There's no tradition like NO Tradition

Thanksgiving gets an incredible amount of hype for being everyone's shot at a yearly Norman Rockwell moment.Coming from an unconventional family, and living a life that would make soap opera writers say "not bloody likely" I've had more unique Thanksgivings than I've had traditions.

As a kidlet, we did our Rockwell approximation, in my oddly assorted family. The ratio of 5 adults: 1 kid meant 5 opinions on how to not spoil me. Thanksgiving WAS however one of those "state occasions" where the folks would get all lahdidah and get out the etched crystal wineglasses and my uncle would pop the cork, my aunt would wrap the bottle, and we'd all get poured minuscule glasses of...Cold Duck. (be nice, this was the early 60s, suburbia had few wine snobs then)

As I got into the double digit age range, and more portable, we'd trek up to the shirt-tail cousin's place in Farmington Michigan, where their tract ranch house backed onto some lovely woods with plenty of room for kid exploration - a sand bank over a crick with a swing rope over it, trails to follow, secret places to discover. It's amusing to think of those squabbling siblings now - one's a bank lawyer, one a large animal vet, one an Engineering professor at a big name school, and one of some significant rank in the Air force - a very successful family, all in all.

The first Thanksgiving that hit me hard was 1976. I was working full time retail in a do it yourself bead counter at a May Company. A part of Thanksgiving I'd appreciated (and still do, in retrospect) is how magical it seemed to have stores go from 'normal' to 'full Christmas' overnight on Thanksgiving. I knew it was expected of me to be in late Wednesday and all day Friday (I don't think they were calling it "black Friday" back then). The harsh part of reality and the cruddyness of working retail came smashing together when my uncle, the head of the house, had a heart attack while bowling the Thursday before. Retail bosses were unwilling to reconcile "this IS immediate family" with the term "uncle" and quite unwilling to give me time off. Uncle Paul died on Thanksgiving morning. A shipment of beads from China had to be priced and set out on Friday. China had just reopened for trade and this was all a big deal then. I can still remember EXACTLY where that counter was and how much like a zombie I felt putting those incredible beads out. When I was done, I told 'em I had a funeral to help plan and let them decide if they wanted to fire me - I didn't care at that point.

Where I got wrapped up in a TOTALLY Rockwellian Thanksgiving was the year I was engaged to John. Both his parents came from a small farming town downstate & the expected thing was to go over the freeways and through the woods to Grandmother's house. It was a HUGE Victorian farmhouse with multiple porches, wood burning stoves built in fireplaces in the upstairs bedrooms, ceilings so high there were transoms over the doors, a bay window big enough for a grand piano, and a table big enough for the whole extended family - perhaps twenty folks there. The kitchen was the biggest I'd ever seen, obviously designed in an era of putting by large crops of produce and feeding large numbers of farm workers. I didn't join that family, but I've fond memories of temporarily being part of a more traditional family group.

The one I DID marry - our first Thanksgiving together was a wild weekend in California. He was in grad school at Cal Tech, I was in art school in Cleveland. I flew out there after Wednesday class. Knowing the logistics, I'd sewn myself two duffel bags I could wear bandolier style, and had my first view of LA freeways from the back of "Shadofax" his orange motorcycle. Thanksgiving day, we went farther down the coast to Orange county, where we dined with the family of a high school girlfriend of HIS. (He always did have a way of staying friends with exes parents). It was a merry weekend, culminating with a decision TO get married in the spring. I took the redeye back to Cleveland and went from the airport to the rapid, to University circle station, to the greenie bus to class.

Thanksgivings after that tended to be with his family, out in the country. His mother's cooking had deteriorated over the years. The time she tried to serve us mostly raw and unthawed on the inside turkey may well have been the key thing to turning my sister in law into a vegetarian.

Then he got sick... very. A summer and fall of battling cancer was a roller coaster of hope and horror. I'm not even sure particularly WHY but that year we decided to spend Thanksgiving day with my art ed professor and other students out at the "Pink Pig" (a farmhouse out in the country belonging to the university) we dined well, watched movie shorts (black and white "claymation" and such). Mark was well enough that we walked in the stubble fields of the farm there and talked. It stays sharp in the memory, for all the mellowness of the day.

The next year, he was gone. Thanksgiving was at my house, and an emotional struggle, trying to be family when the link that joined us was gone. I look at pictures and see the dark circles under the eyes. I also see the delight of my wee niece eating my ginger ice cream - the closest thing to a Thanksgiving tradition I have.

By 85 I was in Illinois, in grad school, and not coming back to Cleveland until Christmas break. An invite from my grad school mentor, Renie, was gladly accepted and I became acquainted with her husband David, the Rutabaga King. Now, I don't think I'd ever eaten a rutabaga before. I was told this would be required of me. Fair 'nuff, sez I, though I did wonder...y'see I'd been listening to WCLV Saturday Night (and/or Saturday Night on Wednesday Afternoon) which included a bit called Marginal Considerations written and performed by a very witty Jan Snow. Her pieces of observational humor had been compiled into a book "On the Non-Existence of Rutabagas and other Marginal Considerations". I was delighted to find out not only did rutabagas EXIST, but they were quite tasty mashed up with great lashings of butter. Admittedly, butter can even make snails SEEM edible... When I went home at Christmas, I arranged for a copy of Jan's book inscribed to David the Rutabaga king for him.

Ten years ago, sorrow and joy were all wrapped up in the (by then) usual invite to a friend's parents house. Ruth was engaged, and her mother in law to be had a bad-and short- health outlook, so three weeks before Thanksgiving, they decided that "the family was all going to be together, friends in town, let's get married while she can still enjoy it" They did, she did, and it was beautiful, small, and lasting. Thanksgiving at her parents has held that loving connotation ever since. Last night they gathered friends at a Cajun cafe to help them celebrate those ten years together and we drank to their good taste in picking each other.

But there are others I love, too. When my best friend Chuck was moving into his first house from a cosy nest of an apartment, with Thanksgiving being the final weekend, I agreed to come down and help. It was a peculiar bit of midwestern weirdness. He's no cook and had planned for a grocery store precooked turkey and stuffing, and relied on me to do the other stuff. I made some yeast rolls, turned the turkey carcass into soup stock and later made hand rolled noodles for the soup. Now helping a gay guy who is a clutterbug set up house is an interesting experience. I had to fight with him and lay down some rules:
- If a towel has holes or is shaggy on the ends IT IS A RAG. (this made the linen closet closer to manageable)
- No more than THREE candles on any one flat surface.
- you can NOT hang up EVERY framed thing you own.
Part of the frisson of the move was making the place an "our" place for them as a couple with VASTLY different tastes. His partner at the time was from a very rural area, and when his family came to Thanksgiving dinner it was the closest I've ever come to a nascarkmartredneckhillbilly world. Very educational. Some of the contrasts just puzzled me. While the brother thought nothing of slaughtering a pig and cutting up parts, making sausage and the like "how many pork chops do you want for your freezer?" he was completely astonished that someone would/could/should make turkey soup stock. We took some soup to their mother in the hospital the next day and I think it was the first home made soup she'd had in decades.

This year, due to the conflict of my being marginally sick and Ruth's dad being major sick and at risk from my coughing, I uninvited myself. I was fortunate enough to be invited to dine by a dance friend. It was a lovely meal with fun people followed by the mind candy of an Indiana Jones movie. Most peculiarly, neither invite had included turkey. The community meal on Saturday at church that's usually been turkey for November was... mac and cheese. I'm in turkey deficit and have decided to have a "Still Thankful" meal this week with some friends from church and the INCREDIBLY heavy turkey I hauled home from work that I'll have to start thawing tomorrow. I can't wait for February to make this one OR to have the room in my freezer.

Gales of November Remembered

And the blizzards...and this year, the election day Flu-that-would-not-die. Being sick for the best part of the month is my main excuse not commenting in a timely manner. Being sick in bed on the last two glorious days of fall before the rotten weather came to stay doesn't seem to stack up with the disasters this month can visit on the Great Lakes area, but while being miserable I was thinking about folks who were in more misery than I hope to ever see.

