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the chicory in bloom reminds me
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Jul. 16th, 2008 @ 11:45 am
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that it's time to post again the cover to this book:
...about a journey to the Milky Way.
The mariner navigates by chicory blossoms, which are like constellations, truly, with their stems the lines we draw between the stars.
My parents planted some chicory in their yard, and it has flourished, but to me it looks right only by the side of the road, or growing beside a decaying piece of farm machinery.
A deer stopped in the middle of the road, by the railway bridge, to stare at me today. I stared back.
"You had better get on across; cars will be coming soon," I said.
It went on its way.
Corridors of green and wild let deer and bears and fisher cats and so on to wander through towns. There are, no doubt, corridors of magic that do the same for the creatures of the Other World. I believe these two types of corridor overlap.I hear...: Ryuu no shônen (Spirited Away soundtrack) |
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The Captain Pearl R. Nye Collection
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Jul. 12th, 2008 @ 06:42 am
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How amazing is the Library of Congress? This amazing: it permits online access to collections of recordings of folksongs, so you can listen to them and download them. This is our cultural heritage, and the Library of Congress makes it possible for us to enjoy it.
Take a minute to thank the people who established the Library of Congress, and our taxes that preserve it, and everyone who contributes to it. (Thank you!)
When I said I wanted to learn some canal songs for our trip along the Erie Canal, the extremely amazing ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) tritoneclarinet went into research overdrive mode and discovered so much amazing stuff that I haven't been able to take it all in yet, but among the things she came up with is the Captain Pearl R. Nye Collection, recorded by John, Alan, and Elizabeth Lomax in 1938 and 1939. Here is Captain Pearl R. Nye. (I never knew "Pearl" could be a boy's name...)
(And here you can see a five-second or so little silent film of him.)
He was born in 1872 to a family of canal boaters, never married, and eventually became a captain of a canal boat himself. The canal closed in 1913, and he supported himself in other ways, among them, singing. He also collaborated on a book about life on the canal, which I shall have to look for.
(All that information comes from the Library of Congress's blurb on the collection, available here)
And the treasure trove? All the songs? Available here. There are canal songs, but other old ballads, too--I clicked on one and soon realized I was listening to a version of Little Musgrave/Matty Groves (Child 81).
We will *definitely* be singing more than "The Erie Canal" on this journey!I feel...:  amazed and delighted I hear...: Pearl R. Nye: The Clever Skipper |
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You have made me decide that, after finishing Les Miserables, I shall read 93
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just two things on the list...
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Jun. 25th, 2008 @ 11:41 am
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Lawrence of Arabia
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Jun. 23rd, 2008 @ 09:31 am
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| » synchronicity du style "les bonnes fees" |
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A number of people mentioned the new webzine Les Bonnes Fees, and when I went and looked, lo and behold, they had an article on spinning in fairy tales (by K. C. Shaw). It talks about spinning nettles, and all! I feel like my interests are in harmony with some portion of the LJ hive mind :-)
One of the poetry authors, Peggy Landsman, did the art that accompanies her poem--it's so pretty, and you can see it here (the poem is called "La Luna/The Moon"). dkolodji also has a poem in, with a very apt photo illustrating it. (Both poems are lovely; there's a third poem I haven't read yet.)
One weird feature of the zine, though, that mab_led mentioned, is that it has advertising links right in the text of the stories and poems. So for instance, the word "palm" in the story "Fairy Frogmother" leads to ads for... palm pilots. :-\
Otherwise, though, it's very pretty. Next break I take, I'll have to look at the fiction.
Jun. 17th, 2008 @ 01:45 pm
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| » sea friends and knitting and crocheting friends |
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Did you know June 8 was World Ocean Day? I did not, but it was.
whiskeredsadie, a very cool person who has traveled the world over and hails from Nova Scotia, put together an exhibit of knitted and crocheted sea life to call attention to the plight of marine life. (Picture and story here.)
Jun. 10th, 2008 @ 09:01 am
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| » Green Man Music Festival |
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Well, it turns out there's a music festival in beautiful Wales called the Green Man Music Festival. The people organizing it characterize it as a "small, independent festival" with approximately 9,000 attendees.
I have never been to a music festival, so I have no basis for comparison.
Looks like this is the second year they've held it.
