Friday Night Frolic — A Mouse is a Mouse, For All That

"It's a constant battle between mice and men."

~ Lulu

Small, crafty, cowering, timorous little beast,
 O, what a panic is in your little breast!
 You need not start away so hasty 
With argumentative chatter! 
I would be loath to run and chase you,
 With murdering plough-staff.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
 Has broken Nature's social union,
 And justifies that ill opinion
 Which makes thee startle
 At me, thy poor, earth born companion 
And fellow mortal!

I doubt not, sometimes, but you may steal;
 What then? Poor little beast, you must live!
 An odd ear in twenty-four sheaves 
Is a small request;
 I will get a blessing with what is left,
 And never miss it.

Your small house, too, in ruin!
 Its feeble walls the winds are scattering!
 And nothing now, to build a new one,
 Of coarse grass green!
 And bleak December's winds coming, 
Both bitter and keen!

You saw the fields laid bare and wasted,
 And weary winter coming fast,
 And cozy here, beneath the blast,
You thought to dwell,
 Till crash! the cruel plough passed 
Out through your cell.

That small bit heap of leaves and stubble,
 Has cost you many a weary nibble! 
Now you are turned out, for all your trouble,
 Without house or holding,
 To endure the winter's sleety dribble, 
And hoar-frost cold.

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
 In proving foresight may be vain:
 The best laid schemes of mice and men
 Go often askew,
 And leave us nothing but grief and pain, 
For promised joy!

Still you are blest, compared with me!
 The present only touches you:
 But oh! I backward cast my eye, 
On prospects dreary!
 And forward, though I cannot see, 
I guess and fear!

~Robert Burns, "To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough" [Standard English Translation] *

* * *

Our furry mortal companions, after all, are merely trying to meet the three basic needs of any living thing: water, food, shelter (and clothing for us lesser humans). Air and sunlight help, too. So what exactly is the battle? What is this compulsion to subordinate nature to man? Can we not work together, in harmony? Maybe this is why Michael leaves peanut butter out for our critters? (She naively asks.)

The thing is, though, the mice have come into our natural world. Our home. And they are, to be sure, small and crafty. Their careful approach to the mouse traps—evidenced by clawed peanut butter globs atop the plastic cheese of traps set around the house—illustrates their slyness and resolve. We are housing and feeding the beasts. Like hell they startle at us!

Up until Michael found a few mini-Santa chocolates haphazardly unwrapped—broken pieces of Santa-shaped, teeny-gnaw-marked chocolate bits scattered under the Christmas tree—the children were accused of consuming too much candy and leaving foil wrappers strewn about the house. Not one of you will fess up, eh? And why the heck are so many ornaments knocked off the tree? Well? They stared at me with eyes narrower than usual. You mock your mother?!

Soon after Max's and Lu's acquittal, while de-decking the house of boughs of holly and sucking all traces of pine into a monster canister, I broke out the vacuum's brush attachment, lifted the cushions from the living room's couch and found a trove of bird seed that had been hoarded by the mice. Under the cushion of a fabric-covered chair, I discovered a small, sugar-sprinkled gingerbread cookie (a treat left for our Santa chimera), shredded ribbon and other scraps. I wondered if it hadn't taken a platoon of mice to conceal their booty. Our house had become the bandits' very own Moveable Feast—a splendid place brimming with tasty morsels and sparkly lights, with ample nooks and chinks for notable adventures. Who needs Paris?!

And then my breast went a-panic. Bold rodents! What have they to worry about? They'll tear apart the pantry! I thought about d-CON (for a moment), and shored up all food-filled containers, vacuumed and sprayed and scrubbed. And then Michael went for the traps.

But our mice are much too clever.

There's a little voice inside me, though, thanking the gods for not mashing the head of one mouse in those traps. Yes, the fields are bare and wasted, and the bleak winds of winter have arrived, but the critters are merely trying to survive. There must be a more humane way to rid our domain of them (for it's quite impossible and far too unsanitary to co-exist in the same domicile). Is there not?

Until we figure it out, Max will carry on about the pests' scratchy evening shenanigans keeping him awake at night. And I'll stock up on glass containers.