Comes to November, many folks think first (and last) of Gordon Lightfoot's grand song about the Edmund Fitzgerald. What I found myself wanting to hear is the lovely "It's quiet where they sleep" sung by my friend Katy Early. Being easily musically distracted, I found myself on a fruitless quest - it wasn't to be had in my house - and so the liner notes are only in my head at this point - the song was a poem written by a diver in the team that found the remains of the Edmund Fitzgerald at the lake's bottom, later put to a haunting tune. The images it conjures are kin to the views of the Titanic wreck that were shown in the last movie about that ship. Now I've got to get m'self a replacement copy of Cooper, Nelson & Early's "Love and War" album so I can listen to it again (and keep my CNE collection intact, egad!)

In the interim, I found m'self listening to another friend's music that Great Lakes lore - heavy on the shipwrecks and ship ghost stories - Lee Murdock. That had me digging out a long ago borrowed book Ghost ships of the Great Lakes (sorry, Chuck!)by Dwight Boyer. Lee sings of ships like the Bannockburn and Fitzgerald and all the exotic sounding place names scattered through the lakes from the Keweenaw Penninsula to all the familiar sounding port names on Lake Erie. If there's a good month to be home sick, tucked in a warm bed, this just might be it.

It rains AND it pours

It didn't rain today. It was actually quite delightful light sweater weather for the trick or treaters tonight. Snow and heavy outerwear with costumes was more the norm when I was of trick or treating age on these same streets. What was more surprising was getting to Playhouse Square twice this week. On Monday the witty and erudite JanC and I went to see the road show of Vinyl Cafe with Stewart McLean. I find myself enjoying this lovely import from the CBC on my NPR station on Sunday afternoon with considerably more pleasure than Prairie Home Companion on Saturday nights. McLean's gentle humor is delivered in a voice that reminds me very much of Jimmy Stewart. By comparison, he makes Garrison Keillor look jaded, cynical and somewhat edgy. I rather think that both of 'em would be happy with that assessment.

Last night, while at church music rehearsal, I'd not turned my phone off (bad girl, but I'm not going to hell for it...) and so took the call from Ruth's mother Madam (that IS what the family calls her) offering me two tickets to Ohio Opera's Hansel & Gretel . By this morning I was able to get a PERFECT companion to go with me: Peggy had been having a foul week dealing with plumbers working on her sewer lines, and like me, she hadn't been to an opera in a vastly long time. We had a grand time, zooming off just after my trick or treat candy gave out, and getting to our seats in enough time to take a deep breath before the music started. This was opera for those who are scared of opera - in English WITH the lyrics projected on a screen at the extreme top of the stage. I came to it cold, not even knowing it was to be in English, just ready to be entertained, and that we were. I was surprised at the overtly religiously centered morals in the tale - nothing the Brothers Grimm would have outlined - prayers, visions of angels, along with a supernatural sandman and a (how DID she manage to sing...?) Dew Drop fairy who hovered over the stage AND sang. Other elemements I don't recall are the witch's cooking turning people into gingerbread persons, and her death turning them back to living humans, with Hansel & Gretel being saviours of a couple dozen folks (made for a good grand finale chorus, that!) It was silly, charming, and had utterly gorgeous singing and sets that were a visual treat - especially the birch forrest.

While looking at the Playhouse Square website, I glanced through the up coming events and saw this one for this Sunday that'd have made three in a week, but it was just way, way WAYYYYYY too weird to contemplate, so I shan't go, though I may forever remain curious of what Eddie asked our Favorite Flaky Democrat:
Eddy Izzard interviews Dennis Kucinich
Srsly. I kid you not.

A Wee Drappie o’t

This life is a journey we all hae to gang,
And care is the burden we carry alang,
Though heavy be our burden and poverty our lot,
We’ll be happy a’thegither o’er a wee drappie o’t

O’er a wee drappie o’t, o’er a wee drappie o’t
We’ll be happy a’thegither o’er a wee drappie o’t

The trees are a’ stripped o’ their mantles sae green.
The leaves of the forest nae langer are seen,
For winter is here wi’ it’s cold icey coat,
And we’re all met thegither o’er a wee drappie o’t.

O’er a wee drappie o’t, o’er a wee drappie o’t
And we’re all met thegither o’er a wee drappie o’t.

Job in his lamentations said that man was made to mourn,
And there’s nae such thing as pleasures from the cradle to the urn,
But in his lamentations he surely had forgot
A’ the pleasure man enjoys o’er a wee drappie o’t

O’er a wee drappie o’t, o’er a wee drappie o’t
A’ the pleasure man enjoys o’er a wee drappie o’t

I first heard this sometimes participatory drinking song from the stage of Orchestra Hall in Chicago, during a benefit concert for the Old Town School of Folk Music. The singers - and drinkers- were Win Strache, one of the OTSFM founders, and the one, only and forever. Studs Terkel. At each "o't" (as in "a wee drop of IT, the pure" one or t'other or the both of them would take a drink. As the song went on, the pauses to drink were longer and longer. I do wonder what folks who only heard it broadcast over the radio were thinking; they were taking the singing and drinking equally seriously, they were.

Studs Terkel died today at 96, after a life filled with ideas, people, issues and music. I raise a wee drappie o't to the glorious life of a splendid man.

But that was Yesterday

And yesterday's gone.

Columbus Day is a legal holiday in Ohio, no mail, closed banks, the lot. Lots of folks don't take the day off, many of whom look on Columbus, the state capitol, as more the home of Ohio State than seat of government. Others look on Christopher Columbus, and the celebration of Columbus Day, as the beginning of European oppression of native peoples.

For many years now what this day is in my universe is the anniversary of burying my last blood relative, my Aunt Eleanor. It was sweetly convenient to be able to bury her on Columbus Day - her step granddaughter came down from Michigan to represent the married-into family and it was a day as gorgeous as we've had the last few days. Yet, there were so few to mourn her at the church; she'd outlived nearly all her friends, and those of my generation tended to be flung all over the country. I mused over this a bit on Saturday as I attended the memorial for Pete Smakula , the founder of Goose Acres.

Goose Acres was where you went in Cleveland for folk music instruments, recordings, music books, instruction, concert tickets and large doses of Pete's curmudgeonly opinions. I was gratified to see how the old place was filled with people who came to pay their respects, tell stories, play some tunes, lift a glass, eat some food. I got there from work in time to hear much of the stories people told. The most poignant point for me was the closing of the formal part of the day when his son Bobby led the place in "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." So often, the near maudlin old time gospelish songs come near to parody, right up there with "Danny Boy" for the rolling of the eyes and wishing you were elsewhere. Have you ever felt that you're hearing a song in JUST the way and JUST the situation where it completely, utterly belongs? That was the way this song went. Voices raised to support Bobby singing of watching his father's body put into the grave.

When Eleanor died, most of the people who came out most to support me were my song circle friends and musicians. A song that had become a staple of our song circle was the key one we used. I sang it a few times to Jocelyn over the phone, and at the funeral, what we usually sang acapella now had harp and flute backing. So much of those sad old songs about coming death and reaching heaven are starting to feel more substantial to me as I get older. I'm not ancient yet. I just did the numbers and realized at the age I am now, Eleanor was dealing with a 9 year old me, and she seemed far from old then. But ever I "hear times winged chariot." I do. And the tune that chariot will be playing?

There are Angels hovering 'round...

Changes

It's a marvelous night for a moondance...
'neath the cover of October skies"

It's a marvelous moon out there tonight, full and so bright it casts shadows of individual leaves onto the pavement. There's an expanded band of low hung mackerel sky that looks a bit like bleached out leaves of a tree, lit from below. I've never seen a sky like this before. It follows after a beautiful and unusually vivid sunset that I saw in bits, waiting at the lights for the hordes of fans streaming down 9th street to a Browns game, and glimpses in my rear view mirror as I headed east tonight.

It was unseasonably hot today - 80something degrees and so beautiful I found myself taking the old dog on a walk down the cinder path and around the half-block. Of course, at just about the balance point between distance traveled and distance to go, I started having enough pain to be noticeable, I limped the way home, disdaining regret. As I walked, I thought about buckling down to put words to the feelings and ideas I've been struggling with for months now.

