*Just a quick note before I head off to my St. Patrick's Day revels in the storage room for a Zamboni machine (never mind), because I have a sinking feeling the world will be rather a different place by this time tomorrow.
*Saturday, I lug OD and various friends to Cambridge so they can attend a march and rally, and then pick them up again a few hours later so they can lounge around and talk teenage talk in our friendly confines. In the car, they're singing "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy)" and "One Tin Soldier." I love it.
*Sunday, it's warm (50ish) and sunny, and I stay at OD's morris and rapper sword practice, doing some rehearsing of my own in a back room. I am rewarded with a look at OD's rapper sword team going through its paces, and doing quite well, thank you. After practice, the sun has set, and as we drive back home, we see a couple of dozen people lining the road with lit candles. Sobering.
*And tomorrow is LW's birthday, too.
March 7-10
*Well, the parental-daughter thaw finally takes place, helped in no small way by a venture to an "experienced contra dance" session Friday night, music for which is supplied by Ruckus, including my sometime-session mates Eric and Ted. Very enjoyable all around, and I notice that almost everyone in attendance is, if not a friend or acquaintance, at least somewhat recognizable by now. Guess that's when you realize you're a regular.
*The exterior temperature goes up a notch as well, thankfully, enough to throw open the windows for a few hours and clear away some of the stale air (and some of the malaise and angst?) that has collected within. Saturday also sees what promises to be the first moves in a reorganization of the premises -- one which will end with a renovated bedroom for the young'uns.
*I pass up my usual session jaunt to play tunes with fellow Great Meadows Morris parent/chauffeur Victor during our daughters' practice. A very good experience for me, having a strict rhythm (via piano) behind me as I work my way through tunes with which I'm not necessarily familiar. Trick is, you just keep playing something, hopefully at least with a resemblance to what's on the printed page.
*Massachusetts, among others, is considering a ban on same-sex marriages, on the grounds that -- so say proponents -- it will serve to weaken the institution of marriage itself. By that score, maybe states should mull prohibition of reality-TV series such as "Married By America."
*Is there just a bit of irony here? Turkey's new leader, Tayyip Erdogan, was tossed in the stir and prohibited from taking office last year because the military and political hard-liners believe him to be a dyed-in-the-wool Islamist -- yet he's the one who will likely grease the skids for US troops to operate out of Turkey, in a war that many Muslims oppose.
*Celtics sign Bimbo
Coles. Does that mean Koko the Clown and Betty Boop will be seen in the Fleet Center soon?
March 3-6
*Winter holding fast this year, with very cold temperatures and a rather intense but relatively brief snowstorm making the vernal equinox seem months away, rather than weak.
*YD, meanwhile, can now officially gird herself for the role of Amaryllis in an upcoming production of "Music Man." Not quite as high-profile as she might've liked, but she will give it her all.
*Recent musical acquisitions:
==The Dixie Chicks, "Home" -- By now, the general critical judgment is in: This is the DC "back-to-the-roots" album, showing both their maturation and their retrenchment from the wild ride of the past few years. A rather pat assessment, perhaps, but hard to dispute, especially since that's what the lead track "Long Time Gone" lays down. But "Long Time Gone," "Truth No. 2," "Li'l Jack Slade" and "Tortured Tangled Heart" do nonetheless bespeak a return to the more traditional country-bluegrass genre from which they sprang. "White Trash Wedding" shows they certainly haven't lost their sense of humor, either. There's also an interesting tension between "Travelin' Soldier," with its small-town girl's-eye's view of war, and "More Love," which includes a pretty unmistakable political statement.
== Ashley MacIssac, "Hello(tm), How Are You?" -- Traditional French-Canadian music meets grunge-metal rock (if I have my labels affixed correctly). None of this would work if MacIssac wasn't a helluva good fiddler, and while the arrangements on a few of the tracks are overloaded, the contemporary stuff is very listenable -- especially the album's signature, "Sleepy Maggie," with Mary Jane Lamond's almost sultry Gaelic singing. He also has a lot of fun, such as with the more straightforward rocker "What an Idiot He Is" and, in the out-of-left-field department, a medley accompanied by fiddle, piano and rhythm spoons.
