Have a Cuppa

Where did I put that essay?

2010-11-24T18:06:00.004-05:00

After writing about my grand time at the Central Ohio Folk Festival, I had every intent to detail the rest of the festivals: "What I did on my summer vacation." Welp, here it is, the end of November and I haven't done that, NOR detailed the fabulousness of my Fall vacation either!

Bad Blogger, no cookie.

This summer I went to more folk festivals and did more folk music oriented things than I've done in years. Waiting so long to document it, without programs in hand, means I'm likely to forget more than I remember, So I'll start with the highlights, and backfill with specifics later.

Dulci-More Festival, Memorial Weekend
I've known about this festival for about as long as its been going on, but never attended till this year. This required investing in a new tent, as it'd been about a decade since my last camping, and that tent had been a garage sale give away last year, all sorta gooey and sticking together. The draw this year was again having some headliners who were friends: Sally Rogers and Doofus. I've known Sally for decades, since first meeting her at Northern Illinois University's New Prairie Cafe, where she appeared with Claudia Schmidt, and among lovely songs and witty repartee, gave a demonstration of the proper way to blow your nose complete with a spitton like vase to put the ...er... products... into. Most impressed that she could sing that well while obviously harboring a snottycold. In later years I saw Sally when we'd present her in Cleveland, or at Folk Alliances. I knew she was a beader & I decided to clean up some of my karma by FINALLY fixing a necklace she'd gotten from me at FA in Washington DC, that I'd promised to fix when a strand came loose. I had quite a bit of a chance to spend time just chatting and catching up with Sally. We shared our sadness at Mary's death and the sorrows of the Paton family. In her mainstage set, Sally dedicated a song to Mary and another friend of hers who had also died recently. With Sally's own recorder, I digitized? (wanted to say taped, but that wouldn 't be accurate anymore, would it?) - recorded her set, so David could hear it. I also went home with some of Howie's wine for myself and for David.

Along with my camping, I'd talked Betsy into going along, with her larger car hauling the EZup canopy and some of the grilling equipment. When I got to the camp in central Ohio, it was an incredibly hilly place, and looking to hike up that hill a couple times a day was a bit daunting with bad knees. The new tent went up very nicely, just like the instructions said. Betsy arrived after I'd gotten it up and things inside, and just BARELY got her tent up when the booming I'd taken to be someone shooting in the distance turned out to be thunder and a frogstrangler storm coming in from the east (a direction weather goes TO up where I live, not where it comes FROM!). I was dry and comfortable in my tent - light to see, book to read, air mattress cushy below me. What was NOT so great was how I'd sited the tent. I'd forgotten to look very carefully at the land, and what I ended up with was a dry tent proper, but this big new thing came with a sort of screened in porch room on the front, with mesh gutters along the inside edges. THAT was ankle deep in water that never came in the tent. The weather cleared up, mostly, the festival was a blast. Doofus, made up of two couples I know from somewhat different contexts weren't only fantastic on stage, but they gave incredibly good workshops in group playing and autoharp. Betsy, with lap dulcimer and fiddle was on a different track entirely through the workshops, and had praise for much of what she attended, as well. (who could NOT find Sally to be wonderful?)

Some of the other "stars" were wonderful folks unknown to me before this festival. A mulitinstrumentalist named Timothy Seaman was camped just the other side of Betsy. We breakfasted with him and vastly enjoyed his company and playing. In one of the song circle sessions he'd brought his flue and improvised around the melody as we sang. At the request of one of the dulcimer players, we did a reprise of Shenandoah, with just voices and his flute - magic! Susan Trump was also a revelation. Turns out she's buddies with Phil & Margaret and I delighted in her performances.

Ohio Scottish Games
A regular June event, and my first time ever making it. Made the most of it, too. Saw Alasdair Frasier for the first time & totally blown away. Attended a session where he taught a tune for a couple hours and watched Betsy get up on stage and boogie to it, as she'd not brought her fiddle. A roup of sisters who'd played at Dulci-more, were a great band, with two harps, whistles and concertina and an age range from 8 to 20something. Got to be audience for Tim Wallace, who was running one stage. Saw some pipers I know march by, kilted up. Lovely time

Raccoon County Folk Festival
Held in a historical village museum setting, this was the first time I'd been to this long running festival, and a number of friends have played it in previous years. There was some wonderful oldtime music coming from some delightfully young performers. The Akron Ceili band was a bit of fun, and I very much liked their attitude of encouraging anyone to come to their weekly ceili sessions. I resolved to take them up in this invitation. Even though it rained a bit through much of the festival, folks put up umbrellas and stayed. Got to see people I've not seen 'round for awhile. Lovely time.

Music in the Valley
Always a good time to be had at the annual Hale Farm event. This year, Mud in Yer Eye didn't have a place set up so much as many band members joining a jam session with old time players. I wanted to find some folks to sing with, and sat off by myself, with a few friends coming by now and then. Had a chance to do some autoharp playing with some folks I know from the extended MIYE family, including singing. Then off to Paul & Laura's bash where I saw MORE folks I hadn't seen in ages. Seeing folks whose kids were about the age THEY were when I first met them had me feeling powerful old. Actually getting out an instrument there and playing it for the first time, incredibly liberating. I went with Ruth to this second part of the day, and had flashbacks to all the wonderful "girl trips" we'd taken in the past.

Cleveland's Irish Cultural Festival
July. HOT. very hot. Mike was MCing the gazebo stage again, and spent some time hanging out with him. I got to gag at the Irish Sopranos (could NOT get out fast enough when they started into Danny Boy) I'd plunked meself down at the wrong stage with my lunch! gaaaah! Did get to see some lovely music before the skies opened up - and they did. Wicked nasty gray sky, rolled in over the hot hot hot in the sun and just DUMPED water. I dashed to the canopy behind the stage and helped get instruments and instrument cases under cover and stood chatting with the dancers who'd been there to dance to Cherish the Ladies. Glad I went, but left before the evening could get rainier.

more.. definitely more to the summer... I threaten to edit this to be more complete. Sue me if I don't, eh?

In the merry month of May...

2010-05-15T22:19:00.009-04:00

as many an Anglo Trad song would have it... this May I went a-folking downstate for the Central Ohio Folk Festival. Last year May had started out with a weekend of making music off in the wilds of Pennsylvania. Plans for doing that this year fell through when JanC was not well enough to go. I'd had a wretched spring, or at least I FELT wretched with a month long battle with bronchitis, sinusitis and hand strain. I hadn't recovered enough ambition to go alone, so I postponed carousing for another week to go to COFF. (An ironic acronym after the spring long Cough That Would Not Die)

The lure was too much- all the headline groups were people I knew, loved, and in some cases, hadn't seen for way too many years. Cherished crazies from northern Ohio, the Smokin Fez Monkeys, were there to do their Jugbandbizzare best. From Michigan Mustard's Retreat, who've been friends for nearly 25 years were part of a larger group, "The Yellow Room Gang" that also included Matt Watroba, who I've enjoyed singing with for years, at Folk Alliance or festivals, but had only a handful of previous experiences in seeing him as a mainstage performer. The end of the show headliner was Canadian James Keelahagn, who I'd not seen for a decade or more. I'd vivid memories of a time he appeared here in a concert I helped present, in an unusual venue - the chapel of a small Catholic college. I'd gone to bring him his fee and record sales proceeds, and walked into him changing - temporarily shirtless- with long hair flowing, in the sacristy of the chapel. One of dozens of priceless Celtic Ceol moments, that.

Friday afternoon: slow to get on the road, as the Grace Car had "needs" a bit beyond what her mechanic and I had expected. 'Twas hot on Friday. really. 85° in Columbus at 9:00 pm when Ellen and I went out to dinner. I had a brief glimpse of her two feral kitties and enjoyed trading "whatcha been up to" stories with her, since it had been a good handful of years since I'd seen her when I'd do Winterfair in December at the State Fairgrounds- nearly a decade, I think.
Saturday morning I intended to get going early, as I still had to register at the festival, find it, AND navigate around a large bicycle rally that takes place through Ellen's neighborhood and the direction I was heading. '

I got myself to the festival grounds in good time, but Oh, the temperature had dropped. Dramatically dropped. I heard the high expected was 55° and I don't know that we even hit that, as the wind was ferocious adding a windchill that reminded me of winter on the prairie. I had known evening temperatures would be lower, and brought some warm pants and layers of sweaters with that in mind. The only jacket-coat like thing I had was my lovely purple wool ruana, which I wore all the time & had plenty of compliments about ("would you mind if I felt your shawl..?) I also wore a brim style chapeau with a beaded hatband, so my pinned up hair could fit out the top. The wicked wind precluded wearing my hair down for my fancy flower hat - I'd NO desire to end up an accidental rastafarian. By ten o'clock I'd added so many layers that I had on socks, long velvet pants, a floor length full skirt, two layers of sweaters and a long tunic top, under the ruana. I didn't look TOO bag lady, but someone asked me if that (the hat, ruana, beadwork, etc) was my "everyday" dress. Well yes, sez I, just not ALL of it on the SAME day, normally!

The whole festival, COFF, was much different from one I'd been to before. The emphasis was very definitely on improving instrumental skills and knowledge, in particular dulcimers. I'd go so far as to call it dulcimer-centric. I don't think I'd seen so many lap dulcimer options since the demise of the (long gone, much missed) Black Swamp Dulcimer Festival. There were day long performance stages - two of those, concerts in the manstaige tent, and one smaller tent. The other four tents were dedicated to workshops or song swap sessions. Another wealth this festival has is in (really good quality) singer-song writers. That'd describe most of the headliners - with folks from the Yellow Room Gang and Keelahagn doing a 2-day songwriters' class. Not that trad was completely ignored - far from it. I was amused that out in this lovely Columbus Metro Park I heard one of the most academic talks based on a single song since I heard Joe Hickerson give the life history of "Bright Morning Stars" at the University of Chicago festival, ages ago. It 'twas in this same academic atmosphere that I discovered a traditional folk instrument to loathe.

Some folks cant abide banjos
Many people run from hammer dulcimers
Drummers get a bad rap regularly
Bagpipers are expected to keep moving to be less of a target.

More loathsome than all of these is the bazooka.

Bazooka's not a folk instrument, you say? Well... it sounds a bit like bouzouki, but I'm talking about acoustic mouth driven bazooka bubble gum. Lawd, oh lawd, there was a lad who could pop his gum at a heretofore unimaginable volume. It CRACK! sounded like someone clapping CRACK! once, at random intervals. You never quite knew CRACK! when he'd pop his gum again. People craning their necks to see who was the perpetrator CRACK! and their annoyed glares phased this guy not at all. CRACK! I have to admit, this is one of my least favorite things that people can do in public, but this was above and beyond. Too much CRACK! spoils the craic, sez I.

The Fez Monkeys did a Jug band workshop with the stated intent of having the participants be part of their mainstage appearance that evening. Kazoos were passed out. Small jugs were loaned. Percussion instruments were put into willing hands. One guy came with a totally Fez Monkeyish washboard with...er... attachments (cowbell, cymbal, bike horn, bells, cans) Fun, silliness, music, noise & sent on our way chuckling.

A real joy in a new festival in a new area is you don't know the local talent, or what they do, and it's all gloriously fresh. The COFF program had descriptive biographies, and even more welcome writeups about each of the workshops to help make decisions (5 tents, 2 side stages, one main stage - LOTS of decisions). I made some good choices, some eh choices, and some timeslots just had nothing that interested me, a permanently lap dulcimerless lass. It gave me time to talk with a number of interesting folks, including already seen performers who impressed me, look at the recordings and instruments and "stuff" on sale, and get some food now and then.

I'd hauled along serious instrumentation, but with how cold it was, didn't worry 'bout leaving them in the car. It's terribly unwieldy to haul folding chair, autoharp, bowed psaltery, concertina and a tote bag everywhere you go. Eventually, I stocked up my lovely folding chair (with multiple side pockets) with my tea bottle, program, and stuck other necessities in my wee bag worn bandolier style. I took along a blanket with the chair to go to the evening concert. First up were the Fez Monkeys, and I knew we'd be joining them the second half of their set. As I sat there I panicked - I'd left my Fez Monkeys OFFICIAL kazoo in my tote bag in my trunk, oh no!!!! Then I relaxed, realizing I still had my Mud-in-yer-Eye April Fool's dance kazoo in the side pocket of the chair. Before I could relax entirely, I had the horrific realization that I'd left the car keys hooked into the tote bag - in the trunk of the car. I went bolting out of the tent and scared up a park ranger to deal with the problem while there was still daylight. I fruitlessly looked into my wee purse, but I knew the keys weren't there. Bless those Park Rangers - they'd have a great career in car theft - he had the window shimmied and my car open with no scratch or dent in about 3 minutes. I got back to the main stage audience in goodly time to see the bulk of the Fez Monkeys' set and get up and be part of the festival pick up band. Grand fun. I know there was video recording of it all, but no idea where those recordings go.

It was immensely gratifying to see that Mustard's Retreat are highly valued and frequent visitors to the Columbus Area. Here, they'd performed their first show in my living room back in the late 80s, had a couple other shows, but nowhere NEAR the repeat audience who can sing along on all their songs. Life hasn't been easy for David in the last decade or so, and seeing such a solid fan base there pleased me to no end. Their group of friends in the Yellow Room Gang reflected the same kind of joy, intelligence, wonderful musicianship and incredible wordsmithing that I'd come to love of David and Michael - what a joy to see!

James Keelahagn - I wouldn't have recognized on the street unless I heard his voice, it's been so long. He'd recently returned from a trip to Australia, in particular a section that had been devastated last year by fires. He talked about the resonance of his song "Cold Missouri Waters" to the experiences of friends there in losing their houses to fires flashing through in moments. His story songs continue to be brilliant points of light on his chosen topic. I brought his "House of Cards" album home along with a couple Mustard's Retreat albums they'd produced since I saw them last.

Saturday night retreating to a WARM hotel room and HOT shower was extraordinarily welcome. Sunday dawned warmer & as the day went on, warmer still. I was able to wear not so many layers, and even shed some, though it never got all THAT warm. I had a chance to spend time with some of the performers who were known to me. Bill Schilling was giving a workshop most of the time, from what I could gather - some of it filling in for some no-shows. I sat in on his Bowed Psaltery workshop. I was intrigued by a man who'd built his himself from plans he "found online" as a sort of warm up exercise to building himself a hammer dulcimer. His psaltery range was from C to C- which I'd never seen before. I had a good case of WANT. I've still got the plans for my alto psaltery - wonder how hard it'd be to do another one with a change of range? Marge Diamond was being her cheerful dulcimer playing self. I was most surprised by a trio made up of folks from the Akron/Kent area I've known for years - but not as a trio. Ed Bray and his wife Elaine joined up with (known mostly as a bass player) Barb Withee. All three of them multi instrumentalists, and all three doing vocals. I don't know that I've ever heard Barb sing like that before, and I was delighted. I was fond of the repertoire they were performing and hope to get a chance to sing with them later this year. Their set was the last thing I was able to attend. Matt Watroba was leading a song circle till later in the day, but I had to head home for a band rehearsal Sunday night - going directly from festival to rehearsal.

It was peculiar to be at a festival where I had no job/responsibility & could roam freely and only have to worry about getting to what I wanted to see on time. Of the dozens of festivals I've been at, I think this was perhaps only the third or fourth time that'd been the case. I was surpised at how much I didn't miss the responsibilty part, possibly because it was a new-to-me venue. Or, it's one more sign of leading a very different sort of life in this decade.

In the dark of a dark year

2009-12-31T23:00:00.006-05:00

When the sun goes pale
And the earth turns cold
Let us do as our foremothers did of old
Gather round the fire with our stories and songs
And dance in the dark of the year.
(Margaret Nelson & Susan Urban)

In years gone by, I'd have been out dancing the new year in with the contra community. Now I can't dance, though I'm frequently part of the band, though not tonight. Instead I try to get a last word in on a blog I've not put a first word in yet this year.

I found it hard to write about, for 2009 was a year of nearly unrelenting sadness, grief and wrenching change. Some of the big changes were winding up even before last January - the change from part time camp director to full time office worker was a seismic shift in my universe. It was the end of thinking of my self primarily as an art teacher. Though I shan't catalog it month by month, the first big hit was April 15 (as if the omens weren't bad enough)- The death of my last dog, Kipling, He was a very good dog- the merriest most joyful thing on four paws through most of his life, running and barking so happily through the world that it became his name: Runyard Barking Kipling. the world's smallest good looking sheltie. His size and cat-like scrumpty dog noises that subbed for purring endeared him to people who were more cat than dog oriented. Those who live alone understand how having a critter in the house takes on additional significance, and how fierce that loss can be. I was far from the only one of my circle who lost beloved pets this year. We shared how the span of this dog's life or that cat's life defined an era of our own lives

Through spring I watched the decline and ultimate failure of the newsletter and folk group I'd poured so much energy into. Ruth's "just let it go..." while sage advice, was bitter to follow.

In the natural course of things, death comes to our parents. I've lost all of mine decades ago. but friends are now coming to that stage in their life, and it's difficult to be a party to this grief. In situations where I've known parents as their own persons, its harder still. Half a dozen folks I'm close to grieved parents lost. Several widows mourned their partners of half a decade and more. But it wasn't only those rich in years who were lost this year. There were children, and grandchildren, beloved cousins, brothers, sisters, all lost to people I hold dear. Horrid illness, heartrending accident, shocking suicide. Holding the hands of friends wracked with grief happened over and over this year, like no other I can recall. Even the year both my Father and my husband died was not plagued like this.

The death that cut closest to the bone for me was Mary, in June. She had been my example of "miracles can happen" -to have her chemo drugs' bad effects come back and take her out was devastating, horrible and shocking. The wonderful times we'd shared in the spring when her vitality had her coming to dance to a band I play in made the shock more intense. The benefit concert we'd had for her, in retrospect, like a wake with her there to enjoy herself, in good heath, full of joy and hope.

From church - the loss of old and dear souls, and a pastor leaving, with but a few weeks notice. Loss of pastoral leadership there and at work at the same time was vrey unsettling.

Summer came, and there were no little girls to teach. Felt most peculiar, though I did not miss the hard physical work of dragging stuff in to school, nor did I miss the stress that dealing with all the details caused. I went through the house, ridding myself of things to do with teaching that I'll not be needing & had a huge garage sale. Looking at decades of "stuff" collection and feeling an uneasy blend of relief to be clearing out things and dismay that I really won't be needing them.

My annual trip to the Fox Valley was marked with huge changes - long time favorites changing lineups, retirements, performers and groups I know I won't be seeing again... and people who usually are there, who weren't. In all that change, it would be fair to say there were some happy events, joyous fun, grand music made, but the tradition, it's a-changing. At Fox Valley some of the losses that hit the folk world were observed, discussed, mourned. The litnay of loss to the folk world I inhabit was striking in how many who've been sources are gone: Sandy Paton, Mike Seeger,Mary Travers, Tommy Makem, Tim Hart among others. The repertoire of what I sing, how I sing it and how I know about the songs would be so very different without these folks.

I know so much of it is the age I'm getting to when Friends prepare to retire, move away, shift their lives. With my peers, I prepare to become "the older generation." but I thought it would be a more gradual shift, and not knocked silly by grief and loss so much all at once. I'm praying for a different sort of year in 2010, where change is for the better, grief is not the keynote.