Changes.
Drastic changes.
Unsettling changes.
I knew BIG changes were coming in my life by late spring, when what I'd called "the job of my dreams" started to resemble nightmares. I did the honorable thing, worked hard, cursed myself for an idiot (funny how Stan Rogers' song "The Idiot" got into the latest lyric book I was assembling then...) and got on with surviving the summer. 'Twasn't easy. Gory details available in person, when plied with libations of a brewed or fermented nature. (Gorey details, on the tip of my tongue, always... "A is for Amy...") My ambulatory health, precarious for the last several years, declined.

A couple episodes of Kipling in crisis were staggeringly horrid. In late spring he had a near-death experience that had me take him to the emergency vet, only to find I couldn't afford to have him treated. Tearful application of antacids turned out to be the needed treatment, not the unattainable surgery, even though it meant some serious cleanup after. Just starting to take a deep breath from that, and suddenly he's dramatically, messily, horridly sick again. Couldn't blame this on the stupidity of the last episode (he'd gotten into an uncovered stash of dog food and eaten himself into a hardened lump), but in time it became obvious that we'd gotten a bad/contaminated/something awful bag of dog food (his usual high quality stuff) and that made him expel things from every orifice. Got water down his throat, loved him, waited. Tossed out what was there, got new and he recovered, slowly. By the time he was sick, the bag the dog food came in had gone to the trash, so no clue as to WHAT might have caused it or if the stuff had been recalled. He's got most of his 13 year old dog energy back, is in good voice, but still not continent enough to be allowed the run of the house anymore when I'm not home.

I survived camp with more grace and accomplishment than they had any right to expect. I don't know if THEY expected it, but I expected it of me. Once committed... I did learn that jobs also need to follow one of the dictums that many friends cling to in dating: " don't make anyone your priority who has made you their option" I shan't do that again. But what did that leave me? Leaving a part time job I'd had for 8 years, in late summer, too late to get a teaching job, too overburdened with camp through the late spring and summer to be able to job hunt in any possible way. I needed a full time job. I had a second part time job I loved, and didn't want to leave, but it wasn't enough to live on.

With that over my head, I did my annual trip to Illinois ("what I did on my Summer Vacation" still to be written). The end of August, start of September is my favorite time in the year. There's a specific fragrance to the Midwest just then. I suppose it's composed of what's blooming at that time, and how the temperature shifts affect what we smell. I know that's the time for Catawba Red haven peaches, and concord grapes but a few weeks away. I inhale it deeply on country roads in the fragrant twilight and the deep breaths I take not only inflate my lungs, but are stored against the winter to come, to be savoured in memory as I wrap myself in wool and peer out at a white world, come February.

The scent of late August is also the scent of change. Through a roller coaster of miracle-gloom-doom-miracle-tension-gloom-miracle over two months I found myself fully employed on the first of October. As a secretary. Not in a school. Not in an arts facility, Not in a college, but at the place I've been working part time for years.

My theme song now had words by John Hartford:

Good bye to sunshine
Good bye to dew
Good bye to flowers
And good bye to you
I'm off to the subway
I cannot be late
I'm going off to work in tall buildings

So, I went off to work in tall buildings, full time, at odd hours. While my own crisis of career was shaping up, the economic world was rattling to pieces and the upshot is, I KNOW I should be vastly grateful for having a job at a great place, with wonderful people (some of whom are friends I love), but I can't conjure the excitement, relief, or ecstatic joy of when the job was first offered. I've been trying to figure it out because the LACK of being overjoyed puzzles me. Is it the season? Oh, probably that has something to do with it. October brings on a potent brew of melancholy steeped in nostalgia. Since my teen years, I've always resonated with Ray Bradbury's introduction to "The October Country" - "That country where it is always turning late in the year, where twilights linger and midnights stay". No, it's something beyond the season, though I'm sure that's an ingredient. I've decided, no matter my actual span of years, I'm old enough to qualify for having a midlife crisis.

Except, I don't feel particularly like I'm in the midst of a crisis, per se. I'm unsettled. I took that idea apart several ways, put it back together and finally figured out:ok. midlife IDENTITY crisis. The time and situation of my life require me to look at myself in a new way that's fairly disconnected to how I've thought of myself for all my adult years. From even before finishing my undergrad work, ask me who I am and the answer is: "I'm an artist and an art teacher."

That's been work, love, passion, and identity. I kept that through the brief adventure in retail -artist and art teacher were part of that whole package. I suppose there is no end to being an artist. Yet. yet...Full time, I'm a secretary in an office. I don't have the time to be an artist very often. Does "use it or lose it" apply here? I dunno. I surely can't call myself an art teacher with no classes, and a schedule that precludes me teaching much more than a one week seminar once a year. or a private class on a random afternoon. So, who am I?

Over the last couple years, making music has become a much more specific, intense interest. Summer before last I fell in love with an anglo concertina that I had to give back to the friend who loaned it to me. Many men hit a mid life crisis and want a Corvette. I just want a concertina! I now play music at least twice a week with others, sometimes four times a week. I'm in two bands, music ministry at church, and still sing on my own and crave others to sing with. I grow increasingly competent and confidence adds to ability. I'm in no way thinking that music is a career possibility for me- I know better, and, well, it IS Folk Music and darn few are even the excellent players who make a living from just their musical efforts. I aspire to being "decent" - I know excellence and while I can achieve it in visual art, as a musician it's out of my reach. Why keep at it then, and take the time from visual art work?

Changes.

If I'm not selling my artwork to make a living; not teaching art to make a living; if something else is paying the bills, why not do what I love? I love the music and it fills my soul in the same places as creating visual art. It's more transient, yet seemingly sharable with a wider audience. This is a different kind of life, indeed, and I've not yet got my sea legs on it. I still feel unbalanced. This is the first time I've had a year round full time job working for someone else since 1976. I've worked full time and MORE in chunks, pieces, years, for myself, in combining 2, 3, 4 or 5 part time jobs at a time. Contract teaching, part time jobs, with always the frantic search for the next job and the next paycheck. I'm entering a stage of my life where what I do for my paycheck no longer gives the whole definition of who I am. I know just where the next paycheck WILL come from and when - how odd that will be! I surely haven't gotten used to it - changes this big take some time.

This new existence requires more precise working methods and learning new tasks at my job. It will also require finding my pleasure in music and becoming comfortable with change: I'm going off to work in tall buildings.(carrying my bottle of home brewed apricot black tea, iced)

Celebrating Independence

Yesterday was one of the most perfect July 4th days in my memory. It was coolish, clear, and every bit of the day went well in my part of the world. A rare sleepin morning wound up with the tradition in my neighborhood: a parade of locals.

There was a marching band, sort of, (they march, they stop and play, then they march on) that is made up of volunteers from the several streets around here. Pete & Dori's daughter Annie was right up there in the front row playing her trumpet. No doubt whatsoever that this was a significant reason why the band sounded so splendid this year... Neighbors you don't see for ages were out for the parade. Kids had decorated bikes, some of them decorated themself, their wagon or the dog. I particularly liked the blue glittery ballerina princess on a large tricycle, towing a...something. The parade goes down a couple of these long streets, and winds up at the grade school the next street over and devolves into a short concert and ice cream social. The simple pleasures of a very American tradition are so cherished when times get hard. This parade has been happening yearly for close to 50 years.

Some time fiddling about in the kitchen, making gluten-free black & blueberry tarts to take for dinner was well rewarded. A cookout with Steve & Arron and a batch of friends in their exquisitely planted back yard featured grilled goodies, supreme salad, and the fun of watching how much aerosol can whipped cream Elizabeth could pile on one tart. I also made some iced tea of black tea flavored with blueberry. When we were no longer hungry, we packed up and headed to see the fireworks that the city of Euclid puts on. This has been Steve's tradition for many many years & a part I love about it is, before the light goes, those gathered take turns reading the Declaration of Independence. Steve remarked about how last year, some folks near us thought we were reading some radical contemporary manifesto. I got the very short paragraphs this time, dagnabbit.

