(musings from an upstart crow)
Who would ever have guessed someday I’d have a job interview that included the question “How would you describe The Sweat Band to someone who’d never heard them?”
Or that I’d get a chance to interview with a real live Sand Ruby?
Oh, the glamourness of my life…
“The punk rock’ll kill you if the government don’t get you first…”
-Rhett Miller of The Old 97s
About time I wrote something, I guess…
Friday limbo, was playing Nick Cave and Leadbelly and songs from an old lover. Day After Blues, wandering, newspaper brooding in the Dinosaur MacDonalds, bookstore lingering over hot chocoolate and idiot shoppers with my sweet little girls whov’e learned a Tom Waits song. Sarah sings it “remember the girl with the sun in her eyes and I’ll kiss you” then she blows a little kiss “and then I’ll be gone…” My punk rock little Maggie sings “and I’ll kiss you and then I’ll be sick!” and laughs riotously. Watched the movie “Seven” which I’d never managed to sit all the way through before and TOTALLY called the ending. Good movie, though. And then…
…Twas the Day After Thanksgiving and the liqour was flowing, the bonfires raging, the music pouring out of the living room and it was to be expected and it was good. The stragglers left long after the first morning’s light and Jesse referred to the sunrise as “God’s morning boner.”Sang “In the Pines” and “Willing” and “Oldest Story In The World” and “I Don’t Want To Me A Soldier” and “Designs On You” and several Forkan originals of old and new and much Stones and Zeppelin and who and the strangest guitar blues rock Iggy Pop style multiphasic eighties pop song medly. Made some promises to learn and sing and practice songs for future reference and so I will. And the the lord hath spake and apparently was happy to see us that morning. Happy birthday Mike, another year you’re still alive which is more than some of us can say…
“Good manners and bad breath will bet you nowhere…”
-Elvis Costello
From “Welcome To Leadbelly Homepage:
Huddie William Ledbetter was born on January 29, 1885 on the Jeter Plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana. He was the only child of his parents Wesley and Sally. Huddie and his parents moved to Leigh, Texas when he was five and it was there that he became interested in music, encouraged by his uncle Terrell who bought Huddie his first musical instrument, an accordion.
It was some years later when Huddie picked up the guitar but by the age of 21 he had left home to wander around Texas and Louisiana trying to make his living as a musician. Over the next ten years Huddie wandered throughout the southwest eking out an existence by playing guitar when he could and working as a laborer when he had to.
Huddie Ledbetter was the world’s greatest cotton picker, railroad track liner, lover, and drinker as well as guitar player. This assertion came from no less an authority on the matter than Huddie himself. Since not everyone agreed with his opinion Huddie frequently found himself obliged to convince them. His convincing frequently landed him in jail.
In 1916 Huddie was in jail in Texas on assault charges when he escaped. He spent the next two years under the alias of Walter Boyd. But then after he killed a man in a fight he was convicted of murder and sentenced to thirty years of hard labor at Huntsville, Texas’ Shaw State Prison Farm. After seven years he was released after begging pardon from the governor with a song:
Please, Governor Neff, Be good ‘n’ kind
Have mercy on my great long time…
I don’t see to save my soul
If I don’t get a pardon, try me on a parole…
If I had you, Governor Neff, like you got me
I’d wake up in the mornin’ and I’d set you freePat Neff was convinced by the song and by Huddie’s assurances that he’d seen the error of his ways. Huddie left Huntsville a free man. But in 1930 he was arrested, tried, and convicted of attempted homicide.
It was in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in July 1933 that Huddie met folklorist John Lomax and his son Alan who were touring the south for the Library of Congress collecting unwritten ballads and folk songs using newly available recording technology. The Lomaxes had discovered that Southern prisons were among the best places to collect work songs, ballads, and spirituals but Leadbelly, as he now called himself, was a particular find.
Over the next few days the Lomaxes recorded hundreds of songs. When they returned in the summer of 1934 for more recordings Leadbelly told them of his pardon in Texas. As Allen Lomax tells it, “We agreed to make a record of his petition on the other side of one of his favorite ballads, ‘Goodnight Irene’. I took the record to Governor Allen on July 1. On August 1 Leadbelly got his pardon. On September 1 I was sitting in a hotel in Texas when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and there was Leadbelly with his guitar, his knife, and a sugar bag packed with all his earthly belongings. He said, ‘Boss, you got me out of jail and now I’ve come to be your man'”
In 1935 Lomax took Leadbelly North where he became a sensation. Leadbelly remained Leadbelly. After hearing Cab Calloway sing in Harlem he announced that he could “beat that man singin’ every time”. His inclination toward violent resolution of conflicts, though mellowed, lead to threatening Lomax with a knife which effectively ended their friendship. Nevertheless by 1940 Leadbelly had become well known in the recording industry. Over the next 9 years Leadbelly’s fame and success continued to increase until he fell ill while on a European Tour. Tests revealed that he suffered from lateral sclerosis and he died on December 6, 1949.
(Adapted from the liner notes to “Leadbelly, Alabama Bound” by executive producer Billy Altman, on RCA Records.)
Never knew you, but I hear you were beautiful
Hear you were angry sometimes
Guess you never knew that you were loved
Well you were loved
For what it’s worth
So goodnight punk rock girl
Goodby lonely one
Hope you found your peace at last
Fine leathers, triumphs against adversity, and dead ex-girlfriends.
