The Thousandth Time

As the World's Terns. . .

2012-01-16T22:17:00.000-08:00

Nothing big for today, only that I ran across a mention of the Sooty Tern (Onychoprion fuscatus). Here's a story for you: they very nearly live their whole lives aloft, only coming down to mate and raise their young. Even the prosaic explanation that they are not particularly waterproof, and would get dangerously soaked if they spent too much time on the ocean that they spend their lives over does little to dim the brilliant truth--they literally spend years in the air. Talk about slipping the surly bonds of earth! And they're pretty, on top of it.

Cherokee Shuffle

2012-01-15T10:17:00.000-08:00

I heard "Cherokee Shuffle" at a jam last weekend: I guess it's fairly standard in the old timey/bluegrass repertoire, but it was quite new to me, except for the bits that resembled Stan Rogers' "The Wreck of the Athens Queen." As one of the fellows who introduced it to me explained, it is rather unusual in that the first part consists of a standard eight bars--or sixteen, if you will, since, conventionally, the eight bars repeat--but the second part is ten bars (twenty, with repeats). So I'm in the middle of learning my first "crooked" tune. There are no end of versions on YouTube; here's one of my faves so far:

Rather along the same lines, on the same occasion, I was told about this very useful website: The Old-Time Jam. It has backing tracks, and a fair amount of demo tracks, too, for most the of the standard tunes in the Old-Time repertoire, so when you can't get to a jam, you can, at least, have a virtual one.

Interlude, by Dickens

2011-12-17T09:00:00.000-08:00

Of A Christmas Carol, G.K. Chesterton wrote warmly: "The story sings from end to end like a happy man going home; and, like a happy and good man, when it cannot sing, it yells.*" Beyond even its own inherent music, the tale contains a highly satisfying depiction of happy and good men singing. Here, as observed by Ebeneezer Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present, it follows:

And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed; or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of firey red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.

"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.
"A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth," returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children, and their children's children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song; it had been a very old song when he was a boy; and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So sure, as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled, and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds--born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water--rose and fell about it, like they waves they skimmed.
But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hads over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them--the elder too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be--struck up a sturdy song that was like a gale in itself.

*Charles Dickens, The Last of the Great Men

And Here's The Other

2011-12-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

To continue yesterday's subject of the rather amusing things I found in Mother Goose (and, to my astonishment, as well as yours, putting off the inevitable regarding Christmas music), the second poem I found ran thusly:

In fir tar is,
In oak none is.
In mud eel is,
In clay none is.
Goat eat ivy.
Mare eat oats.

Now you may all, good people, have grown up with this poem from your infancy, but I made its first acquaintance in that hour, and a most puzzling acquaintance it was, like a face, assuredly never seen before, and yet somehow half-remembered. There it sat, staring back at me. I read it again, more deliberately. There was something about its very economy to make one pause, to. . .read it again. I am not (not always, perhaps I should say) one who enjoys rooting around in the more innocent pleasures of literature until "Ashes, ashes, we all fall down," brings to mind the Black Death, rather than after-school afternoons, hallowed by the smell of cut grass, but this piece of verse was begging for an explanation.

Was it a weirdly time-worn fragment of an old gnomic verse? In it, indeed, vibrated some echo of "A king must hold a kingdom." I read it again, almost aloud, finding the taste of the words, as they passed, stranger than ever. "In fir tar is. In oak none is." I lingered over the more familiar tree. "In oak none is. In oooak. None. Is. In hhhoak none. . .In hoc non est!" Despite the gravely turned phrases, the reassuring parade of truths upon which a world might be built, it wasn't English at all. That was where it all went crooked.

Anticlimatically, despite further pondering of the lines, and incessant mutterings regarding mud and eels, I could make nothing further of it. I would like to think that I might have had better luck were I a Latin scholar, but the cold, hard truth was too soon in. . .dawning? No, not dawning, assuredly. It was more like a sunset, in which the sun did not so much set as plummet--like a lead weight into fishless waters.

I was, at length, forced to Google ("In Google, answer is"?). You may well imagine my disappointment when I found by that auspicious means, not reassurance that I had discovered a the long-lost key to a hidden treasure, or even that the lines lived out their promise in meaning something more than they so obviously stated. I found no comforts, only the declaration of the wise of the world that, if recited quickly enough, the poem passed for pseudo-Latin (I quote) "doggerel." Oh, and that the last two lines, at least, can be dated as far back as Henry VI. (The latter, at least gives "Mairsy Doats" a most impressive pedigree.)

In other words, someone, God rest his soul, got me good.

Music Appreciation. . .Or Not

2011-12-15T11:59:00.000-08:00

I recently had some time to kill, and the handiest volume for this task happened to be The Complete Mother Goose. Its chief charms, besides the pictures of Mother Hubbard's dog, engaged in his various accomplishments and looking dreadfully pleased with himself, were a couple of very odd poems. Here is one of them:

There was a piper had a cow
And he had naught to give her.
He took his pipes and played a tune
And bade the cow consider.

The cow considered very well,
And gave the piper a penny,
And bade him play the other tune:
"Corn rigs are bonnie."

Cows have evidently been making suggestions to the People Who Materialise When One Is Trying To Practice In A Park, because they, too, invariably ask for "The Other Tune."

By Way Of Twitching an Eyebrow

2011-12-14T23:45:00.000-08:00

I am still alive (I wonder how many blog posts on any given day open with that reassuring phrase) and, indeed, quite well. It has just been a hectic (by my lazy standards) couple of months. I have all sorts of plans. . .well, some plans. . .well, a plan, to write something about Christmas music before Christmas is upon us. Unfortunately for the sake of variety, I am now reading A Christmas Carol. . .and planning fiddle lessons. (Not literally right now, or this post would not be written, I would be moving on to another book, and all of my lessons would be arrayed in so tidy a fashion as to shake the world.) Which suggests that the next post will assuredly be about Dickens. Or music, as I said. Or Dickens and music. Not o'ermuch variety in inspiration these days.

But, since I don't quite have the time to write the threatened post yet, on a different topic entirely, here's a very short piece of modern literature for you, a smashin' good headline, as recalled from Yahoo News:

Hikers spot giant carnivorous snail

I didn't dare read the story that followed, for fear of disappointment, but I hope for the sake of humanity that it ran like this: "But they were able to outrun it."

But How Was I To Know?

2011-11-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

However impossible it may seem, somewhere among the readers of this blog lurks the computer that invents the farfetched recommendations attributed to Barnes & Noble. Having nothing to do with that revelation, it is all very unfortunate that I have discovered that I can walk to Barnes & Noble on my lunch break. Having a good deal to do with that, a few weeks back, I, intoxicated with the distinction of being A Person Who Had, At Last, A Copy Of Martin Chuzzlewit, darted prodigally into the aforementioned establishment and bought a copy of Nicholas Nickleby. And the computer printed in the most surly tone imaginable:

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE. . .

Bleak House
by Charles Dickens

Dombey and Son
by Charles Dickens

Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens

And the computer is batting 300.

[If you're reading this again, computer: I'm sorry about the previous "recommendations" post, pal. That bit I ranted on before--it was just in fun. You know that, don't you? And I honestly did enjoy the bits of Moby Dick that I've read. I enjoyed 'em a lot. . .Well, most of 'em, anyway.]

All the Latest Rage

2011-11-14T09:23:00.000-08:00

This weekend I finally learned Jerry Holland's fabulous "Reel for Carl," which, considering I first heard the tune in 1999 on one of Shane Cook's early albums*, was a task--a pleasure, I should say--rather overdue. It's quite an addictive tune, perhaps not the least because it is in the refreshing key of C#m, coming as a perpetual surprise to the ear. (Admittedly, to the uninitiated (me) it is also a perpetual surprise to the fingers, and therefore, in its early stages, not always the kindest of surprises to the ear.) The sound on the video below isn't the clearest, but Mr. Holland himself plays the reel in question at exactly 1:00.

A mesmerizing solo version of the tune also appears on the composer's The Fiddlesticks Collection, and anthologised on Green Linnet's Legends of the Scottish Fiddle.

*Heritage Fiddles, now out of print. Yes, I do enjoy writing footnotes. Why do you ask?

Celebratory

2011-11-13T11:27:00.000-08:00

Today being Robert Louis Stevenson's 161st birthday, here is his opinion on Guinness. Or at least Guinness' opinion of his opinion on Guinness. (Spoiler: It's good for you.)

Credit where credit is due: RLS Silverado Museum's Facebook page

More Fiddle

2011-10-05T09:36:00.000-07:00

And, speaking of fiddles and instructional videos, here's a link that ended up in a recent FootStompin' newsletter. It's just plain clever. The full demo of the tune starts at 0:50.

Fiddly

2011-10-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

Here is something I have seen, and am certain of: I am the deeply contented, if lazy, owner of the excellent video advertised by this clip:

I sent away for Sarah-Jane Summers' Highland Strathspeys for Fiddle a few months back, and if I haven't memorised every nuance of every phrase of each of the five strathspeys presented on it, I have only myself to blame. It is a most beautifully presented instructional video, very easy to follow, and with nice features like having the demo played in a separate "chapter" (the clip above is one of these) for easy reference, as well as having it played, unseen, whenever you bring up the sub-menu for the given tune. And in case this, plus the movement-by-movement breakdown which makes up the bulk of each lesson isn't enough to drive a tune home, the DVD also comes with a little booklet of printed music.

Here is something else, which I have never seen and which I am still, nonetheless, certain of (yes, I know I'm ending sentences with prepositions; I'm rather enjoying it): I really, really want a set of these strings. One of my friends (who has not yet tried them, but also really, really wants them) brought up the subject yesterday, and it would appear to be highly contagious. Here's a great little article on the same subject (octave strings, not contagious fiddle fads) from Darol Anger, who has actually tried the like.

Keeping Up Appearances

2011-10-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

The fun in reading Dickens often lies, not so much in what he is saying, but in how he is saying it. In Martin Chuzzlewit, that archetype hypocrite Seth Pecksniff is about the most royally annoying creature who might be comprehended by a human mind. . .but it is an unspeakable amount of fun to follow the deadpan tone in which his inventor describes him, as in these passages from Chapter 3, where he endeavours to make a favourable impression on (very rich) Old Martin Chuzzlewit:

'No,' said Mr Pecksniff, keeping his hand in his waistcoat as though he were ready, on the shortest notice, to produce his heart for Martin Chuzzlewit's inspection, 'I came here to offer my services to a stranger.'

* * *

It would be no description of Mr Pecksniff's gentleness of manner, to adopt the common parlance, and say, that he looked at this moment as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. He rather looked as if any quantitiy of butter might have been made out of him, by churning the milk of human kindness, as it spouted upwards from his heart.

* * *

. . .Mr. Pecksniff, towering on tiptoe among the curtains, as if he were literally rising above all worldly considerations, and were fain to hold on tight, to keep himself from darting skywards like a rocket. . .

On the Airwaves

2011-09-30T22:25:00.000-07:00

If you don't happen to be up in Grass Valley yourself this weekend, it would be worth tuning into KVMR's live webcast to catch a bit of the Celtic Festival Saturday and Sunday. Scots singer Emily Smith--which by extension, unless I'm much mistaken, also means fiddler Jamie McClennan--and the classic Old Blind Dogs are all in the line-up, for starters.

2011-09-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

The Scotsman has a short article on the John MacLellan Medal recital which is coming up next month. Alas, attending wouldn't just mean a drive across town, or across a county or two--or even across the state, for that matter. Still, I don't think it's only a case of the grass always being greener on the other side of the. . .pond that makes the evening's planned entertainment sound so intriguing.

