We say to the apathetic, Where there's a will, there's a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head.
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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.
So far this winter, we've had a big snow-storm at the end of December and a much smaller snow-storm this week. The snow is icy on the ground now, a cold white blanket for the yards and parks of South Orange.
I've been listening this week to Crooked Still's record Shaken by a Low Sound. Just magnificent, jazzy bluegrass, a nice mix of tradition with innovation -- if you haven't heard them before you ought to take a few minutes right now and listen to some of their music that's on YouTube, and then buy some of their records. Here's one of my favorites, their "Railroad Bill":
While I was listening to "Railroad Bill" I found myself singing lines from a couple of other songs -- "Bob Dylan's Blues" and "99 Year Blues" both share chord structure and melody with this song. I got interested in blues stock phrases: compare the lines from "99 Year Blues", "Get me a pistol, 3 round balls/ Gonna shoot everybody I don't like at all" with "I'll find me a pistol as long as my arm/ Gonna kill everybody's ever done me harm" in this song. I was recently reading John Jeremiah Sullivan's article Unknown Bards: the blues becomes transparent about itself, which contains some interesting observation about variations in stock phrases in blues (and which is highly recommended reading for those of you with an interest in American music).
In the same vein, I'm having a good time tracing common threads of chord structure in blues and folk music. Crooked Still covers Robert Johnson's "Come on in my kitchen", which has the structure and melody of "Sitting on top of the world" and a couple of other blues tunes; and a lot of the songs I've been listening to lately (probably including some of Crooked Still's, though I could not swear to it) are variations on the They're Red Hot structure, including Two Man Gentlemen Band's hilarious "Me, I get high on reefer".
While I was browsing around YouTube for some takes on "Railroad Bill", I was reminded what's one of my favorite features of YouTube, which is the great number of amateur musicians who upload home videos of songs they are working on. Me and John have started doing a bit of this lately, though our skills are not nearly on the level of a lot of these. Check out RivrRidr902 performing a medley of "Railroad Bill", "Freight Train", and "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor":
I went to the Rent Party show at the South Orange Elks Club last night and was overjoyed to hear the 4th Street Nite Owls playing hot jazz, with my sometimes partner in crime Jerry sitting in on bass. Hoping to hear a lot more of them in the future.
We should be civil because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other's ideas without questioning each other's love of country and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American Dream to future generations.
They believed - they believed, and I believe that we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved life here - they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another, that's entirely up to us.
And I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.
That's what I believe, in part because that's what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed.
Imagine - imagine for a moment, here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that some day she, too, might play a part in shaping her nation's future. She had been elected to her student council. She saw public service as something exciting and hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.
I want to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it. All of us - we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations.
posted morning of January 13th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Politics
And there, costumated as a monochromatic rarebear, Stood the food-penguin, lemon-faced as ever.
The duo partook in a pair of pink fluff-puffs;
Destiny masticated her sugar-stick saxifragously,
Leaving Morgan haberdashed.
Sort of like "Happy the Golden Prince" maybe? Dramatically different from the every-day at any rate.
posted evening of January 12th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
David Bonta (blogger at Via Negativa) has published a book of Odes to Tools with Phœnecia Publishing -- some beautiful thoughts about the things we use.
Ode to a Socket Wrench
Better than all power tools Is the socket wrench:
Its accomodating nature Its chrome-plated steel Its handling of torque.
Kristin Berkey-Abbott reviews the collection today.
posted morning of January 8th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
A tantalizing bit of insight into Rivera Letelier's story-telling abilities is in this review of The Art of Resurrection, by Laura Cardona, book reviewer for La nación:
...As a young man, Rivera Letelier eaves-dropped on the conversations of the adults around him in Algorta, where his mother and his sisters (and likewise, later on, his wife Mari) balanced the family budget by serving meals. Every night, forty or more old miners would come by the house looking for a meal; young Hernán would pass whole evenings under the table, making note of every anecdote.
Cardona got this from Ariel Dorfman's Memories of the Desert, a 2004 account of traveling through the Atacama; she says Dorfman devotes more than a chapter to Rivera Letelier. This book is certainly going on my reading list...
