Crosscurrents Blog

2009-03-29T08:55:00.002-04:00

Lynn's Decluttering Planner

If you're like me, you can't really release something until you know where it's going. So, here's what I print out when I walk through my house. On any given Decluttering Day, I pick ONE OR TWO of these destinations and either load up my porch table or pack a carload. With a friend to lift & carry, each session usually takes under an hour. And it feels so great when you stop!

Here's my Three-Step Plan, plus What to Keep:

1) FlyLady.net: How to Declutter

What to declutter? Things to ask yourself as you get rid of your clutter:

Do I love this item?
Have I used it in the past year?
Is it really garbage?
Do I have another one that is better?
Should I really keep two?
Does it have sentimental value that causes me to love it?
Or does it give me guilt and make me sad when I see the item?

Cleanse this room of everything that does not make you SMILE.

FlyLady.net: FAQs like What is a 27 Fling Boogie?

This is a tool to help you declutter your home. Do
this assignment as fast as you can. Take a garbage bag and walk through
your home and throw away 27 items. Do not stop until you have collected
all 27 items. Then close the garbage bag and pitch it. DO NOT LOOK IN
IT!!! Just do it.
Next, take an empty box and go through your home collecting 27 items to
give away. As soon as you finish filling the box, take it to the car.
You are less
tempted to rescue the items. If you have two of any item and you only
need one, get rid of the least desirable.

2) Who Picks Up What

Vietnam Veterans of America: Schedule a pickup online

We used these folks when Dave Stryker died, and they were prompt, courteous, and left the porch clean. They will also leave you a charitable receipt.

Clothing of all types & sizes (men’s, ladies, children’s, baby’s) Clothing accessories Shoes (all kinds) Baby items House and glassware Books, toys, bikes Stereos, radios, portable TVs	All bedding, draperies, curtains Kitchenware Usable small furniture & rugs Small appliances Tools (all kinds) Jewelry and cosmetics ALMOST ANYTHING!
The driver will look for your donation from the street. Please put it out, mark it for Vietnam Veterans of America or VVA, where it is clearly visible. Thank you!

FX - MIT Furniture Exchange

In order to continue this valuable service, the FX is always in need
of donations of good, useable furniture, including sofas, chairs,
tables, bookcases, desks, beds, futons, dressers, cabinets, lamps,
rugs, small appliances, cooking utensils, dishes, children's items,
bikes, and more. All
donations are tax-deductible and arrangements can be made for large
items to be picked up. Please contact manager Judy
Halloran for more information at 617-253-4293, or e-mail us
fx@mit.edu.

Donate Books | Got Books?™

1. Use our FREE Pick-Up Service!
We respect the busy schedules of our donors, so we provide a
complimentary pick-up service to parts of Massachusetts and New
Hampshire to make giving as easy as possible. For pick-ups, just call
us at (978) 664-6555 to arrange a day that fits your busy schedule.
You can also fill out our simple online pick-up request form.
You don't even need to be home at the time of the pick-up. If you need
us to bring boxes, we will. If you need us to carry the books up or
down stairs, we will do that too! Our goal is to make donating as easy
as possible.

Big Brother Big Sister
Foundation (takes computers & cars)

Donate Clothes, Cars or Boats
Believe it or not your unwanted clothing and household
items can help us serve more kids. How? Simple. Our Big Brother Big Sister
Foundation www.bbbsfoundation.org
will pick up these items from your home. You receive a tax deduction for
the fair market value of these items. To arrange a pick up, please call 800-483-5503 or send an e-mail with
your name address phone number and best time to pick up these items to
donate@bbbsfoundation.org

Computers with Causes

Donate a Computer MA and write it off on your taxes! Business donors can deduct the un-depreciated value of the
computer, and individuals can deduct the current market value of a
computer. Sign up, and ship or schedule a pickup. Business donors can deduct the un-depreciated value of
the computer, and individuals can deduct the current market
value of a computer.

Example: A computer and related software with a purchase
price of $3,000, valued at $500 at time of contribution,
receives a $500 deduction on Schedule A. A written receipt
must be received and Form 8283 should be attached to
returns. The tax receipt that schools or nonprofits provide
should have your name on it, the name and identifying number
of the recipient organization, and the model and type of
equipment donated.

