two new books entered the world this week. ok, so maybe a few more than two books entered the world this week, but only two really matter:

our friend donna published engineering and social justice. it can be found here or here. it’s such an important topic and we know how very hard she worked on it. stick it in the christmas stockings of all your favorite engineers this year!

and our sprout, aka robyn, published girls rock: how to get your group together and make some noise. pick up a copy for the young girl rocker in your life, today! (kim gordon says you should. and who are you to not do what kim gordon tells you?)

oh, and watch the promo for it here:

congrats, donna and robyn! we’re so excited for you both.

the breeders showed up in our little town tonight:

(minus tonya donelly, but what are you going to do, right?)

we had a luke-warm reaction to some of their new songs, but kim and kelley’s voices are still really amazing and hearing them do old songs was great. i think the crowd was having a mixed reaction to them also, at first. that is, until this happened *

it made the crowd finally both sing and bounce.

overall a good show, but it made me feel pretty old - all of this music is really from back-in-the-day at this point. oh and, also, i’m too sleepy and cranky to be out this late on a weeknight. ;P

speaking of cranky, a message to the guy who kept yelling “free bird” during quiet moments in the show: it still wasn’t funny the 4th or 5th time you yelled it. i’ll thank you for refraining from now on.

* it was a micro version of when we saw the pixies at bumbershoot a few years ago, their first real show after getting back together. the crowd couldn’t help but pitch in with the vocals at just the right moment during just the right song - it was strangely moving.

a friend of ours is working on the first churches meetinghouse capital campaign, raising money to restore the sanctuary after the ceiling collapsed and forced them to close. it is a beautiful building, a centerpiece of the town, and has been used as a meeting and performance place - for things both church-y and not.

tonight there was a fundraiser for the cause:

the nields performed a sing-along (apparently not to be mistaken for a hootenanny. very confusing.) in a church around the corner from first churches.

lots of people showed up, sang, had a fun time, and, hopefully, put some money in those donation envelopes:

good job pulling it all together, gl! congrats!

oh, and when we were walking by the church to take the above photo tonight, tom spotted this graffiti on the construction scaffolding:

i love northampton.