Friends who were here from DC declared the fireworks were "better than anything they have on the Mall in DC" and I doubt not their word: this was spectacular! BETTER than last year, though I thought that unlikely. Fireworks have improved so much in the last few decades and the colors were astonishing! So much purple! orange! pink! Shaped charges of a rose, cube, or heart were thrilling. A barrage of waterfall like cascades was my favorite bit, though there were a dozen other kinds of display that were gorgeous in the extreme. We had glowstick bracelets, the kids next to us had glowstick braclets AND pendants and glowing.. stuff. The ice cream truck parked nearby did a grand business before the booming started.

Friends, fireworks, parade, food & celebrating the privilege of being American, it was a completely wonderful day. I drove through Euclid Creek park on the way there, and saw the huge crowds set up for a day of pleasure there and felt the joy in celebrating as a group so much in evidence more keenly than seeing it just as a capacity crowd. There's that about this holiday that just needs a good variety of people to make it right.

A Soggy Solstice

For the longest day of the year, after what feels like the longest week of MY year, I'd planned to get some rest. While camp is in session, my time is not my own, for the most part. Today was the first time in weeks where I didn't have something about camp actively rattling around in my head on a list of "do immediately."

My plans for a Solstice Saturday included getting the increasingly shaggy lawn mowed, doing some porch sitting and music making, and listening to Prairie Home Companion which was being broadcast from Blossom Music Center tonight while noshing on some blue cheese burgers.

The lawn got some attention, but not hear enough. I did some singing, but not enough. The hard rain was preceded by a big strong wind that rattled windows and doors and blew me indoors before PHC came on. Dinner will be later tonight - I hope the rain lets up and the sky clears so I can sit on the porch and watch a late sunset.

Have a Cuppa Sarcasm

I get a kick out of William for a number of reasons. A big one is that some of his interests overlap my own. (Another big one is how they don't, and reading his blog exposes me to parts of the world I don't contact on a regular basis.

He recently blogged about the Science of Sarcasm as well as one of the more bizzare ways to Have a Cuppa. Much of what he writes is fascinating, but these two piqued my attention; one for "oh, that's how that works" and one for "oh, that's just too weird."

My own cuppa these days tends to be tall and full of ice. It's threatening to be 99° tomorrow, I'll need iced tea. I suppose I'm a half purist - I do ice my tea in the hot weather - but I brew the tea and cool it before icing it. Today I'm drinking Twinnings Four Red Fruits black tea, a summer favorite. I was fortunate that my friend Kate asked me "what do you want me to bring you from my safari to Jungle Jim's?" as it's not a tea I've found anywhere in Cleveland.

Too late to the party

When I talk with my friends who have always been involved in folk music, one of the things that keeps coming up is the incredible things I've just missed. By the time I got back into the edges of the folk scene in the 1980s, I'd missed alot. One of the big things I've missed is I never got to see Stan Rogers perform live. Today is the 25th anniversary of his death. I've friends and acquaintances who were friends of his. I've sung his songs, heard the near legendary stories, admired the man, but I missed the pleasure of knowing him. I've spent time with his brother Garnet, heard him perform a dozen times or more. Hard to fathom two such immense talents in the same family.

Irony of ironies - I had just gotten my first taste of Kate Wolf's music the week she died. I'd taken a break from listening to a tape of "Gold in California" in my car coming home from Illinois, and heard it on the news. I learned to make the effort to see performers whose work I admired on recordings or on the radio. Being in Grad school outside Chicago made that possible. Being part of the early years of Folk Alliance & attending conferences made that more possible, and introduced me to some performers live before I had a chance to fall in love with their body of work. Years of helping present concerts gave me the delight of hearing and getting to chat with Pete Seeger, Eric Bogle, had Jean Redpath dandle my puppy on her knee, had Bob Copper buy me a pint, ironed Andy M. Stewart's shirt, punned with Art Thieme ... many wonderful experiences in being part of the path of music coming in front of people.

It's harder now for me to get to see the performers I crave, but I still don't want to be late to the party to see David Francey or Jez Lowe or... there's dozens. Many of the performers I love are seldom in this area, where traditional music isn't as valued generally. I need to keep reminding myself that it's worth it to make the effort to be part of the audience & tell the performers how much I value their work.

Memorial Day in song

In my teens, Memorial Day weekend meant the start of the summer, celebrated with D's family at their cottage at Put-in-Bay. We'd go swimming for the first time of the year, frigid though Lake Erie might be. It was the 70s then, and "Veterans" tended to be our father's generation who'd seen service in the Second World War. Looking back now, I think how odd this was, because D's much older brother had been a Marine in Korea. Art school had not prepared him well for this, and he didn't deal with the world too well when he came home. PTSD is how they might diagnose him today, were he still alive.

Older now, I see Memorial Day in it's serious context, a day established to honor American Veterans, particularly the fallen ones. For a number of years, I've thought to do a 'play list' of songs I find appropriate for the day. My highly subjective choices tend to be mostly considered folk songs. The traditionalist in me takes note of Memorial Day being instigated in the aftermath of the American Civil War (show that I'm a Yankee by that title, don't I?) and has me start with songs from that era: Paddy's Lamentation/ By the Hush - fine advice for the lads back in Ireland to miss being drafted for the war between the states.
Tenting Tonight - captures the camp beside the battlefield spirit.
Richmond on the James - Anne & Cindy's finely wrought version of this lament for loss moves me.

My personal taste in songs tends toward the Anglo/ Irish/ Scottish continuum, and their wars had a wider geograpic range. The pride of a solider is represented well in a couple songs. The Minstrel Boy - I've always had a very eccentric vision of what that "wild harp slung behind him" would be, yet this is a song that covers the whole gamut of feelings about soldiering with a surpassingly beautiful melody. Green Hills of Tyrol - a lament for a Scottish soldier while The Flowers Of The Forest - played as a tune for military funerals as well, as well as being a song for lament. In

The Bantry Girl's Lament the possible loss of a significant member of the community - at least to the womenfolk- in battle, is a thing contemplated. Of the Irish, though of the same vintage as the American Civil war, is Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye, the most potent scream of anguish at the return of a wounded veteran I've ever heard. The American version, When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again (hurrah, hurrah) is so very sprightly, and another thing entire. I once heard the opera singer Ben Luxon sing Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye nearly acapella, when he was performing folk songs from both sides the Atlantic with the late Bill Crofut. Bill did a bit of percussion on his banjo head, and Ben's baritone nearly shrieked the last verse "You haven't an eye, you haven't a leg, you're an eyeless boneless chickenless egg, and you'll have to be put with a bowl to beg..." every hair on my body stood at attention.

My father was a veteran who was wounded before seeing action, but did sing songs of his time in the army:
Oh, how I hate to get up in the morning - Irving Berlin's charming gripe, which he paired with:
Gee, Mom I want to Go Home - in a similar vein.
There's a feel to WW2 vintage songs that tends to be a bit more flippant, even when serious. a couple I'm fond of that refer to who does, or doesn't do the work in a war: Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire and D-Day Dodgers

In thinking it over, many of the songs that come to my mind are actually about after the wars, how the survivors deal, veteran or civilian, and sometimes how they don't. Eric Bogle, of Australia has written several songs from a retrospective, thoughtful viewpoint: And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda about the Anzac veterans, and a song many think is Irish: No Man's Land (aka often as Green fields of France or Willie McBride). That's just his top two, there are more. While Bantry Girl's Lament wonders what they'll do without the lad who won't come home, Dancing at Whitsun describes how tradition goes on without the menfolk, after the war, while honoring their memory.
Huw Williams' song Rosemary's Sister is a concise vignette of how survivors of the Blitz carry scars. While not soldiers, they were most certainly particpating in the war in a way the American population didn't have to.

