A Joan Baez favorite

All You Need to Know About Life.

Here's Looking at You Kid

Great Lyrics Here

Cartoon 10/10

Fireflies – Rhett Miller

Sorry, my mistake!

Sarah McLachlan

Yusoff, the Yak farmer

On facebook

Yustoff, Yak farmer

About Me

Basic Info

Sex:

Yes

Birthday:

Yes

Current City:

No city, farm

Hometown:

Yakutsk

Political Views:

What?

Religious Views:

What?

Bio

Siberian, height: 6' 8", weight: 1 medium Yak.

eyes: yes, brown, hair: yes white, Teeth: yes

Myers Briggs profile: INTJ

Favorite Quotations

Yak good, Polar Bear Bad

Work Yes

Education No

College: What?

High School: What?

Likes and Interests

Activities:

Fucking and yaks and farming and eating

Interests

Yes - see above

My Favorite Siberian Music

Best Bull Yak named: YAK-ob Schmirnoff

Montreal Die In

Photo and Narrative by photographer, Kreddible Trout. I think he has captured an interesting event here. He's a good, alert photographer.

montreal die in © Kreddible Trout Visiting my hometown of Montreal a while back I happened upon this. A mass die-in. Normally I get all the memos on protests in my vicinity, but I haven't lived in MTL in a decade so I'd no idea what I was about to bump into. I had spent the day shooting headshots for a good friend when I lucked out on this. We zigged when we might have zagged and I noticed a swarm of cyclists appearing in all directions. My Troutie senses started tingling... something was going on here. Next thing I knew, they stopped and dismounted. Right spot. Right time. Dozens of point and shoots and phones started snapping where they stood, I thought 'vantage point!' I was closer to the front so I b-lined it. I think I made a good choice.They were protesting the death of a cyclist onMontreal street. Killed by a motorist It was incredible. They shut down Rue Ste. Catherine. in the late afternoon on a Saturday. Closed the city for ten minutes. It was beautiful. I would say that it made a lot of Montreal motorists unreasonably angry, but that would mean the protesters really had no effect.

New York City from Above

Click through this slide show below –

provided by The Denver Post.

Captured: New York City from Above – Plog Photo Blog

Meet Ferron – A Canadian-born Folksinger

My favorite song of hers:

"Ferron writes of love with the relentless introspection of Leonard Cohen, and, as with classic Bob Dylan, her songs' tough, questioning attitude sometimes gives way to an unexpected." - Rolling Stone Magazine

When Canadian singer-songwriter Ferron was 15, she hit the road alone. She had a single shopping bag with a change of clothes, a toothbrush, a waitress uniform, and a Leonard Cohen LP. Little did she know then, but one day her own songs would be compared to Cohen's for their depth of word-craft, intimacy, and wisdom. (NPR)

Ferron's Website

Wild And Free

Vedran Vidak, Photographer

From: Imotski, Croatia

The photographer's Narrative:

On the vast pastures of untouched nature Livno field, only ten kilometers away from the town of Livno, relaxing peace that rules the area impairs gallop over two hundred wild horses! That way they inflict on the area has been circulating since Koritine to Pine head, impress the stunning scenery herds of wild horses, in search of good grass, salt and water a day and go to the tenth kilometers. Wild horses on these pastures, almost fifty years of living under the open sky, left to themselves, weather conditions, strong winters and attacking wild animals in the surrounding woods is a lot. Survive only thanks to regions that are rich grass.

Wild Horses

Peace

Winter Comes

A Lynching 91 Years Ago, August 7, 1930 in Marion, Indiana

The photograph below was cited by the songwriter as the inspiration for the song: "Strange Fruit" which began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx, about the lynching of the two black men.

The song, "Strange Fruit" has been covered by Nina Simone, Jeff Buckley and others.

Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were two African-American men who were lynched on August 7, 1930 in Marion, Indiana. They had been arrested the night before, charged with robbing and murdering a white factory worker and raping his girlfriend. A large crowd broke into the jail with sledgehammers, beat the two men, and hanged them. Police officers in the crowd cooperated in the lynching. A third person, 16 year old James Cameron, narrowly escaped lynching thanks to an unidentified participant who announced that he had nothing to do with the rape or murder. A studio photographer, Lawrence Beitler, took a photograph of the dead bodies hanging from a tree surrounded by a large crowd.

Cameron, the third person, stated in interviews that Shipp and Smith had, in fact, started to rob a white man, who was later found shot. He says that he fled when he realized what was going on. The police accused all three men of murder and rape.
Much more info in an NPR article, Linked here.

Trepagnier House – St. Charles, Louisiana

The Trepagnier Plantation was expropriated, along with several others, by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to build the Bonnet Carre' Spillway.

