The next day being Saturday we got our rentacar and following all the directions provided by Yahoo Maps we wended (New England is Huuuuuge on wending) our way up to Toppsfield. Now this was the first time that I began to get this creepy feeling. Its a question as per whether the road signs are inadvertently forgotten or whether they are not put there on purpose to frighten and or vex out of towners. Picture the Twilight Zone episode that begins with the mad man crashing through the front door collapsing on the floor of the small isolated Diner and you get some kind of idea of the New England Driving experience. For all the jokes about California freeways they are in fact designed by advanced engineers who use these things called "road signs". In New England they are designed by leprechans and you find your way with "spells" from the Book of Kells. You see this sign that says Danvers (for instance) and a turnoff that says Danvers and you take the turnoff and you are on a road lined with thick bushes on either sideand you are prevented from seeing anything but the roadway right in front of you and you go for about a half mile and when you come out of these bushes you have no idea which direction you are heading. I called this the Pinata effect. After you're through spinning the bystanders laugh at you as you as you try to regain your bearings. After being on the road not knowing which direction you have just gone in you finally come to a sign that says something like Ipswitch 5 miles and you havent seen a thing. Like "what happened to Danvers?". Freeway turnoffs in California have big white luminescent lines that reflect the headlights and guide you to the offramp. In new England there are no lines and the off-ramp just might be a hole in the hedge next to the road with a single yellow sign which you only see aftre you go through the hole in the hedge that points "that way" without any other clue and two ways (or three) you can go. Throughout the trip I dont think I guessed correctly once. Driving in New England is truly an Alice in Wonderland through the Looking Glass experience. I half expected to encounter a big catapiller on a mushroom with hookah going "I could send you this way but then you wouldnt be going that way" before disappearing entirely leaving only the grinning teeth. We stopped for directions after the Danvers turnoff blooper four times and the people were very kind and friendly but made comments like "Well its a little difficult to explain...." which I already knew. The turnoff to the hotel (which by demon luck happened to be on the "other" side of the freeway) required you to guess correctly twice since there was no other helpful hint like "Hotel over here" or "Sheraton to your right" then proceed to take the sign (Im not kidding) which said "Boston-South" but then immediately take yet another sign which said Route 97 East (or something) and then find a nearly unmarked path with no painted lines and take IT and know instinctively that you needed to go right on that road with the hotel obscurred from your view by tall trees. I did this loop three times until I finally exhausted all the other ways to go so just to take this turnoff took me about 30 minutes of wending. I collapsed like the Twilight Zone character at the front desk only to be met by the hostess who really was Irish with the heaviest accent I have ever heard and i was SURE that this was the person who had designed the turnoff. I finally get to the Sheraton exhausted, in trauma, and lay my head on the counter and lo and behold Im told our room isnt ready yet, but it WILL be. So off to Asharas we go. Now painfully aware of the need to follow the map, we do, and amazingly (in broad daylight) find Asharas house. It is a beautiful two story wooden shingled home amidst an incredible assemblage of trees. The back yard has no fences and with the adjoining back yards you have at least a 175 yard par three hole if you want to install one with a dogleg no less. The ambience is one of spacious forrestry and the smell is just the end. I cant say enough about this incredible back yard which is more like an area at a campground in Yosemite than someones back yard. On the other hand the legends of the lurking Mosqiitos was enough to make me stay inside like those who live on the Moors in England during Wherwolf season. So I never braved the backyard actually. I did vist the porch but was immediately attacked so i retreated white flag flying at the first sign of danger. In daytime however it is stunning and spectacular. When we arrived at Asharas I got to meet her for the first time and the JMDL experience was renewed once again. there was the Madame Queen Dolphin herself, as well as Wally Kairuz from Argentina, Lori Frye with whom I have had many communiques, Mags and Brei and Sal, Asharas big guy. The house is totally warm and spacious with a really cool den and other rooms totally outfitted in media and computer and entertainment devices with an upstairs that has many rooms. The words that describe this abode are warm and friendly. The final touches on the food prep were winding (as opposed to wending) down and soon enough we were on our way to the church in newberryport. It was a gorgeous day. Finding our way to the church was a relatively easy task, with the church being on the main street and all, and it was the only building that had more than one vehicle next to it. It was a grand white classic New England church with a stage and big windows and they had done a marvelous job of setting it up. There were all sorts of surrounding high-ceilinged wooden rooms to practice or warm up in and downstairs was a big kitchen in which food stuffs were asembled. Ashara had gone to the trouble of hiring a sound crew and a lighting assemblage and even had Christmas lights strung which during the day were ambivalent in terms of atmosphere but at night it was mystical and magical in the atmosphere it created we were later to find out was wonderful. All the performances were videoed as well and I would think that anyone who was there will acquire the entire video of the event. Its hard to even remember all that happened because you had some people playing their own set and you had the same people being brought back up to do harmony parts or other parts or group sing alongs and even people like Jimmy Stewart from Fort Myers impersonating Bette Midler impersonating Dr. Rene Richards with Woo Woo parts to songs on some songs. When the CD box set eventually comes out I unhesitatingly and highly recommend that all of you acquire it and feast your ears on some amazing stuff. The JMDL truly has some professionals within it and others who could be if they wanted to be. This was an event that went from Noon to 11 pm at night and never lost momentum and in fact gained some as it went along. Time flew as it does with all such experiences and then all of a sudden there was Bob Mueller the indefatigable Master of Ceremonies saying we all had to go home. Dinner was served somewhere in the middle. I will have to review the CD when it emerges but my recollections are as follows. Some might be out of order but thats how they come back to me.