(Found the Cardona review via Proyecto patrimonio's archive of writings about Rivera Letelier. Found the Dorfman book being remaindered by Amazon marketplace sellers.)
Here is the state of play â…“ of the way into Our Lady of the Dark Flowers, as the striking workers, having marched from Alto de San Antonio to Iquique, settle into their quarters at the Escuela Santa MarÃa* to wait for the mining companies' response to their demands:
Barretero is a worker at the mine who digs trenches.
Carretero is a mechanic who works on the carts used for hauling caliche, the nitrate ore.
Herramentero is (at a guess) a blacksmith.
Calichero is a mine-worker; I think it is a generic term covering anyone who works at the nitrate mines. There are several words derived from caliche that occur quite frequently in the text.
Particular is one of the jobs in the nitrate fields; I think it might refer to someone who works with explosives.
Derripiador is one of the jobs involved in processing nitrate ore.
Patizorro is (I think) another term for particular.
Perforista: another term for barretero.
Some of this stuff is pretty specific to nitrate mining in Chile, I'm not sure how it could be brought over cleanly into English. Album Desierto has a great glossary of salitrera terminology.
*It is difficult reading (mostly in the present tense) about how excited the striking workers are, how happy and hopeful they are in the face of their hardships, when you know how the history is going to end up.
**At one point Gregoria Becerra says her daughter "does not need any idilios"; Idilio Montañez' name means "love affair".
appy new year to all, and my thanks for reading the blog (if you do read the blog, and otherwise thanks for dropping by.) I am looking forward to what this new year will bring. Ring out the old, ring in the new...
Numerological note as of January 1st: today is 1/1/11! Do something observant at 1:11, 11:11, and 20:11.
posted afternoon of December 31st, 2010: 2 responses ➳ More posts about Birthdays
Rivera Letelier is an absolute wizard of narrative voice, of person -- I wrote before about the shifts from third to first-person singular in The Art of Resurrection; something even more complex and initially confusing is going on in Our Lady of the Dark Flowers. This is quite possibly the only novel I've ever read which is told in first-person plural omniscient present.*
The novel opens
with the narrator telling a story, set in the present tense, about 56-year-old widower Olegario Santana and his two pet vultures** -- he "is feeding" them, they "are emitting their gutteral carrion cries"... And it is initially quite jarring when the narrator backs off and shifts to "we" -- I believe the first place this happens is at the end of the sixth paragraph, where Olegario is walking to the mines -- something does not seem quite right, suddenly he meets up with a group of men who come up to him and "we tell him" that perhaps he has not heard, but a general strike was declared last night.
Is "we" the group of men? That's what it seems like at first; but as the novel progresses, "we" becomes more general, it is the workers of the pampa as a general class. The narrator is not a singular person or a distinct group of people -- the group of men would not have been able to narrate Olegario feeding his birds -- but is rather the voice of the pampino community. By doing this Rivera Letelier includes you the reader as a member of that community and makes it very easy, after a little hesitation, to get inside the book. Thinking of the story as a movie: when the narrator is telling about Olegario feeding his birds (and throughout the book in passages where he is speaking about "he" and "them"), he is describing the action onscreen as you watch the movie -- the present tense makes this work -- but when he shifts to "we", you realize you are part of what you're watching onscreen.
*I can't think of another one. Can you? I can't imagine this has never been done before; still it is quite distinctive.
**Well I'm pretty sure they're vultures anyway -- they are called jotes, which I think serves as a generic way of referring to birds, not buitres -- but they are described as carrion birds with pink heads, so vultures. Possibly jot is a Chilean term for vulture. Vulture does seem like an unlikely bird to have as a pet; but I am leaving that to the side for now, suspending disbelief.
...And, confirmation! Googling around for jotes in the Atacama brings me to a page from the Museo Virtual de la Región Atacama, with pictures of a vulture, "Jote de Cabeza Colorada (Catarthes Aura)". Wiktionary listsjote as a Chilean term for turkey vulture.
A long post below the fold, a bunch of disparate thoughts about music and links to music that seem like they should be in a post together:
Sort of like "Happy the Golden Prince" maybe? Dramatically different from the every-day at any rate.
settle into their quarters at the Escuela Santa MarÃa* to wait for the mining companies' response to their demands:
