A memorandum-book does not, provided it is neatly written, appear confused to an illiterate person, or to the owner who understands it thoroughly, but to any other person able to read it appears to be inextricably confused.
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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
I've been been listening to Fegmania! a lot over the past week (in its reissue in the Luminous Groove box set), and finding some things I really like about this record, which I had previously considered one of Robyn's weakest efforts. Today I've been getting very interested in the song "The Bells of Rhymney," which I'm embarrassed not to have already known is a classic of the 60's folk revival, written by Pete Seeger and performed variously by The Byrds, Judy Collins, The Alarm, and others.
I think Pete Seeger's is my favorite performance that I've heard so far:
(I think, but not quite sure, that this recording is from the Newport Folk Festival of 1959.)
And The Byrds are lovely and silly, standing gaily on the beach singing about mining disasters. I believe it is their version that Robyn is covering, as he sounds very similar to this:
The song is based on a poem from the book Gwalia Deserta, by miner-turned-teacher and poet Idris Davies, which Seeger found in a book of Welsh poetry compiled by Dylan Thomas. The poem (as near as I can understand) deals with the failure of a mine-workers' strike in 1926. Two other of Davies' poems can be seen in manuscript form at Welsh cultural history site Gathering the Jewels: "Rhymney", and "Rhymney Hill". David Librik gives more detail about the origins of the poem at this link (midway down), including this tantalizing couplet from Gwalia Deserta:
O what is man that coal should be so unmindful of him?
And what is coal that it should have so much blood on it?
Oh what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.
Is there hope for the future?
Cry the brown bells of Merthyr.
Who made the mine owner?
Say the black bells of Rhondda.
And who robbed the miner?
Cry the grim bells of Blaina.
They will plunder will-nilly,
Cry the bells of Caerphilly.
They have fangs, they have teeth,
Shout the loud bells of Neath.
Even God is uneasy,
Say the moist bells of Swansea.
And what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.
Throw the vandals in court,
Say the bells of Newport.
All will be well if, if, if, if
Cry the green bells of Cardiff.
Why so worried, sisters why?
Sing the silver bells of Wye.
And what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.
Note: I found (at The Mudcat Café) some updated lyrics to this, composed by Mr. Steve Suffet, with help from Pete Seeger.
Bells of Kabul
"We've had twenty years of Hell!"
Cry the sad bells of Kabul.
"Oppression and war!"
Scream the bells of Kanduhar.
"Did we win? Did we lose?"
Ask the broken bells of Kanduz.
"Will God grant us peace?"
Pray the bells of Mazar-i-Shareef.
↻...done
La Pasionaria addressed her July 19, 1936 call to arms to "people of Catalonia, the Basque country and Galicia, and all Spaniards." I'm curious about the ethnic distinctions: I know "Basque" is a different group from "Spanish," different language and all; and I had some idea that there is a distinct dialect of Spanish called Catalan, and that some Spaniards think of Catalonians as a separate group. My first clue that there might be a distinct Galician ethnicity came when I was reading The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, and group of characters was identified as coming from Galicia -- but there it sounded more like the kind of kinship people might feel from having the same hometown, without it necessarily distinguishing them strongly from people from the next town over.
So, well, I'm wondering why Ibárruri chooses these regional identifiers. Galicia is the northwestern corner of Spain, Basque country is along the northern shore, Catelonia is in the northeast. Are all the southern and central portions of Spain ethnically homogeneous, distinct from these three? Ibárruri was a Communist, and I would have thought drawing these distinctions would not be in keeping with her ideology; but that's just off the top of my head.
I am realizing as I read about the Spanish Civil War, how strongly I have ingrained to think about the military as an arm of the state. When I read about a group of citizens breaking into a military base and stealing arms, it's a huge cognitive dissonance to identify the citizens as defending their government against the rebellious soldiers.
I am finding La Pasionaria (Dolores Ibárruri) a very inspiring figure -- overcoming her personal shyness to be a powerful public speaker; exhorting the people of Madrid to resist the military while the radio station was under attack; convincing rank-and-file soldiers to resist their commanding officers. Her "¡No Pasarán!" speech is translated here.
posted evening of August 25th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
Vicky Cristina Barcelona was... not a complete waste of time. (Note: Arguable spoilers follow; if you are planning to see the film and don't want any plot elements given away, don't read this.) There were fun and even moving bits to it, it was really enjoyable visual composition, but the movie did not hold together. It did not seem like the filmmaker's heart was in the project.