Recipients are not authorized to appraise the value of the
equipment. You are responsible for the determination of the
value of your donated equipment.

What
computer equipment is best suited for reuse?

Charitable donations of computer equipment that individuals
or companies would like to pass on directly to Computers
with causes should generally be no more than five years old,
(in most cases) in working condition, and Internet-capable.
Up to five-year-old working laptops and laser printers are
in high demand, as are 17-inch or larger working monitors,
mice, keyboards, and cables.

How can
I maximize the reuse potential of my computer system?

Donate your old computer to Computers with Causes within a
few months after buying your new one. For most people, it is
unnecessary to keep older computers around for parts or as a
backup machine. The effective reuse life of a computer is
only two or three years, so the sooner you get it back into
the cycle, the more useful it can be.

Can my
donations be used as is or do they have to be refurbished or
upgraded?

Almost all three-to-five-year-old working computers can be
upgraded to do the six things most people do with computers:
Internet browsing, e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets,
presentations, and finances. We often install bigger hard
drives, more RAM, and often a network card for computers
going to charities or schools. Up to three-year-old working
computers are generally useful as-is.

Where
will my reusable electronic products likely to go?

There are actually two streams of reuse. One is
noncommercial or in the form of direct use (Charitable
programs) and the other is commercial. Generally, Computers
with Causes will utilize as many reusable computers in the
direct furtherance of our charitable programs and those that
we support.

3) Where to Take the Rest

Clothing, Sporting Goods, Housewares to Goodwill

Make An End-Of-Year Tax-Deductible Donation To GOODWILL! Print out a receipt and bring it with you for them to sign. You may donate up to $500 per donation without an appraisal. To estimate the value of your donation, please go to http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p561.pdf.
Or to see what the items might cost in a Goodwill Store, please visit
www.goodwillpromo.org.

MEN'S
CLOTHING

Suits $15-35

Jackets $5-11

Slacks $3-11

Shirts $2-6

Outerwear $7-16

Sweaters $2-8

Accessories $2

Shoes $2-6

WOMEN'S CLOTHING

Dresses $3-16

Suits $5-16

Skirts $2-8

Blouses $2-8

Sweaters $2-8

Slacks $2-8

Outerwear $7-35

Intimate Apparel $2-6

Handbags $2-4

Accessories $2

Shoes $2-10

CHILDREN'S
CLOTHING

Dresses $1-3

Pants $1-5

Shirts $1-5

Outerwear $3-8

Sweaters $1-5

Shoes $1-6

HOUSEWARES

Cookware $2-10

Tabletop $1-10

Pictures $2-15

Luggage $5-15

APPLIANCES

Vacuum Cleaners $20-40

Televisions $20-100

Lamps $5-30

Stereo Systems $25-60

Radios $5-20

Coffee Pots $10-15

COMPUTERS

Systems $100-400

Printers $25-150

Monitors $50-150

SPORTING GOODS

Golf Club(s) $2-25

Bicycles $12-60

Fishing Rods $5-25

Skates $3-15

Tennis Rackets $3-10

FURNITURE **

Kitchen Set $40-100

End Tables $5-20

Coffee Tables $10-25

Dresser w/Mirror $25-60

Chests $20-60

Wardrobes $15-60

China Cabinets $40-150

Trunks $15-30

Sofas $75-125

Desks $30-90

What
we do not accept:

Goodwill
is unable to accept the following items (due to the high cost of disposal
and strict government regulations):

Any Items in Need of Repair of with Missing Parts

Baby
Furnishings (Strollers, Car Seats, High Chairs, Cribs,

Broken Toys)

Furniture
in need of Repair or Reupholstering

Sofa Beds

Mattresses
Box Springs, Waterbeds, Bed Frames, Futons,

Futon Frames, Pillows

Pianos and Organs

Food
or Beverages

Large
Appliances (Washers, Dryers, Stoves, Dishwashers,

Refrigerators)

Large
Office Furniture

Computers
and Monitors

Camping
Equipment containing Gas, Oil or Butane

Furnaces
or Wall Heaters

Snow
Skis

Exercise
Equipment

Fish
Tanks

Televisions

Water
Heaters

Gas-Powered
Garden Tools Lawn Mowers, Weed Whackers,

Etc.