There's no tradition like NO Tradition

2008-11-30T23:48:00.005-05:00

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

2008-11-30T23:14:00.003-05:00

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

2008-11-01T00:58:00.006-04:00

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

2008-10-31T18:00:00.005-04:00

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

2008-10-14T09:25:00.005-04:00

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

2008-10-14T01:04:00.004-04:00

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

2008-07-05T13:31:00.005-04:00

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

2008-06-21T18:46:00.002-04:00

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

2008-06-06T16:53:00.004-04:00

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

2008-06-03T20:00:00.004-04:00

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

2008-05-24T17:26:00.007-04:00

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

2008-05-19T12:35:00.005-04:00

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

2008-05-11T14:25:00.005-04:00

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...

2008-05-06T18:14:00.003-04:00

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...

2008-05-06T17:28:00.006-04:00

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!

2008-05-04T19:54:00.005-04:00

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...

2008-05-01T23:37:00.005-04:00

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

2008-04-29T07:43:00.002-04:00

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

2008-04-27T14:52:00.002-04:00

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

2008-04-26T07:24:00.002-04:00

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

2008-04-25T17:31:00.004-04:00

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

2008-04-24T23:22:00.005-04:00

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?

2008-04-23T20:09:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-22T00:03:00.009-04:00

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)

2008-04-21T23:38:00.002-04:00

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

2008-04-11T14:47:00.002-04:00

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

2008-04-10T09:56:00.000-04:00

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

2008-04-09T18:28:00.003-04:00

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.

2008-04-08T18:02:00.004-04:00

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!

Toto, we're not in Narnia anymore

2008-04-08T17:48:00.000-04:00

If folks recognize nothing else of Clive Staples Lewis, they know of Narnia. I've long enjoyed the range of Lewis' writing, and appreciated his particpation in a group of like minded souls, The Inklings, whose membership included the more famous Profesor Tolkein. Much of what Lewis wrote about was Christianty (Mere Christianity being a book that still sells well today) and what I appreciated most about his writing is how intelligent it is. "The Thinking Man's Christian" doesn't even catch it all...he's fine for the doubting woman, too. In today's atmosphere of fundiewackos making it look like thinking and Christianity are at odds, particularly over evolution, I found this bit of wry from Lewis amusing:

Evolutionary Hymn
C. S. Lewis

Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.

Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there's always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we're going,
We can never go astray.

To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.

Ask not if it's god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.

Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature's simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
'Goodness = what comes next.'
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.

Oh then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present,
Standards, though it may well be).

A bit more acid for your pen?

2008-04-07T08:05:00.004-04:00

Oh, but I love Dorothy Parker, whose acid toungued rhymes and well turned comments skewered many an ego in four lines or less. She would likely have scared me silly face to face. “The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.” Ruthless in critique: “This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.” Her jaundiced view of love has fit my mood many a time. I find her necessary seasoning in a meal of romantic poetry.

Résumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Should Heaven send me any son,
I hope he's not like Tennyson.
I'd rather have him play a fiddle
Than rise and bow and speak an idyll.

Bohemia

Authors and actors and artists and such
Never know nothing, and never know much.
Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.
Playwrights and poets and such horses' necks
Start off from anywhere, end up at sex.
Diarists, critics, and similar roe
Never say nothing, and never say no.
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that solicits insurance!

Ballade at Thirty-five

This, no song of an ingénue,
This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
Followed ever her natural bents.
This, a solo of sapience,
This, a chantey of sophistry,
This, the sum of experiments, --
I loved them until they loved me.

Decked in garments of sable hue,
Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents,
Wearing shower bouquets of rue,
Walk I ever in penitence.
Oft I roam, as my heart repents,
Through God's acre of memory,
Marking stones, in my reverence,
"I loved them until they loved me."

Pictures pass me in long review,--
Marching columns of dead events.
I was tender, and, often, true;
Ever a prey to coincidence.
Always knew I the consequence;
Always saw what the end would be.
We're as Nature has made us -- hence
I loved them until they loved me.

Unfortunate Coincidence
By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying ---
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

Transient Pleasures.

2008-04-06T19:06:00.006-04:00

Today is what a spring Sunday ought to be! It's warm, its sunny, and the crocuses are in full tilt beauty on the flat and on the hill in the neighborhood. I was spared the feeling of "I ought to be doing yard work" by having a day trip planned to Hiram College for an Irish music session anchored by fiddler Liz Carroll, who was brought in just for the event. With windows open, it was a lovely hour singing car trip down, taking just a basket of soda bread. I'd helped with the benefit that had financed this luxury, and at this event they went through my soda bread as completely as they'd done at the benefit.

The large room was filled most of the afternoon. There were musicians and former dancers I'd not seen in years who turned out. Participants and listeners came a farther than I did, from the western parts of Ohio and PA. The wide range of ages and sorts of people was astonishing. A wee girl with her fiddle was fit for an illustration of "cute." There were older gentlemen with their accordions, telling tales of folks long gone. There were several fiddlers, flutes and whistles, a couple bodhran players of some talent. I teased Bill about his sitting with his mandolin: "are you going to play that thing, or just hug it all day?" The button box player and his wife got some songs into the mix, particularly "Wild Mountain Thyme" which got good group participation. Mazur did one of his spot-on channelings of Tom McCaffrey, a recitation and a raft of quips about marriage, when the conversation turned to the Toms. Hiram college girls wandered in to listen, like a herd of spring fawns, gawky and graceful all at the same time, in that beauty of youth.
All that fun, and I still have more music to make tonight.

Daffodillly Watch, Part 2

2008-04-06T09:00:00.002-04:00

On the "Drive formerly known as Liberty" the clumps of greenery that will be sprays of golden daffodils soon, most of the leaves are up from 4 to about 8 inches, and in perhaps a third of the clumps, a slender, not quite full hint of yellowgreen bud shows. Soon, it'll be soon. And the snow never showed, huzzah!

Night Journey

2008-04-06T01:05:00.001-04:00

Night Journey
Theodore Roethke

Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below my knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.
Beyond the mountain pass
Mist deepens on the pane;
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
Wheels shake the roadbed stone,
The pistons jerk and shove,
I stay up half the night
To see the land I love.

In case of snow

2008-04-05T01:23:00.001-04:00

Take one poem and call me in the morning

Loveliest of Trees
A. E. Housman

Loveliest of trees the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now of my three score years and ten,
twenty will not come again.
And take from seventy years a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom,
Fifty Springs is little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

The trees aren't in bloom here just yet, but the crocuses are. There's a house on Fairmount, that has a lawn planted all over with purple crocuses. A shame it rained all over it today, because it's about at it's peak of purple bloom, and I heard some noise about snow on the way. Spring in Cleveland, what would we do without more snow?

Lust in the time of Concertinas

2008-04-04T10:23:00.004-04:00

There's a very great danger that spring has actually arrived. Critters two and four legged are getting frisky. Last year, when spring restlessness hit me hard, and there wasn't a lad I was feeding and chatting with regularly, in my weakness I fell prey to the temptation to buy a concertina. Betsy had seen one at a music store near her, and I'd sold myself on the idea even before I got there. What they had were things I came to think of as crapcertinas, because seriously, how much instrument can you get for $99? I bought it anyway. I got it home and one reed unit had fallen out and was rattling around inside the bellows. I unscrewed the ends, stuck the reeds back where they came from (they put 'em together with beeswax, amazingly) It still didn't sound great. When I took it back, they'd only let me exchange it for one with a bit better sound. I grumbled. I went to music rehearsal where Carol kindly said "Oh, I can lend you a good one." And she did, for six months. Since I had to give it back, my fingers have been itching for a good 60 button anglo concertina, and I find myself in sympathetic accord with Les Barker's Arnold.

A fortunate few in the folk world are aware of Les Barker and his poetry and recitations, moreso in England than here. Les is the font of all puns, particularly doggy ones, a dean of doggerel, and one of the single funniest smart people I know. The poetry section of my downstairs "reading room" is stocked well with Les' books with charming titles like "Roverdance" "Corgi and Bess" "101 Damnations" "Waiting for Dogot." Watching him read a poem is an adventure, frequently with needed audience participation. He's written deliciously wry parody lyrics to songs from highly traditional to do-wop, and there are several albums full of songs sung and played by some astonishing folk artists. He also writes serious poems and political poems that I would appreciate more if I followed British politics more closely.

Arnold
Les Barker

Arnold was an armadillo
And oh so in need of romance
And it chanced that one Saturday evening
Arnold went out to a dance.
The moment he walked in the room
He saw her as if he had known
She'd be there at the side of the stage
All he wanted, all in black, all alone
She was there, she was his, dressed to kill
Oh, if only his glasses were cleaner
For he was an armadillo, and she was a concertina

He struggled to make conversation
He leapfrogged from topic to topic
If only she'd say something back.
If only he wasn't myopic
Bright silver buttons in rows
From head down to toes in black leather
Could this beauty love him,
Here goes poor Arnold thought it's now or never
He could picture her head on his pillow
He'd loved her the moment he'd seen her
But he was an armadillo, and she was a concertina

You can't help but feel for the lad though
How happy poor Arnold would be
If they could make love in the shadow
And no one but no one would see
Alas, what he hoped might have been
A sweet secret was soured complete
Sex with a concertina Is rarely accomplished discrete
The dancers stopped stripping the willow
It was oh, such a loud misdemeanor,
For he was an armadillo, and she was a concertina.

Picture love as a kind of concerto
Poor Arnold his verse was unfinished
For what let everyone who was there know
A very loud C sharp diminished
Somebody said look: it's Arnold
And he ran from their scorn and their laughter
Into the darkness outside and never returned ever after
Tales of lost love dreams of love unfullfillo.
Cruel Cupid you've never been meaner,
For he was an armadillo, and she was a concertina.

A Litttle Night Neruda

2008-04-03T01:43:00.001-04:00

Leaning Into The Afternoons
Pablo Neruda

Leaning into the afternoons,
I cast my sad nets towards your oceanic eyes.
There, in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames;
Its arms turning like a drowning man's.
I send out red signals across your absent eyes
That wave like the sea, or the beach by a lighthouse.
You keep only darkness my distant female;
From your regard sometimes, the coast of dread emerges.

