- A second presence in the house year-‘round. Plus our guests.
- Seeing the home renovations finally under way. And how.
- My maiden voyage in a ship overnight. As you’ll be seeing.
- A steady supply of real tomatoes, once they started arriving at the beginning of September, thanks to a serious, raised-bed garden already featured here at the Red Barn.
- Our new choral director. We may be a small community, but there’s some deep talent.
- The resurrected film society. The showings are followed by some serious discussion into the wee hours.
- Contradances, too, both here in Eastport and at the Common Ground Fair.
- My appearances resulting from Quaking Dover. You can still find some of them online.
- Scallops in season. (And local blueberries, cranberries, lobsters, and crab.)
- All the eagles I observed during the alewives’ run and additional encounters after. Always inspiring.
Tag: Musings
Dragging me out of the Stone Age
I was tempted to make that “stoned age,” but I was of a more tempered side of the hippie era.
When it comes to high tech, though, I’ve leaned more toward neo-Luddite. You know, face-to-face and keeping people employed. That’s why I go inside to a teller at the bank, rather than an ATM or drive-thru. Ditto for fast food.
One way my family has of nudging me in the other direction is in their Christmas and birthday gifts to me.
Well, my clumsiness therein is another matter.
Here are some examples.
- My first cell phone and then, a dozen years later, the big upgrade to my S22 Ultra, in large part for its digital camera abilities.
- That replaced the Olympus digital camera they’d presented a few years earlier. I have to agree it’s a huge upgrade.
- A coconspirator in all this offered some puzzling lenses and a lobster tripod for photography that made no sense until I learned about the S22 Ultra. I was so ignorant, but these are cool.
- Then there’s the LED ring lamp for Zoom meetings with its warm and cool light settings. The way it’s set up now, I use it for a regular light at my workstation.
- A Fire tablet. An ebook author really should have one, though I use mine mostly to stream music. Which leads to …
- A Bluetooth headset that works with the aforesaid cell phone and tablet plus my laptop Zoom connections. Didn’t know I couldn’t live without one.
- As well as my Tribit remote speaker. I love the flexibility of taking my music around the house or of having hands free during a phone conversation.
- My little weather station, the one that doesn’t require wires running out to the wind, temp, and rainfall gauges. Hey, living on a windy island puts the weather high on the awareness chart.
- The mustache trimmer. The rechargeable battery device really does the job better than a razor.
- Most recent is a set of wireless speakers to go with the new audio system. I started to say “stereo” but know how outdated that’s become. Still, this one accommodates vinyl, if you know what that means.
Well, maybe this should go somewhere
Still more random notes in no particular order:
- Why so many churches? Only an unbeliever would ask.
- Note the hippie vibe of Pride Day. Like a time warp.
- The jolt of phoning someone and preparing to respond to the voicemail only to have a live voice pop up instead.
- Keys that don’t fit anywhere.
- It’s a Catholic church too small to conduct bingo games.
- I’m spending as much time keyboarding as ever.
- All those years I worked five-day weeks every holiday ‘cept maybe Christmas Eve. Or commuted in atrocious weather.
- What is literature? And why does it matter?
- She strikes me as little more than skin-deep beauty.
- What do you like about Christmas?
A shoutout some outstanding vocal ensembles
With the holidays just ahead, we’re coming up on the prime choral season of the year.
Look around, and there are many outstanding groups, not just the big, famed organizations in the footsteps of conductors Robert Shaw, Roger Wagner, Margaret Hillis, or John Oliver, either.
Hit on some of these on YouTube or Vimeo and let me hear what you think.
- Old Order Mennonite Harmonia Sacra. Let’s start from an old American shape-note tradition of harmony. Singing from the 1832 hymnal compiled by Joseph Funk in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, this video will likely lead you to others in this unique stream, including the Shenandoah Christian Music Camp. I’m inclined to sing along, using some much later Mennonite hymnals. Imagine an entire congregation singing parts like this, and many do. Eventually, it may even lead you to the unique Sacred Harp style. If you want to talk about American roots, don’t overlook this. I’m forever indebted to my exposure in this vein. So where do we turn from here? How about something completely different in the religious vein:
- Detroit Mass Choir. This large, tightly disciplined urban body runs flawlessly, turning on a dime when director Jimmy Dowell spontaneously decides to repeat a phrase or section or even jump back several parts or similarly ahead. Their take on Charles Tindley’s 1905 “The storm is passing over” is outstanding. Yeah, it’s one more place where stony unemotional me gets teary. That confessed, don’t overlook the instrumentalists, either. And I, for one, do appreciate the audience support throughout, something my mother would have considered interruptive and rude.