March 1-2
*In attempt to keep OD's spirits up, I consent to squire around her and four -- FOUR -- boyos to a contra dance in (very) rural Central Massachusetts. Turns out to be a small event, with few experienced dancers and an understandably low-key band, but as they say, the journey alone was part of the appeal: teens packed stem to stern, musical selections on the car stereo alternating between Barachois, Tom Lehrer and Primus. OD and I see off our traveling companions and arrive home at 1 a.m.
*Rather tired next day, but still up for a consecutive-Sunday visit to the O'Hanlon's session, with a revamped and expanded line-up of regulars, including the lovely, talented and generally congenial Kristin Andreassen of the Footworks Ensemble and more recently, the splendidly-named Stupid Kiss. The ever-ebullient Jerry Bell also is able to join us for an all-too-brief time, and I even get to unveil my current favorite new song, No Telling (What a Love Song Will Do)."
Feb. 28
*I truly think I would not want to be a teenager today. Period, full stop. The inevitable valleys lying below the peaks nowadays, it seems, have crevices leading to even deeper regions and are far too easily accessed.
*News item: Red Herring magazine is, according to published reports, about to go belly-up. Which means that a certain morris dance team I know will no longer suffer from brand confusion.
Feb. 21-27
*Bye-bye, Mr. Rogers. Never really watched him as a kid, so my initial familiarity was framed largely through parodies and spoofs (e.g. Eddie Murphy or the National Lampoon). But my kids' rather brief interest in watching him helped me to appreciate one of his most important qualities: He knew that it was important for kids to have quiet entertainment. Still, the sight of him running to hand his safety helmet back to a burly construction worker is etched in my mind.
*Viewing: "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" -- I guess every ethnic culture must have its children-of-immigrants generation gap romantic comedy, so here's Greece's entry. But arguably, this genre is important, as we become an increasingly mixed and multicultural society; what do we preserve from our place of origin, and how? Not that this film really tries to get at that question seriously, but it's still generally enjoyable.
*Recent musical acquisitions:
== Linda Thompson, "Fashionably Late" -- Don't know what kind of inner demons Linda's struggled with in the 15-some years since her last album (not including the compilation "Dreams Fly Away"), but I'd like to believe the fight was worth it in producing this well-crafted album. I always appreciated most of all her voice, full of maturity and experience and capable of hitting a range of emotional, as well as musical notes. She does that here, in spades. "Dear Mary" sounds straight from the late-1960s/early '70s Fairport Convention mode, not the least because of Richard Thompson's guitar work. "It's a Weary Old Life" is a self-deprecatingly ironic take on the ravages of age, where the gentle humor manages to blunt the cynicism. Two of her compositions reflect ties to the British Isles tradition: "Nine Stone Rig," a chilling rework of "The Border Widow's Lament," and "Banks of the Clyde," an achingly beautiful lament from the "St. James Hospital/Young Girl Cut Down in Her Prime" mold, with stirring Northumbrian pipes by Kathryn Tickell. Then there's the centerpiece, "No Telling" -- it tips on its head the barroom-ballad type of song she and Richard practically made a genre, offering sentimentality and redemption. Oh yes, and it will shortly appear (if it hasn't already) in my repertoire.
*Boiled in Lead, "Orb" -- Genre-hopping at the flick of a wrist, and never dull in doing so. Balkan instrumentals give way to driving metal-billy ("Tape Decks All over Hell") to quirky, semi-original acoustic compositions ("Army (Dream Song)" and "Hard Times") to Celtic rock ("Siege of Delhi"). I think these guys would be fun at a contra dance.
Feb. 19
Scenes from the aftermath:
Feb. 14-18
*SnowIceBitterColdSnow. I think I almost started channeling Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance from "The Shining," minus visions of naked women in bathtubs and overtly hostile-psychopathic tendencies, of course.
*Friday is a day of semi-rest, most of the activity revolving around dropping OD at friend's house for her trip to The Dance Flurry which, from what scant information we are subsequently given, appears to go very well indeed. I rush back into the relative comfort of home as the mercury dips. And there I largely stay for most of the weekend, really, because there's just not a lot of motivation for going outside -- especially since our old if valiant heater appears barely able to cope with the suffusive cold.
*OK, yes, one respite: I made another visit to the Saturday evening session at Anam Cara, and although the social atmosphere and musical inclusiveness is not quite as top-flight as last week, I'm more than happy to be sitting in a warm pub with a pint of Harp at the side.