Plumbing or Building Supplies Cabinets or Doors

Auto
Parts or Auto Accessories

Hazardous
Materials Including, but not limited to, Paint, Oil, Cleaning
Products, Batteries, Extinguishers

Recyclable
Consumer Materials Aluminum, Glass, Plastic,

Corrugated Material

Nothing Alive for example – Plants or Puppies

Bicycles to MIT Women's League - Service Projects

Mobility is important to MIT students, whether by
foot or by wheel. Because some of our international students
need to get around the campus, Cambridge, and the surrounding cities
to attend classes and visit with their friends and Host* families,
we try to lend assistance. If you have a bicycle (in reasonably
good condition) to donate to a worthy cause, please call Kate Baty,
Chair - Clothing and Bicycle Service Project, at 339.223.0395 (local
call). Your donation is tax deductible, and we supply you with a
receipt for income tax purposes.

Interview Clothing to MIT Women's League - Service Projects

Generous clothing donations by members of the MIT
community these past eleven years have enabled our students to
confidently walk into job interviews.

Many of our scholarship students arrive at the Institute with
clothing for "student life" only. Interview clothes are not
part of their wardrobe. Making such clothing available to them helps
get them beyond the first impressions stage to that point where
their expertise speaks volumes to potential employers. Although we
have no statistics on job offers/job acceptances, we do know that happy,
stylish students leave the Emma Rogers Room on "Fashion Night." Searching
for the perfect "look" for those interviews is a non-technological
challenge—one enjoyed immensely by both the students and our volunteer
"fashion consultants" that night.
If you have clothing for women (dresses and suits)
or for men (suits, white or blue dress shirts, and neckties), as
well as warm winter coats, jackets, mittens, gloves, scarves and hats
that you wish to donate to a worthy cause, please consider this
service effort. Clean clothing may be left at the League office,
Room 10-342, during business hours or you may mail them to us.
Your donation is tax deductible and we supply a receipt for income
tax purposes. Please call the League office,
617.253.3656, or email wleague@mit.edu if you have questions about donations
or if you would like to help as a "fashion consultant" on "Fashion
Night."

Book Trade to Book Rack: 1/4 Cover Price for Store Credit

The Book Rack

13 Medford Street

Arlington, MA 02474

Phone: (781) 646-2665

Fax: (781) 646-2660

The Book Rack takes in used paperbacks for store credit valued
at 1/4 cover price. Used books are sold for 1/2 off the cover price.

Store Credit can be used for up to 50% of a purchase. For instance,
if you wish to purchase $10 of used books, and have $6 of credit,
you may only use $5 of your credit toward the purchase. In this
example, the total cash outlay for this purchase would be $5.50
($10 + 5% tax - 50% of purchase in credit).

All credit can be used toward all used books. All existing slips
will be honored under this system.

Note: they say to call for an appointment with more than one box/bag, but I brought in 5 boxes on a Saturday and they accepted them cheerfully.

Books to Hands Across the Water Arlington

1043
Massachusetts Avenue in Arlington MA 02174 at the outside parking lot
of the shopping plaza where the Stop and Shop supermarket is located. This is a blue drop slot container of dimensions 6 feet high by 6 feet wide by 6 feet long with "Books for charity" signage. Access Hours: Anytime

Food to Arlington Food Pantry

Church of our Savior, 21 Marathon Street, Arlington, Ma. 02474

(Mass. Ave. toward Cambridge, 2^nd left after Lake Street)

OPEN FOR FOOD DROP-OFF: EVERY FRIDAY, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

For Information: Department of Health and Human Services

Leon Cantor, 781-316-3251, lcantor@town.arlington.ma.us

Lyz Carey, 781-316-3264

EXAMPLES OF DONATIONS

Cereal

Dried Milk

Canned Fruits & Vegetables

Peanut Butter & Jelly

Tuna Fish & Canned Meats

Meals in a Can, i.e.

Spaghetti-O’s, Stews, Hash, Ravioli, Soups

Fruit Juices, Coffee, Tea

Pasta & Sauces

Canned Tomatoes and Tomato Sauce

Crackers, Cookies, Mixes

Jello & Pudding Mixes

Baby Food

Toiletries, i.e.