There are bunches and bunches of bands participating--with the exception of one, they're all completely unknown to me, but each one I click on seems to be fun. Right now, for instance, I'm listening to The Saffron Sect, based in
Toronto. Very psychedelic and pleasantly 60's sounding. Some of the other stuff is more hard-edged, like The Drive-by Truckers, a group that NPR characterizes as "where southern rock meets soul." Well, so you get the picture--eclectic.
Oh, and the one group I'd heard of? Pentangle, who do the first versions I ever got of "Cruel Sister" and "Sovay"!
Why am I talking about all this?
Well, oddly enough, I got an e-mail from one of the organizers, an e-mail to Asakiyume, asking if I'd help promote it by talking about it here. Which is funny, because I'm not exactly what you'd call a mover and shaker in the music world. But why not? It seems fun.
They're having a poll to choose what band should open their festival. If you vote (which you can do here), you might win tickets to the festival. Of course, if you're like me, there'd still be the minor matter of airfare to Great Britain and transport to Wales, but if you're actually in Great Britain or will be there in mid-August, why not sample the bands and vote?
Jun. 3rd, 2008 @ 10:20 pm
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| » maddening honey |
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I'm definitely going to use this, or something based on it, in a story one day:
(From Wikipedia's entry "Rhododendron")
Some species are poisonous to grazing animals. These Rhododendrons have a toxin called grayanotoxin in their pollen and nectar. People have been known to become ill from eating honey made by bees feeding on rhododendron and azalea flowers. Xenophon described the odd behavior of Greek soldiers after having consumed honey in a village surrounded by rhododendrons. Later, it was recognized that honey resulting from these plants have a slightly hallucinogenic and laxative effect.
Traveling through the links (God bless the Internet), I come to this, from Pliny the Elder, on "Maddening Honey":
In the country of the Sanni, in the same part of Pontus, there is another kind of honey, which, from the madness it produces, has received the name of "mænomenon." This evil effect is generally attributed to the flowers of the rhododendron, with which the woods there abound; and that people, though it pays a tribute to the Romans in wax, derives no profit whatever from its honey, in consequence of these dangerous properties ... What can we suppose to have possibly been the intention of Nature in thus laying these traps in our way, giving us honey that is poisonous in some years and good in others, poisonous in some parts of the combs and not in others, and that, too, the produce in all cases of the self-same bees? It was not enough, forsooth, to have produced a substance in which poison might be administered without the slightest difficulty, but must she herself administer it as well in the honey, to fall in the way of so many animated beings?
May. 11th, 2008 @ 11:01 am
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| » the transformation stump |
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There is a magical stump visible from my window. If you stand on it, you can transform yourself. Observe:
It has been a remarkable day. Remarkable. I got an e-mail from Appleseed Records. I don't believe I've ever purchased anything from Appleseed records, but the thing is, I intend to... so, what? Is the Internet reading my mind now? And I received an 18-minute piece of remarkable ghost music from sovay that promises to haunt both waking and sleeping hours. Best of all, my favorite pirate folksinger may make a video singing "Wake Up" or "Drowsy Sleeper," thanks to prompting from a devoted fan.
It looks like the Walk for Hunger will be cold and rainy--20 miles of cold and rainy! This Sunday. You can console me with a donation, here.
May. 2nd, 2008 @ 08:00 pm
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| » Lessons learned from ballads |
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From lizziebelle, from her friend mevennen, and originally from the blog of Irish Cat Drinking Song composer Marc Gunn, Things I Learned from British Folk Ballads"
Some of my favorites:
If you're drinking toasts, mention your One True Love early and often...
Sharing a boyfriend with your sister is a bad plan ...
If you arrange an assignation with your new sweetie, a little foot page will be listening in and will carry the news to exactly the last person you'd want to hear the story...
If your girlfriend serves eels in eel broo, make sure you see her eat some first.
And lots more where they came from :D
Apr. 10th, 2008 @ 07:57 pm
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| » What the Internet** brings |
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To me? EVERYTHING!
more than I can say--but look what it brought in particular, today:
jmeadows **made them**. She writes novels AND knits socks. She is amazing.
**The US Postal Service actually brought them. But, the postal service wouldn't have delivered them if jmeadows hadn't sent them, and she wouldn't have sent them if we hadn't become friends, and we wouldn't have become friends if it weren't for LJ, and there would be no LJ if it weren't for the Internet!