* * *

King Rat (an illegal whale hunt protest) by Indie rock band Modest Mouse, has an official animated video, directed by the late Heath Ledger, that's apparently been hijacked by VEVO. If you'd like, you can see it here. Modest Mouse has been making music since 1997, but it wasn't until 2004 that they established mainstream success with We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, for which they enlisted musician and vocalist James Mercer of the Shins, and Broken Bells (with whom we Frolicked here), as well as help from Johnny Marr (former Smiths guitarist). Marr ultimately toured, in 2007, with Modest Mouse.

You can find more information, including tour dates, on MM's blog. They'll be playing in San Francisco, at the Macworld/iWorld convention, January 25, 2012.

Hmm, the only modest thing about our mice is that they don't make a show of it while we're still puttering around the house. But in the evenings, they Frolic!

___________________________________
*Burns's poem inspired at least two book titles: Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and Sidney Sheldon's The Best Laid Plans. Per Wiki, in 2007, Ian Anderson (of Jethro Tull) read the first stanza of the poem as a prelude to his remastered One Brown Mouse, adding the line "But a mouse is a mouse, for all that" (referencing Burns's Scot song, "Is There for Honest Poverty"—popularly known as "A Man's A Man for A' That") which I sneaky-as-a-mouse stole for this post's title.

Friday Night Frolic — In Which Mr. Sawyer Forwards a Letter

Do to various commitments, and, to a lesser degree, technical glitches, the Suburban Soliloquist is unable to bring to you the regularly scheduled Friday Night Frolic. In lieu of this tragic turn of events, she offers you something, with relevance, found just this morning in a soggy box: proof positive the power of a teacher's charitable words to a then eleven-year-old wanna-be writer. Kindly note the second paragraph of the above letter, in which her fifth grade teacher, Mr. Walter Sawyer (of whom she's made past mention) replies to a letter and short story she sent to him the summer of 1972:

"I really did like Ban Rollon. I don't really have any stories, but a good way of getting ideas for stories is by listening to songs and making them into stories. Remember the song 'Drill Ye Tarriers Drill?' That would make a really funny story if you made the characters act like the Three Stooges."

And so you see, dear reader, Friday Night Frolics' seeds were apparently planted many, many moons ago. The Suburban Soliloquist doubts she has a copy of Ban Rollon, but she has a suspicion that it may have been sparked by this (remember In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida?):

The letter's flip side offers a sweet sign off and a joke that no pre-teen would appreciate today:

(Ten hours a day of homework. Sheesh!)

So there it is: evidence from where the Frolic first took roots.

The Suburban Soliloquist remembers Mr. Sawyer as not only an inspiring teacher, but also as pretty darn cool (the Fox Hollow Folk Festival and the Philadelphia Folk Festival in one month?).

Many thanks from the bottom of the Suburban Soliloquist's heart to Mr. Sawyer for taking the time to write and humor the skinny kid with big dreams. It took a long time for the seeds to germinate (maybe the soil was too heavy or dry or not well fertilized, or the seeds were slow growing and the farmer impatient), but they've sprouted, the crop's maturing and she's getting around to the harvest.

Every morning, seven o'clock
There's twenty Irishmen a pounding on a rock
The boss man says, "Shut up, keep still...
Come down heavy on your cast iron drill."

And Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill
And Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill
For it's work all day no sugar in you tay
Down beyond the railway
And Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill

The big boss man, he down to the ground
Married a lady 'bout six feet 'round
She bakes his bread, she bakes it well
She bakes it harder than the nobs of Hell.

The foreman, name of John McCann
Swear I never met a meaner man
A premature blast went off
And a mile in the air goes big Jim Goff.

The next payday she come around
A dollar light poor Jimmy found
"John, what for?" comes this reply
"You're docked for the hour you was up in the sky."

Tarriers live on work and sweat
There ain't no tarrier, got rich yet
Sleep and work, and work some more
And drill right down to the devil's door."

There I stand me hat in hand
With two trains kissing in the Utah sand
There's no one now, who knows my name
An Irish derby is me claim to fame

Friday Night Frolic — To Hadestown and Back

“We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.”
~Louise Glück

She'd been there twice. Once, in her early twenties, on a cocaine and booze fueled road trip to Florida. Later, as a mature mother with children in strollers. South of the Border is as grey and wonky as it looks on the thirty-year-old postcard whether one is stone-cold sober or stardust-spangled high, and she tries in vain to remember the man who sent it to her that briny-breezed May of 1982. 