*Monday dawns with thickening clouds and dire warnings of snow measured in feet not inches. Lo and behold, it happens. My place of employ boots us at noon and remains shuttered the next day as well. Thus we sit watching the snowflakes rise and fall in intensity and swiftly accumulate on the all-but-vanished ground. Tuesday is spent mostly on snow-removal duty -- although we did give in and hire a group of entrepreneurial gentlemen for $40 to clear the bulk of the driveway -- which brings about an early and restful sleep.
*Viewings:
=="American Women" -- Generally average Irish village ensemble comedy, this one built around a plot by some local boyos -- by degrees bored, disillusioned and horny -- to lure their idealized American women to the annual town festival. We know, of course, that they fail to appreciate what's right in front of them, and can only hope they will remedy this by the time the credits roll. Unlikely highlight: A father explaining to his pre-teen daughter the reasons for his long-in-coming departure, using the most cliched sports metaphor imaginable.
=="Beauty and the Beast" -- Jean Cocteau's celebrated version of the classic Madame Leprince de Beaumont story is justly praised for its atmosphere and visuals (Beauty's slow-motion arrival into the castle is haunting, menacing and beautiful all at once), and for Jean Marais' portrayal of the noble, tortured Beast. Perhaps overlooked, however, is the comic element of Beauty's combative, selfish siblings.
Feb. 13
*At the risk of sounding like some kind of neophyte rube, I am tremendously enthused by this site. Now, if I hear a jig or reel that I'm crazy to learn, the phrase "Damn, it's not in O'Neill's" need not cross my lips. Of course, it helps enormously if I do actually know the name of said tune.
*Proof that science-oriented writing doesn't have to be technical nor boring, courtesy of the New York Times' Dennis Overbye, reporting on new data about the origins of the universe:
"The result, the astronomers said, is a seamless and consistent history of the universe, from its first few seconds, when it was a sizzling soup of particles and energy, to the modern day and a sky beribboned with chains of pearly galaxies inhabited by at least one race of puzzled and ambitious bipeds."
Feb. 10
My favorite eco-disaster of the year so far:
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky - More than 1,000 gallons of tequila spilled into the sewer system Monday after a worker tried to unload it from a truck into an already full storage tank at a distillery, officials said.
The tequila overflowed at a rate of 100 gallons per minute, resulting in 1,500 to 1,800 gallons entering the city sewer system, said Phil Lynch, a spokesman for the Brown-Forman Distillery.
Fire and sewer officials were called because of the flammability of the 80-proof liquor, he said. Water was used to dilute the spilled alcohol.
"It was a simple case of human error," Lynch said.
With a little nurturing, this could become a variation on the "exploding toilet" urban legend: woman using hair spray can't stop it from discharging, empties contents into toilet bowl; husband uses it several minutes later, lights a cigarette, throws match into the bowl and...
Feb. 7-9
*Right, I'm now 45. Almost halfway to my goal of living a century. Your assistance in this task is greatly appreciated.
If you expect now to read of a birthday bacchanalia, alas, I regret to inform you that the festivities, as such, were a (relatively) quiet evening at home following an 11-hour day at the office. Which was fine with me. There was food, there was wine, and to quote Vincent Price, we fell to reminiscing.
*...all of which took place, I should add, in the wake of an unexpectedly intense snowstorm that confirmed this winter to be what winters are supposed to be.
*My birthday present to myself came a day later, when I dropped in for my first visit to the early-evening session at the Anam Cara pub-restaurant in Brookline. A lot to like about it, actually: given the time of day, the place wasn't especially crowded; there wasn't an overflow of musicians -- four of us for most of the time, until we were joined by a second fiddler and then a bodhran player; and the tempos and tunes were well within the advanced-beginner to high-intermediate range. The presence of microphones at the session table rather throws me, though -- seems to require quite a bit of attention to get the things working right.
*More music on Sunday, when I stayed at OD's morris and rapper-sword practice to jam with another parent-chauffeur, as we had done a couple of weeks ago. Good discipline for me in a number of ways: I have to be more careful and deliberate about my guitar-playing because he's still a neophyte fiddler; when he plays piano, meanwhile, I'm forced to sight-read while simultaneously keeping to the rhythm, areas in which I've been admittedly sloppy. Oh yeah, it's also just fun to talk, too...