From wartime in my generation comes Pete Seeger's Where have all the Flowers gone (with the last verse by Joe Hickerson that turns it into a circular song). For my generation, it's a touchstone of a song for those who opposed "the war" (which in those days only meant Vietnam) and those who fought in it. I like to think it gives respect to the mourned dead. A duo of songs I learned from the singing of Phil & Margaret I sing as a paired set: Richard Thompson's How will I ever be simple again? and Margaret Nelson's wistful Died in the War. Phil sings John Prine's Sam Stone as a modern version of the tragic ballad genre. Years ago, in an introduction to Don't Let Me Go Home a Stranger Robin & Linda Williams talked about how it brought to mind a relative who was a Vietnam era Veteran, struggling with life. That thought comes to me every time I sing it.

A pleasure of songs, even when it's a pleasure tempered with sorrow, is how it can evoke memory and make one contemplate the subjects as you sing or listen.

Cut my cote, literally & proverbially

While researching square cut garments for classes this summer, my first thought was the classic Dorothy Burnham book Cut My Cote that was a revelation to weavers in the 70's and continues to be a starting point, reference and touchstone for medieval recreationsts like the SCA. I believe square cut garments to be the basis of the early Folkwear Patterns though the company progressed to more and more tailored garments.

An online search of the phrase "cut my cote" brought me to the name of John Heywood (c. 1497 - c. 1580) , an early compiler of proverbs. Like me, many will be more familiar with his grandson John Donne. I'd been thinking about proverbs & "family sayings" after a discussion at Mudcat Cafe, and was struck by how many proverbs that had their first documented airing in the collection of John Heywood were a part of my education, though in updated English, for the most part:

To keep the wolf from the door.
A peny for your thought.
Beggars should be no choosers.
Haste maketh waste.
Look ere ye leape.
No man ought to looke a given horse in the mouth.
One good turne asketh another.
One swallow maketh not summer.
Set the cart before the horse.
She frieth in her owne grease.
Small pitchers have wyde eares.
The rolling stone never gathereth mosse.
To robbe Peter and pay Poule.
Two heads are better then one.
When all candles bee out, all cats be gray.
When the sunne shineth, make hay.
Would yee both eat your cake and have your cake?

I'm going to think of this, the next time someone asks me "why are you interested in all that old stuff?" Age doesn't dim relevance. There's my proverb for the day.

The Mother's day thing

On Mother's Day I feel something that's akin to being Jewish on Christmas, I guess. It's not that I was hatched, but any experience of being cared for by my mother did not last as a memory past her death when I was two. One Sunday after church, when the subject of mothering instinct came up, I replied I hadn't any - I was raised by my adult version of a tomboy aunt - but I had a very good "aunting instinct." The older women who were part of this conversation all launched into variations on "ooooh, my aunt was the joy of my young life, she did all the things my mother wouldn't..." Yet there was always a want and need for someone motherly for me. Over my lifetime, I've been very fortunate that many friends have shared their mothers, and those mothers have shared their generous nature with me.

Betty - "big" Joanne's mom, who did all the coolmom things my aunt didn't have a clue about, from dolls to theme birthday parties to my first lipsticks.

Dorothy's mother Fran - who was my "loco parentis" when we'd go to their cottage on Put in Bay - particularly the crazy years when we were dating maniacs there. My first images of a kitchen full of baking cookies was sitting at her kitchen table watching and being shooed away from the rumballs. She taught me about plants, birds, some cooking, and let us listen to Tom Lehrer. One of my favorite folk music reference books, I first saw on her piano. A taste for things Scottish certainly started there. Always there, from tricycles to weddings, in a most momlike way.

Nonnie's mom, Anne. I'd watched her be a wonderful mother for years before she realized I was a wonderful young'un. I think it was when I married the guy they'd been thinking Nonnie would, that she and Dolor decided I must be a bit of all right. Then she made it her mission to teach me the things she felt were lacking in my education. I ate it up, as we used to tease her Betty Crocker Homemaker of the Year physics student daughter about being "Little Nonnie Homemaker." I still cherish things she gave me. Ya ever see me using an oh-so-70s orange mushroom embroidered hot pad, you know it's a special occasion because I'm using her gift to honor her memory in my kitchen.

Millie, the mom next door. I fall in the generation between her and her kids, but Millie mothers everyone, and everyone's pets. Her generosity is only limited by time and energy. All the practical help she can give, she does, as well as a great line in tea and sympathy & being a great sounding board. Her indignation on behalf of those she loves is gratifying in the extreme. Her strong sense of what is right, the effort she puts out into keeping the world around her on an even keel are among the best things a mother can give.

In the last dozen years of my life, I've had the unmitigated delight in being enfolded in Madam's extended family. Ruth's mom really is called Madam by all but the wee grandkids. It's quite an adventure for a Catholic-turned-Episcopalian to have acquired a Jewish mama late in life, but I highly endorse it! Her zest for living, her generosity with food and encouragement, her incredible storytelling and infectious laugh, are all delivered with incredible panache. She's the only one who could convince me to try eating chopped liver, and perhaps the only one who makes it so well that I now look forward to it. AND she let me wear her Mrs Senior Ohio tiara for my 50th birthday. What more could one ask?

I give thanks for all the wonderful women who've shared their capabilites in the mothering department with me. I give thanks for all the other mothers-of-friends I've come to know and enjoy as an adult. I give thanks for all the friends I have who are superb mothers: I look at their children and think how lucky they are to have such a life! I know how lucky I've been to have these women in my life. Happy mother's day, whoever ya are.

Coffee has it's place...

This is for William, whose warped sensed of humor used my blog name to title an entry of apalling bizzareness. He thinks coffee drinkers deserve equal time. I'll spare you, gentle hyperlink cliker. You didn't want to see white guys rap about their peculiar enthusisam for tea, did you?

I didn't think so.

So Farewell unto ye...

A recent national program on the local NPR station - Weekend America - about Forclosure Bus Tours had me absolutely apalled when they signed off "reporting from Cleveland" The slideshow on the Weekend America site starts with Shaker Heights, the next burb over from me.

Often, when meeting people and describing my passion for folk music, those who don't listen to it will say things like 'that may have been relevant in the 60s, but not anymore.' True, ya don't tend to hear Kumbayah much today, but that's nae hardly the whole story! I've been going through my repertoire of songs that start out with variations on"'one morning in May..." and was struck by the parallels;

SLIABH GALLION BRAE

As I went a walking one morning in May
To view yon fair valleys and mountains so gay
I was thinking on those flowers all doomed to decay
That bloom around ye bonny, bonny, Sliabh Gallion Braes

How oft in the morning with my dog and my gun
I roamed through the glens for joy and for fun
But those days are now all over and I must go away
So farewll unto ye, bonny, bonny, Sliabh Gallion Braes.

How oft of an evening and the sun in the West
I roved hand in hand with the one I loved best
But the hopes of youth are vanished and now I’m far away
So farewll un to ye, bonny, bonny, Sliabh Gallion Braes.

It was not for the want of employment at home
That caused all the sons of old Ireland to roam
But those tyrannizing landlords*, they would not let us stay
So farewll un to ye, bonny, bonny, Sliabh Gallion Braes.

For the rents were getting higher, and we could no longer stay
So farewll un to ye, bonny, bonny, Sliabh Gallion Braes.
(as sung by The Gaping Maw, long disbanded, still loved)
*predatory lenders would scan fairly well in that line

Maypole Mayday!

I couldn't resist the chance to dance the maypole for the first time in quite a few years. One of the regular dancers had finagled the Sunday Waltz for May to celebrate her birthday, launching it with a maypole dance beforehand.

My serious dancing days have been curtailed by painful bonespurs and unhappy joints in both knees, but dancing the maypole is so untaxing, and this situation was full of folks who'd never done it before, so the pace was even slower. Dancing, perse didn't really happen so much as we moved around the pole with music going on in the background.