Overheard

2011-09-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

Two miniscule people, neither of whom could have been much older than four, were regarding the cover of a music magazine with a gravity that would have gladdened the heart of anyone guilty of designing it. It depicted a riot of the professionally unkempt who were brandishing their guitars and trying to out-snarl each other.

"Why aw they so mad?" a small, serious voice ventured.
The other explained,"Dey don't want to pway da duitaw anymow."

Oh I May, May I?

2011-09-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

To wax slightly biographical, I went to Barnes & Noble yesterday and bought a copy of Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit. I've read it before, and it is quite a good book, which is why I finally determined to own it, however, the part of this little episode which most invites comment is that, along with my receipt, the register printed me out a helpful little slip of paper that read like this:

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE. . .
Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
Moby Dick: Or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Martin Eden by Jack London

Which occasions a meditation on just how the computer might have come to such a conclusion:

Barnaby Rudge You, valued customer, just bought a book by Charles Dickens. Therefore, I shall assume you might like to try yet another.

Fair enough, register. I see your logic and, inded, I may read that one someday.

Moby Dick: Or, The Whale You, valued customer, whose taste in literature is now an open book (ha ha) to me, obviously like Big Fat Tomes. Here is a volume quite famed for its portliness.

I'll give you points for some restraint, register. I suppose you could have suggested Melville's Complete Works, which I have seen bound under a single cover, and which would be my choice of the book to throw at someone, if throwing the book at someone ever fell to my lot. But, deep in your little mechanical heart of hearts, do you find much similarity at all between a tale of hypocrisy in England, and one of verbosity on the high seas?

Martin Eden With my keen, virtual eye for detail, I have noted that you have been known to buy books with the Christian name of Martin. I've cleverly found another for you.

Now you're just havering. And I have a book to read. Goodbye.

And Now For a Bit of Piobaireachd

2011-09-20T10:27:00.000-07:00

After a long absence. . .I'll take the lazy way out, write very little, and post two videos and a website. Like this:

Scotland's Songs, has a page which I may have linked to before (and if I didn't, well, I should have) which has a bit more about "Lament for the Children," as well as examples of some other piobaireachd-related singing.

Tenting on the Old. . .Currant Bush

2011-08-11T22:53:00.000-07:00

Herein follow the clearest of the faunal pictures from the Independence Day weekend drive up (or rather, down, in this case) Highway 89. I had parked in a pullout and was occupied in keeping a bumblebee in focus atop a sulfur buckwheat bush when I chanced to glance deeper into the plant and saw a caterpillar. A closer inspection of the bush revealed at least two more of the same species, though that took me no closer to identifying the creature. I snapped all the pictures I could, intending to iron out the who's-who questions when I got home.

A couple of pullouts later, however, the main feature was several currant bushes that had been most definitely settled by the same sort of caterpillar; their manner of settling suggested very strongly that they were tent caterpillars, or Malacosoma californicum, if you'd rather.

I'm still rather curious as to why I found a scattered few of the creatures, unhoused, in the sulfur buckwheat bush. They are evidently pretty gregarious.

Don't Miss It

2011-08-07T23:30:00.000-07:00

This couldn't possibly be August, could it? And if such an untoward thing as August had prematurely landed upon us all. . .well, surely even if such a thing had happened, the BBC wouldn't be offering the worldwide live streaming of yet another World Pipe Band Championships, would they?

Oh, but it is, and they are. Next Saturday, folks. I go to buy a coffeepot, tomorrow.

How It's Done

2011-07-11T09:50:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of videos that Temple Records compiled last year, featuring the Battlefield Band. First off, an arrangement of "A' Bhriogais Uallach," with some rather driven harmonies--and a glimpse of a little fellow who looks as though he's wearing the trousers in question, too, at the end of the video. (Also, here's a translation of the song, or at least a similar version of it, because the lyrics are too good to miss.)

And in case you are not content with that, and would like to feel utterly exhausted, here is some intense and splendid fiddling (and piping!). You know that bit in "The Great Escape" when the Americans are trying out their potato moonshine for the first time, and the only comment they can all muster is a strangled sort of, "Wowww?" That is what I have to say about this video:

Wowww.

High Country

2011-07-05T22:04:00.000-07:00

A band gig Sunday landed upon me the happy obligation to drive up Highway 89. To add to the utter perfection of the day, I had my mp3 player plugged into the stereo system, and just about the time I hit the bit of the drive in the picture below, a piper filed somewhere in the depths of my machine struck into a magnificent rendition of "Scarce of Fishing." Probably, on reflection, that isn't the most accurate musical tribute that might be paid to the area that contains various bits of the Feather River, the Yuba River, and I couldn't tell you how many smaller streams. . .but the crunluath a machs were eloquent.
The highway is just one lane in each direction, but it is situated cunningly, with a generous trimming of pullouts, and each pullout has a view, be it expansive and scenic, or quite concentrated and floral. Below are some guesses at some of the floral bits. The faunal should follow in the next couple of days.

Brodiaea hyacinthina?

Calyptridium monospermum?

Sarcodes sanguinea, or Snow Plant. This was truly weird and wonderful, and I had no idea what it was when I saw it. It looked rather alien, like a cross between a flower and a mushroom. There is, come to find out, a good reason for that. Although it's considered part of the heather family (Ericaceae), it doesn't process its nutrition in the expected floral fashion (i.e. chlorophyll); instead, it takes its sustinence directly from a type of fungus that grows on pine roots. Yes, really.

Here's more on heterotrophic flora. Worth a gander: it's really quite fascinating.

Yellow, definitely. In Fabaceae, I think.

Ergonium umbellatum, Sulphur buckwheat.

Something in the Cryptantha genus, but what?

And, something in the Castilleja (Indian paintbrush) genus.

Balsamorhiza, maybe?

Collomia grandiflora. The common name isn't much help. It's "grand collomia."

And a flock of Aquilegia formosa, Western columbine.

In a Stunning Twist--

2011-06-06T21:42:00.000-07:00

I met a small creature when I was up at the park this morning. The creature addressed me thus: "I jump. I jump and jump and jump." And this he demonstrated splendidly, all over the pavement, to a point where admiration compelled me to say, "My goodness--you're like a kangaroo!" Whereupon he paused mid-jump to divulge the shocking truth in the most matter-of-fact tone imaginable:"No, I'm a boy."

Reachd 'n' Roll

2011-05-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

Herein follows a setting of "Mary MacLeod," that I am quite willing to bet you were not expecting. And it works:

The Bonnie, Bonnie Bugs

2011-05-24T22:54:00.001-07:00

I've had broom much on the brain of late. I have not been pondering its vicious invasive habits, or even taking the trouble to find out whether I am looking at the Scotch, or the Spanish, or at some other variety. There is just a good deal of it around here, so much so, that you can't help but notice it--so much so, indeed, that the perusal of a poem collection the other night turned up, at its first opened page something Stevenson was saying about bonnie broom. I don't know why broom absolutely must be bonnie, but the laws of poetry seem to dictate that you cannot mention that particular noun without that particular adjective. Do you think I exaggerate? Then possibly you never heard of the bonnie, bonnie (two of 'em! Count 'em!) broom of the Cowdenknowes? The poets do have a point, I'll admit. It is: At least it was growing along Sunrise Boulevard in a bonnie enough fashion to make me drive over to the American River Parkway on Sunday to see if I could get a decent picture of it. Well, to be honest, a good deal of the "bonnie" award goes to the big fried eggs of matilaja poppies that were growing among it, high on the bank, and I couldn't get anything like a picture that did the panorama justice:

Though the river was fair enough,

And so were the wild grapevines which seemed obligated to grow all over every inch of space that didn't already have something growing in it. . .and a few that did.

But the real pay-off, that more than made up for any disappointment over broom that insisted on being bonnie from a distance was this. Or rather these. There were herds of them:
And can you guess what this faboulous and fearsome beast is? It is the oh-so-thankfully flightless young of my old nemesis the Pipevine Swallowtail.
You didn't even have to look for the little fellows--they were everywhere. Well, yes, for starters, everywhere there was a handy pipevine, but also taking their evening strolls among other foliage, or even, in one case, across the road.
Fabre once complained: "The fashion is all for the Mollusc and the Zoophyte. The depths of the sea are explored with many drag-nets; the soil which we tread is consistently disregarded." Mind, I can't point any fingers when it comes to a fondness for the Mollusc, but there are certainly some wonderfully bizarre creatures quite close at hand.

A Sticky Business

2011-05-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

I am, despite the apparent contradiction implied by the appearance of a post, internetless at the moment. Which means I was at the library yesterday, waiting for my turn on the computer, which meant I took the opportunity to check out a great armload of books, which I shall probably never read, which means I did sit down and look at the one with all the pictures in it, which means (at last) that I can bring you this fact, which I found quite startling: there is a cactus peculiar to--Bakersfield. It is, with the characteristic direct address of Kern County, called the Bakersfield cactus, or, more obscurely, Opuntia treleasii. And this is what it looks like. So now you know--don't ever ask me again.

Unless It's A Fish

2011-05-03T23:59:00.000-07:00

My Mom gave me a really lovely set of dessert plates. I do mean absolutely lovely--the sort of thing that I admire to such lengths that I am very nearly inspired to invite hordes of people over just so that I may let them eat cake.

As you can see in the picture on the left, the aforesaid plates are of the intriguing, "Oh-this-old-thing-we-tore-out-of-a-naturalist's-notebook," pattern, which truly happens to be a favorite theme of mine for prints, be they floral or faunal. I mean, a splendid cake is a splendid cake, but who would not rather have their cake, and egret too?

I am just feeling a little conflicted about this particular pattern, however. The best parts of such arrangements are invariably the tantalizing scraps of field notes and encyclopediesque entries that fill in the spaces between the sketches. Just as invariably, such entries are incomplete. The one above, for instance, runs artistically off the edge of the plate, so you can read only enough about some half-named creature (Eastern. . Fancy Copperplate Squiggle: scientific name Sialia si--) to make it sound rather astounding. It can boast a mighty stature of seven inches. It does. . .something in south Manitoba. Evidently whatever it does involves gurgling, and holes. To my mind sprang a vague and fearsome picture of the prairies of Manitoba, stretching in an endless golden sheet from horizon to horizon--and absolutely riddled with dark burrows, wherein dwell, and gurgle, the fierce, yet seldom-seen Sialia si. I was more than a little miffed when I discovered that the people who made the plate were not introducing me to a vocal, land-dwelling moray eel, but were most likely only starting rumours about Sialia sialis, otherwise known as the Eastern bluebird.

Still, until I get just a bit more clarification on the gurgling bit, I don't think I shall be taking any extended walks through the more southerly bits of Manitoba.

2011-04-30T21:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a blog with many's a fantastic shot of the six-legged side of things: Bug Safari.

Excuses, Videos, and Suchlike

2011-04-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

Well no, I didn't give up blogging for Lent. Life has just been in a bit of a comparative upheaval, the main culprit being the virtual shingle which I hung (or had hung for me) in February, launching me to the high estate of fiddle-teacher-with-a-rented-studio. This is my excuse for spending the time that used to be spare tracking down and transcribing tunes and, as a matter of fact, I am enjoying it immensely. But it does keep me busy, or so I like to believe.

And, of course, I get the benefit of all that tracking down (yes, more accurately known as surfing-the-web-and-getting-distracted-from-whatever-important-thing-it-was-I-was-looking-for-in-the-first-place). F'r instance, here is the delightful "Don Messer's Breakdown," as played in a style that does it justice by 1999 National Fiddle Champion Shane Cook. . .and as if that wasn't enough, he goes and follows it with an impeccable "St. Anne's Reel."

Niche Market

2011-04-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

I saw this sign hanging over the door of a shop yesterday:

Smoke Shop, Gifts, and Cash Register Supplies

Do you suppose there is a story behind that, or is it just the logical conclusion that most smoke shops come to when customer after customer stoically settles for cigarettes when, all the while there is a longing for reciept tape languishing in his eyes?

Playing Hooky

2011-03-31T11:15:00.000-07:00

I happened to be standing in the right place at the right time (at work) on Saturday to be the recipient of the news that Catherine Fraser and Duncan Smith were going to be playing in Fair Oaks on Wednesday. Without having heard them before, I imagined it would be worth seeing (thought in a mild tone of mind), after all, how often does one get to hear Scottish fiddling in Fair Oaks? Too bad I had to work Wednesday night. But the more I thought about it, the more inviting it sounded, and the more I thought, "What's with the have to work?" and when I texted a coworker and found her willing--no apparently eager--to take my shift, I caved in entirely; and am I ever glad I did!

From a purely practical standpoint I ended up with a great seat from which to observe some exquisite bowing, which had been my purely practical desire in playing hooky in the first place. But that was only the least of it! The short version of the story (you knew this was coming, didn't you?): if you get a chance to see these folks yourself, please do!

The chief impression I took away was of shades, colours of sound. Recall, there was only a fiddler and a piano player up there, nothing more. But the fiddle could whisper, and it could cry, and it could dance--sometimes all in the space of a few bars--and the piano was not relegated to a predictable rhythmic role, but had a palatte of its own colours which wove through the fiddling and blended seamlessly. At times, too, the fiddle would subside into a haunting drone or chuckle through a few bars of chords to let the piano take the lead.

Even this, I suppose, would have been only half as delightful, if it weren't for the affable stage presence of both performers. Both had a gift for conversation, which complimented the music well, especially as they played a large number of tunes composed by Catherine herself. Though these tunes would have spoken for themselves well enough (a bit of an understatement, that), they were twice as endearing when the context had been explained. One of my favorite sets contained two tunes Catherine had written in Montreal, with an intentional Quebecois flavour. (It's a wonder anyone in the audience still has feet--you would think all that tapping would have worn them clean off.) My runaway favorite for the evening, though was her slow air "Hills of Kaitoke," which is up on MySpace, and also on the duo's latest CD.

And yes, it was that good, that I'd love to take a chance on growing tired of excellence and attend such a performance every week. . .but I suppose it's better for the work schedule that such opportunities are rather few and far between.

Breckenridge

2011-03-01T23:13:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of snaps from a week ago Monday, when I had the fortune of driving down, at long last, Highway 58. The mountain, unless I have grown terribly discombobulated from a long absence, is Breckenridge; the wild currants in the foreground, even if they are not quite in bloom, have an incomparably spicy smell. That is to say, one can't properly compare them to anything except wild currants, and any decent soul would wish every other living being in the world a chance to smell the same on a bright, late-winter morning. The fiddlenecks, something not over-far from Amsinckia menziesii, were flourishing, but not quite in bloom at the same location.

Some Rather Nice Snapshots

2011-02-24T11:14:00.000-08:00

Are you in the mood to be flabbergasted, stunned, flummoxed, astounded, and made to feel absolutely minute? Well, then, I have something for you. One of my friends introduced me to Astronomy Picture of the Day yesterday, so I pass it on. Note that the tab on the bottom of the page will take you to the archives, so you don't have to wait until tomorrow to further your exploration of the universe. A good many of the photos are, like today's shot, impossibly wonderful vistas that you just don't run across in your usual terrestrial wanderings, but there are some equally amazing ones that include the earth in the picture as well. This one was unexpected, and quite clever--it looks like something that should have appeared, in gold leaf, of course, in the margin of a Book of Hours.

Of All Sad Words. . .

2011-02-23T22:23:00.000-08:00

Here is a photo from the past weekend in Long Beach that might have been something grand. You will note, it encompasses not only the UCR Pipe Band (Grade IV champions), but the Queen Mary, some impressively inclement weather, and, faintest of all, a rainbow running through the middle of everything. At the time, I was only sorry that I couldn't find a decent angle for a clean shot at the ship, the band and the rainbow, all at one go. On seeing the results here, however, I am much sorrier that I never followed the rainbow's end to its logical conclusion. That must have been some kind of beer!

Hot Club of. . .Bluegrass?

2011-02-12T07:54:00.000-08:00

I know, I know--this constant dependence on videos is a rather sorry state of things. I will write something one of these days (whether that counts as a promise, or a threat, I don't know). In the meantime (once again), here is a rather above-average jam.

Relativity and Baroque Music

2011-02-10T12:10:00.000-08:00

The local Classical Station has recently started broadcasting Sunday Baroque, which, though I've never yet managed to catch it in its entirity, or anything even remotely near its entirity, I consider a huge treat. This past Sunday the airwaves were exquisitely alive with a piece called "Folies d' Espagne," by a group called the Palladian Ensemble. If you go to their record label's website, you can hear a tiny clip of the piece, the very last selection on the CD. There are several other impressive versions to be heard on YouTube, my favourite, so far, being the one below, a solo by flutist Mario Caroli, but having heard the Palladian Ensemble's arrangement first, I miss the lively interplay between the recorder and the viola da gamba.

Now, veering off in an entirely different direction, here is a very intriguing article that is only related because the link was posted on Sunday Baroque's Facebook page. . .and it does mention Bach a couple of times--and the Theory of Relativity a couple of times. It's about Einstein's musical side, which was considerable.

2011-01-13T09:00:00.000-08:00

Since music has taken a lion's share of the topics here of late, I should probably post something else today. Then again, there's always tomorrow, and in the meantime, here's a rousing Quebecois set that's just as well heard sooner as later.

While I'm On the Subject. . .

2011-01-12T09:00:00.000-08:00

As I was rambling on last night it occurred to me that quite aside from any music Stevenson played himself, one could likely compose a decent paper on mentions of songs and tunes quarried out of his books. "The Bonnie House of Airlie," turned up more than once, and there was Alan Breck Stewart, bursting "with a great voice into a Gaelic song," after his defense of the roundhouse, or whistling "Hey, Johnnie Cope" by way of an insult--or to switch books entirely, what about "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest"? When I thought about it, I realized my delight in the discovery of the music archive I posted yesterday was caused less by a satisfying of historical curiosity and more because Stevenson, when he had occasion to work a bit of music into a story, wrote as though he appreciated both a good tune and the skill required to turn it out well. Well, yes, he was a writer of fiction and so could make his characters say whatever they ought, not necessarily what he was believing in his own mind, but he was, for my money, accurate on the subject and. . .aw, I'll just come out and say it. To borrow a word from Alan Breck, I'm unco fond of the piping bits--like that scene from Catriona where the selfsame Alan is describing how he passed his time while in hiding:

'And whiles I would make songs.'
'What were they about?' says I.
'O, about the deer and the heather,' says he, 'and about the ancient old chiefs that are all by with it long syne, and just about what songs are about in general. And then whiles I would make believe I had a set of pipes and I was playing. I played some grand springs, and I thought I played them awful bonny; I vow whiles that I could hear the squeal of them!'

Stevenson himself said, on the subject of writing: "The right kind of thing should fall out in the right kind of place; the right kind of thing should follow; and not only the characters talk aptly and think naturally, but all the circumstances in a tale answer one to another like notes in music. The threads of a story come from time to time together and make a picture in the web, the characters fall from time to time into some attitude to each other or to nature, which stamps the story home like an illustration."* In his own writing, such illustrations are far from lacking, but one of my lasting favourites is "In Balquhidder" from Kidnapped. If you click the beginning below, it should take you to a page where you can finish out the chapter and decide its merits for yourself. But a story stamped "home like an illustration," or no, the details are delightful--the picture of the two enemies nearly running into each other at the door, the descriptions of the playing, especially the "warblers," which would almost have to be crunluaths, by the details set out, even the remark: "And he had no thought but for the music," is a perfect summation of the effect of a piobaireachd. Not as visually memorable, but the bit where Alan and Robin are debating whether they should eat before playing is rich. . .or at least somehow it comes back to haunt you when you find yourself first up some chilly morning, in a solo competition with nothing more hearty than a cup of Arco coffee to encourage you: "I havenae broken bread for near upon ten hours..."

*"A Gossip on Romance" (1882)

'Ay, ye have music'

2011-01-11T21:14:00.000-08:00

Some months ago--indeed, over a year ago, now, I mentioned that Robert Louis Stevenson (the same ubiquitous Stevenson) had a fondness for music, playing the flageolet and the piano. Here, however, is an impressive site that does a good deal more than mention it, having transcriptions of some of the tunes RLS wrote or collected. It requires a bit of scrolling, which is well worth it, especially on the home page where you can get a look at a jam session in the South Seas, including views of two French flageolets which seem to have very little finger room in relation to their size. (There was a copy of the same picture in the Stevenson Museum when I was there last month, and I did end up making several trips back and forth between it and Stevenson's (English-style) flageolet which was on display in the other room. I never did quite figure out how it worked; the fingering looked straightforward enough, but the keys were intimidating.)

Among the tunes in the index, one particularly worth mentioning is "Over the Sea to Skye," an old tune to which Stevenson penned a set of his own particularly wistful words. His lyrics are available at the bottom of the page, along with the useful trivia that "Over the Sea to Skye" (or "Skye Boat Song," if that's what your band calls it) is pentatonic (at least in the setting he used)--and why.

So there's your music theory for the day. Furthermore, the list includes several good old Scottish tunes, as well as some classical pieces that look rather intriguing--or if you are, like me, just an abyssmal piano player, there is company for the misery, a line from a letter Stevenson wrote to his cousin: "I can fish along with either hand pretty jolly, but on putting them together I become like Martha careful and troubled."

One bit of music which doesn't seem to appear on the site is the tune mentioned late in Kidnapped: "At first I proposed I should give him for a signal the 'Bonnie House of Airlie*,' which was a favourite of mine; but he objected that as the piece was very commonly known, any ploughman might whistle it by accident; and taught me instead a little fragment of a Highland air, which has run in my head from that day to this, and will likely run in my head as I lie dying. . ." One could, of course, assume that Stevenson had generously left the tune to the imagination of the reader which, perhaps, was exactly what he did at the time. However, when he got around to writing Catriona, he, went to the trouble of inserting a footnote in David Balfour's voice: "A learned folklorist of my acquaintance hereby identifies Alan's air. It has been printed (it seems) in Campbell's Tales of the West Highlands, Vol. II, p.91." Which, thanks to Google Books, is this:

*A tune which gets its own page here.

Reels

2011-01-10T10:44:00.000-08:00

It's a little late in the morning to label the Shetland reels here as "wake up tunes," but they are pretty sprightly!

The company that posted this video, Foot Stompin' Records, is a great one-stop shop for Orkney, Shetland, and Scottish music (including Gaelic singing, and various sorts of fine piping), and their shipping prices and times were quite reasonable for overseas orders, the last I checked. If you do the Facebook thing, you can "follow" them there, and get snippets of the latest traditional music news and releases; they have an email newsletter as well.

Eighth of January

2011-01-08T09:00:00.000-08:00

After all, it's not every date that has a tune named after it. I've always found this one a rather cheerful bit of music, even without the benefit of clever uke-work.