Nov. 30th, 2007 @ 06:12 pm
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| » LOLcat Bible! |
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sdn posted about the LOLcat Bible
very fun!
e.g....from Genesis: An Ceiling Cat sed O hai, make bebehs kthx. An dont worry i wont watch u secksy, i not that kynd uf kitteh.23 An so teh...fith day. Ceiling Cat taek a wile 2 cawnt.
Nov. 27th, 2007 @ 03:18 pm
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| » moonshadows, unicorns |
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The forest creatures were desperate for this remix of Moonlight Shadow, sung by a German group called Missing Heart. Not the short version that's on DDR, not the version sung by Groove Coverage, or any of 24 versions (some were duplicates, though) offered on iTunes.
My brother was able to drum it up from somewhere. He's so awesome.
Well, it is an invasively danceable, singable tune, with pretty good lyrics, too ( here are the lyrics )
And, it got me thinking about the difference between a moonlight shadow--I guess the shadow you'd cast in the light of the moon--and a moonshadow, which is the shadow the moon casts on Earth during a solar eclipse... I think.
And also, it got me thinking about Cat Stevens's song, pardon me, Yusuf Islam's song, "Moonshadow," that has a cheerful melody but somewhat morbid words ( lyrics here )
All of which made me wonder if there's a folk tradition of the shadow of the moon, or shadows cast by the moon, being of grim portent. But--a five-minute search of the Internet didn't turn up anything...and I don't have more time to devote to the matter.
Anyone else know anything about that?
One thing I did discover, though, was that Groove Coverage did a cover of the opening song to the movie The Last Unicorn (of course... not on iTunes. Dear iTunes. You have lots of stuff, but about half the stuff I look for, you don't have.)
Apparently it was written by Jimmy Webb and sung, in the movie, by the band America. The lyrics are under the cut.
( lyrics to The Last Unicorn )
And you can watch the really lovely intro to the movie on YouTube, here.
The Internet is clearly going to be my ruination.
I'll have to live in the woods and subsist on nothing but hickory nuts. Which, I discovered this morning, after work with a rock and a little nut-extractor thing, require more calories to get into than they offer back, though they are very delicious.
Sep. 5th, 2007 @ 10:02 am
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| » Sovay, Sovay! |
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So, I have a new LJ friend called sovay (hi, sovay, if you're reading this). She has hooked me up with some awesome versions of old folksongs.
Well then! I was not at all surprised to discover that her username is the name of an old folksong, and what a song! I happened to ask sartorias what music she associated with a particularly heart-rending story (more than just heart-rending. It's heart-rending and then some...), and among other pieces, she mentioned "Sovay."
So I went and listened... and then found the lyrics. It's about a woman who steps out on the king's roads as a highway(wo)man to test her true love.
How excellent to be a female highwayman! A highwaywoman :-)
I'd like to draw a picture of one, but for now, here's something from Google. I think this is actually a young man, but he's got a feminine look to him, doesn't he? Can't you imagine him as a woman? It's Adam Ant--so both miz_geek and wakanomori tell me
And here are the lyrics (one version of them, anyway), courtesy of http://sniff.numachi.com/
Sovay
Sovay, Sovay, all on a day
She dressed herself in man's array.
With a sword and pistol all by her side,
To meet her true love,
To meet her true love away did ride.
As she was riding over the plain,
She met her true love and bid him stand.
"Your gold and silver, kind sir," she said,
"Or else this moment,
Or else this moment your life I'll have."
And when she'd robbed him of his store,
She said, "Kind sir, there's just one thing more--
A golden ring which I know you have,
Deliver it,
Deliver it your sweet life to save."
"O, that golden ring a token is;
My life I'll lose, the ring I'll save."
Being tender-hearted just like a dove,
She rode away,
Rode away from her true love.
Next morning in the garden green,
Just like two lovers they were seen.
He spied his watch hanging by her cloak
Which made him blush,
Made him blush like any rose.
"O what makes you blush at so silly a thing?
I thought to have had your golden ring.
'Twas I that robbed you all on the plain,
So here's your watch
Here's your watch and your gold again.
"For I did intend and it was to know
If that you were my true love or no.
Well, now I have a contented mind;
My heart and all,
My heart and all my gear* is thine."
In the notes, it said that the name at one time may have been Sylvie, which made me like the song all the more, as Sylvie/Sylvia is one of my favorite names.