Per Frances E. Johnson, the Photographer – 1938
"St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. 'The Rookery', Trepagnier House. Norco vicinity. Abandoned plantation house now occupied by Negroes."
Photo courtesy of Shorpy.com.


From the front porch view, it looks like the home of a laundress.

Additional Photos of the Trepagnier House by Lee Russell in the Library of Congress archives. FSA and WPA Photography

Blues in the South – Photos and Music

Brief Bio of photographer, George Mitchell

George Mitchell was born in Coral Gables, Florida in 1944. He was raised in Atlanta, Georgia and in 1958 discovered by accident the two radio stations in Atlanta that played black music, WAOK, and WERD, the first black-owned station in the US. Mitchell was drawn to black music, and as a teenager listened intently to Samuel B. Charters’ anthology The Country Blues. He also went to blues and R&B shows and saw Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, and the Staple Singers with his grandmother in tow; they were the only white people at that performance. George's obsession with photographing and recording country blues players in the Southeast has allowed their tradition to survive.George Mitchell resides in Atlanta with his wife Cathy.

Pulling up to a Stuckey's in Senatobia, Miss., in 1967, Mitchell was looking for well-known bluesman Fred McDowell, who had recorded extensively and toured Europe. He asked the attendant pumping gas where to find McDowell. "You're looking at him," the attendant said. GEORGE MITCHELL

William Grant, seen here at his home in Pittsview, Ala., was adept as a solo harmonica player, alternating singing and harp-playing with great agility. GEORGE MITCHELL

More Snapshots of Blues in the South

By George Mitchell

Some of the music? OK. Hang on!:
John Lee Hooker – Tupelo

Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Little Walter — My Babe

When Sheepdogs Get Bored

They Play Leapfrog –

So Long, Drive-In Movies

At their peak, which most experts agree was in 1958, there were almost 5000 drive-ins. Today, there are only 372 drive-in theaters still open in the US.

Remembering the Drive-Ins properly demands some Bob Seger music.

Hores

Billboard

Sign of the times:

Model T Ford Postcard – 1928

Offering Mechanic Services.


Click on:


Notice the sophisticated addressing scheme! This was sent on a penny postcard. Of course, it's all relative. A dollar was hard to come by in 1928.

Roadrunner Cartoon

By Seth MacFarlane, creator of TVs Family Guy and other comedy. I think his stuff is hilarious.

Deliverance

Welcome to Atlanta – Old and New

Slide show with music. Long, but well done.

More from Brad Watson

The below Narrative Magazine story, In the Prime of Their Lives is but part of Brad's novella which is in his excellent new book of stories:
"Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives"

Click on this link to read this delightful story.

“SHE WAS A GOOD Baptist girl, but she wasn’t a prude, and she liked to drink a beer here and there, and go to parties, and she generally liked my rowdy crowd. She was a virgin, though, and determined to stay one until she married.”

Biographical Information

Brad Watson was born and grew up in Meridian, Miss. He became interested in theater in high school, and, after graduation, went to California to look for work in Hollywood as a set-builder. Unable to find a movie job due to a strike, Watson worked as a garbage collector. After about a year, he returned to Meridian and worked in a variety of jobs, including carpentry and bartending. He also attended Meridian Junior College, where he became interested in writing. Watson earned a BA in English at Mississippi State University in Starkville in 1978. He then enrolled at the University of Alabama, earning an MFA in creative writing and American literature in 1985. In the mid-1980s, Watson also worked for a weekly newspaper on the Gulf Coast. He later wrote for the Montgomery Advertiser and for an advertising agency in Montgomery.

From 1988 to 1997, Watson was employed by the University of Alabama as an instructor and as a writer in the public relations office. During this time, he was also writing short stories. Several were published in literary journals such as The Greensboro Review and Story. A collection, Last Days of the Dog-Men, was published in 1996. The following year, Watson moved to Massachusetts where he held a five-year appointment as a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard University. He published a novel, The Heaven of Mercury, in 2002. Watson then moved to Pensacola, where he was writer-in-residence for a year at the University of West Florida. He spent a semester teaching at the University of Alabama at Birmingham before being appointed the John and Renee Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. In 2005, Watson became a member of the English faculty of the University of Wyoming and moved to Laramie.

Interests and Themes

Brad Watson’s fiction is set in the South and frequently involves failed interpersonal relationships. Last Days of the Dog-Men is a collection of short stories about dogs and people. The Heaven of Mercury is set in a fictional town that is based partly on his hometown of Meridian, Miss., and partly on Alabama Gulf Coast towns like Foley and Gulf Shores.

Want to learn more about Brad? This is an excellent 2002 interview that really draws him out.

How 'bout some Jackson Browne?