- Jehovah Shalom Acapella. And you thought the King’s Singers or Cambridge Singers epitomized the small, elite, all-male a cappella field? This six-member Ugandan Gospel group, members of the Seventh-day Adventist faith, delivers with an unbelievably smooth pop style. Where, by the way, do they find such an incredibly deep bass? Now, if we only knew how they’d handle Handel, Bach, and Mozart as well, we might have even more cause for amazement. By the way, we’ve also delighted in live performances by athletic Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
- Central Washington University chamber choir. Within a higher education state institution in tiny Ellensburg, well east of the Cascade Range and Seattle, there’s long been an outstanding fine arts program. In such situations, a few good teachers can make a lasting impression. (I hate to think of the destructive obverse.) Under the direction of Gary Weidenaar in works by contemporary Ola Gjeilo or Renaissance master Tomas Luis da Victoria , these student singers reflect, I feel, the high standards found in many other pockets across America – and not just its great conservatories and leading music schools. Returning to the shape-note tradition:
- Amherst Madrigals. In William Billings’ “Euroclydon,” a distinctive masterpiece, these ten singers blow me away. It’s a very demanding piece, after “all. And they present it so clearly, with no conductor in sight! For further confirmation, listen to what they do his “I am come into my garden.” Or, for pure polyphony, move onto another group for this:
- Indiana University’s Conductor’s Chorus. Their master’s of music performance of Palestrina’s “Sicut cervus” for conductor Daam Beam Kim in 2016 is unbeatable. After seemingly endless rehearsals and a few public performances of this choral masterpiece, I can’t imagine anything more ethereally sublime than this. Period. Even as an IU grad.
- Saint Olaf College Choir. This Minnesota Lutheran institution makes some incredible music. The diction in their videos and recordings leaves me envious, and their annual Christmas broadcast is understandably anticipated and admired. Still, compare their rendering of William Billings’ “What wondrous love is this” to one led by Ukrainian conductor Yuriy Kravets and the Shenandoah Christian Music Camp orchestra and choir, previously noted. Both are deeply moving.
- Luther College. Set along the upper Mississippi River in Decorah, Iowa, this church institution also has a superb musical program. Just listen to what its Nordic Choir can do. I’m even more impressed when I notice they sing their parts from memory and then their ease in navigating dynamics. Oh, my, that soon leads to a Baton Rouge high school performance that definitely stands out. Yes, high school.
- Quoddy Voices. My current chorus is an amazing group in a small remote fishing village with an active arts scene in easternmost Maine. Still, we would really welcome some younger voices. During the Covid restrictions, director John Newell put together some remarkable virtual presentations online, despite the fact we were recording individually under some highly unfavorable conditions. Now that we’re back face-to-face, I’m also delighted and humbled to be part of this circle and its stellar leadership.
- Boston Revels. A unique half-century-old organization that blends history, folk traditions and classical music, dance, plus theatrical acting and story line, I have to admit a bias in being part of the organization though not its justly celebrated annual winter holidays extravaganza. Each year’s Christmas show ends with the entire audience joining in, in full harmony, on the Sussex Mummers’ Carol, inevitably drawing tears from me and, I suspect, most others in the packed and wildly cheering Sanders Theater at Harvard. As a charter member of its community chorus, I do confess this family custom is one thing I do miss in relocating to Way Downeast Maine. Thanks for the memories, all the same.
Another thing about the island where I’m living
It’s a place where flannel sheets served all summer.
Yeah, while everywhere else was sweltering.
Cranberries!
Not everybody loves them, but they are a Thanksgiving tradition, jellied or stewed or otherwise.
Here’s some background.
- They’re one of the few fruits native to America.
- They don’t grow in water but the berries do float, which is how many of them are harvested, starting with a machine called an eggbeater.
- They also bounce.
- Only five percent are sold fresh. And eating one raw will be unpleasantly tart.
- Americans consume 400 million pounds of cranberries a year – roughly a pound and a half per person – a fifth of that during Thanksgiving week. How do you measure up?
- A gallon of juice requires 4,400 berries. Did we mention it’s a great antioxidant and high in Vitamin C?
- The “Sex in the City” TV series in the 1990s boosted the popularity of the Cosmopolitan cocktail, which features cranberry juice and vodka. Well, there’s a classic version with gin instead. Cosmos are typically served in martini glasses, after all.
- I’m quite fond of Craisins, the dried berry version that goes nicely in green salads and yoghurt, at the top of my list.
- Seven out of every ten cranberries sold in the world today come from Ocean Spray, a farmer-owned cooperative with more than 700 grower-families.
- Wisconsin is the leading producer in the U.S., followed by Massachusetts. A few are even grown here in Downeast Maine.
A travel perspective
Suppose I lost everything I had packed in a car fire.
My meds and dental retainer likely the biggest loss.