The day was gorgeous, with lilacs in full fragrant bloom, and the maypole outside. She'd made a truly gorgeous maypole with thick grossgrain ribbons, provided a fine accordionist and instructed the group well. We got o'erly photographed, videoed and whatnot. I hung about for awhile when the action moved inside to waltz, and had a most gratifying afternoon. The rest of the piano player's band didn't show up - a scheduling mixup - and she didn't want to play alone. I play with her in another band, so she's familiar with me. I zipped home, gathered up autoharp, waltz music books, a tinwhistle and harmnonica for Dale and dashed back. The accordion player was willing and very very able to play whatever we had music for, so we played. I'm most fond of 3/4 time anyhow, I knew most of the tunes we did, stumbled only minimally, and enjoyed myself immensely. It didn't cross my mind that I'd get paid, being a last minute addition: THAT was a huge, and welcome surprise. (and of course, goes in my 'get a concertina' fund). A lovely thing to be so directly rewarded for helping out. Lovelier still, that I as able to do so, playing the music that fills my heart.

On the first day of May you'll see...

Some schoolgirls dancing the Maypole. Sanitize the concept all ya want, it's still a fertility ritual. I've danced the Maypole myself in years past with the English Country dance group here. I love the patterned braid that the dancers make 'round the pole as they dance.

I'd be remiss if I didn't note May Day, where around the world Morris Dancers danced up the sun, hankies waving, bells chiming, sticks whacking. So many folksongs start out on a morning in May, and things tend to get rollickingly, ruttingly randy from there on in. One of my favorites in this genre is a sweet lovesong with a happy ending, something rather rare in my repertoire!

CUCKOOS NEST

As I was a walking one morning in May
I met a pretty fair maid and unto her did say
I'll tell you me mind, it's for love I am inclined
An me inclination lies in your cuckoo's nest

Me darling, says she, I am innocent and young
And I scarcely can believe your false deluding tongue
Yet I see it in your eyes and it fills me with surprise
That your inclination lies in me cuckoo's nest

Some like a girl who is pretty in the face
and some like a girl who is slender in the waist
But give me a girl who will wriggle and will twist
At the bottom of the belly lies the cuckoo's nest

Me darling, says me, if you can see it in me eyes
Then think of it as fondness and do not be surprised
For I love you me dear and I'll marry you I swear
If you'll let me clap my hand on your cuckoo's nest

Me darling, says she, I can do no such thing
For me mother often told me it was committing sin
Me maidenhead to lose and me sex to be abused
So have no more to do with me cuckoo's nest

Some like a girl who is pretty in the face
and some like a girl who is slender in the waist
But give me a girl who will wriggle and will twist
At the bottom of the belly lies the cuckoo's nest

Me darling, says me, it's not committing sin
But common sense should tell you it is a pleasing thing
For you were brought into this world to increase and do your best
And to help a man to heaven in your cuckoo's nest

Me darling, says she, I cannot you deny
For you've surely won my heart by the rolling of your eye
Yet I see it in your eyes that your courage is surprised
So gently lift your hand into me cuckoo's nest

Some like a girl who is pretty in the face
and some like a girl who is slender in the waist
But give me a girl who will wriggle and will twist
At the bottom of the belly lies the cuckoo's nest

This couple they got married and soon they went to bed
And now this pretty fair maid has lost her maidenhead
In a small country cottage they increase and do their best
And he often claps his hand on her cuckoo's nest

From the album "Morris On"

Whoopie Ti Yi Yo Get along little blogger

Dagnabbit. I missed Cowboy Poetry Week, the third week of this poetry month. Cowboy poetry is something I encountered years after my brief acquaintance with the genuine article cowboys on a dude ranch in Wyoming. Hearing them later, at a folk festival in the Cuyahoga valley was a breath of the long prairie coming to my hilly part of the world. Though there is much excellent poetry, charming doggerel and touching Hallmark moments in the huge gamut that is cowboy poetry as a genre, my favorite is still the poem that sets the bar, sets the mood, holds the banner for this kind of expression in the larger world:

Reincarnation
Wallace McRae

"What does Reincarnation mean?"
A cowpoke asked his friend.
His pal replied, "It happens when
Yer life has reached its end.
They comb yer hair, and warsh yer neck,
And clean yer fingernails,
And lay you in a padded box
Away from life's travails."

"The box and you goes in a hole,
That's been dug into the ground.
Reincarnation starts in when
Yore planted 'neath a mound.
Them clods melt down, just like yer box,
And you who is inside.
And then yore just beginnin' on
Yer transformation ride."

"In a while, the grass'll grow
Upon yer rendered mound.
Till some day on yer moldered grave
A lonely flower is found.
And say a hoss should wander by
And graze upon this flower
That once wuz you, but now's become
Yer vegetative bower."

"The posy that the hoss done ate
Up, with his other feed,
Makes bone, and fat, and muscle
Essential to the steed,
But some is left that he can't use
And so it passes through,
And finally lays upon the ground
This thing, that once wuz you."

"Then say, by chance, I wanders by
And sees this upon the ground,
And I ponders, and I wonders at,
This object that I found.
I thinks of reincarnation,
Of life and death, and such,
And come away concludin': 'Slim,
You ain't changed, all that much.'"

Hymnody/Parody/Song glee

A Mighty Fortress is our Brain
Mark Graham

A mighty fortress is our brain, the mind a perfect treasure
To seek its worth, 'twould be in vain, its value beyond measure.
Aloft the neck the brain resides in high rent penthouse splendor
O'er fleshy empires it presides and suffers no pretenders.

The mighty brain is oft beset by life's cruel tribulations,
In drugs and demon alcohol it seeks its liberation.
Although its trials may be great, it still seems quite ironic
That it should feel subdominant and return to the tonic

But lurking in rebellion are the wily genitalia,
A-waiting 'til the brain's engaged in wild bacchanalia
And if thus engaged the brain receives a winged shaft from Cupid
The genitals and hormones strike, the brain is rendered stupid.

The brain sometimes for exercise will pump some mental iron
At Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Yale or other like environs,
Does twenty reps of calculus or speeds through Shakespeare's sonnets,
But mostly lifts the tons of shit that will be heaped upon it.

The brain and thumb together wrought our whole civilization,
The humble thumb just does its job, contented with its station.
And while the brain proclaims itself God's gift to all creation
If anyone would like the job we're taking applications.

Mark Graham is one of the funniest folk singer-songwriters around. His chops in traditional music are substantial as well, having performed in old time bands and 8 years as part of Kevin Burke's "Open House" band. Quite a number of other performers have covered his songs "Zen Gospel Singing," "I Can See your aura and it's ugly," "Their brains were small and they died." If Gary Larson were a folk singer-songwrter, he might want to be Mark Graham.

With my wild harp

Thomas Moore's Minstrel Boy has always been my image of a singing soldier. Singing "a song to cheer us" no matter the battle is likely as old a tradition as battle itself. Lately I've been thinking about the purpose of my autoharp playing, both why I do it, and who benefits from my doing it. In examination and critique it's both an encouraging and a humbling experience.

The Minstrel Boy
Thomas Moore

The minstrel boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death you'll find him;
His father's sword he hath girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him;

"Land of Song!" cried the warrior bard,
(Should) "Tho' all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!"

The Minstrel fell! But the foeman's steel
Could not bring that proud soul under;
The harp he lov'd ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder;

And said "No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and brav'ry!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free
They shall never sound in slavery!


The Strange Music
G.K. Chesterton

Other loves may sink and settle, other loves may loose and slack,
But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon his back,
Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger and I fret,
Still, my hope is all before me: for I cannot play it yet.

In your strings is hid a music that no hand hath e'er let fall,
In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all;
Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as your frame,
Fiercer than the pain that folds you, softer than your sorrow's name.

Not as mine, my soul's annointed, not as mine the rude and light
Easy mirth of many faces, swaggering pride of song and fight;
Something stranger, something sweeter, something waiting you afar,
Secret as your stricken senses, magic as your sorrows are.

But on this, God's harp supernal, stretched but to be stricken once,
Hoary time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a dunce.
But I will not fear to match them-no, by God, I will not fear,
I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand still to hear.

Sappy Cat Blogging

Thanks to Ktty for the best of the Bad Kitty Gang, Upsidedown Jake. Thanks to the modern poetry "it" book of the 70s "Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle..." for the second poem.

Cat's Dream
Pablo Neruda

How neatly a cat sleeps,
Sleeps with its paws and its posture,
Sleeps with its wicked claws,
And with its unfeeling blood,
Sleeps with ALL the rings a series
Of burnt circles which have formed
The odd geology of its sand-colored tail.