The end of this page has a charming, innovative, and unexpectedly stately version of the tune, arranged for fingerstyle guitar; in fact, the arranger was kind enough to put up the tabs as well, in case anyone doesn't have enough winter projects already.

Something Short of Spring

2011-01-07T22:05:00.000-08:00

Least the profusion of new growth might seem a bit out of place for two days after Christmas--I hadn't come close to a quota of mushroom pictures when the sun iced over, turning the landscape monochrome, like a black-and-white shot in bad lighting. . .and four or five hours later, everything was under four inches of snow.

Happy Epiphany!

2011-01-06T23:39:00.001-08:00

Well here it is the twelfth day of Christmas by some reckonings, and the day after the twelfth by others, and here is a great lack of commentary (thanks to me) and a very lovely picture (thanks to Wikipedia, where you can read more about it.) But really, did you ever see so many flowers in a Christmas picture? Or an angel, calmly cradling the Star of Bethlehem between his hands? I think you could search many a year and find no match for so much wonder filling so small a space.

Christ Child Lullaby

2010-12-22T11:10:00.000-08:00

Well, what with Christmas coming, the goose getting fat, and all the other things that go on this time of year, I'm not sure how much posting I'll get done over the next week or so (finally--an excuse!). At any rate, there's no time like the present to get the carols up. Here's a good arrangement of the Christ Child Lullaby sung by Katrine Polwart, Christy O'Leary and John Doyle (accompanied by several other musicians, including Liz Carrol on the fiddle). The names of all three singers were familiar to me, but John Doyle was the only one I'd heard at any length, apart from this song. He was playing at the KVMR Celtic Festival a couple of months back, and I happened to be driving back from Reno, giving me rather indefinite amount of time and, finally, a glorious sunset somewhere around Truckee in which to enjoy the broadcast, which I did, immensely. His exquisite guitar playing would be quite enough to keep any audience happy, but his voice happens to be equally rich and compelling. He had the crowd in Grass Valley going with some sea chantey or other and I should say one can scarcely consider one's life complete until one has roared out repeated choruses about the shores of Californy (can I have forgotten the exact words so soon?) among the Sierra's narrow hallways of thick black pines, while the sunset catches fire along the the edge of a thick grey day.

Which is neither here nor there, where this lovely song is concerned. It sticks in my mind that I have posted it before, and, if so, probably did mention that it was originally written in the Hebrides, in Gaelic (in case the tune doesn't give that away).

Boys of the Lough also have a very sparse and lovely arrangement of the song on their CD Midwinter Night's Dream (Well, scratch what I just said about John Doyle being the only one of the three above who was familiar--no less a person than Christy O' Leary played uillean pipes and sang with Boys of the Lough. I should study CD liners more often.) It's a neat album all around, with a few good carols set in among a lot of tunes with titles like "Christmas Day in the Morning," in keeping with the situation, and lots of Shetland fiddling from Aly Bain.

Natural Law

2010-12-14T23:40:00.000-08:00

Murphy's law is probably the foremost of all the laws by which the old world keeps running: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Not far behind it, and ever so much more exquisitely phrased, is Payn's Law:

"I never had a piece of toast
Particularly long and wide,
But it fell upon the sanded floor
And always on the buttered side."

The corresponding law for sunsets (yet unnamed), runs thus"The splendour of the sunset is inversely proportional to the photogencity of the location in which it is observed and/or the availability of an operational camera." Which is the nice way of saying that the sunsets that plaster themselves over the window during the evening shift at work have been splendid, but have too much city in the way to make pictures that might truly do them justice. So late last month I drove out Jackson way, stalking the wild sunset. The one I encountered was indeed a good deal less vast and less vibrant than those I had admired in less spectacular settings, but it was, all the same, a pleasant place, and a grand moment in which to be alive. The eager winter edge in the air, and the comfortable sounds of distant cows you will have to imagine for yourself.

O, Brother! (And Calf, and Cold, and Corn, and Cow)

2010-12-13T23:19:00.000-08:00

Here's an intriguing presentation: an audio-enhanced sampling of words from various dialects of English. The IPA transcriptions are pretty impressive; it never occured to me that the top phoneticists must have ears trained to something like perfect pitch. Some of the differences presented are exceedingly slight, yet each gets its own discrete IPA symbol.

We Moun Singen

2010-12-12T23:26:00.000-08:00

Following Mass this afternoon was a hearty serving of lessons and carols. I think there is possibly an older name for the custom, and I am sorry, on more than one level, that I was scarcely at my best and brightest, leaving the explanation we got to trickle through my head, like water through a sieve. But if I can't tell you where the custom arose, I can, at least, report that it's quite a lovely one. The lessons were Bible readings, mostly Old Testament prophecies with a music of their own (doubly so the quote from Isaiah about "Every valley shall be exaulted," which one instinctively expected to sprout wings of Handel) and the carols of the rarer Advent variety. I was startled and delighted to hear a musical setting of "Adam Lay Ybounden," the medieval lyric that is, purposely or not, a spoken siubhal variation on St. Augustine's felix culpa.

The wise of the world (as represented by Wikipedia) believe the poem originally existed as a song, though none of the original tune has survived. Below is a modern setting similar to the one I heard this afternoon (and yes, though much of the pronunciation was updated, as far as I could tell, our choir, also, used the wonderful phrase "we moun singen").

A Change of Habits

2010-12-11T23:00:00.000-08:00

Among a (probably very large) handful of things which I never expected to wax greatly enthusiastic about was the subject of red carpet. The idea, in the abstract, is either pretentious or demonstrative of a certain lack of decorative taste. But in the real world, much to my surprise, I saw a red carpet--or at least red carpeting--which caused me to stand and stare with nothing but a helpless awe.

Perhaps, to give the circumstances their due, it was not entirely the carpet. As a matter of fact, half of it was the shock of realizing I was indulging in the unprecedented venture of visiting a Robert Louis Stevenson museum--when it was open. I had laid a hand on the door, the door had swung inwards and I was--

I will go back a short space in time to explain that I was at the library in St. Helena, and I had arrived there mostly by a most pleasant, corkscrew-shaped trip over Highway 128, a route that had lead me up the north side of Davis, and out into the walnut groves, through Winters, and, at last, up into the foothills to the west, brown, homelike and holding up the sky with their share of oaks. Putah Creek runs along the highway for a space, laced tightly in the greys and whites and yellow sparks of late autumn's sycamores. The road climbs a little higher, up into country where stolid pines lift their fleet of masts above a mute, motionless ocean of manzanita thickets. Another few turns, and the way leads downhill again, among narrow valleys where the strange grey oaks of Solano County assuage the year-end theft of their leaves with eerie gonfalons of trailing moss. Right around high, bare red banks, left, finding pines and oaks behind and unambitious hills raising nothing more than a velvet of manzanita. Pines again, to frame the sky-grey shards of Lake Hennessey and beyond it the fringes of civilization that blossom suddenly into the Napa Valley, less wild than the country that came before it, but touched as it is by humankind, it might be considered a work of art, rather than of nature, a canvas of vineyards rusting richly in the long shadows thrown by the southbound sun.

It was small wonder if I was already slightly dazed when I reached the museum at last. At last, I say--after a time much longer than a drive through the mountains. I had, in essence been nearing that particular door since the Fourth of July. In great contrast to the sunbaked silence that had defined my memories of the place, the whole end of the street was now lined with cars, and the library was open to many hurried comings and goings.

Life even sprouted on the lintel of the museum itself as a man emerged, rasping with a broom at the impeccable walkway. I followed a little behind him as he went in again, walking more slowly the nearer I came to the door; the ambition of going inside suddenly seemed rather presumptuous. But the handle gave easily, the door swung aside, heavy and silent, and there I stood on the step, I must say in the interest of accurate reporting--gawking. I can recall hearing, as a child, a fairy tale that had, as one of its most impressive characters, a "dog with eyes as big as the Round Tower." I had no idea what the Round Tower was, and to be honest, I still have no idea. But it sounded very large indeed, and I now have a fair inkling, at least, of how it feels to have eyes approaching that size.

For I, pulling the door softly to behind me, was looking in on a room of opulent quiet, of glass cases and dark furniture all laid out against the thickest, reddest carpet I had ever seen. It had a welcoming, comfortable air, like a home library awaiting its intended reader, an impression hardly discouraged by the books which lay in every direction, most monumentalised in their appointed cases, but with a fair and tempting store of newer editions laid out for sale. A book of another sort lay on a table directly before me. A lady, who was standing several thousand miles away on the other side of the small room greeted me kindly and asked, "Will you please sign the guestbook?" I did that and accepted her invitation to come in and look around, though my feet, ever more deeply impressed by the carpeting and the sense of where I was, were slow to move. I began with the glass case to my left, and it's a wonder that in itself didn't finish me. There was a watch in the case. It was Stevenson's watch, open so that any casual passerby might see how the man who wrote Kidnapped told his hours. Next to it was a plain silver wedding band, also Stevenson's. I had seen many pictures (and there were plenty to see in that room) which recorded how extraordinarily thin that author was, but I was scarcely prepared for the sight of a ring which would have fit over one of my own fingers with very little room to spare. I was most certainly not prepared, despite my expedition to accomplish the same, to find myself in such close proximity to solid mementos of a man who had conjured such extraordinarily solid characters out of mere words.

The docent from the distant kingdoms on the other side of the room rescued me at that point, offering to give me a tour before I was left to my own devices. She was wonderfully patient, informative, and, above all, enthusiastic. Her story of the museum's founding was particularly interesting. I had supposed it had been settled in St. Helena piecemeal in vague deference to Stevenson's tarrying in the general neighbourhood. I had the story almost exactly backwards: the gentleman who began the collection, an advertising magnate named Norman Strouse, had a home in the area himself, and it was his perusing of The Silverado Squatters (at the site of the bunkhouse pictured in the book, if I remember correctly) that lead to a lifelong interest in the author. His enthusiasm resulted in a most impressive collection, impressive, at least, to others who might share his passion:

"And did you ever read 'A Child's Garden of Verses?'" the docent asked, pausing before another case. She didn't have to say much else. There in brave, garish paint, many gnarled by time and most in two ill-featured dimensions, marched and galloped the leaden legions of the Land of Counterpane.

Here was Louis' desk, the one he used at Vailima (the eyes now began to feel as though they had quite surpassed the Round Tower); there was his flageolet, rather like a recorder. . .this was his own collection of books. . .

Any one of these items would have astounded in itself, but I was particularly enthralled by the bookshelf. After my guide had completed the tour, I returned to savour the fading gold titles on the back of the bindings: some were worn away beyond reading, but I could still marvel at an age that published a life of Sir Walter Scott in. . .was it five volumes? (though the similar length of a nearby work on the Crimean War seemed a bit more readily believable). Popular Tales of the West Highlands had the distinction of having been quoted in a footnote of David Balfour, according to which it contains the uncanny air that Alan taught David to whistle toward the end of Kidnapped. Lower was a graceful two-volume set by another Stevenson--I believe it was Louis' father Thomas--on some fine point of lighthouse construction. The spines of several Dickens books were still legible: Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, and Martin Chuzzlewit. The shelves also contained several volumes of poetry, most of it fairly contemporaenous with its late owner, but also containing the inviting Poets and Poetry of Scotland, with Thomas the Rhymer and Richard Gall's names, in a gossamer of gold letters bookending the epoch the collection spanned. It was a rather delightful thought to picture a man who could work such magic with English as Stevenson, taking his own quiet enjoyment from words which had preceded him--even if, by an evil chance, he missed the added benefits of rich, red carpet in his own time.