The central problem I had with the movie was the voice-over. The narrator was obviously, audibly bored with the story he was telling. Every time he started talking I tuned out completely. Ellen suggested the narrator was playing the role of Allen's character in his old movies, which sounds right -- but Allen's character being bored with his own life comes off as jaundiced and world-weary; whereas Allen's narrator being bored with the story he's telling just comes off as lazy.
Also lazy: not bothering to develop the character of Judy, the older woman who is trying to warn Vicky off of getting bogged down in an unsatisfying marriage. The first conversation she has with Vicky was really moving and sympathetic, and seemed like it had the potential to form the emotional core of the movie; but apparently Allen was not interested enough in the story he was telling to develop that any further, once he had the plot element set up he lost interest in the character.
So... not a great movie. Fun and pretty, though! The high points for me were four actors: Rebecca Hall, Patricia Clarkson, Javier Bardem, and Penélope Cruz. These four are just splendid, poetry in motion. Watching them move around through the streets of Barcelona is an excellent way to spend an hour and a half.
I started reading Peter Wyden's The Passionate War: the Narrative History of the Spanish Civil War today -- not chosen through any research, it was just the only title the bookstore had that matched what I was looking for. It seems all right though. (I felt a little disappointed when the first chapter was about some Americans who were stealing into Spain to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade -- I had thought the book was going to be about Spanish history, not Americans' involvement therein -- but that seems to have been just a hook for getting into the history.)
A few chapters in I haven't quite got a handle yet on how quickly events are moving. It seems like Sotelo was assassinated on July 13 and a week later, Sanjurjo has died, Franco is already victorious in Morocco, and Queipo de Llano has surrealistically seized power in Seville; but I don't see the connection between events yet.
I was interested to see that the slogan of the Foreign Legion in Morocco (under Franco) was "Long live death" -- Saramago makes very cryptic mention of this slogan in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, saying that a soldier had said that to Miguel de Unamuno but declining to tell what Unamuno's response had been. A Google search leads me to this article at libertarian site LewRockwell.com, which gives Unamuno's response as, "To conquer is not to convince." -- More information about this exchange is at José Millán-Astray's Wikipædia entry.
We had no trouble finding a baby-sitter on the spur of the moment, and we're off to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona after dinner tonight. Yay! Woody Allen's "diary" from the project is published in today's NY Times. (thanks for the link, Cyrus!)
posted afternoon of August 24th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about The Movies
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis is really making me think I need to learn more about the history of the Spanish Civil War. This looks like a good book; anyone got recommendations based on more than searching on Amazon for keywords? Leave them in comments please. Also I will stop by the used book store this afternoon and browse around their history section.
Tomorrow is Ellen's birthday! Courtesy of Josh Hosler, here is the number 1 hit song in the U.S. on the day she was born, Rosemary Clooney singing "Come On a-my House" (which is, to my surprise, written by William Saroyan of Human Comedy fame and Ross Bagdasarian of Alvin & the Chipmunks fame):
posted evening of August 23rd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Birthdays
Looking more at the "Live from the NYPL" calendar -- I see Bernard-Henry Lévy and Slavoj Žižek will be giving a talk on Tuesday the 16th. That seems like it will be great -- well worth going in to the city on a Tuesday evening.
...And later on, December 5th, Zadie Smith will be speaking "on Sensibility".
I was looking at Annie Proulx' Wiki page and that led me to find out about a talk she took part in this May at the NYPL: Books that Changed My Life -- you can watch it or listen to it online, I didn't see any transcript. And on that page, I see she has a new collection of Wyoming short stories coming out in September! This is a fine moment to have been reminded about her writing.
posted morning of August 23rd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Annie Proulx
We had no trouble finding a baby-sitter on the spur of the moment, and we're off to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona after dinner tonight. Yay! Woody Allen's "diary" from the project is 
Tomorrow is Ellen's birthday! Courtesy of 
does the math