A Wee Drappie o’t

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that was Yesterday

And yesterday's gone.

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

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

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

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

There are Angels hovering 'round...

Changes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My theme song now had words by John Hartford:

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

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

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

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

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

Changes.

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

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

Celebrating Independence

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

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

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

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

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

A Soggy Solstice

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

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

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

Have a Cuppa Sarcasm

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

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

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

Too late to the party

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

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

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