Soundstage 1976 – The Pretender



One more: "The Load Out/Stay", also BBC 1978

Two Romanian Photographers

Michaela Cojocariu – Her Blog

"Wrong Written Life"

"Frida is Back" –

A photographic portrayal of Mexican painter and wife of painter, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo.

George Gradinanaru – signs his work, "Horhhe"

"Night traveller III"

Both of these talented photographers are from

Brasov, Transsilvania, Romania

Listen to Caroline Herring

I think she's terrific!

About Her:

Caroline Herring is a Canton, Mississippi-born artist whose music has been hailed for combining traditional folk and bluegrass sounds with striking, original observations of modern life and love. Thoroughly steeped in southern culture, Herring began her music career in Austin, TX, where she released her first album, “Twilight,” and won Best New Artist in both the Austin American Statesman and Austin Chronicle in 2002. Since that time, Herring has built an international following and released three more albums, including the masterpiece “Golden Apples of the Sun.” The critical acclaim for “Golden Apples of the Sun” firmly supports Herring’s status as one of the top musical artists of her generation. The Oxford American says, “Golden Apples is the album of a woman who has come into her powers as a singer-songwriter, claiming as her stomping ground the territory where folk meets alt-country.” NPR’s All Things Considered interviewed Caroline in January 2010 about the making of the record, and Jim Allen of All Music Guide said the following: “It's not easy being a great folksinger -- Kate Wolf, Linda Thompson, and Iris DeMent are some of the names on the short list, but ‘Golden Apples of the Sun’ makes a strong case for the addition of Caroline Herring.” Herring’s album “Lantana” (2008) received widespread acclaim as an alt-country masterpiece. The Austin Chronicle proclaimed it to be “the best modern Southern Gothic album since Lucinda Williams’ Sweet Old World,” and NPR named it one of the “ten best folk albums of 2008.” On “Lantana,” Herring writes and sings about a myriad of southern topics, from a character in a Larry Brown novel to the infanticide and racism exposed by the dark and troubled life of Susan Smith. With “Golden Apples of the Sun” Herring stakes out new terrain, exchanging the country-influenced resonance of her previous albums for a sound inspired by the iconic female folk singers and songwriters of the 1960s and 70s. Caroline Herring lives in Atlanta, with her husband and two young children.

For a lot more of Caroline's music, go here:

Elvis was generous.

Some said to a fault.

Click on:

"Bloodroot" by Amy Greene - NYT review

Cold Mountains

BLOODROOT
By Amy Greene
291 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.95

$15.97 on Amazon ( per DNJ )

New York Times
By LISA FUGARD

Published: February 12, 2010

Don’t be misled by the dreamy pastoral image on the dust jacket of Amy Greene’s first novel. “Bloodroot” takes place in Appalachia, and, yes, Greene lovingly describes its mountains and hollows, its waters filled with bluegills. There’s also much talk of healing and magic and backwoods folk wisdom. But this story is really about the fraught, sometimes dangerous, bonds between children and their mothers, and the appalling spillover of violence from one generation to the next.

A scene about halfway through, when a pregnant Laura Odom Blevins is being harassed by her wildly possessive, drink-addled mother-in-law, captures this dark legacy with wrenching clarity. “I ain’t never had nobody,” the older woman sobs, after she’s finished hurling insults. “When I was little they was always passing me around. Didn’t none of them want me.” But the pity Laura momentarily feels is banished when her mother-in-law grabs a jack handle and begins smashing Laura’s husband’s car. “I was sorry,” a shaken Laura confesses after another tussle sends the woman limping away, “but most of all I was worried about my baby. I thought something had broke inside me, the way it broke in Mama.”

Laura’s mother, black-haired, blue-eyed Myra Lamb, is one of the characters the novel follows through three generations of domestic strife. She’s first encountered through the recollections of Byrdie, the grandmother who raises her on Bloodroot Mountain, and Doug Cotter, a shy young neighbor who falls in love with her — both of whom feel her slipping away, lured by an ominously attractive man named John Odom. Although Greene strains a bit in these passages, using the awkward symbolism of Wild Rose, a horse that can’t be tamed, to echo Myra’s free spirit, she succeeds in capturing the intimate relationships many of her characters have with the natural world. “The whole mountain belonged to us,” Doug declares, “and we knew its terrain like our own bodies, every scar and cleft and fold.”

In unadorned but assured prose, Greene then takes her readers to the hard­scrabble world of foster homes and juvenile detention centers, of life in a blue-collar Appalachian town as experienced by Myra’s children, the twins Laura and Johnny. While Laura struggles to move beyond the traumas of their childhood — when social workers removed them from their mother’s home — Johnny can’t forget the years they spent with the reclusive Myra. At one point, he hikes up Bloodroot Mountain with a friend who has promised to show him a witch’s house. Dilapidated, hidden among the trees, it looks “like a toy I could hold in both hands, a dirty white box with black window holes and the roof a flake of blood.” It’s his childhood home, and the witch in question is his mother.