Soap, Shampoo, Conditioners,

Toothpaste, Toothbrushes,

Toilet Paper, Paper Towels,

Diapers

Rosie's Place Shelter: clothing, toiletries, non-perishable food

Through our drop-in advocacy program we are able to
distribute clothing, toiletries and other items to thousands of poor
and homeless women each year. We rely on the generosity of individuals,
companies and organizations to provide these essential items. Rosie's Place is always in need of the following items:

• Clean, in-season women’s clothing, particularly nightgowns, slippers, new underwear, bras and socks

• Toiletries – shampoo, conditioner, deodorant,
lotion, soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes; regular and travel sizes are
appreciated

• Non-perishable food items, particularly canned
vegetables and fruits, cereal, peanut butter, pasta, non-refrigerated
juices and rice

• Children’s books

• Buttons and jewelry

• Playing cards

Rosie's Place does not accept baby and children's items, cell phones, computer equipment or furniture. Please click here for a list of other organizations in our community who may be able to use such items. Please contact the
Development office at 617-442-9322 for details or use our contact us form.

You can drop off in-kind donations to Rosie's Place
Monday through Friday 8:30 am - 4:30 pm. Please note that we will no
longer accept donations on weekends and holidays.Please click here for directions.

4) What to Keep and How Long to Keep It

Which Financial Records to Keep (and How Long to Keep Them)

Get Rich Slowly

Bankrate has an excellent table summarizing how long to keep financial records. To summarize:

Keep any tax-related records for seven years.
Keep records of IRA contributions permanently.
Keep quarterly retirement/savings plan statements until you receive an annual statement. If the numbers match, shred the quarterlies and keep the annual summaries permanently.
Shred unimportant bank records after one year; keep the rest permanently.
Keep brokerage statements until you sell the securities.
Most of the time you can shred bills once you get a cancelled check. Keep bills for big items permanently.
Keep credit card receipts to reconcile with your statements, then keep the statements for seven years.
Paycheck stubs should be kept until you receive your end-of-year tax statements.
Keep house records permanently. (Some can be held for less time, but I think it’s wise to keep them all.)

2008-10-13T12:02:00.007-04:00

LIGHT from Ed Softky

at right: the view from Ed's balcony in Dharamsala, India, 2004

Who can encompass the dreadful shock of sudden death? This is not the memorial page for Ed Softky, and you can read here for the black story of his passing and of his many tributes. This is about Light.

For those of you who knew Ed only through his Buddhist work, let me introduce myself as an old friend, singing and dancing buddy, and housemate of Ed's since, oh, maybe 1990? I don't recall. With Liz Lewis and Alan Field, we sang together in the quartet Lingua Franca, "Music as the Common Tongue." Here is the group's demo album, a truly limited release that maybe we should reprint in Ed's memory.

I was to see Ed this weekend (Columbus Day), for one of our joyously serious sessions of "PhilosoTea" and a visit to his new home in Brattleboro. While his physical presence still lingers so powerfully in our hearts and minds, I wanted to offer one more chance to hear his rich, sustaining voice in song. Please listen to Light.

LIGHT MP3

"Light" is Ed's translation of a Buddhist prayer, set to an American Sacred Harp melody. Ed loved the Sacred Harp, which held a high place in his passion for harmony, in song and in living. This was the first time Ed had answered the call to translate Dharma in music, part and parcel of his passion for bringing the voice of dharma to the West.

As a computer geek trained in science, Ed came to natural language later in his journey. We joked that he found it easier to translate Tibetan into Perl than into English. I was privileged to offer him a home base during the three years that he studied Tibetan in Dharamsala: a deeply intentional transition that transformed his outer life. (His intention was so powerful that Ed's mere presence enlightened my cat Yoda into a Buddhist, so that he will no longer kill mice. Yoda now meditates serenely on mice and mouseness in the messy room that Ed once filled with prayer flags, incense, and inner space.)

During our long sessions of PhilosoTea, we devoted hours to reflections on language, music, spirituality, patterns and structure, and the ineffable that defies translation. We had both discovered that translation demands more than grammar and syntax: it requires not only deep immersion in cultural context, but the ability to find your way back to the surface of your own culture. Then it demand of you the skill in your native language to tell of where you have been.