Leaning into the afternoons,
I fling my sad nets to that sea that is thrashed
By your oceanic eyes.
The birds of night peck at the first stars
That flash like my soul when I love you.
The night, gallops on its shadowy mare
Shedding blue tassels over the land.

A less humid melancholy - this poem has been with me, heart and soul, since the 5th grade, when it was in our science book as a challenge to memorization. I don't remember the scientific point the book was trying to make about memory, but I succinctly remember the poem, the classroom, my seat toward the back of the far right aisle, and the sounds from the gym a floor below.

The Day is Done
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time,

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And tonight I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have a power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And comes like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

Unexpected Serenade

2008-04-02T18:05:00.001-04:00

I love gloom and doom. I read creepy stuff.
So why on earth do I get such delight out of perhaps the LEAST creepy/gloomy/morbid of Poe's poems?

Serenade
Edgar Allan Poe

So sweet the hour, so calm the time,
I feel it more than half a crime,
When Nature sleeps and stars are mute,
To mar the silence ev'n with lute.
At rest on ocean's brilliant dyes
An image of Elysium lies:
Seven Pleiades entranced in Heaven,
Form in the deep another seven:
Endymion nodding from above
Sees in the sea a second love.
Within the valleys dim and brown,
And on the spectral mountain's crown,
The wearied light is dying down,
And earth, and stars, and sea, and sky
Are redolent of sleep, as I
Am redolent of thee and thine
Enthralling love, my Adeline.
But list, O list,- so soft and low
Thy lover's voice tonight shall flow,
That, scarce awake, thy soul shall deem
My words the music of a dream.
Thus, while no single sound too rude
Upon thy slumber shall intrude,
Our thoughts, our souls- O God above!
In every deed shall mingle, love.

Coffee, Tea or Blog?

2008-04-01T17:56:00.004-04:00

When you have a wonderful teacher, they don't stop being wonderful when they stop being your teacher. Over Holy Week I had the delightful experience of getting to chat briefly with my highschool art teacher, Sister Donna. I mentioned my blog, and today I got a note from her saying "this reminded me of your blog." Gosh, I wonder why? I don't drink coffee...

Daffodilly Watch

2008-04-01T17:23:00.006-04:00

Washington DC may have it's cherry blossoms, but in Cleveland the glorious sign of spring for east siders is watching the patches and fields and swathes of Daffodils perk up and come to bloom along Liberty er... Doctor Martin Luther King Junior Drive for those younger than 30 or relentlessly PC.
**********************************************************
An aside here.. can I get snarky? As a child I was told that Liberty Blvd. was given that name in honor of men who died in the First World War & that many of the trees were planted as specific memorials to them. I know the tree memorial was true up around the Shaker Lakes - some of the brass circles set in concrete cubes are still there at the foot of the trees. Now if that's a true thing, taking an honor away from a large number of honored dead to give it to one seems unjust. It sets up arguments for "well who had a bigger impact, blah blah blah" Ain't the point. Dr. King should have gotten something wonderful named for him, absolutely. Should they have burdened one of the main gorgeous commutes with an unwieldy name (when Liberty was so short, sweet, pronounceable and well known) ? I feel sorry for folks looking for it on the freeway, might think they're going for a typo'd dairy: MLK Drive. SO, if the naming of Liberty is NOT based on WW1 casualties, I take a huge Roseanne Rosannadanna "Neverrrrrmindddd" (for the very young, that's like "whatever²") My snark about how stupid it looks, and hard to read it is, still stands.
**********************************************************
As I was sayin... the daffodils are the joy of spring. Between last week and this, the nubs of green have come up.. there are now 2-3 inch high clumps of daffodils-to-be all up and down Liberty/MLK. I believe in spring, I believe in spring, I do.

April is the coolest month

2008-04-01T00:20:00.005-04:00

T. S. Elliot's The Waste Land famously starts:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers

I love April for the outpouring of poetry that floods the world each spring. Years ago, Kevin introduced me to a plethora of poems and poets I'd never heard of before, and one April he provided a poem a day. That was a gift I've decided to pass on, but with my own ecclectic tastes. T. S. Elliot isn't so much my taste outside of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (especially as illustrated by Edward Gorey) but his well known line about April gives good enough reason for his work to launch the month's effort.

The Naming of Cats
T.S. Eliot

The naming of cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm mad as a hatter
When I tell you a cat must have three
different names.

First of all, there's the name
that the family use daily,
Such as Victor, or Jonathan,
George or Bill Bailey--
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names
if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen,
some for the dames;
Such as Plato, Admetus,
Electra, Demeter--
But all of them sensible everyday names.

But I tell you,
a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that is peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he
keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers,
or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind,
I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quazo or Coripat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellyrum--
Names that never belong
to more than one cat.

But above and beyond
there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you will never guess;
The name
that no human research can discover--
But The Cat Himself Knows,
and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought,
of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

But JUST beacuse it's also April Fool's Day, a bit of foolishness from one of my favorites, Uncle Shelby:

Bear In There
Shel Silverstein

There's a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire--
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in there--
That Polary Bear
In our Fridgitydaire.

That's Flippin' heartbreaking

2008-03-31T11:58:00.004-04:00

One of the pages I regularly peruse in the Sunday newspaper is the real estate listings. I've done this for years, just to keep an eye on what my house would be worth on the market. This Sunday's front page story about the assorted horrors of the housing market foreclosure crisis in the area had my burb's housing stock as down 11% in value. Looking at the range of prices made me think that the average must have been lowered by the historic mansions out on the boulevards. What caught my eye in a shocking way, and opposite the downward pricing trend, was seeing a listing for the house I grew up in for $179K. Yikes.

That brought back anew the sorrow at having to sell that house to pay for my aunt's nursing home in the years I was going full tilt at starting a retail business. Because of the business, I was unable to fix the house up to get either a good price or be able to rent it out, and keep it longer. There are half a dozen shows now about "Flipping that house," but in the 80s that niche wasn't such an obvious thing. I was able to get into the house, just on the first floor, a few years ago. I saw the "garage sale" sign on the corner and couldn't resist a peek. I was met with effusive greetings from the darlin lady who lived next door who introduced me to the current owners who talked about what had been done with the house. I particularly enjoyed their story about having a First Annual Safecracking Party to get open the large office safe of my aunt's that had been accidentally locked by a real estate agent (with the slip with the combination INSIDE the safe). Someone got it open the first party.

The last time I drove by, I was enchanted with the three color paint job they'd done , showing off the original storm/screens on the front windows. It was warming to know that the current family loved the place as much as we did & also felt "It lives like a larger house." With 4 "official" bedrooms and 2 baths, it was large enough for the five adults, one kid and one cranky cocker spaniel when I was growing up.

I know the guy I sold it to (for less than a third of the current asking price) had to do some serious renovations. When sold, all the phone lines were hardwired in or 4 prong plugs. All the electric ran through 4 screw in glass fuses. Both bathrooms needed tile work. The heating system was one of those behemoth converted coal furnaces taking up a quarter of the basement, complete with asbestos wrapped ducts. The leaded glass cabinets in the dining room needed repair. I don't deny lots of work and likely lots of money had to go into that house. Yet, it had a working fireplace, leaded glass built ins, hardwood floors that had been protected by carpet, and one of the most comfortable porches in town. But it still does make me want to weep that I couldn't have hung on to it. More bitter the pill is that I sacrificed my chance to keep that lovely house in order to keep my aunt safe while I built the business, and I don't have the business anymore, either. .

For those companions of my youth, you can oogle the old house along with me.

Snarky Cat Blogging

2008-03-30T17:59:00.004-04:00

MissKtty says "this is the shrink face we all strive for"

Rest in Pieces

2008-03-29T13:21:00.002-04:00

I was in such a dash to get out the door last night that I killed my lovely large lilac dragonfly embellished teapot. It smashed on the floor and the remainder of a pot of "Tea of Good Tidings" splooshed out and soaked my foot. So I went to the concert with one wet foot, smelling of spice laden tea. All I've got left to make tea in are the very nice special-occasion-only pots or mugs. One mug at a time, for the time being. Today it's some Irish Breakfast tea in my "Snarling once a day improves the complexion" Sylvia mug.

Friday night in the big city

2008-03-29T12:52:00.004-04:00

Sometimes in the comfort of suburban life, I forget that we live with a big city near our doorstep, and sometimes that's the place to go play, or in this case, listen. Steve, Arron, and I went to the Beachland Ballroom to hear some Celtic flavored music last night. We arrived early, got good seats, and were amused at the commercials for other shops in the area that ran on the club's sound system. It gave me a feeling of being a part of the city life like a Charles De Lint character in Newford, out for an evening's carouse. We were excited to see Gráda and were vastly pleased at the opening band, Pitch the Peat, a locally based group with some Irish imports in the personnel. The guitar player had a fascinating style: he was often playing with a flat pick while finger picking with his last two fingers. They were wondrous good, high energy and obviously had a good following in the audience, as the place filled to standing room. The quantity of quality band originals was impressive, and held it's own as part of a great evening of music winding up for Gráda's powerhouse presentation.
Gráda - oh, they were good. Every one of 'em, including their Irish/Italian substitute (#2) fiddler who doubled on trumpet. Yah really, a trumpet. Alan's fluting was everything you could hope for. There was enough light from the neon "BAR" sign that I tried some sketching: if you can't dance, it's amazing how enjoyable it is to be penciling in the dark background to a wild set of jigs. The guitarist was a dervish, dancing and waggling his guitar around while bending notes in a lush way. His glasses kept sliding down his nose; sometimes the fiddler would shove them back up, and sometimes he'd take 'em off. I watched the bodhran player's hand turn a blur on the tuneable bodhran that reminded me of Margaret's, though a bit deeper. She sang beautifully, high energy. They too had a great number of traditional sounding songs they'd written. It was three hours of grand live music. I felt sorry for them, driving off to Nashville overnight. I'd not want to be on the road after putting out that kind of energy for a couple hours. Good thing they're a batch of young lads and lass!

A Clean Slate

2008-03-24T03:42:00.002-04:00

This spring, change is in the air. I'm reconsidering jobs, my artwork, and some of the baggage I carry with me from past sorrows. I need to lighten my load in lots of specific areas.

It was Easter yesterday. Easter a few years ago was the last time I saw the inlaws I loved when I made brunch for them. They're not dead, just dead to me. My adored elder niece inscribed a tribute to my cooking in multi colored chalk on the slate chalkboard I have hanging at the entrance to my kitchen. Grocery lists have come and gone on that slate. Notes of recordings and books lent and returned have come and gone. The lovely line from the lovely girl stayed.

I was told it wasn't my fault...exactly. It was the other folks who'd hurt them so much that they decided to close in to just the nuclear family, and shut out the rest of us with "we love you, but don't call us - we'll call you when we're ready." I ached to see them hurting, and I stepped back to give them the mental space they needed. I squelched my own hurt. But as days added up to weeks, and weeks built up months, and then to a year, and no word, the hurt festered anyway. I broke radio silence briefly last Christmas, when I sent them a cookbook I'd done of my traditional cookies, but got no response.

My blood family has long since died out. I have no progeny. The part of my late husband's family I loved has chosen to be dead to me. The wheel of the year turns to a new spring, and I've come to delight in and appreciate the generous love of friends more and more. And so I shed my last bit of reluctance.

I wiped the slate clean.

Late to the wake

2008-03-23T16:54:00.009-04:00

Laruel Burch, a woman for whom a single adjective just isn't enough, has died. She died in September, but I only heard about it today, so it's today that my heart aches for the end of the vision of an artist and designer whose style inspired me so much. Her Obit told me things about her struggles in life that make her accomplishments even more inspirational. In her own words:

"I live within the vivid colors of my imagination, soaring with rainbow-feathered birds, racing the desert winds on horseback, wrapped in ancient tribal jewels, dancing with mythical tigers in steamy jungles."

All that in was her head, while dealing daily with a very frail body and constant pain; what she chose to make for the world was exuberant beauty and visions of joy, with a particular love for cats. My one trip to England was chronicled in a journal with this Laurel Burch cat head cover. It was with me through days of sketching at the Victoria and Albert, through grad school interviews and observations of the world I craved to enter.

I so clearly remember the first place I heard of Laurel Burch. In the early 1970s there was a book of folk artists in the San Francisco Bay area called "Native Funk & Flash." This book was a key to creativity for many artists of my generation, and seems to have been in the hands of many bead artists who sprung up in the 80s, m'self included. In it was a picture of Laurel, sitting on a bed wearing a "Lifetime dress" of her own (at that time) exotic design. My first contact with her mass produced jewelry was in Ye Olde Mystic Shoppes, a very twee shopping district down the road from the Mystic Seaport Museum. I was on a forced march speed day trip by bus & I was cranky because as much time was allotted to the "Ye Olde Shoppes" as was the Seaport, where I thought we were spending the day. Two things of delight came out of that forced shopping trip - a view of rainbow-like sundogs and the purchase of a pair of pewter Laurel Burch sitting cat earrings. I wore out the first pair, lucked into finding a matching second pair made out of sturdier metal, and wear them still. My world comes in richer colors because Laurel Burch lived.

I write this with tea fragrantly steaming by my side, my own mix of black tea with peppermint & spearmint, in a mug decorated with Laurel Burch dancers.

Is lusting after furniture a sin?

2008-03-22T14:21:00.004-04:00

Once upon a time, in the last century, my late husband and I bought this house from a very busy couple; he an oral surgeon, she a brain surgeon, with two kids, a large dog and a nanny. I suspect the only stores they went to were grocery stores, and that they bought everything else mail order. We became "Or" (the current resident) to a mindboggling collection of catalogs that missed being forwarded. Once or twice a week something would arrive. My wonderment at the profusion of catalogs caused me to start collecting them to see how they'd add up. Six months later, I had a two foot pile. It took years to stop being the "Or" family. I think that Siberia on the Heights was a "desirable" zipcode to the catalog producers, because it took years, in some instances for the catalogs to stop coming. I think the only one we succumbed to was Lillian Vernon, who at that time had storage items that were difficult to find elsewhere.

27 years later....

I'd been gawking at the Toscano catalogs that came to a friend at work. The peculiar combination of religious articles, medievalish gargoyle/dragon tchotckes, lovely library furniture & fittings and other oddments enchanted me. The continual exposure to the catalog finally got me to ordering a couple things from them. The funky gag gift of pens turned out to be much more nicely made than I'd anticipated, and the humor part mutated into just a bit peculiar. The other items, some celtic knot work sculpture, were decent for the price. I was happy. I figured I'd be getting the Toscano catalog myself now.

Yes, that happened AND a stream of about one new catalog a week in an increasingly peculiar vein. It was easy to be amused with the one that had a combination of wiccan folderol, Christian tchotckes and hippiechick clothes. The lamp catalog was something I knew I should hide from Chuck (who has a fetish for acquiring lamps). But what really got me moaning and drooling was the fairly thick catalog with dozens of lovely, reasonably priced furniture in the Mission style. Some gave you the choice of "golden" or "Morris" oak. Even with reasonable prices, what I want out of that catalog likely equals a year's worth of salary, between the oak and the rugs. Oh yah.. lovely lovely rugs. Wool. Rugs. I am damned to catalust & I'll save you, gentle reader, the same fate by not posting their link. You'd thank me, really.

Oh yeah, Spring

2008-03-22T14:09:00.003-04:00

This is a week overburdened with events of significance, great and small. Holy Week calls for lots of attention (and odd jobs and lots of music rehearsal) and time in church. St. Pat's got it's due with a dinner party, but the coming of spring was noted only in passing, during a deep breath or two.

Spring in Siberia on the Heights is frequently indistinguishable from winter. On the first morning of spring, I woke to a couple inches of crisp snow, covering all the muddy grey ugliness of the melting heaps of previous snow. The view from my stair landing of my back yard was a giggly delight. I usually see some bunny tracks, we have lots of bunnies here, but the yard was crisscrossed with dozens of bunny trails in the snow. There were a half dozen or more places where the snow had been seriously scuffed up at intersections of tracks. I rather suspect this was evidence of wild spring bunny boffing & this may well be another bumper crop year when we contemplate hasenpfeffer potlucks.

Meme: Passion Quilt

2008-03-22T13:42:00.006-04:00

The "look what I made" smiles

Dr. Zeus tagged me I also hear and obey.

What I'm most passionate about my students learning is the feeling of satisfaction and pride in work that is worthy of it. Kindling the fire of inspiration to do artwork is the overarching principle. Art students come to you with the urge already there, and in my teaching in mostly alternative situations, I'm blessed with an even more motivated group. Technique is part of what I teach, but always in aid of an idea. Showing a student how to take that path from a fuzzy idea, to a well formed concept, through picking a compatible medium, and working on the technique required, to the conclusion of pleased astonishment at their work - this is my passion. Showing them ways to tap their inner fire with mental exercise as casual or intellectually rigorous as their stage in life and dedication to art require is the flip side to technique. The path is the same with students from wee girls in camps to the oldest students in senior centers: "oh, I can't do that... oh, that's not so hard is it...hmm... I might try that ... wow, this is not so bad ... cool! I CAN do this!" I am equipping them with the tools to do their own creative explorations, & the ability to take that path again without me to guide.

THE RULES:
Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about.

Give your picture a short title.

Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt.”

Link back to this blog entry.

Include links to 5 (or more) educators.

I was startled Dr. Zeus tagged me for this as I'm an art teacher (and have only drawn from live, if recumbent, bodies) & this is my first meme. I'm new to the blogosphere, and don't have any teaching acquaintances to tag, so either I'll have to suffer the consequences of not passing it on, the way I have with chain letters, or if you're an untagged teacher, consider yourself tagged.

I Bind Unto Myself Today

2008-03-17T09:21:00.004-04:00

It's a rare year that has St. Patrick's falling at the start of Holy Week. Lent and Easter haven't been this early since our grandparents' day, nor will it be so early again until our grandchildrens' day. While every bar and restaurant becomes Irish for the day, drinking celebrated, shamrocks on everything including fast food shakes, it's more striking how off the mainstream my appreciation of the day has become. While I love how much the whole Irish culture is celebrated this day, and I'll be doing it m'self with friends helping me eat corned beef, colcannon, and soda bread, this heritage is something I cherish every day. Today I praise the enduring power of the prayer of St. Patrick's Breastplate.

St. Patrick's Breastplate is contained in the ancient Book of Armagh, from the early ninth century. "Breastplate" is a translation of "lorica" or protective garment, particularly armor. Metaphorically, a Lorica is a chanted "binding" prayer for protection. St. Patrick is thought to have written this prayer to strengthen himself with God's protection as he prepared to confront and convert Loegaire, high king of Ireland. The use of a binding prayer/chant shows one of many facets of how early Christianity in Ireland absorbed & changed aspects of the druid faith to it's own purpose. The legend surrounding it's use has St. Patrick & his companions appearing as deer and doe to the threatening druids, giving the prayer the alternate name "Deer's Cry."

While it is by no means the only Lorica in existence, St. Patrick's Breastplate is the best known, possibly because of being translated from the Gaelic and set to music. Though the music is somewhat difficult, changing tempos from being composed of two traditional tunes, it is beautiful. Cecil Alexander put words to music at the request of H. H. Dickinson, Dean of the Chapel Royal at Dublin Castle:

St. Patrick's Breastplate

I bind unto myself today
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this today to me forever
By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;
His baptism in Jordan river,
His death on Cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spicèd tomb,
His riding up the heavenly way,
His coming at the day of doom
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of cherubim;
The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour,
The service of the seraphim,
Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word,
The Patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the star lit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need.
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, His shield to ward;
The word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart’s idolatry,
Against the wizard’s evil craft,
Against the death wound and the burning,
The choking wave, the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.
By Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Post-Buzzard Day Post

2008-03-16T21:51:00.007-04:00

My friends Phil and Margaret are famous for fine singing, good humor, bad jokes, and horrid puns. They got such a kick out of the northern Ohio ritual of welcoming the buzzards back to the town of Hinkley that they wrote a song about it. They tend to preface it with the story about the buzzard couple who were stopped from boarding a plane because they were each carrying two very dead critters, one under each wing. They didn't see what the problem was, because they were clearly told they could bring two pieces of carrion.

Kate and Phil being Mr & Mrs Buzzard,
while Margaret does the color commentary:

The song "When the Buzzards Come Back Again to Hinkley (my dear I'll be carrying on with you)" is the audience participation event for those who can't sing on pitch or in correct tempo. The more off pitch /tempo the better. The band sings:
"When the Buzzards Come Back Again to Hinkley"
The audience is to sing back:
"HINKLEY!"
with gusto, and who cares what key. I recall one particularly enthusiastic audience who had great fun with it. A song or two later, something pretty, and from the back of the hall comes a "HINKLEY!" from, I suspect Pete Z. The band lost it, entire. It was a great moment, ya shoulda been there, yah you bet. I need to cajole a recording of this for local use and edification.

Blizzard on the Heights

2008-03-15T14:21:00.001-04:00

It wasn't a blizzard on an epic scale, no, but it was a more snow in a short period than we're used to getting. I'd stocked up on Friday, heeding the weather warnings, and by late in the afternoon folks were canceling events & trying to leave work and schools early, if they were smart. Only about 3 or 4 inches of new snow covered the frozen couple of inches in my driveway by Friday night, but ohhhhhh Saturday morning was another thing entire! With the way I get crazy drifts, it's difficult to tell perzactly how high it got, but a few dips of the metal yardstick convinced me that it was two feet, more or less.
I had to push the back door open against drifts. The wee dog just looked at me as if I'd lost my mind in expecting him to go out there and Do what Needs to be Done. (And me with no Powdermilk Dog Bisquits, darn.) I shoveled a path for him, but by the time I got past the edge of the house, the 8°F and 30 mph sustained winds suggested to me that I reconsider. The dog took advantage of the path, but with lack of canine conviction. An hour later, everything I'd shoveled was drifted back in again. Listening to all the cancellations of dances and concerts announced on Saturday radio was clue that it wasn't just Siberia On the Heights that the storm had inconvenienced. What gave me pause was when WRUW decided to "end our broadcast day" at the end of Bill Kennedy's Irish show at 1:30 in the afternoon, for the safety of their volunteers. I enjoyed having a fully stocked larder, a couple books to read, plenty of tea, heat, water, and electric, knowing that I wasn't going ANYwhere anytime soon.

Sunday Morning was gorgeously sunny & it felt so peculiar to be sleeping in rather than up and tuning the 'harp for church. The snow smothered landscape was gorgeous, deep, and a challenge to shovel. I hacked out a path for the dog, but didn't last too long and figured I MIGHT be able to get the drive done by Tuesday morning, then a neighbor took pity on me, and had my drive cleared by snowblower. The street hadn't been plowed till Sunday, though the driveway plow guys had been busy. I'd watched the guy doing the drive next door with more enthusiasm than skill, after I heard the first BAM!!! of plow hitting the stone edging to their drive. Not learning his lesson, he scraped the snow down, then back toward their lawn with another BAM!! At that point, I figured he'd demolished part of the two steps & wingwall bit of masonry by their sidewalk. The thaw has shown this to be the case: He uprooted a 16 inch boulder and bits of brick from the wingwall are peeping out of the snowbank that is filthy with the turf and topsoil he scraped off my treelawn. It's going to be ugly, but I'm still ready for a full thaw. Meanwhile, what a lovely difference a week makes:
Saturday, March 8th:

Saturday, March 15th:

Darn, I missed it!

2008-03-07T00:14:00.000-05:00

In browsing links to the music I love, I came across a resource for Celtic festival listings & started looking at all the events I'm not likely to get to, but would love to see. This past January there was one I think I'd have taken a pass on that still fascinated me in a "truth is stranger than fiction" sort of way, billed as "The Most Glamorous Irish Festival in the World," the Dubai Irish Festival. Yes, that's Dubai in the Middle East, not a poorly spelled Dublin. They have a flashy web page, but glamorous isn't how I usually think of traditional Irish musicians, unless it's one of the programs aired during a PBS fund drive - they do get tarted up for those. Held in January, the Dubai Irish Festival at least has the attraction of warm place during the cold in the north. The astonishingly green golf course they advertise as part of the whole shebang makes me wonder how much of their GNP went to water bills.

In Like a Cliche

2008-03-03T11:56:00.000-05:00

Oh Joy. It's March. In my world that's where all the Irish cliches, especially the music ones, come out of the woodwork. I've a deep joy in the traditional music, and in some of the contemporary performers who come out of the folk tradition who write splendid new songs. One of my favorites is Robbie O' Connell. For the only peripherally aware who ask "whozat?" saying he's the Clancy Brothers' nephew usually suffices. I fell in love with his singing decades ago when he performed in a trio with Mick Maloney and Jimmy Keane. In those years I was actively involved in promoting folk music concerts, and Celtic-flavored artists in particular. For a few years I was behind a "NO Danny Boy and NO Green Beer" concert on St. Patrick's Day, featuring traditional performers.

To perhaps explain why I get cranky about the music one hears in March, I offer you, gentle reader, the lyrics to one of Robbie's songs:

You're Not Irish

When first I came to the USA with my guitar in hand
I was told that I could get a job
singing songs from Ireland
So I headed up to Boston,
I was sure to be alright
But the very first night I got on the stage,
I was in for a big surprise

they said;
(Chorus) You're not Irish you can't be Irish
you don't know Danny Boy
Or Toora loora loola, or even Irish Eyes
You've got the hell of a nerve to say
you came from Ireland
so cut out all the nonsense
and sing Mcnamaras Band

To tell the truth I got quite a shock
and I didn't know what to say
So I sang a song in Gaelic
I thought that might win the day
But they looked at me suspiciously
and I didn't know what was wrong
The all of a sudden they started to shout
now sing a real Irish song
(Chorus)

The next day I was on my way for Chicago I was bound
I was ready to give it another try
and not let it get me down
From the stage they looked quite friendly,
but I hardly sung one word
When a voice called out from the back of the room,
and what do you think I heard? (Chorus)

Now I've traveled all around the country,
but its always been the same
From LA to Philadelphia and from Washington to Maine
But sometimes now I wonder if its a secret society
And it doesn't matter wherever I go
they'll be waiting there for me,

saying;
You're not Irish you can't be Irish
you don't know Danny Boy
Or Toora loora loora or even Irish eyes
You've got a hell of a nerve to say
you came from Ireland
So cut out all the nonsense and sing McNamara's band

Leap Day Languishing

2008-02-29T15:30:00.002-05:00

It's Leap Day, aka Sadie Hawkins Day. I won't be chasing down any likely lads. The roller coaster of extreme highs and lows that this year has been finds me at the low end today.

The year started with cookies, cookies and more cookies for my annual tea. Several dozen friends helped me eat them, explored tea varieties, chatted with each other, and in general carried on. The friends, new and old, who came out to socialize and bring their own goodies was the kind of happymaking that has the month's worth of baking worthwhile. When you live alone (but for the wee dog), a house full of incredibly wonderful people is just, simply, joy. Sending out invites for the tea gives me a sort of inventory of who touches my life. It's gratifying that there are so many loved ones who've been in my life for decades.

A sadness to offset the joy this year was the day after my tea I attended a memorial service & wake for my friend Nat the III's father, Nat the II. I first met the Nat of my generation somewhere around second or third grade whenhe lived on the next block. He gave the main eulogy at the memorial service for his father which consisted of stories about what it was like to have been his son, and the richness of the values he got from that upbringing. I had such waves of nostalgia as he talked about things I remembered so clearly: the beagle that was the joyous companion of his youth, the treehouse that was the envy of many and scene of all manner of escapades. In later years, I had the pleasure to know his mother, and later his father. as people in their own right, not just as parents. So I wept the sad tears and the happy tears at this memorial service for an incredible man, for the son who has been a great friend to me for decades, and the deeply satisfying feeling of connection that fills the gap where I'm missing family.

The birthday weekend.

When I turned 50 a few years ago, I threw myself the party of a lifetime which has evolved into a tradition. I've had a Hobbit-like birthday party each year since that includes lots of food and song. I roasted a big turkey, whipped some taters, gussied up a salad and invited a flock of friends to eat & sing. A dozen friends took me up on it, including Steve & Arron who also have February birthdays. Prezzies were exchanged. My needlework project during jury duty was quilting some silkscreened & hand painted teadragon panels to make a teacosy for their house.
Chuck came up from down state for the weekend for the first time in years. I baked a gluten free "Happy Birthday to US" cake that so Steve could enjoy it. We did do a bit of singing, though several of the regular singing group were missed.

After the partiers left, Chuck and I went down to the Prosperity Social Club to see the Smoking Fez Monkeys, a band I've been following for a few months. Tim, one of the front people, has been a favorite performer for years, but in this band he's like a gem that's found the perfect setting: not only does he get shown off at his best, but the entire band is as wonderful as he is and the synergy is electric. Watching the way they get better, hotter, tighter each time I see them is the kind of musical excitement I haven't had in years. On this particular Saturday the lovely young fiddler got sick, and went home, though the illness was not at all apparent in her playing to that point. We were at a table up front with John, who was invited to sit in with the band. Chuck was enchanted John knew his sister Jean through his working for the National Parks, John got his mandolin & the band went smoking in a different way. They were having so much fun that they kept playing for nearly an hour past their usual time. Rolled home at 1:30, exhausted and exhilarated.