I should like to sleep like a cat,
With all the fur of time,
With a tongue rough as flint,
With the dry sex of fire and
After speaking to no one,
Stretch myself over the world,
Over roofs and landscapes,
With a passionate desire
To hunt the rats in my dreams.

I have seen how the cat asleep
Would undulate, how the night flowed
Through it like dark water and at times,
It was going to fall or possibly
Plunge into the bare deserted snowdrifts.

Sometimes it grew so much in sleep
Like a tiger's great-grandfather,
And would leap in the darkness over
Rooftops, clouds and volcanoes.

Sleep, sleep cat of the night with
Episcopal ceremony and your stone-carved moustache.
Take care of all our dreams
Control the obscurity
Of our slumbering prowess
With your relentless HEART

Catalogue
Rosalie Moore

Cats sleep fat and walk thin.
Cats, when they sleep, slump;
when they wake, stretch and begin
Over, pulling their ribs in
Cats walk thin.

Cats wait in a lump,
Jump in a streak.
Cats, when they jump, are sleek
As a grape slipping its skin-
They have technique.
Oh, cats don't creak.
They sneak.

Cats sleep fat.
They spread out comfort underneath them
Like a good mat,
As if they picked the place
And then sat;
You walk around one
As if he were City Hall
After that.

If male,
A cat is apt to sing on a major scale;
This concert is for everybody, this
Is wholsale
For a baton, he weilds a tail.

(He is also found,
When happy, to resound
With an enclosed and private sound.)

A cat condenses.
He pulls in his tail to go under bridges,
And himself to go under fences
Cats fit
In any size box or kit,
And if a large pumpkin grew under one
He could arch over it.

When everyone else is just ready to go out,
The cat is just ready to come in.
He's not where he's been.
Cats sleep fat and walk thin.

To His Coy Daffodil

Had we but bloom enough and time...ah, the time of daffodils is waning. The first blooming ones are withered and gone, the hearty yellow now is the last of the late bloomers, tulips and the first of the dandelions. Last week, in their prime, Steve went on a photo safari on Liberty (a braver man than I, but then he walks farther, which helps) and he's given me permission to post this set of pictures.


To Daffodils
Robert Herrick

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.



Gloriously at their peak are the magnolias-with-small-petals that surround the female statue that is a personification of the Ukrainian spirit.

It also looks like there are going to be two new gardens or installations in Rockefeller Park's Cultural Garden collection, either side of the street, just north of St. Clair. One looks suspiciously like it could be a fountain, once they take the tarp off.

May I be of Service?

Robert William Service, an Englishman raised partially in Glasgow with a Scottish gran and a batch of doting aunts, came of a wealthy family, had a career in banking, but is most known for his Poems of the Yukon, where he sowed his wild oats in his youth, and reaped a context for his writing for years to come. "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," "The Cremation of Sam McGee," "The Ballad of the Ice-Worm Cocktail" all with the flavor of the wild parts and wild men of the Yukon, are just a tiny bit of his prodigious output. With Kipling as a hero, I think of him as an inspiration to the cowboy poet movement, in particular with this poem:

The Joy Of Little Things

It's good the great green earth to roam,
Where sights of awe the soul inspire;
But oh, it's best, the coming home,
The crackle of one's own hearth-fire!
You've hob-nobbed with the solemn Past;
You've seen the pageantry of kings;
Yet oh, how sweet to gain at last
The peace and rest of Little Things!

Perhaps you're counted with the Great;
You strain and strive with mighty men;
Your hand is on the helm of State;
Colossus-like you stride . . . and then
There comes a pause, a shining hour,
A dog that leaps, a hand that clings:
O Titan, turn from pomp and power;
Give all your heart to Little Things.

Go couch you childwise in the grass,
Believing it's some jungle strange,
Where mighty monsters peer and pass,
Where beetles roam and spiders range.
'Mid gloom and gleam of leaf and blade,
What dragons rasp their painted wings!
O magic world of shine and shade!
O beauty land of Little Things!

I sometimes wonder, after all,
Amid this tangled web of fate,
If what is great may not be small,
And what is small may not be great.
So wondering I go my way,
Yet in my heart contentment sings . . .
O may I ever see, I pray,
God's grace and love in Little Things.

So give to me, I only beg,
A little roof to call my own,
A little cider in the keg,
A little meat upon the bone;
A little garden by the sea,
A little boat that dips and swings . . .
Take wealth, take fame, but leave to me,
O Lord of Life, just Little Things.

I confess there's a bit of the following in me, though my vice tends to be "how to" books for projects that I try once or never get around to pursuing.

Book Lover

I keep collecting books I know
I'll never, never read;
My wife and daughter tell me so,
And yet I never head.
"Please make me," says some wistful tome,
"A wee bit of yourself."
And so I take my treasure home,
And tuck it in a shelf.

And now my very shelves complain;
They jam and over-spill.
They say: "Why don't you ease our strain?"
"some day," I say, "I will."
So book by book they plead and sigh;
I pick and dip and scan;
Then put them back, distrest that I
Am such a busy man.

Now, there's my Boswell and my Sterne,
my Gibbon and Defoe;
To savour Swift I'll never learn,
Montaigne I may not know.
On Bacon I will never sup,
For Shakespeare I've no time;
Because I'm busy making up
These jingly bits of rhyme.

Chekov is caviare to me,
While Stendhal makes me snore;
Poor Proust is not my cup of tea,
And Balzac is a bore.
I have their books, I love their names,
And yet alas! they head,
With Lawrence, Joyce and Henry James,
My Roster of Unread.

I think it would be very well
If I commit a crime,
And get put in a prison cell
And not allowed to rhyme;
Yet given all these worthy books
According to my need,
I now caress with loving looks,
But never, never read.

A sentiment I heartily endorse:
A Song For Kilts

How grand the human race would be
If every man would wear a kilt,
A flirt of Tartan finery,
Instead of trousers, custom built!
Nay, do not think I speak to joke:
(You know I'm not that kind of man),
I am convinced that all men folk.
Should wear the costume of a Clan.

Imagine how it's braw and clean
As in the wind it flutters free;
And so conducive to hygiene
In its sublime simplicity.
No fool fly-buttons to adjust,--
Wi' shanks and maybe buttocks bare;
Oh chiels, just take my word on trust,
A bonny kilt's the only wear.

'Twill save a lot of siller too,
(And here a canny Scotsman speaks),
For one good kilt will wear you through
A half-a-dozen pairs of breeks.
And how it's healthy in the breeze!
And how it swings with saucy tilt!
How lassies love athletic knees
Below the waggle of a kilt!

True, I just wear one in my mind,
Since sent to school by Celtic aunts,
When girls would flip it up behind,
Until I begged for lowland pants.
But now none dare do that to me,
And so I sing with lyric lilt,--
How happier the world would be
If every male would wear a kilt!

Keep on Kipling

Rudyard B. Kipling is one of the first poets I became aware of, from a young age, as a writer with a body of works. "If" was a poem boys were drawn to when they were required to memorise something. In looking back, the more remarkable and enthusiastic performance was of "Gunga Din" by a wee girl named Julie. I came across Kipling's poetry and prose again and again, with each age bringing different parts of his astonishing production to my attention.



















Runyard Barking Kipling, the world's smallest GOOD looking sheltie

The Power of the Dog
Rudyard Kipling

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie--
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet's unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find--it's your own affair--
But...you've given your heart for a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!);
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone--wherever it goes--for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart for the dog to tear.

We've sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long--
So why in Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

It's near impossible to pick out every Kipling poem I love, but I know the joy I take in them has been forever enhanced by the late Peter Bellamy, who made it his life's work to reunite Kipling's verse with the tune it was set to, and failing that, to compose his own. This he did with great dexterity, and a braying nasal voice that was an acquired taste for those not anglophile to the hilt. Of all of the Bellamy/Kipling, I think I most love "The Road to Mandalay" as performed on the Mandalay album by the Friends of Fiddlers's Green. Next would be "Smuggler's Song" as performed by either Roberts & Barrand or Anne & Cindy. John and Tony have a wonderful album Naulakha Redux, all of Kipling songs, first sung to the background of Kipling's Vermont home, Naulakha, near to where Tony lives. Not least, but definitely hardest to sing, is the setting of "The Sea Wife" that has come down in aural tradition in Gordon Bok's family. Bok/Muir/Trickett recorded it and I can't unravel the harmony to get the solid melody, much as I love the song. Percy Grainger did settings of Kipling - "The Sea Wife" and "We Have fed our Seas" among others.