Feb. 1-2
*Where was I? I, along with LW and YD, was at a bar mitzvah service for the son of close family friends, and it wasn't until I was driving to the reception at around 1 p.m. that I heard -- even then, it was as an "oh-by-the-way" item on a sports radio station's regular update. I caught snatches of reportage on the TV in the lobby of the hotel where the reception was held, but only when we got home did I at last see what has become the enduring image of this event: clear azure sky, bisected by the bright golden streak, as if this were some inspirational celestial phenomenon.
Took a while to sink in, in part because of other social arrangements [more of which later]. And, like many people, I had come to accept the occasional reports of the space shuttle program as if they were NASCAR updates. More to the point, I suppose, here we are, poised on the brink of a whole other kind of conflagration. Then, the stories come out, in fits and starts: one of the dead was the niece of a couple who lost their son on 9/11, for example. For me, the most compelling is the journey of Kalpana Chawla, from a village in the Punjab where, as the NY Times reported, "the birth of a girl was met with quiet disappointment, and often still is." There's danger in turning someone into A Symbol when they're not around to approve it, but if there was ever a calm, quiet rejoinder to the hysteria over immigration -- especially from non-Western nations -- Kalpana was surely it.
*Life does, and did go on. The reception was an occasion to catch up with old friends and acquaintances, to attempt a bastardized form of Appalachian clogging and Irish step dancing to "Cotton Eye Joe," and to listen to fondly rendered anecdotes, mostly about the young man of the hour. A favorite: Awaiting his kindergarten screening, he wrote on the blackboard, "This is a trap."
*Barely an hour after returning home, OD and I are off to a mid-winter dinner party and jam session at the home of another morris dance-folk music family. Scant minutes after we arrive, a Celtic session begins in the living room -- an old-timey session already underway in the adjoining parlor -- and I carve out a space to unpack instruments. Before I know it, some three hours have passed and my arm's about ready to fall off. What's especially pleasing is that at the beginning, more than half of the musicians participating were 17 or younger. One of them, in fact, stayed on with us oldies well after her friends had strayed off to socialize (and, as it turned out, to sing Beatles' songs a cappella). The progress she's made is fairly astonishing, but I find myself simply impressed at how much joy she clearly finds in sittin' and scrapin'.
*Given that the drive home is through a shifting snow-to-rain-to-sleet storm, and that I'm still basking in the glow of music and friendship, getting to sleep is somewhat difficult. Which makes Sunday an increasingly lethargic day.
*Viewing: "My First Mister" -- Frustrating, in that it comes oh-so-close to working despite some significant flaws and misjudgments. The premise is, actually, pretty damn good, pairing anti-social goth-grrl (LeeLee Sobieski) with soft, middle-aged owner of men's clothing store (Albert Brooks). Sobieski and Brooks both manage to take their characters beyond stereotype, and the relationship between them is ambiguous enough (employer-employee? mentor-mentee? surrogate parent and child? lovers?) to create both poignant mirth and acceptable tension. Then comes a Great Crisis, and the two must face the inevitable risks of growth through the inevitable confrontation of personal demons, notably the patching-up of their respective familial bonds. All of which rings less-than-sincerely compared to the pleasantly off-center first part of the film.
Jan. 31
So, the Library of Congress has announced the first 50 selections for its
National Recording Registry. I'm gratified that not only did Scott Joplin, the Carter Family, Woody Guthrie, Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith make the cut, but so did Uncle Dave Macon, Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, Bob Dylan, the Fisk Jubilee Singers and even Eck Robertson. Glad to see, also, that recordings made by John and Ruby Lomax, as well as the Highlander Center of Rosa Parks, Septima Clark, among others, were on the list.
Jan. 28
*I don't think I'm that much of a conspiracy buff, but I have this uncanny feeling that as soon as the February sweeps are over, we're heading to Baghdad.
*Too much of a good thing? http://www.ninestones.com/didjibod.html
Or just too much, full stop?
