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Monday, January 17th, 2011
 Further progress in improving the look of our dining room: Ellen found a great deal on reupholstering the chairs, from the McGowen Fabric Outlet in Elizabeth. Very reasonable price and excellent work, though perhaps lacking in customer service relations -- at about 5 this afternoon Ellen answers the ringing phone, listens for a minute, says "Jeremy, we have a situation" -- the chairs are finished and the fabric outlet manager wants them picked up right away so he does not have to hold them overnight. So me and John quit practicing and took a road trip to Elizabeth.
I find the sheer extent of the urban area around here disconcerting. I often don't notice it because I will get on the highway to drive any significant distance; but the city, the neighborhoods, keep going beneath the highway in between the exits. There isn't much of any way to get to Elizabeth by highway -- it is just surface street after surface street, and you never lose the impression of being in the city. The chairs are probably nearly as old as I am -- they and the table are Ellen's parents' old dining-room set. The old leather upholstery on them was looking really bad; the new fabric is utterly transformative.
posted evening of January 17th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, January 16th, 2011
 The genius of Rivera Letelier's Art of Resurrection does not lie in the writing of the plot or the character development. There are events narrated that in aggregate form a plot, to be sure, and it's not (with sufficient suspension of disbelief) a bad plot, but not (by itself) a masterpiece either. The characters are pretty static (except for the two main characters -- and in their cases "development" consists largely of flashbacks sketching out their life stories, more to give context to the narrated events than as part of the main story) -- indeed one could say that in the narrated moment, the characters are almost wooden.
But somehow this does not work out to be a criticism of the book: it is precisely this almost-wooden quality where the æsthetic greatness of the work can be found. Rivera Letelier's calmly focused lens can zoom in onto his characters frozen in the moment of his story like bugs in amber* and communicate to the reader their rich complexities. Update: It occurs to me that this quality of woodenness and of masterful exploitation of it, is something the book has in common with Buñuel's Simon of the desert, the movie from which its cover illustration is taken.)
 *(If not indeed birds in perspex)
posted evening of January 16th, 2011: Respond
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Saturday, January 15th, 2011
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. cleek links to the Guramdolart gallery in Russia, with some lovely pencil drawings of Imereti, Georgia, under the fallen snow.
posted evening of January 15th, 2011: Respond
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We got video!
videography: Sylvia
 OK, this is bugging me: where is the "Finneganagainagain" thing from? Some kind of children's song about Jim Finnegan? Aha! No, "Michael" Finnegan.
posted evening of January 15th, 2011: Respond
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 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:
- 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":
(Lead sheet)
- 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.
↻...done
posted afternoon of January 15th, 2011: Respond
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Thursday, January 13th, 2011
At the memorial service last night:
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
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Wednesday, January 12th, 2011
Thanks to Jen Mandel at The Great Whatsit for linking to this marvelous video of Morgan and Destiny's Eleventeenth Date:
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
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Saturday, January 8th, 2011
 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 WrenchBetter 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
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Friday, January 7th, 2011
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.)
posted evening of January 7th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, January second, 2011
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: The primary characters are four friends who work at San Lorenzo, the salitrera where the strike was initiated: Olegario Santana, a 56-year-old loner and a hard worker, a veteran of the War of the Pacific; Domingo DomÃnguez, a barretero, the most gregarious of the group; José Pintor, a widowed carretero who is virulently opposed to religion and religiosity; and Idilio Montañez, a young herramentero and a kite-builder. In Alto de San Antonio, these four meet up with Gregoria Becerra, an old neighbor of José Pintor's when he worked in San AgustÃn, and her two children, 12-year-old Juan de Dios and 16-year-old Liria MarÃa. Gregoria Becerra was recently widowed when her husband was killed in a mining blast, and there is some suggestion (as yet undeveloped) of a romantic connection between her and José Pintor. Idilio Montañez and Liria MarÃa fall deeply in love with one another during the march to Iquique (Chapter 4). Her mother initially disapproves** but by Chapter 6 she seems resigned to it and even warming to the young man.
The male characters' occupations are central to their identities; Dominguo DomÃnguez is often referenced as "the barretero" and likewise for Idilio Montañez and José Pintor. I think Olegario Santana has not yet been referred to by his occupation, except maybe as a calichero. Here are my understandings of some of these terms, I'm not sure how accurate they are:
- 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".
posted morning of January second, 2011: Respond
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