I let Chuck have a sleep in on Sunday while I went to church. He's working two jobs, so he deserves a day to sleep in.After church we went down to Bo Long's for Dim Sum with S &A and found several tables full of their friends, my friends, our friends. After lunch, the four of us went to see the Suspicious Cheese Lords, a sublime, if peculiarly named, male acapella early music group from the DC area, who were performing at St. John Cathedral. Sunday night finished the weekend with in a mellow mood. Chuck hauled in some wood & built a fire while I finished making home made turkey soup. A house fragrant with wood smoke and soup made an evening of reading by the fire, singing a few songs, and reveling in the pleasure of each other's company a perfect end to a splendid weekend.

Of course, for every splendid weekend, there is the opposite - like last weekend which was day 3 & 4 of sick in bed with the cough that will not die. By Saturday, I felt like my ribs had been beat up from the INSIDE from the violence of my coughing. In the mail came notice that the work I'd strained myself to finish was not accepted in the show I entered. Drat. was an unfit companion for man or beast, but mended enough to go back to work on Monday full of cold remedies.

Tuesday we woke up to a world gone white in the most decorative way snow can accumulate. Driving in to work, the roads were clear, if damp, but everything else was white, even chain link fences that looked like they'd been flocked. Wednesday brought more snow which took hours of shoveling to get me out to work. The weather worsened, and by the end of the work day was foul. So foul that I hit a slush hidden pothole and had a spinout on (the road formerly known as) Liberty, and hit a tree. Angels must have been watching over me, for at the start of rush hour, on a well traveled twisty road, there wasn't a single other car in my path when I went fishtailing all over the road, the Gracecar and a tree were all that were hurt. With some help from a good Samaritan on the UCI payroll, I got out of the snow pile I came to rest in, and moved to the side of the road, facing in the appropriate direction. A bungee cord held the dragging fender parts in place for me to limp up the hill home.

The Gracecar is in the shop for some extensive plastic surgery & I'm without wheels till Monday. So, for Sadie Hawkins Day 2008, I'm missing my chance to go running after the lads or out to concerts or much of anything but being grateful for being alive and in one piece, and able to keep drinking tea.

Folk Processing the weather

2008-02-12T18:51:00.000-05:00

I was sent home early from work downtown today because of the bad weather. As I drove home through what was only mildly annoying bits of snow on roads mostly plowed, I thought on other trips home where the weather took us by surprise and was scary to drive in and hard to see in and much more in line with being a significant threat to travel. As I mushed along in the troughs of slush on Carnegie, I thought of "the really bad stuff" and of the wonderful Michigan Snow Shantey that details the work of winter survival. Written in 1989 by Michigander Judi Morningstar, and performed by her all women's string band "Just Friends" (and me, in my car). I loved her irreverent take on it: “Written in the genre of the Sea Shantey which had three unwritten rules: Never sung on dry land - never sung in harmony - never sung by women. Rules begging to be broken.” I find humor a necessary survival skill for living in Siberia-on-the-Heights.

Michigan Snow Shantey

Heave ho! Heave ho!
Rock your car in the snow
Forward, first throw it in reverse
Way up in Michigan-i-o

On Saginaw Bay where I come from
You learn survival on the run
Chains and saws and shovels and sand
Are tools you’ll always have on hand.
Heave ho! Heave ho!...

Well bundle up and cover your nose
Wear your hat when the big wind blows
Air so cold you can see your breath
If you get sick you’ll sneeze to death.
Heave ho! Heave ho!...

Well wear you woolies whenever you roam
By springtime they can walk alone
Keep your mukluks on your feet
You’ll need the traction in the ice and sleet
Heave ho! Heave ho!...

Pretend that you like winter games
Downhill skiing is quite insane
Hang your ice-skates on the wall
You can’t hur yousealf if you don’t fall.
Well…
Heave ho! Heave ho!...

Neither snow, nor wind, nor savage wind chill...

2008-02-11T02:05:00.000-05:00

It has to be fairly horrid weather to keep me from a chance to make music close to home. The large conglomerate dance band I play in was providing the music for a "father-daughter" dance at a posh private girls' school just a few blocks from me on Sunday afternoon. The morning sunshine gave lie to the wicked wind and bone chilling temperatures, but I'd survived the trip to church, played well there, so eh, what the heck, I packed up the dance music, the instrument and acoutrements and off I went.

The gym where the dance was held was warmer than the outside, but quite cold as places to sit and make music go, and every time the door opened, the strong wind blew more chill in the room. The band was positioned hard by the outer door. Charming theme decorations were designed to make this a "hoe-down" sort of event; bales of hay, corral signs, western landscape mural, cowboy/girl hats and bandanas for the dancers. Those of us who looked appropriately "country" at the core soon spoiled the effect by wearing our outerwear & looking like we'd been imported from Alaska rather than out on the prairie. Hammer dulcimer, fiddle & autoharp players bundled up against the chill, all hoping our instruments would hold in tune through the temperature fluctuation. I'd never seen an upright bass player wearing gloves while playing (though he said it was to protect blistered fingers rather than from the cold)

It was a charming sight, the dancing. The wee girls were 1-4th grade, and some were even taller than waist height on their fathers. There were a couple dozen of us playing in the band, and perhaps a couple hundred in the dance. One door of my car wasn't frozen shut by the end of the dance & I seriously regretted leaving my mittens in the car. I navigated my way home with frost on the windows that didn't have time to melt before pulling into my garage. Temperatures are in the single digits tonight, and it looks like most grade & high schools in the area (including the place we played the dance) are closed Monday due to the weather. My studio windows are iced over. I think it's time for a "hibernation day" for Monday.The last cup of Twinnings Lemon Spiced tea in the pot has cooled to lukewarm.

What on earth did you do to your hands?

2008-02-08T11:06:00.000-05:00

Folks have been asking me this in the last few weeks when I'm sporting my ever so stylish "flesh" colored wrist braces. It's somewhat humiliating to admit that I did something stupid, and did it intentionally, in aid of getting my artwork out to shows again. I first gave myself carpal tunnel injury years ago, also by being stupid and hoeing my raised bed in abject anger for about 8 hours straight. (I'd rented out the house while in grad school, and my tennants trashed my lovingly tended bed that was then rife with weeds).

This was almost 20 years ago, and in the interim, I've managed to cope with the carpal tunnel problems by task shifting and not stressing my wrists much. All caution flew out the window while trying to get a large piece of my beadwork done for a show. Mounting the work by stretching it over shaped wood is tough work on the hands, and embroidering beads on the edges after stretching is even tougher: it requires pliers to place the needle and tug it through with hefty yanks.

The piece had been ready for mounting for months, though getting the wood cut requires a trip to a friend's woodshop, and getting that scheduled around illness, travel, holidays and other obligations pushed it to the last VAGUELY possible day.

- So of a Saturday we cut the wood & I start varnishing it.
- On Sunday the last coat of varnish went on early in the morn, and by evening I'd spent 8 hours tugging the embroidery into place on the wood.
- Monday I got the edges embroidered enough so the piece can be photographed as if finished. My hands ache, fingertips are shredded and I KNOW I've messed up my wrists again.
- Tuesday I get up at the crack of before dawn to photograph the piece, go in to work where a friend helps me format the (first ever for me) digital entry for the show. Then the digital files have to be postmarked that day. I take myself out in the 2° snowy windy weather for a trek to the post office a few blocks away.

The piece that was worth all of this insanity?

Meet Stella Maris:
Stella Maris, "Our Lady, Star of the Sea" is one of the personifications of the Virgin Mary in Catholic iconography. This particular Stella Maris is more of a Pago-Christian personification, showing the Pre-Christian seagoddes sort of body, with the Christian iconography of the star-halo. The idea of "sea" is even interpreted broadly, with the side paddle wheel boat depicted being a version of the first Goodtime boat in Cleveland's harbor.As my work goes, this is a quite large piece- 13.5 inches high, with the surface being solidy stitched with seed beads (about 1.5 mm in size) but for the swirling lightening bolts/hand section that leaves it void to the underlying gold lamé fabric.

Today, I'm drinking Constant Comment because a grey day needs some spice.

Juror # 6

2008-02-08T00:56:00.000-05:00

I was vastly surprised at getting my first summons to jury duty after decades of voting, but never being called to serve on a jury. Consultation with experienced jurors gleaned the universal suggestion: "bring a book, you'll do lots of waiting." I didn't really assume much more about the experience than that.

There was indeed waiting, lots of waiting. I'd prepared myself with a paperback in my purse and a totebag full of embroidery project-in-progress and a back up bit of beadwork as well. While they expect us all to be there by 8:00 am, we weren't shown the introductory video till later,(amused to find the model for handicapped access was a friend of mine) and it was even later in the morning before they started calling folks for jury selection. I had the serendipitous pleasure of finding a folk music friend there, already seated on a jury, waiting to be called for the day. Nancy introduced me to the men she was sitting with, an Irishman and a Scotsman, and oh, wasn't I pleased! We started in to talking about the varieties of Celtic Music & Michael turned out to be in the production end of making CDs. I mentioned that I'd a number of LP records that I was egar to get transferred to CD format, some quite old. I said my first ever "Irish" album was Arthur Godfrey Presents Carmel Quinn. I was stunned when he said he knew her, startled to hear she was still alive, and tickled completely when he said he'd bring me a copy of that CD the next day.. and he did, the darlin man, as well as additional tracks. It had been decades since I'd heard that album and had forgotten how "big band" it sounded - like the sort of arrangements you'd hear behind Bing Crosby in that era (1950s).

The WAIT was over shortly before lunch when a batch was gathered to go up to a courtroom. A pair of us thought it profoundly funny that two teachers from the very same small highschool should be on the same jury. We go up to the court room, and WAIT. We get told to go to lunch, then go back to the assembly room, and WAIT to be called back. And WAIT.

In all the waiting, in all the week, I saw one other person doing needlework of any sort besides me. Perhaps half of the folks picked up some of the newspapers or magazines provided in the jury pool room for part of the time. Perhaps 10% of the folks there had books with them. A few played cards. one or two did some work. Many talked. Some did the jigsaw puzzles on the tables. I should have expected it, but it still appalled me that a large portion of the folks in the jury pool, jury, selection group, wherever we had to WAIT, did nothing.

Nothing.

I shouldn't be shocked, should I, but the idea of letting yourself just sit doing nothing, or watching endless soap operas "Price is Right" or even gawdhelpus Rachel RAY was compltely foreign to me. I'm not kind enough to assume they all came thinking they'd be jurors every second of every day and be so busy they'd not have the time for anything else.

Jury selection meant lots of instructions about what they were going to ask us, why we had to answer and why we should listen to those before us. We were also told, in a number of different ways, that it was not going to be like on TV. Our judge was a very young looking woman, very Irish name and a very merry soul for the most part. On that jury selection day she'd a friend who was in serious health problems & that's why we'd been kept waiting even after we'd come up to the courtroom, yet she kept a very upbeat way about her all the while, even after explaining the reason for delay. In her questioning, we got nearly the whole life story of the first lady sitting in the #1 juror chair. I'm muttering to the woman next to me my assumption that it'd take to the middle of next week if EVERYONE talked at such length. So we have TMI from this woman, who was dismissed in about round three of the challenges from the lawyers. Some of the answers to the questions about previous experience in court were answered as sidebars so they wouldn't have to tell traumatic tales in open court. Which would have been fine, if they'd bothered to whisper - the folks closest to the Judge heard most of the gory details. When they were doing that, I could whip out the embroidery, since I wasn't supposed to be listening. It took us from right after lunch till 5 pm to get the 12 + 1 alternate picked. We're instructed not to watch the channel 8 news.

Tuesday Morning we get there early and WAIT. Get called up to the jury deliberation room and WAIT (lots more embroidery done...) Opening arguments begin at last, midmorning, and there's a newscamera throughout the morning in the courtroom. The fuzzy, academic looking defense lawyer lines out the image of his client being a hard working home repair contractor from Guatemala, and that all the evil deeds were done by the cousin he was kind enough to give a place to stay and employment in his business, that he'd merely gone into the grocery store to get a chocolate bar because he was having a diabetic episode.

The prosecutor spelled out the sordid tale of the two guys working together to rob a Mom & pop Korean grocery store, with the defendant being the one who went in to scope out the place and drive the get away van. The cousin had plea bargained down to one count of felonious assault and one of aggravated robbery for testifying against his cousin. Korean Mom and Pop testify. Her English is minimal, His is somewhat better. Diagrams help. The story starts to take shape. We see the recording from the security cameras. Lunch, return to the jury pool room and WAIT.

After lunch, the cousin testifies, sitting there in handcuffs with a burly officer in a char right behind him. Our gallant defendant shows the only emotion by smirking at cousin while he testifies. According to cousin, it's the defendant's idea to rob the store. Why? well because they're both crackheads and really need to get high, and they owe their dealer $200. so their credit was stretched a bit thin, and it was cash and carry for the crack. Cousin kept calling it "intoxicated" when he meant "high" and the defense atty kept calling it their "connect" rather than "connection." I didn't know if this was a street jargon I wasn't aware of, but judging by some of his other remarks, I'm guessing he was a bit more clueless than he ought to have been, all things considered.

The story that unfolds from testimony of Mom & Pop Storeowners, Cousin, Officers Who Arrested Them, Officers who Went to the scene & the Detective who came cause he knows Mom & Pop, as well as what was perfectly visible from the security cameras was thus: Defendant goes in, buys a candy bar, leaves, drives his van outside the parkinglot and stays on the street, heading away from the store with the engine running. Cousin gets out of the van, puts on a very distinctive "hoodie" that is silkscreend with a skeleton, and includes a skull hood, that zips all the way up the front with nothing but mesh eyeholes as openings, once zipped. He has a honking big (that's the technical term for a 12 inch blade, I think) knife that he pulls out of his belt. He enters the store (On camera), goes directly to the window seat where Elderly Disabled Granny is sitting., grabs her, puts the knife to her neck and starts hollering "give me the money." E. D. Granny understands no English. Mom, behind register screams and bolts to the back of the store where Pop is working on his truck, in the parking lot behind the store. Cousin in distinctive hoodie, seeing he's NOT gonna get the money, dumps E. D. Granny on the floor, turns to leave, then stops, reconsiders, and stabs at her with Honking big knife. He exits out of camera range.

Cousin runs for the car, runs into Pop Storeowner half way down the parking lot, not quite even with where Getaway Van is located. They jostle each other, the knife is brandished, but does no harm, and he responds to the drivers "get in get IN" shouts. Pop Storeowner, thinking quickly, whips his belt out of his pants, swings it like mad and smacks the belt buckle into the driver's side window, shattering it completely. The two nasty cousins zoom away, leaving Pop the opportunity to take down their license plate accurately. Mom has called 911, but her English is not the best even when not rattled so much, Pop gets on the phone, gives description of the van, plate number, details. 911 dispatcher gets a wee bit condescending when Pop starts getting aggravated - his English ain't THAT bad. But the radio call goes out. Cops respond to the scene, other cops to the address listed on the van registration, one Detective comes to the scene. We get to hear the 911 tape. Just as the police arrive, the pair are backing out of their drive. They're stopped, returned to the scene and identified, as stabbing cousin was dim enough to unzip the hoodie before he got in the van, so Pop could identify both of them, no sweat. The defendant gives them permission to search his house, and the dramatic hoodie is found, but they can't tell which of the dozen kitchen knives was used because, fortunately, E. D. Granny was wearing a thick fur coat that deflected the knife, and she was barely scratched.

On Wednesday morning we did considerable WAITING before being called up to the courtroom. I'd been concerned about getting there late, because of multiple detours due to flooding from tremendous rains the previous day. Even after getting there we WAIT, this time in the court room. The defense atty is over an hour late and, surprise surprise, no defendant. His atty doesn't know where he is. We proceed with him in absentia.

We get a considerable raft of instructions before going to deliberate & are sent 20some pages of the instructions & definitions to the deliberation room, along with the dramatic hoodie. While we've no doubt the pair did the nasty deed, we were a bit uncertain about how guilty the defendant was the point of law, more than point of morals. The "in for a penny, in for a pound" nature of being in this criminal escapade together didn't sit well with some of the jurors who wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt: "perhaps he did NOT know his cousin had a knife...." The rest of us talked them 'round, with some additional answers from the Judge (and the lawyers on both sides, they had to be consulted too, for form's sake) which we had to WAIT for. We're ready with the verdict by 4pm, but the judge isn't ready to take it till 5pm- she's in the middle of picking her NEXT jury, so we

WAIT (more embroidery) and WAIT some more. We give the verdict, get polled, get thanked and sent back to the deliberation room to, well, WAIT. While most of us were egar to get out, we were curious enough to want to wait till the Judge comes in to answer our questions and fill us in on the background. HERE is where the real drama starts. It seems our fine upstanding defendant wasn't the man they thought he was. He'd indeed skipped out, and when they went to the house to look for him, they found that he'd stolen the identity of an elderly man in the cluster of houses they lived in, used his identity to register the contracting business with the State of Ohio. Our Dear Defendant, under his actual name, is wanted in the Dominican Republic for murder. Moreover, if skipping out on bond, murder in another country and identity theft aren't enough, he's also wanted for trying to contract the jailhouse murder of the cousin. By this time we're not even sure if they ARE cousins. The guy he wanted for a hit man ratted on him, and so there's one more thing to hit they guy with when/if they find him and truss him up for deportation. I'm thinking we did very well as a jury, convicting Dear Defendant on all 7 counts.

We were not to watch the news because that channel was covering the story of Mom & Pop & E. D Granny being robbed yet AGAIN (seems to be a neighborhood pastime) and this time Mom was pistolwhipped, E. D. Granny took her cane and whacked the pistol wielding robber, who then pistol whipped Granny, all about 2 weeks before this trial, and that was the third or fourth time in a year they'd been robbed (or attempted robbery, as in our case).

Day 4 -back into the jury pool, a whole day of embroidery & beadwork. I finished both projects just in time to be excused for the rest of the week. It was rather neat for a first adventure wading into the Jury pool, but I'm just as happy waiting quite a while for the next swim.

New Year, New Blog

2008-01-10T15:40:00.001-05:00

I've been reading blogs, and wondered if I had as much to say as some of my interesting and literate friends. Musings on the nature of the universe, quirks of humans, proto-humans and the critters we share the earth with; all used to go in letters, written with fountain pens on interesting note paper or cards. I havn't been very faithful in communications the old fashioned way for quite some time & hope that my friends, many of whom are light years ahead of me technically, will find this a comfortable way to see how my world goes round these days. I've kept a journal at times in the past, but not recently.

20 years ago, when I was in grad school, I used to write (type actually) at length. I'd put in clippings from the Chicago papers, rubber stamp illustrations, do drawings, include pictures of my environment or artwork. I'd then copy it and send it out to a list of about two dozen friends. The adventures of Peawig the tortishell tabby and Kelty the Sheltie living with me in the ghetto-in-the-middle- of-a-cornfield were considered high entertainment to most. Those who snarked at not getting individual letters were deleted from the list (they didn't get individual letters, either). When I came home, I made bound copies of those letters which make a wonderful diary of my two years away from home. I figure that having a blog will nudge me into doing that kind of writing again, and encourage some banter from those who bother to read it.

Today, I'm drinking Darjeeling. I need the industrial strength caffeine.