"Light" became a meditation for us, over many months of conversation punctuated by absence. He brought his work to me, humbly seeking my teaching as a writer and musician, and I in turn sought teaching from him him in compassion and some comprehension of dharma. Ed would unpack each Tibetan word like a flower opening, newly aware of his own limits as an English speaker. I would grope for English words that fit the shape of the tune, and Ed would discard them as lacking the right connotation, or seize upon one with fierce joy and demand that I unpack its English meaning in my turn. We would deconstruct the Tibetan rhyme scheme and meter, seeking not just a parallel phrasing, but to extract and articulate the differences that defied translation. Ed's vision was not simply to translate Tibetan into English, but to shape and express their vastly different sensibilities by holding the gulf of space between them, words and music holding that space like two empty hands apart. Once we had a phrase, Ed would turn it over and over for months like a string of prayer beads, bringing a new verse back from India to begin again.

He was endlessly fascinated, not only by words, but by the rhythm and shape they give to tunes. In teaching me to sing "Light," he insisted that I learn the Tibetan not just word for word, but vowel by vowel, consonant by consonant, with intonation and breath in deep mindfulness, striving for the most literal and uttermost consonance with his inner understanding of the prayer. In singing, I would feel I was stumbling in the dark, and then suddenly our voices would lock in a moment of harmony and Ed would cry, YES! With what joy and radiance he showed me how the foursquare solid form of the Sacred Harp was transformed by the Tibetan phrasing into a lilting, dancing shape entirely unWestern, and yet composed of the same literal notes. He was incredibly, eagerly, joyfully demanding, and it became an extraordinary experience in songmaking.

With anyone else, even I might have gotten bored with poring over two verses for three years. But Light was Ed's calling in so many ways, and he envisioned this piece as the beginning of a series of sacred hymns for Western Buddhists. Typically of Ed, he never felt it was finished enough to publish, though he had given me a harmony and hoped to record it with me, and perhaps with others.

Music may be the voice of soul and of spirit, but it is also sadly true that the human voice is the most mortal of instruments. Ed's death is as shocking as if someone ran over a Stradivarius in the street. More so, because a violin takes its life from the fiddler. With utter commitment of his intensely physical being, Ed made of himself an instrument of Light.

In the first numbing shock of grief, the silencing of that voice stopped all music in my soul.

But then, silence has always been one of Ed's greatest gifts. Only in silence can we truly listen, and truly hear. Ed taught me to hear light.

I trust that Peter and Mary Alice Amidon, Mary Cay Brass, and others will share with me the solemn joy of spreading this small flame of Light that Ed has left for us. I look forward to singing it with you.

2008-06-08T12:10:00.004-04:00

Sea Slugs in Marzipan
Originally uploaded by noelegance

Gastropod Gastronomy: The Edible Nudibranch
Photos and video of our latest team exploit in performance-art food. Now this is Extreme Sushi.

Red Herring Morris gives team biologist Phill Nimeskern a thank-you gift for chairing the Ale. Phill, who has eaten a sea slug for science, repeats the experiment in marzipan and song. The nudibranchs were inspired by this month's cover story of the June 2008 National Geographic. Go look 'em up!
ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/06/nudibranchs/doubilet-photography

2008-06-01T21:55:00.009-04:00

Walter Coe Clark Family 1907

Back Row: Edith Clark (wife of Walter Edward Clark), Walter Edward Clark, John Alexander McGill, Lewis Wilson Page, Frances Josephine (Clark) Page

Middle Row: Harold Norton Clark, Julia Elizabeth (Clark) McGill, Martha McGill (lap), Hilda McGill, Gertrude McGill, Walter Coe Clark (father), Albert Wendell Clark

Front Row: Helen Louise (Clark) Farnham, George Bradford Farnham

Martha McGill was my maternal grandmother, and this recently discovered photo is the earliest known photo of her and her family. This photo came from my Washington State cousin Lewis Norton Clark, who writes:

"Martha’s mother, Julia Elizabeth (Clark) McGill, and [Lewis'] Grandfather, Harold Norton Clark, were siblings in the family of Walter Coe Clark and Julia Gertrude (Norton) Clark.

This past weekend, while my brother and his wife were visiting from Phoenix, we had a family gathering with our ailing father. In the course of visiting, we began perusing family photos. The attached photo is one such photo that surfaced. My brothers and I knew that it featured the Walter Coe Clark family because we recognized our Grandfather Harold. We proceeded to ask our father to identify as many people in the photo that he could. Since Dad is deaf and can no longer speak, it was pretty difficult to get answers. Since I know the family line I was able to write down the names of Walter Coe Clark’s children and by pointing to names and faces, Dad identified as many as he could.