Didn’t bring my laptop, and my cell phone’s in my messenger bag.
Everything else could be readily replaced.
Well, including those. Even the phone numbers I had stored there.
Heads up!
Oh, my, so much has happened since the Common Ground Fair at the autumn equinox.
The week that followed, when I was out in the schooner, introduced so much, and two days after I returned, the big renovation project on our house finally began.
Many of those developments will be presented in weekly posts after the New Year. I do need time to digest the implications. Remember, I spent too much of my professional life as a journalist in the immediacy of daily chaos. I do value a longer view.
For now, there are other bits to catch up on as well.
Life is feeling very rich, indeed, if I don’t let it become overwhelming.
Doodling around with the origins of ‘Yankee’
The label does have a range of applications, from residents of the six-state New England region or Connecticut in particular to a Manhattan professional baseball team to anyone north of Dixie (often prefaced with “damn”) to anyone from the USA who lands in a foreign country.
Along with the shortened “Yank.” Or its many uses as an adjective.
The word’s origins, though, are contested.
- The earliest recorded use is credited to British General James Wolfe in 1758 when he complained about the Americans under his command. The British continued to use it in a derogatory fashion. The pompous fools.
- A largely dismissed theory had it arising in a French word for English-speaker that the Wyandot rendered into Y’an-gee.
- Another had it being adopted when New Englanders defeated a Native tribe who had identified themselves as Yankoos – meaning invincible. Problem there is the tribe must have been invisible all along.
- More likely is a derogatory Dutch-language origin in the early 1600s through New Amsterdam, beginning with the name Jan, for John, pronounced Yan. One theory has Jan being applied to any Dutch-speaking English colonist, a kind of winking acknowledgement that they could converse. How about having it originate among those Dutch-speaking Englishmen? I haven’t seen that suggestion before.
- Or it may have been imported from the Old World as Jan Kaas, “John Cheese,” a generic nickname the Flemish had for Dutch in the north.
- Or Jan might have been combined with another popular Dutch name, Kees, into Yankee, as English-speakers turned it against the New Netherlanders.
- And then those New Netherlanders soon slapped the word on English colonists in nearby Connecticut.
- By 1681 there may have even been a Dutch pirate, Captain Yanky or Yanke. The Dutch settlers, now subsumed into the English colony of New York, may have seen the Brits as pirates. Sounds awfully late in the timeline for me. I think it was definitely widespread slang before that.
- By the time of the Revolutionary War, the song “Yankee Doodle” was well established. Whatever its original intentions of mocking the Americans as simpletons, New Englanders took it as a badge of honor, macaroni and all.
- Somehow, after the Revolution, it became a synonym for Protestants descended from New England Puritans and their values. Take “Yankee ingenuity” as a prime example.
None of these quite convince me, but I feel Scottish, Swedish, and even Persian roots are even less likely.
Sometimes I’m accused of acting squirrely
Back in New Hampshire, I was often engaged in a losing battle with squirrels. We had them for a while in the wall of the house and in the bay window, found they’d chewed into the attic through the flashing around the chimney, and were never able to eradicate them from the Red Barn, where they pretty much devoured a 20-foot strip of crown molding. They were always digging up bulbs or taking chunks out fruits and vegetables in our gardens.
At least we eventually got a birdfeeder that would send them falling off, an advance that left us endlessly amused, especially when we noticed the obsessed critter as a new kid on the block.
One good friend, an avid gardener, aptly dubbed them tree-climbing rats with big tails.
Here are a few related facts.
- They eat their own body weight every week, typically 1½ pounds.
- They can find food buried under a foot of snow or, for males, smell a female in heat a mile away.
- Their front teeth never stop growing, even when they eat right through wood.
- They can climb about anything. Yes, metal poles are no problem. Plus they can rotate their front feet 180 degrees.
- To elude predators, they run in sharp zigzags. They also have a way of moving to the side of a tree trunk opposite the side of a human, keeping themselves out of sight.
- They can leap ten times their body length. But not quite that much straight up, which I think is only five lengths.
- They can fall 30 meters without injury and run sprints at 20 miles an hour.
- They can travel as much as 100 miles in a day. So much for all those Havahart trap runs I took across the state line, just to add a river between us and the liberated rodent.
- By chewing electrical wiring in the walls and attic, they’re a major cause of house fires, perhaps 30,000 a year globally. They’re also responsible for an estimated 20 percent of electrical power outages, including knocking out entire transformers and leaving towns in the dark.
- Chipmunks are a kind of small squirrel with a prominent stripe rather than a big fluffy tail. They may be cute, but they may be the most destructive of all of their kin.
At least we don’t notice them around our current home on an island in Maine. Instead, we have deer.
Jnana's Red Barn 