*Book completed: "Still She Haunts Me," by Katie Roiphe -- Another, semi-fictionalized attempt to fathom the nature of the relationship between Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell during the several years he was almost part of their household. Roiphe does make pretty extensive use of archived letters, journals and manuscripts to help construct conversations between the principals, as well as glimpses at the creative process of Dodgson/Carroll. But ultimately, the book tries to get at the question as to whether, or how much, Dodgson's feelings towards Alice traversed the knife-edge between inappropriate and idealization. For that, Roiphe seeks to take us inside not only the head of Dodgson but of Alice and her mother, and in so doing, calls forth that by-now familiar stereotype of repressed Victorians.
Jan. 25-26
*Live vicariously through the joyous experiences of one's children, right? On Saturday, I lug OD to friend's house so she can drive up with them to the Snow Ball contra dance extravaganza in New Hampshire. I return to the house Sunday morn to find her and several friends in post-slumber party mode, looking absolutely adorable. Apparently, it was all she hoped for, and more.
A few hours later, I'm schlepping her to morris and sword practice, where another parent and I adjourn to a quiet room and play some tunes. It occurs to me that jamming with someone for the first time is not unlike a date: You're thinking to yourself "Will we get along?" "Does he/she like me?" "Oh God, I hope I don't do something stupid!" In any case, quite a fun time -- tried a few contra dance tunes that I've heard but had never played before, and managed to do all right. And then, as a bonus, we get to watch our offspring do their ever-improving rapper sword routine.
*Viewings:
=="The Professional" -- Well, certainly a different spin on the concept of mentoring. But a poignant, funny film all the same: Professional hitman Leon (Jean Reno) finds himself a caretaker for orphaned Mathilde (Natalie Portman) after her family is slaughtered by a crooked drug agent and his cohorts. Leon is a great creation, a creature of discipline and habit who is also naive and disadvantaged -- he can't read or write, and he accepts his boss's explanation that the money he's earned is being "held" for him. Most of all, Leon also has an inner capacity for compassion and humanity, and Mathilde helps him mine it -- often against his will. At the same time, he demonstrates to her the significance of resolve, and of redemption.
=="The Crossing Guard" -- Disappointing. The cast is willing, but the script is weak. Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston are a couple who've taken different roads to recovery from the death of their daughter: she, through remarriage and by devoting attention to their younger children; he, through haunting sleazy bars and sad liaisons with strippers and hookers, and thoughts about killing the soon-to-be-paroled drunk driver (David Morse) responsible who killed his daughter. But writer-director Sean Penn makes the mistake of front-loading the tension at the beginning of the film, when Nicholson confronts Morse but unaccountably allows him three days before what's supposed to be the final reckoning. In the interim, Nicholson drinks, plays a dissipated sugar daddy to various young ladies, and squabbles with Huston, while Morse has something along the lines of a love affair with Robin Wright Penn. In the end, you're about as ready to cry as Nicholson.
Jan. 24
Can't let the week end without a pen-and-ink paean to Mssrs. Bill Mauldin and Al Hirschfield, gone, surely, to sketch on a higher plane. Mauldin was a little before my time, but Willie and Joe were arguably two of the greatest cultural creations coming out of World War II America. But I will happily admit to browsing Hirschfield cartoons in the NY Times as a child, and feeling quite satisfied when I managed to find a "Nina." Somewhere along the way, I realized that the drawings themselves were uncannily evocative and quite inspired.
Jan. 23
*Morris dancers=deviated preverts? From BBC Gloucestershire:
"Morris dancers in the county are expecting new recruits at their dance workshop today following an embarrassing error in the Guildhall's event programme. Instead of reading 'Absolute beginners of any sex', the Lassington Oak Morris Men's event was billed as 'absolute beginners sex welcome.'"
Mymorris team, which keeps its sexual recruitment tactics a closely-guarded secret, meanwhile, had a pretty damn good practice this week, as we continue adapting to our new repertoire.
*Fox-TV has announced plans to develop a revival -- if that's the word -- of the old CBS sit-com, "Mr Ed," except that this time the talking horse will, according to Yahoo, "speak with a more urban voice," apparently through the likes of Eddie Murphy or Eddie Griffin. Not to over-analyze or anything, but arguably one of the almost-redeeming subtexts of the original was that Mr. Ed represented -- however tenuously -- a link to the more bucolic, agrarian past not so far removed from the new suburbanites of the 1950s and early '60s, as embodied by Wilbur Post. Not sure if a voice that's supposed to be straight from the 'hood can bring that off.