On The Waterfront

2010-12-06T09:19:00.001-08:00

Yesterday the band held a fundraiser concert on the Delta King, a paddle ship-turned-restaurant in Old Sacramento. It was a "fine soft day," as the phrase has it; quite a pleasant time to be down by the river, though the lighting left a good deal to be desired from a photographic perspective. Music aside, I was delighted to be a short stroll away from the Hawaiian Chieftain, a square topsail ketch that is currently one of the finest sights in the whole of Sacramento. One of the crew was standing by, and I asked if I might take a few pictures. He said of course I might, indeed, I could come on board, if I wanted to. My sorrow! Of course I wanted to, but I knew I should be hurrying back to see about warming up the pipes; it was scarcely a time to get started with the charms of a ketch. A few hurried pictures from the dock were all I dared (and yes, I was the recipient of perplexed looks from innocent bystanders who were, perhaps, wondering whether I considered it integral to low-key photographic pursuits to go stravaging about Old Sac dressed as if I were in a pipe band).

Fortunately for my peace of mind, the Hawaiian Chieftain will be in town a little while longer, so perhaps I can get a second shot yet.

Given the Day. . .

2010-11-13T23:09:00.000-08:00

It seems scarcely short of mandatory to make some mention of Robert Louis Stevenson, although Google beat me to the punch by redecorating their search page with motifs from Treasure Island, in honor of its author's 160th birthday. I judged it an occasion auspicious enough to be celebrated with a glass of Scotch and several of Stevenson's short stories and essays. Of that number, this one best continues the theme set by Google and throws in some interesting trivia, and writing advice to boot :

An Old Joke. Truly.

2010-10-27T12:48:00.000-07:00

Hidden in the depths of a late medieval anthology is proof that the minds of the early 16th century dedicated some time to the truly important questions:

How many calves tayles behoveth to reche from the erthe to the skye?

And the answer (Ready?):

No more but one if it be long ynough.

Distractions from Botany

2010-10-16T20:28:00.001-07:00

I remembered last night that I had a book about 19th-century plant collectors which I had yet to read, and thought it was an excellent juncture at which to browse through and get an extra line or two on David Douglas. It was the browsing that proved to be a bit of a difficulty: shuffling through the pages, I was detained by the wonderfully botanical name of Richard Spruce. But I ask you, what kind of book is it, that drawing you in close to read about an Englishman with a wonderfully botanical name, casually drops the information that he played the bagpipes, and never bothers to tell you whether they were Highland or Northumbrian (or Galician, for all one can guess), or the steps he took to maintain a good reed in the mountains of South America, where he collected quinine trees? Not a very nice kind of a book, if you ask me.

And There's More!

2010-10-13T12:33:00.000-07:00

Back in August I posted a video of Bruce MacGregor playing a smashing strathspey and reel set. I hadn't realized, at the time, that there was another great video floating around from the same show, featuring "Lochanside", and lots of jigs, mostly pipe tunes, if I'm not mistaken. So here it is:

Stravaging

2010-10-12T23:14:00.000-07:00

In Carmichael, down on Manzanita Avenue, there is a Goodwill branch which has a most unfortunate habit. Not to beat around the bush: they keep their books in remarkable order. Not Dewey Decimalised or anything (which would be almost creepy, or at least, given the vagaries of the stock, just about miraculous) but tidy, you know, so when you go in looking for a cookbook, you are not horrified by the sight of Yorkshire Terriers on the cookbook shelf. Of course, this is a terrible state of affairs, because if you should happen to stop by this particular store (I'm not saying I ever did) you might actually find A Man for All Seasons on the drama shelf (they have a drama shelf. . .I mean, I hear they have a drama shelf) or something by Robert Frost wonderfully dogeared (but not Yorkshire terriered) on the poetry shelf. Or a book on the Sutton Hoo treasure on the history shelf.

Okay. Fine. I was in there last week, and, yes, I bought a book on the Sutton Hoo treasure. It seemed like just the thing every well-stocked Old English library needed. (One more parentheses: I have a lifelong ambition to have a well-stocked Old English library. I have no idea what that has to do with actually reading the books.)

Now, at last, we cut to the point of this soliloquy: the effects of reading the introduction and the preface to a book on Sutton Hoo. One might read the introduction and the preface to the book on a rare occasion when one is very early to work. One might forget to take the book out of the car after work. And, faced, one afternoon, with the incalculable distance from the house to the car, one might decide to supplement one's Old English studies with that 21st century phenomenon known as the Internet. In which case, where better to turn than the British Museum?

Frankly, I think anywhere would be better than the British Museum. Because if you go there, you might be reminded of the Lewis Chessmen, or you might be apprised of the existence of the Vindolanda Tablets. Which might distract you from making the trek to the car for the book on Sutton Hoo.

The Perfect T-Shirt

2010-10-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I'm a bit behind the times, but it was the first time I'd seen this one:

Fight me, I'm Irish.

History in the Making

2010-09-23T12:16:00.000-07:00

A few days late, but here's a short reprint on the Battle of Britain from Flight Journal's website, complete with Spitfire and Hurricane pictures. The current issue of Flight Journal is largely dedicated to the same event--70 years ago, now.

Summer Black and Whites

2010-09-14T22:09:00.001-07:00

1.) Experiments with the sunset and a quite lovely delphinium, back before the caterpillars ate it; 2.) An airplane engine from the Aerospace Museum of California; 3.) A bank or brae, or something at the UC Davis Arboretum; 4.) Marina Beach (to nobody's surprise); 5.) The UC Davis Arboretum again, with a swallow; 6.) A Cessna T-50 (ca. 1945), one of the Aerospace Museum's latest projects.

Off the Charts!

2010-09-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

Tonight's link is another one of those rather astounding treasures that exists, surprisingly unremarked, as far as I can tell, in the depths of BBC Scotland . Bliadhna nan Òran, or "Year of the Song" (that is "year," singular, innit?) is very Gaelic-oriented. You can use the little tabs at the top of the page to translate some things (mostly the headlines) into English, but it won't go as far as admitting that Seumas Greumach is known, in some circles, as James Graham, and when it comes to lyrics, although they're supplied, the translations rely entirely on your own ingenuity. All the same, I think there is just enough English to let an American navigate about and acertain that there is a lot, and I do mean a lot of splendid singing to be had here! Some songs include videos of the singers, others are simply mp3's, but there is plenty here to keep you busy, if you have the slightest interest in Gaelic compositions, and rather immeasureable material for use, if you're trying to learn the language.

Close, But no Cigar

2010-09-10T22:28:00.000-07:00

Watch, just watch. As soon as I put up this video, the one will finally surface that I've been hoping for ever since I started skimming YouTube for the latest records of Pleasanton. This is not last weekend's Pleasanton Highland Games, by several miles; this is Lucca Italy, as a matter of fact, the band is the Royal Regiment of Scotland, and the video is well over a year old. But it is a very catchy marching-band-and-pipes setting of "The 79th's Farewell to Gibralter," which is what the Marine Band (San Diego) and the LA Scots treated the crowds to at massed bands last weekend. The arrangement was much the same, except for the visuals--the Marines would start the tune in a block by themselves, marching in place, and when it came time for the pipe band to strike in, they would march up through the Marines until the block had doubled in size and consisted of alternating rows of pipers and brass or woodwind players. It was a most impressive sight, and a most contagious sound, as, I think, this video conveys very well.

P.S. As a matter of fact, yes this has been stuck in my head all week.

What I Call A Good Day

2010-09-08T21:18:00.001-07:00

Well, it was cloudy when I woke up, and one would think this sufficient cause for thinking life was splendid, which I did. But then, through a series of events which mostly involved a smog check for the car, I left for work nearly forty minutes early, thinking to kill some time in the bookstore, and I happened to be driving around in this wonderful overcast weather with the window down. I thought, as I came up one of the side streets, "I hear bagpipes." And, almost as suddenly I thought, "Man, you have a one-track mind." But never in my life have I so clearly imagined the sound of--a piobaireachd, no less! A piobaireachd I didn't know. There was just no mistaking it. I turned the car and, to misquote Tolkien, "to my astonishment. . .and lasting delight," found a member of the Bushmills Irish Pipe Band (Grade III) playing, yes, indeed, a piobaireachd in less than a block of the shop! It was just a wee bit surreal. I mean, I would have thought the clouds and the wind were Paradise enow--when does one ever, ever, ever in the course of everyday life get all that and a piobaireachd too?

Roldán, Gold Leaf, and St. Francis

2010-08-31T20:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a bit of a change: a page from the Getty Museum on a 17th century sculptor named Luisa Roldán. The page itself is quite interesting as regards the life of the artist and the construction of the intricate wooden statues in which La Roldán, as she was called, specialised. The video, if you have a minute (okay, twelve minutes, but it goes by very quickly) to view it is even better; it shows modern artists recreating the techniques that went into making such a statue as Roldán's Saint Ginés de La Jara.

The pictures on the Getty site seemed somehow familiar, but it took me a while to recall that I had seen a similarly crafted statue at Carmel Mission a couple of years ago. The St. Francis there was likely carved about a century after La Roldán's time, being produced around 1791 for the mission at Santa Cruz, but the similarities of design are hard to miss, and the placard, which, inexplicably, I remembered to photograph, describes it as "carved wood, gessoed and painted."

Seeing Double

2010-08-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

Happy Snappy is a photography blog with a clever twist. It is maintained by two girls in two different countries who each post a photo on a weekly theme--a very good photo, I might add.

Thanks. . .I Think

2010-08-28T20:57:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day, from a small tow-headed being of maybe seven who came, with admirable politeness, and introduced himself when I was practicing in the park this evening:

"I heard you from way over there, and it was so good, and I snuck up the hill to see if it was a real funeral."

Marina State Beach

2010-08-26T22:37:00.000-07:00

Most of my pictures from the Monterey trip earlier in the month were from Marina State Beach, where I stopped on the drive home.The only thing missing here is the true colours, which were bound up with the motion of the wind, the fog, and the waves. A breaker might be carved in jade as it rose agains the milk-white sun and the dove-feathers of cloud, and then, as it curled down past its crest, it would shimmer into a dark peacock green.

Lively

2010-08-23T23:57:00.000-07:00

Any comment on this video seems to fall a bit flat, so I'll just stick to the facts: Bruce MacGregor plays a strathspey and a couple of reels. The recording quality isn't the clearest, but the fiddling is splendid!

R.I.P.

2010-08-19T08:03:00.000-07:00

The piper Bill Millin, who played Lord Lovat's commandos ashore on D-Day, passed away yesterday according to the BBC. The epitaph that springs immediately to mind is from the last chapter of O'Crohan's The Islandman: "The like of us will never be again."

Without Spoiling the End, Can I Say. . .

2010-08-17T23:40:00.000-07:00

Well, it sticks in my mind that there are really very few old ballads that end happily for all concerned. Not to phrase that as a complaint, mind. In the stark old stories, you rather get to expecting lovers to end up parted and adventurers to end up perished, as is the way of the rather gritty and realistic world of the ballad and the best-seller. Still, the general tendency toward the tragic, or even macabre, is sometimes overturned, as in this classic tale with an end, evidently so satisfying that it has been recycled in several songs from the British Isles to the hills of the southern U.S. I couldn't find a clear recording of Kate Rusby's lovely "Polly," but here's Emily Smith and Jamie McClennan singing a Scots setting of the story: "The Bleacher Lassie of Kelvinhaugh" (the tune used here was Irish originally, if I'm not much mistaken):

Jock Tamson's Bairns' Rod Paterson has a charming version of similar words to a different tune.

