Month: April 2011

EARTH DAY Question

Not only are we going to be saving money during the heating and cooling seasons, but we are getting a federal tax refund that is over $1000 larger than it would have been had we not spent the few thousand dollars to insulate.

Far from my naivete on the first Earth Day 41 years ago, I realize that we have to make some substantial changes if we are going to keep old Mother Earth healthy. Sure there are the BIG issues of industrial pollution and the like to address. But I also find it necessary to look in the mirror to see what I’M doing.

By far, the most significant thing that we’ve done is getting our attic insulated. I should note that we were motivated in no small part by a tax advantage that was available in 2010 but unfortunately is no longer the case. Not only are we going to be saving money during the heating and cooling seasons, but we are getting a federal tax refund that is over $1000 larger than it would have been had we not spent the few thousand dollars to insulate.

We’re still doing the compost thing.

Living where we do, we can walk to the daughter’s school, the post office (which will probably close due to budget cuts), an Indian restaurant, a pizzeria, a pharmacy/drug store, a movie theater, and a supermarket. No small thing, I suppose. Other places are at a bikeable distance or on the bus line, and there are at least four bus routes within a block of my house.

So what are you doing, or want to be doing, to help on Earth Day?

 

Monday Thursday

It’s like splurging on a big wedding, and the groom doesn’t show up.

When I was a child, I never understood the idea of Monday being on a Thursday. I mean, I knew it was a tough week for Jesus, and would only get worse. But why Monday? Oh wait, I have late word that it is actually Maundy Thursday, which may be derived “from the Latin mandatum, the first word of the phrase ‘Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos’ (“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you”), the statement by Jesus in the Gospel of John (13:34) by which Jesus explained to the Apostles the significance of his action of washing their feet.” Or not.

I had commented on someone’s blog recently, and I mentioned a pastor that I used to have in the past decade. My observation about him, indeed his own casting of himself, made him more of a Lenten person than an Easter person. Goodness knows I love good, depressing Lenten music, for instance, as much as anyone. But if someone is stuck there, it’s like — my goodness, I just thought of a probably inappropriate analogy!

OK, it’s like splurging on a big wedding, and the groom doesn’t show up. I was thinking of that because a number of church hymns use this somewhat odd imagery of Christ as the bridegroom and the church as the bride. I get it, but still, find it a bit peculiar, and I’d think it might be off-putting to some.

Musicians and choirs involved with churches often call this “hell week” because of all the extra services. I’m fairly tired myself, so that’ll be it for today.

Song History: You’ll Lose A Good Thing

Barbara’s rendition appears on the Hairspray movie soundtrack, the original movie with Divine.

barbaralynn-notlp183_borderI’ll admit it; I’ve lost my energy for keeping up with the newest music. But this doesn’t mean I stop learning about music. There is apparently a wealth of older music I don’t know about.

This particular adventure started with the Coverville podcast (#756) about Aretha Franklin. As you may or may not know, Aretha was signed to Columbia Records in 1960, and recorded with the label with only moderate success; her entire output, plus extras, from her years on Columbia Records, is being released in a boxed set in 2011. Though raised in Detroit, Aretha Franklin never recorded with Motown; rather, her greatest success was with Atlantic.

One of the songs on Coverville, covered in this case by Madness, was You’ll Lose A Good Thing. But it wasn’t originally recorded by Aretha. It was written and recorded by Barbara Lynn; it went to #8 on the pop charts and #1 on the soul charts in 1962. Here’s the original recording and here’s a live version – check out Barbara’s nifty guitar playing! Aretha’s version came out in 1964. Incidentally, Barbara’s rendition appears on the Hairspray movie soundtrack, the original movie with Divine, which inspired the Broadway musical, which inspired the Travolta-starring movie.

Interestingly, the song was also covered by Freddy Fender. It went to #1 on the country charts and #32 on the pop charts in 1976. This showed me, once again, how universal music is – pop, soul, country: it’s pretty much all the same.

 

N is for Niagara Falls

One doesn’t NEED a passport to go to Canada; one could get an enhanced driver’s license or non-driver’s ID, or similar products. BUT the things are only good for traveling by land or sea, not by air.

JEOPARDY! answers. All but the first from a Niagara Falls category introduced by host Alex Trebek, who said: “The honeymoon’s not over with one of North America’s most scenic attractions.”

Niagara Falls gets is enormous power because the Niagara River’s water is rushing between these 2 Great Lakes, which are only 36 miles apart but have a 300-foot difference in elevation.

In 1901, a 63-year-old schoolteacher named Annie Taylor became the first person to go over the falls in one of these; she made it, but I’m gonna pass.

There’s plenty of water going over the falls right now, but would you believe that in March 1848 for about 30 hours the Falls actually stopped flowing due to a massive upstream accumulation of this stuff.

The tradition of honeymooning here at the falls began way back in 1801 when the daughter of this then-U.S. vice president came here with her new husband; three years later, dad fought a famous duel.

Ferries with this dewy feminine name have been plying the waters below the falls since 1846; some of the most famous guests: Edward VIII, Teddy Roosevelt & Marilyn Monroe.