Kipling seems to need some historical context for the young. Those to whom Political Correctness is the only god to worship, decry what they see as racism. Yep, he was an English Colonial, with all the possibility for condescension that it implies. I don't think that his main function was a British Colonialist apologist, however. As a traditionalist, I value the things about his work that put it solidly in a geographic and temporal context.

Mandalay
Rudyard Kipling

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,
An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat -- jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen,
An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,
An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:
Bloomin' idol made o'mud --
Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd --
Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she stud!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' slow,
She'd git 'er little banjo an' she'd sing "Kulla-lo-lo!"
With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' 'er cheek agin' my cheek
We useter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak.
Elephints a-pilin' teak
In the sludgy, squdgy creek,
Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to speak!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

But that's all shove be'ind me -- long ago an' fur away,
An' there ain't no 'busses runnin' from the Bank to Mandalay;
An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:
"If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else."
No! you won't 'eed nothin' else
But them spicy garlic smells,
An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an' the tinkly temple-bells;
On the road to Mandalay . . .

I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?
Beefy face an' grubby 'and --
Law! wot do they understand?
I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be --
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay,
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

From the knowledge and praise of the exotic, to the praise of the everyman, Kipling covers the waterfront, the landscape, and all the places of the heart and soul (A recording of this as a song on John & Tony's album Twiddlum Twaddlum):

The Pilgrim's Way

I do not look for holy saints to guide me on my way,
Or male and female devilkins to lead my feet astray.
If these are added, I rejoice -- if not, I shall not mind,
So long as I have leave and choice to meet my fellow-kind.
For as we come and as we go (and deadly-soon go we!)
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!

Thus I will honour pious men whose virtue shines so bright
(Though none are more amazed than I when I by chance do right),
And I will pity foolish men for woe their sins have bred
(Though ninety-nine per cent. of mine I brought on my own head).
And, Amorite or Eremite, or General Averagee,
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!

And when they bore me overmuch, I will not shake mine ears,
Recalling many thousand such whom I have bored to tears.
And when they labour to impress, I will not doubt nor scoff;
Since I myself have done no less and -- sometimes pulled it off.
Yea, as we are and we are not, and we pretend to be,
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!

And when they work me random wrong, as oftentimes hath been,
I will not cherish hate too long (my hands are none too clean).
And when they do me random good I will not feign surprise.
No more than those whom I have cheered with wayside charities.
But, as we give and as we take -- whate'er our takings be --
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!

But when I meet with frantic folk who sinfully declare
There is no pardon for their sin, the same I will not spare
Till I have proved that Heaven and Hell which in our hearts we have
Show nothing irredeemable on either side of the grave.
For as we live and as we die -- if utter Death there be --
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!

Deliver me from every pride -- the Middle, High, and Low --
That bars me from a brother's side, whatever pride he show.
And purge me from all heresies of thought and speech and pen
That bid me judge him otherwise than I am judged. Amen!
That I may sing of Crowd or King or road-borne company,
That I may labour in my day, vocation and degree,
To prove the same in deed and name, and hold unshakenly
(Where'er I go, whate'er I know, whoe'er my neighbor be)
This single faith in Life and Death and to Eternity:
"The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!"

A watched Daffodil...(Daffodilly Watch, part the last)

It would be the week where my attention had to be focused elsewhere that the last bits of the daffodils came to bloom, decking out (the drive formerly known as) Liberty in yellow splendour. Around Shaker Lakes in Madam's yard, she suspects this last weekend was the peak for the daffodils there. My camera and I missed it all. In between frantic to-ing and fro-ing I did note that at this time last week the only green in the trees was a dim haze on the willows, and in that week's time the magnolias have bloomed, the redbuds are shedding enough that looks like someone spilled a bag of cheap kitty kibble under them, the forsythia is in full fabulous bloom, and more than the willows have that misty green haze of new leaves on them.

Poems with Sharp Edges

I've always had a taste for poetry that was a bit sharp, particularly with the knife turn at the end. The one that comes to mind first in this vein is:

Incident
Countee Cullen

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee;
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

Early exposure to the Norton Anthology of poetry set the bar for me. I was enchanted to find that some of the poems I'd studied had been sung ballads, come down through the aural tradition. While murder ballads have been a steady diet in my singing repertoire, less gruesomely detailed, stark and shocking poems like Richard Corey by Richard Arlington Robinson woke many up to poetry not being all loveydovey saccharine.

Though even the stark, bare bones can be put to music:

I Shall Not Care
Sara Teasdale

When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you shall lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough;
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

I've hauled out the Dorothy Parker already, so what on earth is left? There are the outwardly facetious, yet sharp poems. Since high school (or because of it?), this one by Samuel Hoffenstein has had my vote:

Love Song

Your little hands,
Your little feet,
Your little mouth --
Oh, God, how sweet!

Your little nose,
Your little ears,
Your eyes, that shed
Such little tears!

Your little voice,
So soft and kind;
Your little soul,
Your little mind!

Earth
John Hall Wheelock

"A planet doesn't explode of itself,: said drily
The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air-
"That they were able to do it is poof that highly
Intelligent beings must have been living there."

Also on the facetious side is Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies (where illustration is part of the wry).


For down and dirty GOTCHA with nice scansion and meter, you just can't beat Houseman. Although his Is My Team Plowing has the best knife twist ending:
...I cheer a dead man's sweetheart
Never ask me whose.
Not as succinctly sharp edged, yet the poem that did the most to put me on the trail of this sort of poem is:

-from A Stropshire Lad
A. E. Housman

"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour
The better for the embittered hour;
It will do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that sprang to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
--I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

Patterns

The daffodils are blooming. Loved men and women are coming home from today's war dead or worse. The mannered seasons of the heart are on view at the Playhouse with Jane Austen's characters sweeping the stage in their ballgowns. The costuming and the arena of war may change, but the depth of loss does not.

Patterns
Amy Lowell

I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.
And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.
I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the
paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles
on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon --
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.
Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.
In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.
In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

Daffodilly Watch, Part 3

Ah, now there's something to see on MLK (the drive formerly known as Liberty)! The clutches of golden yellow Daffodils are in full bloom, particularly near the tenniscourts and pond. Shyer late bloomers of a paler yellow are still getting the lemony yellow tips starting to bend over, ready to bloom. Other sections have the daffodils at different stages, from short foliage to full bloom. Red buds are showing on some of the trees, though the glitter of light green leaf tips has yet to start. At the end of MLK drive, there was the utter delight of sitting at the traffic light in front of the Church of the Holy Oilcan, and rolling down the windows to better hear their carillon peal out Hayden's "Austria" (Glorious things of thee are spoken...)

I DO believe in spring, I DO, I DO!

Love, when alteration finds.

I love bookstores. There used to be more independent bookstores when I was growing up as a pampered reader. I needed no persuading that a trip to the fabulous Loganberry Books (to see the altered book show in the gallery) would be a perfectly splendid thing to do on a sunny spring Monday afternoon, and JanC would be the perfect person to do it with. I talked Jan into including me in her east side safari. She shooed me out of the bookstore before I either drooled in public over a table of Edward Gorey books/cool merchandise or let my pen write a check I ought not.
We had a nosh at Shaker Square, where in nostalgia for the burgers of the 1970's vintage Fairmount Circle Our Gang, we were delighted to find something VERY like what used to be their "Dave's" burger on the menu. The excellence of the burger and potato fries cut in waffle discs balanced out the iced tea that was about the shade of Canada Dry Ginger Ale. If there was any caffeine content, it was totally indiscernible. The day,the company, the book gawking, and a great burger, all getting spring off to a great start!