So glad that the photo I sent is meaningful. Of the brothers and sisters (and spouses) shown in the photo, your line is the only one I’ve been able to locate. When you think about it, there are quite a few offspring of those represented in the photo scattered about the country. Where and who they are continues to be a mystery. I have so much information to share, with so few to share it with. Our ‘cousin’ connection to John Adams is really quite amazing, something worth sharing.

Your dating of the photo seems logical given the birth dates of people in the photo [Martha was born in 1905]. My Grandfather, Harold Clark, the youngest in the picture, was born on October 13, 1889. He looks to be about 18-20 years old. When I think of our connection to your family, it’s really quite amazing that your Grandmother Martha and my father Frank are first cousins. I’d speculate that there are very few, if any, of the first cousins left. Since Grandpa Harold was the youngest in the family, married at the age of 30, and had my father at the age of 33, it’s quite probable that Dad is the only surviving first cousin. Again, when I look at the photo, I can’t help wondering where the Farnham and Page, as well as the Albert Clark and Walter Edward Clark families are scattered. By the way, your Great Great Grandfather (my Great Grandfather) Walter Coe Clark is buried in Olympia, WA in the same plot as my Grandfather Harold. Speaking of Walter Coe Clark, and the photo, his wife, Julia Gertrude (Norton) Clark (according to my father) died when Grandpa Harold was two years old."

Lewis also sends a photo of his own family. His father Frank Clark is the grandson of young Harold Clark above (seated, left).

Back row left to right… Lewis Clark, my Brother Frank, My Brother John, Frank’s wife Ana (center) and our Father, Frank (center, front).

2008-05-21T18:37:00.004-04:00

Old Sea Dog
Sunday was our first MIT Chantey and Maritime Sing of the season in our dog-friendly summer venue at the Wood Sailing Pavilion. Mina the Dog snoozed in her MIT burgee, dreaming of sea chanteys from the Revels Book of Chanteys and Sea Songs. Much to the entertainment of some visitors from the Revels Pub Sing, Mina woke when we sang the Dutch chantey Los Mina Loos, and "sang along" happily whenever her name came round in the chorus!

Photo: Harriet Fell-Brown

2008-05-20T17:34:00.003-04:00

Gloucester Hornpipe and Clog Society at the Edmund Fowle House, Watertown

The Edmund Fowle House is the second oldest surviving house in Watertown. During the Revolutionary war, it was the seat of the new Massachusetts government while the British occupied Boston. The Watertown Historical Society has completed a major restoration, and the house is now open to the public and available for functions. We had a wonderful time playing Revolutionary-era tunes and songs in their lovely parlor.

2008-05-12T06:33:00.012-04:00

Second Annual Merrymount Mayday

This year's Kettle of Fish Morris Ale was a great success, especially the final stand at Merrymount on Maypole Hill. We danced the morris, wove the Maypole, led the audience in Sellenger's Round and the Padstow Day Song and Hal an Tow, and applauded Dr. Jack Dempsey's dramatic reading of the Poem that Morton composed and nailed to his Maypole, which was 80 feet high and crowned with buckshorns. We had a goodly number of the good people of Quincy, who are pleased to see the Maypole return to Maypole Hill.

Advance publicity was excellent this year, with feature articles in Wicked Local Quincy, the Patriot Ledger and the Boston Globe. Today's Patriot Ledger carried a great article with a full photo spread.

2008-05-01T22:27:00.001-04:00

Newtowne Mayday on the Charles 2008

Mayday 2008
Originally uploaded by Stew Stryker

Stew Stryker has posted a great slideshow of May morning 2008.

Hal an tow, jolly rumbalow
We were up long before the Maypole!

Well, WE were there at 5, and anyone there at that hour doesn't need a songbook, so we sang until the Maypole arrived. The weather was cool but dry, the Lowell House receiving line warm and welcoming, and the crowd pretty good for a workday. We processed along the usual route, despite Harvard Square construction, and concluded with a fine Maypole dance by a group of local school kids whose teacher had brought them to see us as a field trip. Merry May!