The falls are divided into two sections–the straight-line American falls over here, & over here on the Canadian side, this cataract, named for its distinctive shape. I have been to Niagara Falls at least thrice, with my family planning a trip there this year. Let me tell you about my previous visits.

When I was 10, give or take a year, my parents, sisters, and I went to Niagara Falls. Oddly, I have a stronger recollection of the floral clock on the Canadian side than I remember the falls themselves. I do recall that the kids were all asleep when we came back through to the US side, and that I was disappointed by that.

In 1998, our SBDC annual meeting was in Niagara Falls. By this time, the Canadian side had a bunch of casinos, and we were all given some casino money – from a sponsor, not the program – with which to start gambling. Since I had never gone before, I gave it a shot. But I found/find casinos annoying loud and rather boring. Worse, I was actually winning, which you might think would be exciting, but which I found actually worrisome. So I changed machines, promptly lost my money, and just wandered around the area outside. My strongest recollection, though, was crossing the borders, in each direction, on foot. I waved my US passport and about a half dozen of us went across; ah, the days before 9/11.

In 2002, the State Data Center had its semiannual meeting there. It was in May, and my wife had just finished her school year; she was a grad student. Even better, it was our third wedding anniversary. So we drove out, had a hotel room for three nights, and ate out every night, and all was reimbursed except for her meals. She explored all day while I had my meetings. It was great. We walked across the border, me with the passport, my wife with her standard driver’s license.

So now we’re planning a trip to Ontario. We all have passports, including the Daughter. One doesn’t NEED a passport; one could get an enhanced driver’s license or non-driver’s ID, or similar products. BUT the things are only good for traveling by land or sea, not by air, and though we’re traveling by car THIS time, we might want to fly to Vancouver, BC or Calgary sometime in the future. Oh, those pictures: they’re supposedly Niagara Falls in 1911. Are they really Niagara Falls? Apparently so. Are they from 1911? Almost certainly not. It’s one of those legends that are partly truth and partly fiction. The e-mail from which I received the photos even came with this narrative:

Margaret writes: Her mother had a cousin living in Niagara Falls that year. She told the family that she and her neighbours woke up in the night feeling something was wrong. It took a while but they finally realized that it was the lack of noise. They had all become so used to the roar of the falls that the silence was unusual enough to alert their senses. Of course, at that time nearly all the houses were near the falls. Can you imagine walking on Niagara Falls? JEOPARDY! questions:

What are Lakes Erie and Ontario?
What was a barrel?
What was ice? (See the falls DO freeze!)
Who was Aaron Burr?
What are the Maids of the Mist?
What is Horseshoe Falls?

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

Not the Bob Dylan You Know

“Just as Schumann or Brahms or Wolf had re-interpreted in their own musical styles the same Goethe text, I intended to treat the Dylan lyrics as the poems I found them to be.”

On March 12, 2011, my wife and I got to see the great percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie perform, with the Albany Symphony Orchestra, a work by Pulitzer, Grammy, and Academy Award winner, composer John Corigliano, performing a piece commissioned by her, Conjurer. It was great.

During the intermission, there were several recordings by Glennie and Corilglano for sale. I thought to buy something by Glennie, but I was intrigued by something called Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (for soprano and orchestra), and I bought that instead. In the program notes for the evening, he echoed what he wrote here:

When Sylvia McNair asked me to write her a major song cycle for Carnegie Hall, she had only one request; to choose an American text… I had no ideas. Except that I had always heard, by reputation, of the high regard accorded the folk-ballad singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. But I was so engaged in developing my orchestral technique during the years when Dylan was heard by the rest of the world that I had never heard his songs.

One reviewer of the recording found it highly suspect that the composer could never have heard “Blowin’ in the Wind”, but having spoken to him briefly after the concert, when he signed my copy, I find it totally plausible.

So I bought a collection of his texts and found many of them to be every bit as beautiful and as immediate as I had heard-and surprisingly well-suited to my own musical language. I then contacted Jeff Rosen, his manager, who approached Bob Dylan with the idea of re-setting his poetry to my music. I do not know of an instance in which this has been done before (which was part of what appealed to me), so I needed to explain that these would be in no way arrangements, or variations, or in any way derivations of the music of the original songs, which I decided to not hear before the cycle was complete. Just as Schumann or Brahms or Wolf had re-interpreted in their own musical styles the same Goethe text, I intended to treat the Dylan lyrics as the poems I found them to be. Nor would their settings make any attempt at pop or rock writing. I wanted to take poetry I knew to be strongly associated with popular art and readdress it in terms of concert art-crossover in the opposite direction, one might say. Dylan granted his permission, and I set to work.

And, musically, it’s not the Dylan you’ve heard before. On first listen, it is mighty jarring, but subsequent hearing, it begins to make its own sense. If you don’t like operatic sopranos, you won’t like this, but there is something about it that eventually appealed to me.

Possibly more immediately accessible is the other piece on the CD, Three Hallucinations (based on the film score to “Altered States”), a movie I saw in theaters three decades ago. The use of religious themes, specifically a variation on Rock of Ages, made this more gratifying on the initial listen.

 

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