A delightful take on the American form of the tale is presented by a Danish bluegrass group called Shady Groove. I wasn't able to find out whether they're still playing together these days, but their MySpace page is still in operation, and there you can find "Pretty Fair Maid." I'm told Doc Watson recorded this song as well, though I've never heard his rendition; Tim O'Brien has a grand setting on his album Fiddler's Green, which has flitted across one of the local radio stations once or twice.

[EDIT 04/28/2011: And it doesn't end with "Pretty Fair Maid;" somehow I forgot the title tune of MacDara O Conoala's The Love Token. . .]

A day late. . .or three

2010-08-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

Saturday was a very difficult day, only because the World Pipe Band Championships web stream was, if possible, even more phenomenal than last year. It was a weird change of direction to shut down the computer and go straight off to work with my mind full of medley sets and nobody to talk about them, despite the droves of people (quite lovely people, for the most part) that I was waiting on all day.

Anyway, yes, that was a webcast of webcasts! I was sorry that Simon Fraser University missed a hat trick (ah well, there will be other years), but from the moment St. Laurence O' Toole stepped out on the field, they sounded like they owned the place--and what a sound it was!

The BBC site that carried the live stream now has the Grade 1 performances archived, with commentary by Canada's Bob Worrall. Very much worth a look and a listen--or a second, third, or fourth look and listen, for that matter! I'm smitten with SFU's medley (they had me from the get-go with a march setting of the slow air "Cha Till MacCrimmon), but there are as many exciting arrangements to be had as there were bands entered.

3-2-1---

2010-08-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

And, before the screich o' day, to mangle the old song, the drums will beat. Well, no, not before daybreak in Scotland, but in the wee hours here, they'll be kicking off the World Pipe Band Championships. Last year's BBC stream was monumental, what with crystal-clear sound recording, informative and unobtrusive commentary, and some topnotch filming reaching computers all over the world. By all means, if you find yourself up before about 9am, PST, catch some of it here!

Episode 2

2010-08-09T23:13:00.000-07:00

From the studio that brought you The Robert Louis Stevenson Silverado Museum, comes the next installment in the thrilling series How to Visit a Closed Historical Literary Site. I was in the Monterey area over the weekend and, of course, nothing would do but that I must find Stevenson House, yet another footprint of the author's California travels. Well in keeping with my methodology for visiting such sites, I was only nearby thanks to a Highland Games. . .and by the time Sunday's massed bands had finished, Stevenson House, which is only open for a few hours on Saturdays, had been closed for over 24 hours. Even the gate had a "closed" sign, if I might presume to interpret the heavy padlock, so I saw what I could of the gardens (Monterey gardens are unfailingly vibrant) by leaning over the fence. I am reasonably sure that whatever else one can blame Stevenson for, teaching pigeons to panhandle was not one of his offenses. Someone since his time, however, had implied to the pigeons of Houston Street that a flightless biped was an unfailing source of nourishment. They came trooping up to me over the grey, silent asphalt and looked much taken aback when I did not offer to stand them a round. I was busy staring at the windows and wondering, unpoetically, if RLS actually used to look through them, or if all the glass has been replaced.

The sign on the front of the building was marvelously economical, being both the old and the new titles of the place at one go, though again, I haven't the slightest as to whether the "original" sign is, in anything but name, the original; trivial things like paint do not endure salt Monterey seasons unscathed.

I'd had fair warning; I'd looked up the museum hours even before I left home, and I knew it wouldn't be working out to go inside this trip, but still I felt a little wistful. It is an odd thing, I know. There is the Bohemian Stevenson whose main purpose in California was a typically Bohemian love-affair, an at times irresponsible, and certainly impractical man, but somehow that's the same man who invented Alan Breck Stuart. I don't mean the historical character, of course; I mean the John Roy-like little hero who stole the show in Kidnapped. And that is what brings me to look at the outside of closed, fog-dulled buildings. I don't know if I was half as interested in knowing that Stevenson had looked out of the window (as much as I admire his writing) as I was in knowing that some minute spark of Alan Breck had once been there.

Invaluable

2010-08-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of the posts here last September mentioned Scottish fiddler Bruce MacGregor. Well, to mention him again, among his other projects, he's filmed a series of how-to videos on different aspects of fiddle technique. I s'pose they would naturally be of the most interest to fiddlers, but this bit on double stops where Mr. MacGregor takes a strathspey apart and puts it back together again by way of demonstration will probably be of just as much interest to anyone who appreciates a bit of drive in a strathspey.

The videos here have more on ornamentation and bowing.

Climbing Sunward

2010-08-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

J. G. Magee, Jr.'s "High Flight" has been anthologised (I don't think I've seen a high school reader without it) and recited so many times that, perhaps, it can, by its familiarity, be taken for granted. A shame, that. It's such a perfect piece, not only in the artless, natural construction of the lines, but in its accomplishment of weaving, word by word, a scene so terrifyingly alive. It fills a mind full of sun and "windswept heights," to the point where it is no longer merely taking in polished words but, yes, flying. Impossibly high.

If it's time to give the poem another reading, the RCAF has a copy up on their website, along with a biography of the poet.

But No News is Good News, They Say

2010-08-05T23:17:00.000-07:00

That is, I have little to relate, unless the discovery of a mantis in the delphiniums this afternoon counts as news. The middle shot might be an attempt at 50's-style Sci Fi. . .then again, it might be an accident.

Orfeo, Part II

2010-08-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

Picking up where I left off last night, here's the libretto for L'Orfeo, from the website of a New York radio program called, "Here of a Sunday Morning." The libretto (Italian and English) is in .PDF, which takes a moment to open, of course, but it comes in handy if you want to go right to the pages corresponding to the arias in the link I put up last night. "Tu se' morta" is at the very bottom of page 6, "Possente spirto," at the top of page 9.

One can certainly understand how Orpheus' story (or variations thereof) would appeal to someone whose livelihood was music, but until I was looking for more information on Monteverdi's opera, I had no idea that so many composers had adapted the same subject!

My previous appreciation of the theme had been fueled almostly solely by Tolkien's rendering of the Middle English Sir Orfeo, which, in fact, eschewed with Hades altogether and had Orfeo's wife carried off by a king of the Otherworld rather than the Underworld. The University of Rochester offers this Middle English edition, with generous notes. A 1909 translation is available from Google Books:

(Tolkien's take on it is, as you would expect, quite solidly satisfying. And even better, if you go looking for it at your local library, it generally comes in a collection with his version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.)

Then, as my friend Maria reminded me, there is the Shetland King Orfeo which, in some ways, is about as far removed from the original as you can get, while still having the tale vaguely recognizeable. Again, Orfeo's wife is carried off by the "King o' Ferrie," and here, her name is nothing close to Eurydice. If I had to choose an incarnation of Orpheus' character that I liked best, however, it would be this one. Monteverdi's version seems somewhat above likes and dislikes, though certainly inspiring sympathy. In contrast, the picture painted by the laconic understatement of the old ballad seems less of a demi-god and more of a human being. A straightforward sort of man. Although certain prejudices incline me to be utterly delighted with an Orfeo who, faced with task of melting his adversary's heart, takes up his pipes*, the real charm of the piece is the concise request of the mortal man, standing before the dazzled court of Ferrie: "What I will hae I will you tell,/And dat's me Lady Isabel."

Biot Edmonston got the words to the song from an Andrew Coutts, of Unst in the late 1800's. The Oxford Book of Ballads publishes the tune for it as well, but it's rather rarely sung, quite possibly because not many people can make a phrase like "Scowan ürla grün," sound convincing. The Scottish band Malinky has quite a good version, which you can sample here.

The odd phrases that make up the chorus are, by the way, not exactly Scandinavian. As the song was collected when a form of Scots had taken over as the language of Shetland, such phrases as survived in song, having lost their meaning, began to erode in pronunciation as well. Based on similarities to Danish, The Oxford Book of Ballads proposes that Scowan ürla grün is "The wood is early green," and Whar giorten han grün oarlac, "Where the hart goes yearly." I seem to remember reading something Mr. Edmonston himself had written indicating that the singer he learned the song from did not know what the phrases meant, but now that I want to confirm that, of course I can't find it.

*Did the poet who wrote the ballad mean "pipes" as in bagpipes? Highland pipes were never much of an institution in Norse-influenced Shetland. But if you're going to play "good gabber reels," what other pipes could you possibly use?

Orfeo, Part I

2010-08-03T22:26:00.000-07:00

Once again, here's one to blame on the radio. Somebody deemed the classical station should broadcast Monteverdi's L'Orfeo a couple of weeks back, and I happened to be on the receiving end at the time. To wax very common about something uncommon, had I been wearing socks, it would have knocked them off. For the first time in my life, I fell madly in love with an opera.

Of course, there is the caveat for those who have heard the opera and might be wondering what bee has taken up residence in my bonnet: I vastly prefer Baroque music to most of that of the Classical period, and (without being too well studied on the subject) prefer Rennaisance music even to Baroque. So when Monteverdi comes along, gracefully toeing the line between the Rennaisance and Baroque periods, the chances are pretty good that I will find some of his music tolerable--or better.

Anyway, L'Orfeo, from a [my] musical standpoint, is a delight, with its archaic vocal styles and period instruments seemingly set adrift in an ocean of music. The opera doesn't have the islands, if you will, of arias that stand apart by their contrast to the rise and fall of the recitatives, just waves that are raised a bit higher against the sun than those around them. Rather than a reflection against the arias, this is a remark on the appeal of the recitatives; L'Orfeo, as appropriate to its subject, mesmerises by an unbroken current of music.

NPR has a page dedicated to this opera where one can read a synopsis and listen to two of the arias. They are both quite beautiful (and quite sad), but "Possente Spirto" is, on top of that, rather astounding with its early Baroque ornamentation and interplay between voice and orchestra.

Strings and All

2010-08-01T21:55:00.000-07:00

In the course of picking up pipe tunes, you certainly run into a fair share of laments, for great folk like the Laird of Anapool (no matter if nobody knows who he was--he rated a fine piobaireachd!), and for small things like an infamously Little Supper. Piobaireachd, and even the pipes themselves aside, there are still numberless pieces that might be played or sung in sorrow at the passing of things that were, from the loss of a homeland ("Lochaber no More") to the loss of a love ("Colorado Trail"). But a lament for the art of shoemaking? Well, perhaps a traditional shoemaker, faced with the advent of the Industrial Revolution would indeed be inclined to write such a thing. Here Bruce Molsky gives his inimitable rendition of "Peg and Awl," accompanied by himself on fiddle and Darol Anger on viola.

It's The Most Wonderful Time of The Year

2010-07-31T08:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, maybe I exaggerated a little bit with the title, but when BBC streams the World Pipe Band Championships live, two years in a row, superlatives are about all that come to mind. The date for very early rising for those of us on this side of the pond is August 14 this year, and the excitement is here.

West Coast Lady

2010-07-30T21:07:00.000-07:00

The alleged territorial habits of butterflies in the Vanessa genus might be what makes these insects so absorbing to photograph. They startle if you get too close, but having indulged in their obligatory barnstorming session, they generally settle down again quite close to the spot they just left. It gets to be a bit of a game, seeing just how carefully close you can move before they explode into flight. More tricky is keeping them in constant sight through the eccentricities of their arial acrobatics so they might not disappear in a sudden landing. The pictures here are all the same butterfly, over the space of about 5 minutes at the Davis Arboretum last Sunday. I had guessed it to be a Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui),but when it settled down at last with its wings open, the blue spots marked it as a West Coast Lady (Vanessa annabella).