She was in her senior year of college—the year she lost her bearing and went astray. Her housemates worried. Up 'til then, she had merely flirted with drugs and alcohol. Or so she thought. Evenings were often equal part studies and getting stoned. She'd close the books and walk down to the beach with a pitcher of kamikaze mix, sit on the seawall and dreamy-stare at the curly waves frothing at the shore. Or she'd slip into a happy hour, which was as easy to find as the steepled churches that hugged nearly every street corner of her Franco-American hometown. There, in those sticky, beer-crusted shrines, or on the beach with her pitcher, she found hollow comfort from the demons that haunted her. 

But this guy, where had she met this guy? Why had he sent her a post card? She'd hardly known him. And he was sure to have been as much trouble as the man for whom she'd left the nice guy. She must have known this, somehow, in those hazy days of painful insecurities and indecisiveness, she must have sensed a danger. Even then, a doubtful girl, she was determined in her ways.

Blond hair, on the longish side was all she could evoke. Maybe a house party, dancing to Human League's throbbing, synthesized  music—Don't you want me baby, don't you want me, ooohhhooo—black lights, cigarette-smoke and stale-beer infused furnishings... 

He went to Key West. She knew this only by the Sloppy Joe's postcard he'd sent previous to his South of the Border note. It's all she remembers. Does any of it really matter? Back then, she'd settled into a long, bleary underworld siesta from which she feared she wouldn't wake.

But she did. She woke in time to keep herself from dialing the number.

*    *    *

In her fifth and latest release, Hadestown, Anaïs Mitchell, with her sweet Goldie Hawn-like persona and distinctive voice (an Eartha Kittiness quality to it) sings, with her Hadestown Orchestra, about love, sorrow, regret and displacement in a refreshing rock-opera based on the popular Greek myth of Orpheus, Eurydice and Persephone, only set in a post-apocalyptic American depression. (Sounds scary-familiar?)

Along with Mitchell as Eurydice, the cast in this opera includes an impressive list of voices and musicians: Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) in the role of Orpheus, Greg Brown as Hades, Ben Knox Miller (The Low Anthem) as Hermes and Ani DiFranco as Persephone.

Find out more about the Vermont-born and based Mitchell at her official website. 

Friday Night Frolic — Fifty is Nifty?

                                                             
Fifty is nifty when you're twelve years old and in pressing need of rhyme for Mother's birthday card. But when you're fifty—when you're actually fifty, well, somehow it doesn't feel so nifty. Nor peachy, nor swell, nor cool. Nor... you get the picture. I mean, you get the picture—just look at it! Filled with squiggly lines and creases and greenish-brown age-like marks. It's a bit crumpled and uncertain of whether it's an upper or lowercase condition! Clearly, it wants to be uppercase, but the t and y informs us that its appearance is dwindling.

Say what? You don't see age marks and wrinkles on that card? You mean it's confetti and streamers? Ooooh! You see how twisted one's perception becomes at the ripe old age of fifty? Fifty is shifty is what is fifty.

For my birthday, Hubby gave me poetry 180—A Turning Back to Poetry, which is an anthology of contemporary poems carefully selected and introduced (said introduction can be read here) by Billy Collins. In it is one I love—probably the shortest—by Carol Snow:

                            Tour

Near a shrine in Japan he'd swept the path
and then placed camellia blossoms there.

Or—we had no way of knowing—he'd swept the path
between fallen camellias.

Without touching upon the poem's symbolism (camellias, shrines, Japan, paths!) which might reveal much about its meaning, but I have no way of knowing—just as I have no way of knowing if the flowers have drifted to the ground, or have been trampled upon the ground, or are untouched in full bloom on the ground, or who he is or when or how precisely he may have swept the path—what Tour speaks of to me (and that is what a poem is all about, after all, right?—what it says to you) is perception. 

In Tour, there are possibilities. There are lovely fallen camellias on a path that has been swept near a shrine in Japan. Does it matter if we do or don't know when or how the camellias came to be placed upon the path?

That's what fifty is like. I'm on a tour. Paths have been swept. Camellias have fallen. There are other bits and buds with which I've littered the path, and some I've gladly cleared it of. I can't know everything about the path, or the fallen camellias—other than they have, indubitably, fallen—but there are possibilities. Still.

Hmm... 

Maybe fifty is nifty. 

If I had to pull together a soundtrack covering the paths I've traveled these past fifty years, there would likely be a trail sprinkled with Neil Young song crumbs. It would lead one from his early days with Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young up to his live album A Treasure, released in June 2011, which includes a half dozen previously unreleased songs.

