday we had a tornado producing event pass right through west Wichita and a couple

tornados and some funnels were spotted near the airport, just down the road from Newman. Kind of scary. I was in the car with the music blasting reading something and I looked up to see people actually running for cover. But there was no damage, luckily, no CGI'D flying cows, everybody's ok. Sue and I only made it to the River Fest for a few hours yesterday. We had to try the chocolate covered bacon. Well, Sue had to try it, I refused at first. But after taking a bite I decided it wasn't so bad, a lot

like chocolate covered pretzels, sweet on the outside, crispy and salty on the inside. They had events on the river like group waterskiing and boat racing and those waterskiing kids deserve a round of applause just for getting into that dirty water.

Oh by the way, this boat, perched on the east bank of the Arkansas River in downtown, looks a little out of place, doesn't it? I mean, the river

isn't anywhere near deep enough to accommodate it. Turns out it's the actual boat that won the Americas Cup back from the Ausies in 1992. Some of the best sailors come from Kansas, who knew? Something about the crazy, unpredictable winds. It's also the first boat built by an aerospace manufacturer, which is the big industry here. How about that? Don't mess with Kansas, I'm warning you.

Ooh ooh ooh, before I forget, Sue and I will be in the Northeast for three weeks, the last week of July to mid August. We'll probably be doing a lot of driving around visiting people but we will be in contact with those of you we are hoping to visit. We will be arriving in Philidelphia on July 27th and leaving August 15th, fyi.

Hope you are all having a pleasant spring and that we get to see you soon.

So, Spring is here! The weather has been getting warm and the trees and plant life have been exploding all over the place (as my allergies can attest). Though the semester has been keeping us hella busy, we've managed to turn some of our attention to gardening and built our first raised bed in the back yard. Bet you didn't know I could handle power tools! Either did I but all fingers and toes are still accounted for so...success! Now we can put that huge pile of horse poop we had delivered to use! But before we actually can grow anything in that bed, we need soil that actually grows stuff. The soil around here is so full of clay you could pretty much make pots from it straight out of the ground. That's why we went with the raised bed in the first place, you need some serious muscle to till this soil. It gives one a new appreciation for what the pioneers must have gone through. And we are not that tough.

We're moving into the home stretch of the

semester now. One or two more projects to go in each class and then

we'll be done. In drawing I wanted to do my landscape assignment in the

format of a Chinese landscape scroll painting. The style as it turned out

isn't really Chinese and though it's hard to tell from the picture, I gave it a little bit of a 3-D look by putting the different parts on different panels separated by foam board. I still have some issues with it but it was a fun experiment. The title, written in Chinese at the bottom says

"Central New York State." Also completed for my Typography class, a funky calender page. Obviously it didn't have to be functional as a calender, just an interesting design. By the way, this one was rendered on the computer, not by hand. Next assignments include designing a wine label and I have a couple abstract self portraits to whip up also.

Last weekend, Newman held its annual Literary Festival. This year's theme was Sci-Fi, and the main topic was about the future of literature in a digital world. I divided my time between my projects and the festival but Sue ended up having to introduce and manage most of the panels so she was there all weekend. I thought the keynote speakers were very interesting but there were some issues with turnout a

nd ideas are already being tossed around about how to make next years event more exciting.

Bryan, the english faculty who usually throws the fest will be

on sabbatical next year which means Sue and her fellow faculty will be taking a more

active role in planning it.

We were also happy to have our friends Deborah and Neil out for a visit so that Deborah could present some of her fantastic poetry at the festival. Though the fest dominated our time, we did get to hang out with them a little and show them the house when it was over.

We're excited that our good friends Sonja and Michael (Sonja shown here cuddling Kirk) have bought a home right here in College Hill, just on the other side of the park from us, practically neighbors! Our evil plans are coming to fruition, one by one we will lure them all here! Hmmahahaah! From all appearances they too found themselves a pretty sweet deal, a lovely house and the closing process appeared to go quickly with no major snags.

A few weeks ago we celebrated our friend Kelly's birthday at a place just around the corner from us, called Margarita's. It's a mexican restaurant and dance club that looks a little run down though festive, from the outside but is a popular local spot, packed on the weekends mainly because of the fun atmosphere and the live cover bands that play Friday and Saturday night. Its popularity probably isn't because of the food, which is pretty bland as mexicana goes. And yes, cover bands play a pretty prominent roll in the local music scene, but it was a fun evening

with friends listening to the greatest hits of the 70's, 80's, 90's and today!

Oooh, speaking of cool music, we did discover a great local joint just a little further down Douglas Ave from us called Let's be Frank, or Get Franked, or whatever the name is this week. It's a specialty hot dog shop that serves a crazy array a wacky dogs ranging from the traditional New York and Coney Island dogs to the bizarre caramel and other desert dogs. They load these puppies up with so

much toping that rest assured you'll be wearing half of it, but mmmm, it's sloppy good! The atmosphere is urban and hip, the walls covered in neat graffiti and stencil art and it may be the only place in town were you can chill listening to cool indie music. The word on the street is they're moving soon, noooooo! Just to Old Town a little further down Douglas, yaaaay!

I hate to end this blog on a sad note, but it seemed the most appropriate place to bring this up. This weekend I received word that my grandpa who lives in Puerto Rico has been taken to the hospital for a kidney infection. He was diagnosed a few years back with Parkinson's and has been getting progressively worse since. They don't expect him to last very long so I'm hoping to catch a flight to PR for at least a couple days this week. The last few times I'd seen him, he wasn't himself. First of all he could hardly speak, and the man loved to talk. He loved to tell stories and laugh about them, always good natured and fun. It was hard to watch him deteriorate and I'm sure it was especially hard for grandma who cared for him day and night, staying up all night with him if he couldn't sleep. He was born and raised in Cabo Rojo PR, and worked on a cane plantation when he was a teen. After highschool he moved to New York where he met grandma. She was ten

years younger than him, not even a teen yet when they first met but obviously they didn't get together until later on, after grandpa had spent some time in California trying to break into acting and then joining the military. World War II ended before he could be deployed and he returned to New York, married grandma and lived in Spanish Harlem where my dad and aunt Nancy were born. They moved to Long Island when my Dad was in his early teens around the time that Maryann and Ruby, my younger aunts, were born. In their later years they moved back to Cabo and I'm glad that I got to visit them a couple times there. I'm sure that grandpa, Roger Laracuente Rodriguez, will be content to pass on in the place where he was born. I already miss him.