*Viewings:
=="Minority Report" -- Plenty of good fodder for philosophy, theology and ethics classes: If you had the means to "predict" a crime and then intervene before it happens, how do you assign guilt and responsibility? And should you, especially if the crime is unpremeditated and born of passion? Steven Spielberg only partly explores that premise in this film, set in Washington, DC, in the year 2054, six years into a law enforcement experiment that utilizes clairvoyant "pre-cogs" and a special division to prevent murders, rapes and other crimes. Complicating this future-shock scenario, among other things, are good old-fashioned politics, greed and ego. There is, also, the almost inevitable Spielbergan sub-text of lost children and parents. A grainy, harshly-lit Tom Cruise manages to carry all this pretty well.
=="Gladiator" -- Probably not the best film to watch on a 13-inch screen, but it's still possible to appreciate Ridley Scott's visuals, from dark, wintry Germanic forests to an Ancient Rome that is as complex and overwhelming as most any modern metropolis. Almost, but fortunately not quite, dwarfed by the landscape is Russell Crowe, as the great general Maximus, who suffers excruciating betrayal and loss and forced to battle in the Roman Colosseum for his survival; Crowe plays him as man of equal parts strength, sorrow, honor and dignity. Scott gets points alone for using respected but oft-overlooked veteran British actors like Oliver Reed, Derek Jacobi and David Hemmings.
Jan. 18-20
*Our imitation Antarctica continues, strong as ever, and yet I can't seem to avoid venturing out in it. On Saturday, I drive YD to classmate's bar mitzvah and attendant celebrations, which -- after a certain amount of mainly clothes-related sturm und drang -- she quite enjoyed. Sunday is Great Meadows rehearsal for OD, and with no car pool in place I hang around, sneaking occasional peeks at the practice but mainly tooling around on mandolin -- I have absolutely fallen head-over-hands with a reel called "The Holly Bush," and must learn it -- and talking with other GM parents.
Sunday evening, I drop in for my first 2003 sampling of the O'Leary's Pub session, which starts later than usual but turns out a treat: workable tempos, and a good range of tunes. However, I'm starting to become a little concerned that I might have the makings of carpal tunnel syndrome or something -- my hands and wrists feel tingly at odd times while playing, as if I'd sat on them for a while before shifting position. Doesn't appear to hamper my playing much, not yet, but...
And then we finish the holiday weekend with the obligatory grocery shopping after which, thankfully, I am able to hunker down and relish the warmth of indoors.
*Recent musical acquisitions:
==Tom Kruskal, Jim Morrison, Robert Jospe, John Dexter, "Over the Water: Traditional English Morris Music" and
Lissa Schneckenberger, "The Mad Hatter" -- Some local flavor here. Lissa plays at many area contra dances, as well as with the innovative three-fiddle group Halali, and this album (her first, released in 1997) aptly demonstrates her ability (and of her accompanists) to balance inventiveness with adherence to rhythm. The "Master of the Dance/Sheila Coyle's /Julia Delaney's" set and "The Mad Hatter/The Valley of the Moon Turnip and Vegetable Mash" medley are particularly impressive. In addition to being the guy who teaches OD rapper sword, Tom Kruskal happens to be a friend and all-around good fellow, whose dedication to preserving and enhancing traditional dance forms is admirable. So perhaps I'm a little biased when it comes to commenting on the album he and his musical chums put together, a collection of medleys of both well-known and obscure morris dance tunes. In any case, it's a terrific achievement, with superb musicianship on display, and fun to listen to as well.
Jan. 17
*This is serious, tragic even. So no laughing. I mean it. Reuters reports that the banana may be facing extinction in the next 10 years, essentially because it is not genetically diverse enough to handle diseases and pests. What's more, the article quotes a "Belgian plant pathologist," a phrase that somehow doesn't have the same ring as "California marine biologist." Will future generations thus never know the old slip-on-the-banana-peel vaudville routine?
*Oh, yes, winter is "back" this year. After last week's parade of mini-snowstorms, this week the temperature has hardly reached 30 degrees. I really should go sledding this weekend.
*Went to Cambridge VFW last night to enjoy the music provided by occasional O'Hanlon's session mates Eric and Ted and their recently formed band. Think they'll do fine on the contra circuit.