Some of the many paths I've followed over this half century remain constant, reliable courses lined with pretty flowers, while others became worn and treacherous and had to be abandoned. Still, paths await to be swept. Or littered with confetti and streamers.

Here, Neil Young returns to his native country in 2005 to perform with his wife, Pegi.

The Bridge School Concerts—25th Anniversary Edition—will be available on DVD and CD this Monday, October 24, 2011. You can preview the official trailer here.

Friday Night Frolic — Are You Still Dreaming?

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, 

that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

 ~ Henry David Thoreau

Adbusters Corporate Flag

You know, about the Dream. The American Dream: Justice, Freedom, Equality? Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Oh, that's right, the American dream has fizzled along with your investments and savings—if you've been so lucky as to have saved at all.

Really though, are you still dreaming?

Or are you weary to your bones?

The dream, as James Truslow Adams wrote in his book, The Epic of America, is the "[...] dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement..."  Yes, life should be better for all. It should, dammit. Now wake up from the dream. (If you are, in fact, still dreaming.) Because that dream is over. Poof.

Things are beginning to get a little ugly on Wall Street (as if they were not already grotesque). And elsewhere. Police and protesters are clashing across America. Our government's leaders praise the youthful anti-establishment protests overseas, but in America—Land of the Free, Land of Hope and Promise—peaceful activists are being arrested and even run down by police scooters. Who knows what's next.

"...It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it..." 



I'm dreaming...

I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong.

Our young have taken to the streets in an assemblage of civil disobedience, giving temperate expression to anger. I pray it remains peaceful. They do, we do, of course, have every right to protest. As we should. We must rise against corporate greed and confront Wall Street, the banks, the thieves with their crimes! After all, our government (ha!) simply won't do it. They won't. They prefer to bail out the thieves. With our money.

We are still a nascent country. We are still trying to find our way and we are floundering. Worse, we are drowning in our own greed. And make no mistake—it's not just Wall Street or big corporate or the banks. It's a two way street. Greed runs both ways. Greed throws rationality out the window. Greed takes hostages and then forgets about them. Disposes of them. Makes casualties of them. Greed never looks at the fine print. Greed signs contracts while disregarding consequences. Greed makes ill-advised and just plain wrong decisions. Greed gives bogus advice.

"...It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

What we are sorely in need of, as individuals and as a nation, is self-actualization. You laugh. Bwahaha! I mean it,  we need to get ourselves self-actualized and but quick. Has our collective dream become solely the pursuit of mounds of money? Does that trump all?  I think not. (Though many's the time I've been mistaken.)

The disparity between the wealthy and poor is profoundly absurd. And no matter how one spins this dubious distinction when it comes to a full stop it is transparently clear that it's a dizzy and thickly layered black blotch against humanity.



I'm still dreaming...

What if, my OWS and Working America and Adbusters friends and All those interested in reform—and I don't care from where the financial backing comes—what if we considered doing more than just hanging around financial centers throughout the country. Now that OWS has gained momentum, what if the cause were to  use the cash to find us a new leader—hell, we should All use our cash for that purpose—to broaden the candidate pool (the pool obviously ought to be emptied, political parties sucked down the drain, cleaned and re-filled with a fresh, clear, odorless solution), and not another politician chained to big corporate and financial institutions, but someone, some thing, who's nested in the loamy grass of the earth. Someone, some thing, that understands the heart and soul of a country, its people, it's greatest desire, its dream—we could search Thoreau's woods and root him out—and what if we stood him firm on packed soil (though he may not come so willingly—who, what, in their right mind would)—brushed him off a bit and tossed him into the pool (which has been cleansed of its greedy, beastly, sell-your-soul-to-the-devil political system that has never truly represented We the People)? What if? What if we rewrote the whole damn system?! Our new earthly candidate won't need to answer to or feast with the great corporate powers that be. The People will back him! You think he'll get eaten alive like a vegetable? The People will back him! He will serve humanity. Humanity will feast!

Uh, I am having night sweats. I am turning and tossing...

Oh, dang, I just woke from my dream!

... But it's all right, it's all right
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest.

* * * 

Paul Simon turned seventy yesterday. When he wrote  American Tune back in the 1970s our country was in high turmoil. We were in the midst of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers were laid out for public consumption and horror, and the Watergate scandal sealed Nixon's fate. The American people had been mislead and violated. 