All Kind of Related

2010-07-29T21:51:00.000-07:00

Well, for starters, I found this video, which is quite a lot of fun. How to tap your feet like a Quebecois fiddler + Le Vent du Nord = what's not to like?

I enjoyed that enough to see whether the folks who posted it, the Institute of Musical Traditions in Maryland, had any other videos. Which they do indeed (YouTube channel here). But who would have guessed that "any other videos" would include an Alasdair Fraser/Natalie Haas duet?

Then the search veered off in another direction as I thought if I put up a fiddle version of "Gloomy Winter's Noo Awa'," I might do well to find a definitive sung version. It's hard to say if Ben the Hoose has a definitive sung version, as the sample they have on their website is likewise mostly fiddle, but they are another duo worth a listen, in any case.

Most coincidental of all (but far off the trad music track), the phrase "gloomy winter" had been used in this nature photography blog post--so if you'd like to see some birds in very sharp focus indeed, that would be the place to check. If you've had enough birds for one week, go have a look anyway. It's pure art.

Mostly Avian

2010-07-27T23:30:00.000-07:00

Sunday afternoon this week meant a Sunday drive to have a look at the UC Davis Arboretum. It was quite a pleasant jaunt, after I got through the double torture of a traffic bottleneck in West Sac and the Youngbloods' "Get Together" coming on the radio simultaneously. That's not generally a song I tolerate at great length but I was too occupied with trying to keep track of who was merging and who was moving over, and who was losing a lane, and who was giving up and going back to Sacramento to reach over and turn it off. It proved a source of great entertainment when the chorus kicked in. The gentle-voiced singers were advising "Try to love one another right now!" and I was wondering why the jerk ahead of me didn't merge already since I'd left him a nice big space to merge into--surely he wasn't going to insist on passing yet another car before his lane ran out! And was the jerk (for he must be a jerk, and not possibly in the right) behind me honking at me for no apparent reason, or had some other unseen driver been caught in the middle of committing some infraction that would work its way up the centipede line of cars and become my concern all too soon?

The Davis Arboretum, thankfully, was about as far from bottlenecks and radios as you can get while still being within a mile of I-80. It was very quiet indeed; I had many a parking space to choose from (free, as it is on weekends, too) and gratefully left the car to its own devices for a while.

As I had decided to drive out on the spur of the moment, finding the Sunday afternoon heavy with the bright new intelligence that there was a botanical garden in Davis, I hadn't taken much time to research how the Arboretum was laid out. Without spending a good deal of time mulling it over, memories of other gardens had prepared me to expect something. . .well, if not expansive, giving, at least, a certain impression of spaciousness . This was why I was, at first, slightly disappointed to discover that the Arboretum is, through most of its considerable length, restricted to the banks of Putah Creek. It was, however, only a very momentary disappointment, which was pounced upon and devoured by the notion that there was far too much to see as it was.

While I am sure the creek has its charms as a feature in its own right, and likely enables the growing of some fine riparian flora, the greatest entertainment that it provided was the creatures living in and around it. I was only a few hundred yards on my wanderings when I was stopped by the sight of a barn swallow (or so I believe it was) calmly sitting on a branch over the water. I had never, in fact, seen a barn swallow calmly sitting anywhere, so I stopped to see it while I could, admiring the contrast of its sleek purple back and its scarlet face. It was just a hair too far away for me to get a sharp picture, but, since it didn't seem to be going anywhere, I had plenty of shots at it anyway.

It was carrying on a sporadic conversation with another swallow which would occasionally make an airborne appearance, coming in for a fly-by above the still water. The efforts of this second bird had a graceful conclusion, almost at my feet as I stood on the bridge. With sharp bank that would have done a Spitfire pilot proud, it came in on a blur that was a moth, winging, white beneath the overhanging trees. For an instant, sharp and startling as the best photo I missed all afternoon, all the unknown wonder of "footless halls of air" was suspended in the narrow void between the dark branches and the dark water. The moth was a darting star, wheeling across a strange, green inverted sky, and after it, exploded a presence, all spear-graceful wings, and purple smoke and red fire. Somewhere in the depths of space, these two impossible forces collided, and the star fluttered feebly in the mouth of the swallow.

Less graceful in its first impression was the green heron I glimpsed several times along stream's course. Its feathers were, from a distance, as smooth--and imaginative--as something that had been drawn in coloured pencil, but when it would sense anyone nearby, its efforts to make itself scarce gave an impression of great vexation, rather than fear. It had fine, strong, bright yellow legs, which it used to such a desperate effect, galloping off at a quick, but ungainly waddle, that at first I (who had never seen a green heron before and had no idea what I was looking at) wondered whether it could fly at all. When, at last, with a cry of exasperation, it took off, it proved quite steady in the air, with an elegant wingspan that came as a surprise on its stolid body. Much less airworthy and certainly lacking in long, yellow legs, turtles would surface through the murky water on occasion. The pictures I got of those were irredeemably out of focus, probably because of overabundance of lighting between the sun and its reflection on the water, but they were quite funny to watch. Their build dictates only one possible way for them to swim, their heavy shells dragging below the surface of the water and only their noses just barely above it. Of course, going around at an angle like this, with their noses literally in the air, they have quite a supercillious look about them. Perhaps they have good reason for looking as though they think they should be envied--in some of the long, sunny stretches, even that green water looked rather tempting to me, too.

As I said, though, an early impression of the Arboretum was that there was too much to see. I felt rather as though I was faced with a buffet where, in feeling obliged to taste everything, I put myself in danger of missing those dishes I knew I liked best. That is to say, I would stop in one place and shoot a few pictures, and instead of getting all I could out of that location, would stop and push myself around the next bend in the creek in the interest of "seeing it all." Which I never did. But that's enough for tonight.

Monday Music

2010-07-26T22:58:00.000-07:00

The iconic fiddler/mandolinist/composer Peter Ostroushko has a grand selection of tunes on his website, and in styles ranging from ragtime to Irish to Ukrainian. No miserly 30-second samples here, though since he had to leave you wanting something, only three selections from each CD are available (which is enough to keep anyone busy for quite some time, as the man has, industriously, made quite a few CD's).

Matilija Poppies

2010-07-25T23:26:00.000-07:00

Calflora has just about everything you might want to know about this native shrub.

Gory Etymology

2010-07-13T21:35:00.000-07:00

This I did not know. Not that I've ever heard "decimate" used in a particularly cheerful sense anyway, but now they tell me it comes from the old Roman practice of punishing mutinous, or otherwise misbehaving legionaries by choosing a tenth of their number by lot, to be executed by their comrades. Here's a short article on the word, its use, and its misuse. One comfort--if you misuse it, whatever else the grammar police can do to you, they can't decimate you. Silver lining, and all that.

In Which it Pours

2010-07-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

At a country/bluegrass jam this afternoon, one of the musicians commented, "You can go for years without meeting any new fiddlers, and then all of a sudden, you'll run across six of them." The same must go for fiddle tunes; having posted Shetland music last night, I return to pass along a new tune that one of the guitar pickers at the jam today had just learned and was trying to teach me. I needn't mention, I am extremely thankful for YouTube--despite the man's patience in playing and replaying the tune at a clear, precise, and reasonable speed, the notes trickled, more or less, "through my head, like water from a sieve." But I did manage to recall the title, so here are a couple of versions of the "Temperance Reel". Kind of an interesting piece in that it is one of a handful (?) of apparently Irish tunes which have a degree of a regular following in the bluegrass world. (You do hear a good deal about bluegrass' Irish and Scottish roots, but it's a little rarer, at least in my experience, to run across a tune that retains such a close resemblance with the versions played in those traditions).

Anyway, here is a very bluegrassy version, complete with a couple of smashing banjo breaks by a group called High LoneSome Bluegrass Band.

And here is something even more unexpected (and I'm not just talking about the hat), a fluent harmonica version by Buddy Greene, Jeff Taylor (accordion/piano) and Tricia Walker (percussion) preceded by "Blackberry Blossom".

For the Multitasker. . .

2010-07-10T22:58:00.000-07:00

Shetland-Music offers this informative and enjoyable page; an article on Shetland fiddling (a three hundred year old tradition) and a sidebar full of tunes in case you're the sort who likes a bit of music with your reading. I can't speak for all the tunes yet, since I am sampling them in no particular order, and had to listen to Jenna Reid's twice; that girl plays a mighty sweet fiddle.

And, better and better, it looks as though this page is only a sliver in a forest of articles and biographies available on the site--but one must start somewhere.

The Gadabout

2010-07-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

Independence Day proved an interesting one this year. It was not the first time I had celebrated (if celebrating it can be called) my inalienable right to dress in woolen clothing on the 4th of July, but it was the first time I had ever played "Scotland the Brave" in downtown Napa. The band made a good showing, even if reeds (and throats) were getting a bit dry by the end of the parade route.

I had brought a change of clothes with a hazy notion of going. . .somewhere after the parade and getting a few pictures of. . .something. Fortunately, I took a wrong turn early in the day, when I was trying to find the spot where the band was supposed to meet, and found myself crossing Silverado Trail. What was it about the name that sounded so familiar? The answer took the form of a second question, which burst upon me scarce seconds later--How did you forget that Robert Louis Stevenson used to live around here? So, after the parade, and fully aware that no stretch of the imagination was going to qualify what I was doing as a legitimate 4th of July custom, I got back on Silverado Trail and drove up towards St. Helena to see if there was a trace of RLS to be found. There were certainly a good many cars to see. St. Helena was a happenin' place. Still the slowed traffic meant I had plenty of time to see the sign pointing the way to to the Stevenson museum. I chortled in my joy at this stroke of luck; searching for small, rumoured historical sites by dead reckoning is a very chancy business. Of course, I was under no misapprehensions that luck would extend to fantastical lengths and that the museum would be open, but it was still gratifying to find the place, neatly labeled, next to the public library.

There were small, mud-colored fish quivering in the fountain, and a dozen-odd indulgent yellowjackets were making semi-acquatic landings on the algae at the foot of the horsetail. They were so languid about it that one might have believed it was the insect version of the neighborhood pub; they certainly lingered over their drinks.

Not far from the fountain, a larger sign designated the library and museum, and beyond that was (perhaps not too surprisingly) a small, tidy vineyard.
Having satisfied, as far as I could, my literary curiousity by gazing at the stucco on the outside of the building, one might think I would be content and would head for home. Even I thought that-- but I did not do it. Instead I let myself be seized by an even wilder ambition, and, by rather devious routes, turned the car in a gradually westering direction.

After some time (the details of which I will spare you, as it mostly involved going around corners, so I could go around other corners and up grades so I could go down grades), I saw something grey and soft curled about the tops of the hills ahead of me. Fire? I didn't smell any smoke when I rolled the window down. Perhaps the wind was blowing the wrong way. But, no, the wind was just fine as it was, and great tufts of the grey stuff were eddying past the car. And it smelled wonderfully wet. "It's fog!" And grand fog it was, too, just flitting about in graceful pieces, cooling off July in a most unexpected way, and not interfering with driving in the least. And if fog on the hills was a sight for sore eyes, what was fog on the ocean? I, having driven about as far westward as I was going to get, got out at Doran Beach on Bodega Bay. Perhaps enthusiasm leads to exaggeration in this case, but the weather didn't feel much above 60, if it was even that. And there was plenty of ocean.

An intriguing boat was anchored and bobbing about at rather uncomfortable angles in the fog beyond the jetty.