In other news, one thing that tastes good? elderberry syrup dripped on chocolate ice cream.
Now I have to write some of my own story, having gotten pretty giddy reading other people's. And write a poem about a rising night tide.
Aug. 29th, 2007 @ 09:46 pm
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| » Music is Love |
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I need to borrow shikuchi's icon that says that.
Thank you to sin_agua, sovay, tithenai! Also to origa for pointing me in the direction of last fm, and grayheyes who was the one who got me started on this journey :-)
Aug. 26th, 2007 @ 04:34 pm
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| » Taste the Goblin Fruit! |
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kythiaranos has a poem in the Summer 2007 issue of Goblin Fruit, and curiousity about the poem and the enthusiasm of blue_vervain made me go right over, first free minute I got.
And wow! This is a *fantastic* magazine! The homepage for this summer issue was so beautiful, graphically, and then, every single poem I happened to look at, I loved.
The kind editors said I could put some quotes here, so for instance, from Jennifer Crow's "Mermaid Syndrome":
during your lunch break you loosen
your blouse past the point of decency
and splash chlorinated water
on flushed cheeks. Behind your reflection
a beach awaits you -- volcanic sands
polished by the tide, and your sisters
weeping for joy in the surf.
Or how about this, from "How Does He Know?" by Kate Chadbourne:
The old púca conducts this thought
through the open doors of your head,
through the latchless gates of your blood
There is also a series of haiku, by Joshua Gage, that capture the essence of certain fairy tales--you must go take a look: my favorite is the one that mentions stinging nettles :-)
And then a very funny one by Karen Jessica New called "Cogito Ogre Sum," about Ogre-ish logic.
Finding things like Goblin Fruit online is really exciting--it makes the world seem full of possibilities.
Jul. 16th, 2007 @ 11:30 am
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| » pied piper, infinity |
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( for Wakanomori )
The town has mown an access path into a portion of the undiscovered country, and the fragrance of the mown grass-turning-into-hay, along with clover and bedstraw/madder, and the wild roses, well, it's better than will-o'-the-wisp or the pied piper's flute for calling you to come on in, come on in... If you were to walk in, the music you would hear might be very like "Twilight and Shadow" from the Return of the King soundtrack, maybe. (I didn't walk in, physically, because of being in flip-flops and a skirt... but in another way I way I was all the way in, moved in on the mist.)
We saw A Beautiful Mind last night. I had to leave the room when he walks the pattern of the sign for infinity--infinity almost always makes me cry. But then, being up almost constantly for 48 hours makes me prone to weep over just about anything; even though I like sleep deprivation sometimes, I can also see how it's an effective torture; the world and your instincts get skewed, and I, at any rate, become hugely emotional and suggestable.
But even when I'm not exhausted, thoughts of infinity often make tears come to my eyes. I think it's because of its being not comprehendable; I think being on the very edges of thought, of reaching for the eternal--that makes the tears come.
I really liked the movie. wakanomori, we'll have to see it together, too. I **won't** spoil it for you and neither will the forest creatures--the plot twists completely worked for us.
Jun. 17th, 2007 @ 08:16 am
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| » random mix of things |
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This year, we have lots and lots of strawberries. I let the grass and dandelions and bedstraw or madder (not sure which; either gives a red dye from its roots, which is why I planted it and let it grow wild) and other stuff grow tall around the edges of the strawberry plot, and it hides them from the birds, and I find huge, huge strawberries. Here are some from last week:
The cows came to the edge of the fence to watch me on my walk yesterday or the day before...
I have started reading Grace in the New Year, which is a cool story, and I can't wait to find out what's going to happen next--I was reading it late, late at night last night and woke up thinking about Grace's dad.
Meanwhile, in the nightlands, Ara and Kerrin are about to stumble on a nest of night dragons.
norilana posted some amazing YouTube videos of Georgian dancing, which sartorias linked to over at the ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) athanarel website, and that put me in a search mode, and I found a piece of music I really love, sung live, by a singer called, of all things, Origa! (origa, I don't know anything about her, except that she may be Russian, and she was singing with a Japanese orchestra.) This song is both very melancholy and very martial. You can hear it if you click here. The slide show is not so interesting, so you can minimize your screen and just listen.
You know what other song I like? "Umbrella" by Rihanna.
Jun. 13th, 2007 @ 02:50 pm
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cheerful