History does have a tendency to repeat itself.

And then comes Simon with his textured and rhythmic, So Beautiful or So What, which the Rolling Stone declared "His best since Graceland."





The road to America's self-actualized soul is littered with obstacles. The journey is long. The GPS is our collective conscience. I hope we never lose sight of it: our destination—our Dream. I hope we've enough fuel to get us there. 

Friday Night Frolic - The Bad Wife

[source]

His lower abdomen is punctured with tiny holes for the trocars, blown up with CO₂ 

and the wall is illuminated. 
She walks the city streets in Boston. Back Bay and Beacon Hill. He is in able hands.
There is nothing else to be done.
Three hours in the OR and three more in recovery. A stroll in the Public Garden.
The Swan Boats have been stored for the season. Still, the city's oasis sings botanic.
A poke in Shreve, Crump and Low. Too sparkly.
Lunch at Figs. Crinkled spinach, bacon and Parmesan salad. She eats
the very last dark leaf.
A massage. Soft tissue, she says. Stares from the headrest at the mossy green carpet.
What are they cutting now?
Isabelle's Curly Cakes on Charles Street: They make a
damn good cupcake.
It is, after all, owned by renowned chef Todd English. (As is Figs.) At four bucks
a pop every morsel is savored.
The surgeon calls and says he'd been looking for her in the family
waiting area, expected her to be there.
I'm around the corner, she says. Oh, well, says the surgeon, he's going to be fine.
She repeats it. Collapses, shutters inward relief.
She goes to the waiting room. The attendant says the surgeon was looking
for her. He seemed disappointed, she says.
Thanks, she thinks, I'm the bad wife.
No one misses the Chief.
They let her run up to recovery—only on Ellison do they allow that, the attendant says.
She sees him on the gurney.
Bloated and wired with input and output, says he's happy to see her.
Boy, am I happy to see you. 
She collapses again. Smiles and says, the surgeon says you won't remember anything in
recovery. You remember the surgeon seeing you in recovery?
I do, he says.
Her hair is greasy with healing oils. She hopes he doesn't notice.
His head is wrapped in a cream colored blanket and he looks like an old Babushka.
She leaves him, again, to rest.
There is nothing else to be done.
Has dinner at PF Chang's—no Todd English at PF Chang's. Returns to the hospital.
Tubes and drains and Foley catheter. Instructions and prescriptions and precautions.
Call if this. Don't worry if that. He'll go home tomorrow.
The whole damn summer into fall. This'd better be the end of it, she thinks.
It's fall. Fall is not decay. Fall is renewal. Renewal.
There is nothing else to be done.
She drives him home the next day. Box of cupcakes on the backseat.



Kate Fenner, the Canadian musician with the rich and sultry voice, began her singer/songwriter career in the 1980's with the alternative rock band Bourbon Tabernacle Choir. Since the disbanding of BTC in the mid 1990's she has recorded two solo albums and several others with Chris Brown, with whom she founded BTC. 

Fenner's last solo recording (January, 2007), Magnet, produced by Brown, includes this beautiful duet with Brown:  



More from Magnet can be heard here.

And from her days with Bourbon Tabernacle Choir:



According to her website, Fenner and Brown are currently working on their own renewed collaboration—an album with an unscheduled release date. One never knows what's around the corner.

Friday Night Frolic — Falling Waters: A Meditation

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.  Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.  The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.                                              ~John Muir

I know why Backwoods Betty left the city. Though this, I did not always know. Nor was I certain it was a good idea—Betty being a cityfied professional for nearly three decades, held captive by the city's assiduous urban hum, it's vibrant sheen, culture and diversity—I was worried, couldn't imagine how she'd negotiate the solitude of the mountains and northern boreal forests, the frigid and often dangerous winters, the slowed pace. As a second home, sure, but on a permanent basis?

But North of Franconia Notch is hardly an isolated, unfriendly or stagnant plateau. It is a series of verdant mezzanines, palisades of evergreens and brush, pillars of granite and peppery stones that line its natural corridors and wrap around its lush and coniferous woodlands. There, in the thick of this mountainous weald, it is to breathe crisp air and listen.

It is to be spoken to by a voice rooted deep in earth's core, an oracle.

It is to be in the company of good friends. Like the croaking bullfrogs at dusk.