Jan. 10-12
*For various reasons, which I oughtn't, and won't, go into here, I had not seen my younger sister for nearly eight years. Until Friday, that is: She was in Boston on a legal matter, so we arranged to meet for lunch. To put it simply, the years fell away in the hour or more we were together. A promising new beginning, I hope.
*That night, OD and schoolchum and I go to the far-distant reaches of the western suburbs to attend the monthly Carlisle dance, which is pretty small-scale and very family-oriented -- easily a half-dozen or more elementary school-age kids scurrying about, in addition to the dollop of teens. Having exerted myself quite enough with the previous night's morris-and-contra-combo, I elected to sit in with the band, which this night was pretty sizable. I don't often play for contra dancing, so this was a good opportunity to see how adaptable my guitar style is -- well, let's just say a fair bit of work is on order. But a fine, fine way to spend a cold mid-winter's night.
*Saturday is yet another teenage-dance-crowd event, a birthday party at the home of a fellow area morris dancer (who owns a late-1950s TV that apparently still works). In between dropping off and picking up, I watch the Steelers once again stumble in their quest for the "One for the Thumb." This coming two weeks after seeing the Patriots' one-year championship reign end. Sigh.
*Sunday is shopping and cleaning, followed by schlepping OD out to morris/rapper sword practice. I seize the chance to make my first visit of the new year to O'Hanlon's , which proves to be enjoyable socially as well as (if not more than) musically.
*Book completed: "The Adventures of Miles and Isabel," by Tom Gilling -- Amiable novel set in mid-19th century Australia, chronicling the gradually intertwined lives of two young persons seeking to shed their circumstances -- he, an actress's illegitimate son working for a sideshow performer; she, the youngest of six daughters in a straight-laced, well-to-do Sydney family -- and immerse themselves in the primordial era of manned flight. Gilling's attention to period detail is sound, and he also effectively depicts how the fascination for flying, and for fanciful story-telling, could draw people from different walks of life -- and, in so doing, help foster new ideas about the sexes.
Jan. 9
*So the Ottawa Senators have gone bankrupt. One might well ask, isn't a pro hockey team failing in Canada kind of like a fan-and-air conditioner salesman losing money in Phoenix? OK, I won't ask.
*So, back to practice for Red Herring Morris, which means continuing our transition to Sherbourne, an occasionally painful process. Following that, I head off to the Cambridge VFW, where one of OD's friends is celebrating his birthday. I'm amazed and delighted to see many kid morris dancers and neighbors of years past, now in college, in attendance.
*Book completed: "The Rogue's March: John Riley and the St. Patrick's Battalion, 1846-48," by Peter Stevens -- One of the most neglected, and complicated, chapters in American history: During the US war with Mexico, great numbers of Irish and German immigrant soldiers, brutalized by their Nativist officers and troubled at the prospect of taking up arms against a Catholic country, deserted and threw in their lot with their former enemies. Stevens uses most every piece of archival material he can to try and recreate the experience of the most famous (or notorious) San Patricio of them all, John Riley. Stevens is able to offer no shortage of plausibility for Riley and his comrades' decision, while at the same time contrasts their experiences with those immigrants who elected to stay with the Americans. We also get a glimpse of such future notables as Grant, Lee and Bragg.
*Recent musical acquisitions:
==Oysterband, "Rise Above" -- Oh, they can still rock on, all right. But it's a pleasure to have somewhat less of the throbbing bass-percussion dynamic that had pervaded their previous works, the better to appreciate John Jones' incomparably English vocals, for one thing, and some damn fine writing, which continues to offer a mix of social consciousness ("Uncommercial Song" and the exciting "Shouting About Jerusalem"), grit and dark humor. There's also the anthemic title track, equally soothing and insistent: "And we'll rise where shadows fall/till the pain can't touch you at all/crazy things you were thinking of/rise above, rise above." Their finale, an a cappella offering of the traditional gospel song "Bright Morning Star" is not only more than appropriate, it's one of the most gorgeous things they've ever done, full stop.
=="The Best of Valdy: The Millennium Collection"--A sampling of 1970s compositions by Canada's famed country singer-songwriter, extolling the simple life and with a swipe at nuclear power ("Hot Rocks") to boot. Quite easy on the ears.