After a time, either the crew found what they were looking for, or grew very tired of bobbing about at uncomfortable angles; they fired up the motor and came around to the harbour entrance. As the craft came nearer, it proved to be of a particularly endearing build--even wooden. The plot thickened with a sign hung over the side that belied the trawling rig, proclaiming, "Special Research." Judging from the beating they had been taking out on the water, they might well have been doing research on seasickness.

I lingered on the beach near the jetty for a while, trying to get an interesting angle of the waves, which ended up being a rather bad idea, as I had brought my pipes along, in their box, rather than leave them in the car. Of course, I was loathe to leave them too far out of reach, but that was not a very good reason for setting them down below the tide line, even if I was down there too. Inevitably, I got just far enough away to have a particularly enthusiastic wave go sizzling by me, and right through the box before I could reach it. Luckily the pipes were not touched at all, and the bag only got a couple of small spots of seawater, but the box is due for a good vacuuming--it's a miniature beach in there at the moment.

Even after I had packed my sandy box and my sandy self back into the car, it was a rather long departure. Every few hundred feet, it seemed there was a different feast for the eyes that could not be squandered for a mere drive home.

Doran Beach is on one side of a small peninsula; if I understand the geography correctly, the harbour channel runs around the end of the peninsula and skirts a salt marsh. That, being about as close to the end of the park as I could get, was my last stop, and it was difficult to get enough of it. The sluggish water was slightly oppressive after the caprices of the open sea, but by the same token, the channels and pools of the marsh, mirroring the grey sky, had edges as sharply defined as the shards of a sword against a red and green mosaic, the thick, tough growth of marsh grasses. Impossibly, from the steel-like fragments of water, the wind was carding soft spirals of wooly fog, each curl moving slowly in its own eldritch dance to the music that was the invisible surf, the insistent foghorn, the cries of the gulls, and the songs of numberless hidden birds in the marsh itself.

And if that wasn't a fine Independence Day, what is?

Food for Thought. . .On Food

2010-07-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

One of my kinfolk emailed the link to this essay this morning, and I thought it was well worth passing on. Maybe some of you are already familiar with Mike Rowe of the TV show Dirty Jobs. Here's his take on the vital, and often unrecognized, role of the farmer in civilization.

Latest B&W's

2010-07-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

In Case You're Feeling Too Cheerful

2010-07-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

Once more, I was looking for something else, but here is a powerful recording of an orchestra from Indiana University and Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Tallis Fantasia". Perhaps this piece wouldn't strike me as being quite so sad if I hadn't made its acquaintance first in a tragic scene in the movie Master and Commander, but it isn't exactly a sprightly tune, however you look at it. Sprightly, it isn't; lovely it is.

Vachel Lindsay (Part 2)

2010-06-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

Well, the sudden dearth of posts was caused, I would like to think, solely by my computer being in the shop. (The most recent poetry clip was something I slipped in on a library computer since I happened to be in the right place at the right time.) The good thing about not having my computer handy is, of course, I read immeasurably more from real books. Indeed, while I was at the library havering on about Vachel Lindsay (and mispelling his name in that post too, I see) I was so efficient as to check out a whole book of his poems to see what else he might have come up with. On the whole, he didn't turn out to be much my type, rather Victorian in style, Victorian, in this case being everything from minute, delicate sprites dancing aimlessly, but rhyming prettily, in the moonlight, to flights in mysticism which seemed at times to verge on the once-fashionable occult.

But there was one other poem out of the collection which thoroughly delighted me, so here it is:

Poetic Observations

2010-06-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

Vachal Lindsay is a poet whose work is largely unfamiliar to me, but I ran across this last night and quite appreciated it:

The Congo, as you will have gathered, is the book in which the poem originally appeared; I can't tell you whether the rest of it is any good or not, as I found the poem in a high school reader.

Earlier in the week, I ran across another observation on human weakness, though this time from Ogden Nash, who rightly remarked:

Well I have learned that life is something about which you can't conclude anything except that it is full of vicissitudes.
And when you expect logic you only come across eccentricitudes.

Bist Du Bei Mir

2010-06-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

Among the diverse pieces which have, in the past six months or so, been inextricably embedded in my mind is one which may be a good deal more familiar to most readers than it was to me at a first hearing. That would be Bach's "Bist Du Bei Mir." Or possibly Stölzel's "Bist Du Bei Mir." As deeply fond as I am of Bach's music, I can't help but hope it is Stölzel who should get the credit for this gem (overplayed, perhaps, but a gem, nonetheless) of a tune; otherwise, all the poor fellow really seems to be known for is for not being Bach. . .and can't we all say the same? There is a wonderfully in-depth article which delves into the Bachness or Stölzelness of "Bist Du Bei Mir" here; it also includes a translation of the simple and effective lyrics. Would I see the tune quite the same way had I not run across a translation at work? I would like to think the music is perfect enough to blaze on its own merits, but there is something wistful about the terse words that, once understood, is hard not to taste in subsequent renditions (vocal or not) of the piece. Here, Svetla Protich plays it on the piano:

St. Valéry

2010-06-12T21:15:00.000-07:00

A couple of months back I mentioned the 3/4 march my band is playing this season, P/M Donald MacLean's "Heroes of St. Valéry." The tune was very much on my mind today. It would have been a difficult tune to ignore, since we were competing, and used it to march out after both of our sets, but coincidentally, it was 70 years ago today that the 51st Highland Division was finally faced with surrender at St. Valéry.

There is a very good website-in-progress on the 51st Highland Division here, which includes some information about the events leading to the surrender and subsequent 5-year imprisonment of some 8,000 men. P/M MacLean's tune is not the only one with a title that stands as a memorial to the hardships they endured: there is also a hornpipe by John Wilson, who was, like MacLean and P/M Donald MacLeod, taken prisoner at St.Valéry . The tune, played by the composer, is the first listed on this page.

Latin Strikes Again

2010-06-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I never! I've always thought "nice" was a rather inane adjective for use in describing a person, but based on a definition I ran across on the radio yesterday, it might have once been classed as an out and out insult. "Nice" is from the Latin nescius, "ignorant." Webster's has a disparate collection of meanings for the word, most of them rarely used, but only two of them marked as obsolete: dissolute (obs.), reticent, fastidious, punctillious, precise, trivial (obs.), agreeable, virtuous, and polite. Nice, eh?

Hornpipes, Plural

2010-06-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

To get back to subject of modern hornpipes, there's nothing like Gordon Duncan's "Ian Green of Greentrax," and certainly nothing like Gary West's mellow smallpipes to give one a fresh perspective on it.

And here the composer of the tune above does all manner of impossible things to a jig, reel and hornpipe set, including a rendition of his own "The Fourth Floor" at 5:12.

Latest Find

2010-06-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's drive to see my piping instructor proved just a little too productive; I was on my way home, my mind sufficiently engaged with proposed improvements for my strathspey,when dusk fell and I started to become aware of the surroundings, including new and different wild lilies. The picture above doesn't capture the light, whispy effect of the flower. Seen in the dusk, they were as ephemeral as wind-combed clouds, the stems seeming more of an afterthought than a necessity.
From the description in Growing California Native Plants, I think this is Chlorogalum pomeridianum (soap plant). If that is correct, perhaps I needn't be so surprised that I only noticed the flowers on my way back from the lesson--according to the Pacific Bulb Society website the delicate, short-lived blossoms only appear in the evening.

And now, about that strathspey. . .

Latin Trivia

2010-06-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Well, now, did you know that with a good deal of applied concentration (the like of which any Roman would have sensibly forgone) you can make sense of this concise Latin composition? It runs thus:

Malo, malo, malo, malo

The scholars say that this means:

I would rather be

In an apple tree

Than a bad man in

Adversity.

The Latin version of Wikipedia kindly offers an explanation. . .but in Latin, of course, which does me little good. All I ever declined in that language was the opportunity to learn it.

As Threatened--

2010-06-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

For the folks at home who might wonder about such things--no, I was not enlivened with a sudden fervour for practicing the guitar. Well, I was, but since my idea of burning inspiration is apparently to get out the guitar for five minutes twice a week and try to muddle past the fourth bar of "Cavatina," I'm not sure that it counts.

What prompted this particular post--I was at work on Saturday when the "Prelude" from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major came on the radio. That is a piece I very much enjoy, though, truth be told, I could probably listen to many a more mundane composition being turned out on a rich-sounding cello and still think I was on the borders of heaven. The interesting thing this time around was that the "Prelude" wasn't being played on a cello at all; the airwaves were transporting the clean, woody tones of a guitar. My intelligent reaction to this innovation was: "Who woulda thunk it?"

When I got home and started digging around for recorded proof, however, I discovered that I had been the last to get the memo about playing the aforesaid prelude on the guitar--everybody does it, to all appearances. Here is one of the more popular (in YouTube's estimation), a Norwegian guitarist named Tor Inge, who takes it a good deal more slowly than many other players--exactly where I like to hear it:

It's like comparing apples and oranges (so I am thankfully relieved of any obligation to compare) but I had the fortune to happen upon this steel-string guitar arrangement, which is similarly enthralling. The guitarist here, whose versatility made yesterday's post, has a quality-not-quantity YouTube channel called guitarvangelist:

Great Stumble-Upon

2010-06-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

I was looking for something entirely different (Well, not entirely--guess what, dear readers? It's guitar videos again tomorrow!) when I came upon this neat little set. The guitarist doesn't give his name, but the tunes are "Our Ship It is Ready" and "Butler's Jig." And, yes, the guitar is cross-tuned, but I'm not certain exactly how.

And Piobaireachd Again

2010-06-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

If you're in a mood to brave MySpace, the Wicked Tinkers have their splendid, hearty (and original) rendition of "MacFarlane's Lantern" (or "MacFarlane's Gathering") up on their page. Their arrangement only goes as far as the taorluath variation, but it is plenty enjoyable along the way. The words that are being sung start "Togail nam bo," something about taking the [neighbors'] cows , which was evidently a bit of a passtime for certain clans. "Togail nam Bo," is also the Gaelic title of the tune.

The One that Got Away (and Ancient Art)

2010-06-04T23:48:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to walk to the bank. The thing I remember most painfully about this decision was the dismissive tone in which I told myself, "No, you don't need to bring the camera. You're going to the bank." Which, as anyone with any sense would ascertain, meant I came upon a nifty beetle on my way home. Despite geographical discrepancies (which I only discovered later) it certainly looked like a Neoclytus acuminatus*. In case you are wondering, I did not jump up and down and say, "Oh look! A Neoclytus acuminatus!" I thought of it, in my scientific fashion, as, "One-of-those-beetles-that-looks-kind-of-like-a-wasp. Subspecies: but-different-from-the-other-one."

I have proof, in pencil and watercolor, that I came across a somewhat similar insect (the-other-one) when I was at school. It would appear that I had no camera at the time, and, I hope, no midterms either. The penciled remarks, meant to supplant the inaccuracies of the depiction, have long since been rubbed into oblivion, but I seem to recall that one of them stated that the beetle was more slender and graceful than the drawing made it appear:

I don't know how closely related it is to the creature I ran into last month, but it had an odd, jerky, and waspish gait to go with the waspish stripes.

*As I understand it, these are an East Coast species, but the pictures on BugGuide certainly resemble the one that got away (it's hard to forget the bright stripes, the reddish cast of the shell, and a beetle with legs quite that long). A quick search for a related West Coast species turned up an animal evidently related, but not at all the one I saw. Suggestions greatly appreciated, as usual.