Sunday morning we hiked Falling Waters. Here, along this rugged, root covered, stone lined trail, worn by the tread of many a trekking shoe, insulated from flurry and fuss, from what can sometimes feel like the madness of the world, we heard water falling: drips of clear liquid dropping from one green leaf to another, like Mother Nature's tears running down a stairway of foliage. Then, a trickle of water from behind slate and golden rocks, around fallen birch limbs, and quietly through the brook.

It is a conversation, accompanied by a lullaby.

Without television, radio or internet for the entire weekend, on Sunday we were still unaware of the events that had unfolded in Oslo, and Utoya. We climbed, quite blissfully, higher up the steep and sometimes muddy trail, and witnessed a different kind of unfolding: cool water plunging down granite steps. Pulling ourselves skyward, past sharp twists in the terrain, through shallow pools of water and up stone risers set by the AMC, the waterway widened and gushed from enormous slabs of stone into cascades of trilling aqua.

It is a melody.

We rested at the top of one of the largest falls, and absorbed the deep pigment of nature, whistling birds, barreling water, buzzing insects, pine and dirt and rock, the organic lyrics of the mossy forest.

It is a symphony.

Not knowing anything but the rich sounds of tall pines, clods of mud under foot, wild geese, bullfrogs, or fanning falls can be bliss. (It was Walt Whitman who said:  You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.)

But the north country is not about not knowing. The north country is about paying attention to knowing. It is a meditation on knowing the true identity of the world, and all its creatures, of self and of what brings oneself joy and peace.

It is a meditation on quality of life.

It is a libretto of life. And death. And renewal.

And it is a meditation on everything we don't know, may never know, may never understand.

We went up and down the trail unfettered by the knowledge of the chaos and killing in Norway. The whole weekend, unfettered. It's hard to believe. Some things we don't want to know. Some things we most certainly will never understand.

At the base of the trail, turning on the radio, it was a requiem.

Falling waters, slipping tears. Sounds that resonate.

I didn't want to leave.



Thomas Dybdahl is a Norwegian Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter. His music has all the serenity and lushness of a stream rippling through mountain gorges. His voice: undulating waves of light and sound. His lyrics: as colorful and emotional as the deep northern forest, flooded with the steamy warmth of southern everglades. The sound: rooted in pop, its branches having a multidirectional spread to folk, rock, country, jazz—it is as melodic, scenic and pristine as the glacial terrain and falling waters that seduce us, that speak to us.

His new album, Songs, was released this month in the U.S.



This week, Dybdahl has been touring the States, dedicating his shows to his Norwegian countrymen. Next week, he returns to Trondheim and the tears of Norway. There, he's sure to bring much comfort.


(In the background, Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss speaks of quality of life by asking, roughly, how it may be defined and how it may remain high or become heightened? He reminds us that quality of life has nothing to do with what one has, but how one feels about oneself, what brings one joy. Næss is well known for his work on the principles of deep ecology. )

I worry no longer. Betty knows exactly what she's doing, and she's doing it well. There, in the backwoods of New Hampshire, is much joy and peace. I wish it were the same the world wide.

"In every walk with nature one receives more than he seeks." 

~ John Muir

Friday Night Frolic — Heading for the Fir Lined Hills

The Juveniles Children in N.H. Fall 2009.

To New Hampshire I go, I go
Oh yes, it's so, it's so!
for my sister waits
for these special dates
in the hills of the Great White North.

With she I find my best friend,
this sisterly love we tend
strolling the wispy-haired summit
its rocky paths down we plummet
the grand hills of the Great White North

Bathing in its giggling brooks
with smooth stones underfoot
the wade shan't be brief
as we covet relief
of heat cloaking the Great White North

Spouses away the weekend
this, being when we pretend
to have no annoyance or burden
until we recall we've the juveniles children
in the hills of the Great White North

Still, we ladies have one another
the juveniles children not too much bother
behaved, they'll  allow us to gossip
lest they desire a backhand wallop
in the HILLS of the Great White North



Right now, I'm feeling as giddy as Jade and Alex. Ready to hit the road with my babes and clamber beyond Franconia Notch to where Backwoods Betty makes her beautiful hillside home. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, who helped usher in the current folk-rock revival, are fired up to make the journey with us.

