Fare Thee Well
June 12, 2003: I was sitting at a picnic table in Saratoga Springs, strumming my guitar and "singing." (I use quotes because I didn't know how to sing at the time). I was terrified and could barely keep my fingers from shaking as they attempted to form chords on the fret board. In between singing, I took deep breaths in feeble attempts to calm my nerves. A few weeks previous to that evening, I passed through a set of "ragged, wooden double doors,"* walked the length of a cramped hallway, and ascended the steps of the legendary Caffe Lena for the first time. I had read about the Caffe in a newspaper article that I probably should have missed. Typically, you see, we didn't get the Schenectady Gazette. For some reason, one was delivered to my dad's house, where I lived, and was sitting on the dining room table. One of the middle sections was slightly out of sync with the rest of the paper and part of the headline was visible: Open Mic. Around that tim