When, in the novel’s last section, Myra’s voice is finally heard — searching back for the first “whispers of fear” she felt after meeting John Odom — the effect is chilling. Here Greene uses gothic overtones (sometimes too heavily) to capture the crippling atmosphere of Myra’s marriage. The smell of sulphur and dead rats permeates the air outside the Odom house; her sisters-in-law are “tired and colorless”; her husband looks “almost foreign, hair and eyes black as soot.” She captures well the electric emotional snap of a woman about to break free from an abusive marriage, the charge of adrenaline in that “exhilarating moment when I knew it would end for me one way or another.”

Greene layers the novel with references to Myra’s incredible magnetism, and it’s said she has “the touch,” a kind of ESP. There’s also mention of a family curse. But this somehow detracts from the tragedy of her life. Myra is most compelling as an all too ordinary woman trying to escape an inheritance of violence and poverty. “It’s not right, what we’ve put on her,” one character remarks. “She’s made out of flesh and blood, just like anybody else.”

Lisa Fugard is the author of a novel, “Skinner’s Drift.”

Opera While Shopping

Am I the only low brow, white trash that listens to this stuff? Anyone else have it on their iPod to listen to while driving? It's calming and keeps me from pulling my Glock out of the glove compartment and taking out folks talking or texting on cell phones while driving. Several months ago at the central market in Valencia, Spain, opera singers disguised as shopkeepers were selling produce at the various stalls there. Suddenly, Verdi's Il Travatore starts playing over the loudspeakers and they burst into song. None of the shoppers has a clue what's going on.

Hallelujah

Covered here by Jeff Buckley (1966 – 1997) It sometimes seems only the good die young. He drowned in Memphis... perhaps on purpose.

This is probably my favorite song. It was written by Leonard Cohen and released on his 1984 album (CD) Various Positions. It's been covered by K.D.Lang, John Cale, Kate Voegle, Alison Crowe and many others including Bob Dylan, Bon Jovi and Willie Nelson

Hallelujah Lyrics by Leonard Cohen

If you like the song, check out these other two renditions. I like them all.

Another good cover version sung by Rufus Wainwrght

The Photography of Ruadh DeLone

Photographer DeLone, working in Rheden, Netherlands, shoots a wide variety of subjects. Those in which he achieves the look and feel of 17th century paintings in the style of the Dutch Masters are far and away my favorites. Nota Bene: The whimsical milk mustache on the first photo.

Click on for an enlarged look.

Meet Seasick Steve

Steven Gene Wold, aka Seasick Steve, is knocking them out in the UK and much of Europe. The music videos of him at the bottom of this post are at the Rock Werchter Festival in Belgium which, since 1974, has been called the world's premier music fest, lasting 4 days each year. In the UK, he's thought to be the world's coolest pensioner.

"Man From Another Time"

Click on and move your cursor over the screen to check him out:

Diddley Bo

Dog House Boogie

Born in Oakland, California in 1941 (68 years old), Wold left home at 13 to avoid abuse at the hands of his stepfather, and lived rough and on the road in Tennessee, Mississippi and elsewhere, until 1973. He would travel long distances by hopping freight trains, looking for work as a farm labourer or in other seasonal jobs, often living as a hobo. At various times, Wold worked as a carnie, cowboy and a migrant worker. Of this time he once said: "Hobos are people who move around looking for work, tramps are people who move around but don't look for work, and bums are people who don't move and don't work. I've been all three."

Even More Bloodroot by Amy Greene

Best Books of the Month

Discover our editors' picks for January--available at 40% off all month long--plus more new releases not to missed.

Bloodroot by Amy Greene

Bloodroot is that rare sort of family saga that feels intimate instead of epic. Set in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, it’s told largely in tandem voices that keep watchful eyes on Myra Lamb. She is a child of the mountain, tied to the land in ways that mystify and enchant those around her. There’s magic to Myra--perhaps because she has the remarkable blue eyes foretold by a nearly-forgotten family curse--but little fantasy to her life. Bloodroot is as much about the Lambs as it is about a place, one that becomes ever more vivid as generations form, break free, and knit back together. Its characters speak plainly but true, they are resilient and flawed and beautiful, and there's a near-instant empathy in reading their stories, which--even in their most visceral moments--are alluring and wonderful. --Anne Bartholomew

Bloodroot to publish on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010.

Amazon price: Hardcover, Deckle Edge $14.97