There's been mountains of rumor as to whether or not their euphoric sound is drug induced. They—Alex and Jade, at least—appear so enraptured by life, in love with their music, it's almost impossible to believe it's a natural high, a rush at the peak. But Alex Ebert and his alter ego (Edward Sharpe: "a messianic porn star whose mission to save mankind is disrupted by a series of romantic entanglements with beautiful women") has cleaned up his act since leaving Ima Robot (see him here, with Ima in a very different, darker role), and now stands high on love and life. The anthems he composes are gleeful and brimming with hope.

New Hampshire-bound jingles and hymns that set our spirits free. (Maybe I'll even turn off the droid.)

Betty: I'm coming up!

Backwoods Betty's place -- a/k/a Maggie's Farm
(photo from Design New England)

Friday Night Frolic — Building Roads Beneath the Full Moon

[Source]

What she'd like to do is sit down in her little striped beach chair, late, late afternoon by berylline ocean waters and watch pools of frothy tide swish to and fro the shore, as it happens, until the amber sun fades into the sea's violaceous horizon, and the sky illuminates with the shimmery light of this Friday's milky floret of a moon.

The full moon calls.

But that scene is an hour away, and driving is still somewhat restricted (perils of pain medication), so she is here at home, late afternoon, trying to forge a Frolic, feeling anxious and overwhelmed and wanting to be by the beach. She's not happy.

The large framed second story east facing window will have to do. From there, she can almost pluck a low moon from the dark sky.

And then she reads this, from Jan Spiller (whom she's never consulted):

There is an opportunity for insight and progress inherent in the FULL MOON. People often react emotionally during the days of the Full Moon due to a feeling of helplessness.  They become aware of the distance between the way they want their life to be, and the way it currently is.  Often, when they see this gap, they become upset.

Haha, she says, laughing like a madwoman. It's not my ailments, it's the moon!

She pulls the liner notes from Building a Road by Spottiswoode and His Enemies and sips on her damn green tea. There will be no wine tonight. But there will be the full moon. (Unless she fails to finish this Frolic.)

There are no liner notes, really, just perfunctory thank yous and  lists of Special Friends and Archenemies, and one Bete Noire. She cannot imagine that Spottiswoode, the frontman, guitarist and harp player for his rock and soul and cabaret avant garde  band—who reminds her of a young Leonard Cohen (with whom she has frolicked) and Harry Nilsson (with whom she'd like to frolic, lime in de coconut and all)—would have adversaries.

Yet Spottiswoode is drawn to the dark, where foes lurk.

And it is under Stygian skies that she finds a few specters Building a Road:



(She is frustrated that she does not know how to build an MP3 sample.)

And others, far from the Road, at play, building scenes like this:



And this:



And then she flips through the Farmers' Almanac to find that today is the beginning of some of the best days of the year:

According to Farmers' Almanac tradition, when the moon is in the appropriate phase and place in the zodiac, it's widely believed that activities will be more fruitful or lead to improved results. The period between the new and full moon (first and second quarters) is considered as the best time to perform tasks that require strength, fertility and growth...

Who knew! Perhaps it's not all bad, she thinks. Surely there's something that can be done here in the burbs. Ah, a tall iced tea, chilled cherries, the setting sun from the west facing dappled deck accompanied by Spottiswoode. And a stroll down the street. That'll do. Who knows where it may lead...

(Maybe she'll find more goblins along the road. Maybe she will conquer some demons.)

* * * 

You can find Spottiswoode's whole show, starting with scene 1, Live @ Joe's Pub in New York City here.

His latest album is Wild Goosechase Expedition, about the doomed course of a touring rock band. The second track is Beautiful Monday:



Beautiful music.

"Friday Night Frolic" - The Flute of Rock

Do you recognize this man?

No?  Now do you recognize this man?

Yes! That's right—one in the same—Ian Anderson.

Ian Anderson: the singer/flautist/minstrel/contortionist/possessed pirate/Marty Feldman-eyed voice behind the legendary Jethro Tull. Now 63 years old, Ian is still actively touring with Tull (at an average of 100 shows a year), along with a generous schedule of solo concerts around the world. 


Ian Anderson—now and then:





From A Song for Jeffrey, to the celebrated vagabond Aqualung, to Beethoven's 9th, to Rupi's Dance, Ian Anderson's work is pure, magical artistry. And you can see Ian in Rhode Island this November 21st at Veterans Memorial Auditorium. 

I wonder if he still does that thing with his leg?




By George, the old Scotsman does!