“Good manners and bad breath will bet you nowhere…”
-Elvis Costello
…back from the dead again. For as much as it counts. Thinking it’ll be different this time. This carrot will be different. Thinking that life will be good and recognition will be earned and trust will be rewarded. Love’s no different whether you go looking for it or it blindsides you. Fairness will always elude the mankind. Intelligence is the curse that it ever was. But here I still am. Buttering my fucking carrots. Hoping the end will be just a little bit better. All that keeps any of us living, realy. The hope that each ending will be a little bit better than the last. The hope that Karmic Justice will prevail but that god will forgive us all the same. Another season. Another chance. Let us wish ourselves well, hope for the best, serve up a nice wedge of carrot cake and dream that things will get better, by and by. I always loved carrots anyhow.
The Picts were the early inhabitants of Scotland, so called “barbarian” tribes who often skirmished with the Celtic Britons living to the south of them, sometimes living on the spoils of their attacks. Little historic documentation is available regarding them, as Scotland gradually became Celticized itself. The only text left to us by the Picts is their king-list, which gives the names and the lengths of the reigns of 60 or more Pictish kings. The list ends with Causantin mac Cinaeda, who died in 876. The only other written source from around the “Arthurian” era is Adomnan’s Life of Columba. The terms “Picts” and “Pictland” were used in speaking of the inhabitants and the area up until 900, when the country began to be called “Alba.”
The Picts had a warrior society, “and warlords needed strongholds. When St. Columba visited the Pictish king, Bridei, son of Maelchon, in 565, he went to one of the royal fortresses; it was ‘near the river Ness’ and the most widely accepted identification is Castle Urguhart on Loch Ness… where the medieval castle overlies earlier occupation…” (Nicoll 23) Several Pictish forts have been excavated, revealing that the warlords lived in style, wearing great silver chains and beautiful jewelry. A Pict’s life was not altogether different than that of his southern Celtic neighbors; they all spoke a very similar language, as the Pictish language is convincingly argued to have been Preceltic or Brithonic.
Minimal archaeological evidence exists though some survives in the form of uncovered Pictish treasure hoards. Brooches and dress-pins have been found, as well as small painted stones used as charms. An absence of valuables in Pictish grave sites, may imply that the Picts did not believe in a physical afterlife. Some oral traditions claim that Pictish deities were later mythologized as “Pixies” and faeries and that many Scottish folk traditions derive from Pictish belief. Since there is little physical evidence, it is hard to prove or disprove this line of thought. Most modern day Scots have at least some Pictish blood in them, and it’s very possible that they may carry with them some Pictish wisdom as well.
For more information and speculation, see the following sites:“The Pictish Papers” and “Pictish Nation”.
Postnet:
(where people send in their deepest secrets on the back of a postcard and somebody posts it.)
Context is Optional: www.corbid.net
History of Occam’s Razor
William of Ockham (also spelled Occam) was a Franciscan theologian born in Surrey, England, around 1285. He studied at Oxford and later at Paris. His philosophical views made him a polemic scholar. He died in Munich, Germany, around 1349.
Although the general idea of the preference for simplicity is attributed to William of Ockham, there are some precedents. Some writings by Duns Scoto, Ockham’s teacher, mention similar principles. A french Dominican named Durand de Saint-Pourcain used this idea before. Even earlier, Aristotle made statements such as “nature operates in the shortest way possible”, “the more limited, if adequate, is always preferable”, and “if the consequences are the same it is always better to assume the more limited antecedent”.
In the history of Science we find the principle has often been cited to argue in favor of one theory over others. It has played an especially successful role in physics. One example is the preference for Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation over Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. Although both theories made essentially the same predictions about the motions of the planets, Newton’s law is simpler and more general, requiring fewer assumptions, and was hence preferred. Newton’s theory was later empirically confirmed when its predictions led to the discovery of the planet Neptune.
An earlier application of Occam’s Razor, also in astronomy, was the controversy between heliocentric and geocentric models of the solar system. Ptolemy explained the observed movement of the stars using a rather complex model with the Earth in the center, and the planets orbiting around invisible spheres which themselves were orbiting around the Earth. Aristarco of Samos in Greece, and later Copernicus, convincingly argued for a simpler model in which the sun is in the center and the planets orbit around it.
I spun my car tonight. Avoiding the same sort of traffic scenario that
nearly did me in the first time. Something inside me snapped and I decided
“This car will NOT hit me!” and as it failed to yield and left turned
almost into me I decided to drive around it. And somehow I did even though
it kept coming, except that at that point “going around it” consisted of
ending up spinning sickeningly out of control and facing the wrong
direction in the fast lane on Kolb, but everyone was able to avoid me and
I was able to stop in time and avoid any damage to my car or anyone
else’s. No verdict yet on whether I damaged ME because I discover new
aches and pains hourly, but it may just be initial tension and shock.
Anyway, I faced my demon and lived, right? But for a minute I was sure I
was seconds away from death in the form of twisted metal and broken glass
and the fate once avoided that can never be fully escaped….But the good
news is that 21 year old boys worry enough to call me if I don’t show up
at the bar on a Saturday night which is absolutely touching and sweet in a
way that made me kind of forget I was suppsed to be having a panic attack.
But that’s never going to be as sweet as someone who brings you a
hamburger without asking because they know you really,really need
it…Holy shite, I could’ve been killed or something, couldn’t I? I just
realized. Fuck. But I wasn’t. I’m still here, just a couple of aches and
bruises worse for the wear.