2008-05-01T13:39:00.013-04:00

Folio: Boston, November 1884
"A Man who plays the accordion is the greatest nuisance to be found in the world of alleged music with one exception: that of the person who spells accordion with an e."

As the recent inheritor of a melodeon--and as one who plays in a band with both an accordion and a banjo--I dedicate this fine sentiment to the late Dave Stryker, to bandmate Nancy Koch, and to all accordion players of my acquaintance: all of whom know that if you spell it with an "e", it's not an accordion--it's a melodeon.

2008-04-30T19:44:00.001-04:00

A review of "Puritan Days," a.k.a. "Lee-li-Nau," an opera by Earl Marble and Richard Stahl. Folio Magazine, January 1884

The existence of this opera about Merrymount is more interesting than its somewhat alarming excerpts given in Folio. One imagines Gilbert and Sullivan as performed by F Troop (!). However, put this in context as an American response to the height of the G&S craze following H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), which was "received in America with “enthusiasm bordering upon insanity” (Kate Field, Scribner’s Monthly, xviii, 754). Lee-li-Nau was staged the same year as Princess Ida, two years after the Savoy opera house was built expressly for G&S. Small wonder American composers were searching for New World themes to capitalize on "Pinafore-mania." Thomas Morton must have seemed ideal material for 1880s fans of Buffalo Bill's Wild West and of Indian Princesses of the Victorian stage like author and actress Pauline Johnson.

I have searched to no avail for a libretto or sheet music. "Leelinau" itself does not have a citation in online catalogs of the Smithsonian (SIRIS), the Library of Congress American Memory Collection, the Boston Public Library, or the Minuteman Library Network. Harvard HOLLIS does have the libretto for a similar opera that Richard Stahl published in 1883: The Salem witch : an American comic opera in three acts (also available a the BPL).

[page 91] A NEW AMERICAN OPERA
"Lee-li-nau" is the name of a new American opera, which is the joint work of Earl Marble as the librettist, and Richard Stahl as the composer of the musical score, and which was mentioned, before its completion, under the title of " Puritan Days." A less stern and severe title was deemed necessary, and so the name of the Indian princess who figures largely in the story was seized upon. It is not strictly a comic opera, its aim being somewhat higher, and its action at times dignified and dramatic, though there is a great deal of fun developed in the action of the story, the plot being hazy and somewhat unsubstantial, the story really being one of sentiment tinged with the romantic features of Puritan and Indian characteristics as discovered by looking back two hundred and fifty years, and scanning life as it then existed in the Plymouth colony. It would be absurd to speak of it in a historical sense, though Miles Standish, Governor Bradford, and Thomas Morton, figure in the story, and on different occasions the exact language that these historical characters used is made available under similar conditions. The scene of the second act is laid at Merrymount (now the residence of Hon. John Quincy Adams), where Morton, referred to in the Plymouth annals as "the Lord of Misrule," held high carnival one luckless Mayday, where he gathered his clans, both whites and Indians, and raised a May-pole, and danced about it till he danced himself into jail, through his arrest by doughty Miles Standish, which furnishes a dramatic ending to the act. The first and third acts are laid in Plymouth, and the opera ends by the sending-back of Morton to England as a prisoner in the Mayflower, which swings away from her moorings as the curtain fails. Of course this is not history, though the Plymouth authorities did what they could to make it such. The dignified sentiment of the opera is furnished by two Pilgrim lovers, idyllic in every respect; and there are other phases of love-making, — between a young Plymouth subject and an Indian princess (baritone and contralto), and between two young people, recent arrivals in the colony, who refuse to work one Christmas Day, and, as a punishment, are forbidden by the Governor to play on that day, he ordering them to " keepe within doors," which incident will be remembered by the careful reader of colonial history. This couple, as well as the idyllic lovers, are tenor and soprano. Thomas Morton is bass ; and another strong bass character is an Indian medicine-man or jossakeed, who is a character in his way. All the " horse-play," which is given place to only in small quantities, falls to the lot of this Indian. The author has endeavored to make an opera of sentiment and humor, with what degree of success of course remains to be seen. There is a chorus of Indian girls, whose business is very original, and whose music is expected to become very popular. Several of the numbers in waltz time are said to be very catchy.

The following is a tenor song sung when an Indian attack is expected :
— The Indian foe is here !
As the twilight settles down,
From the forest deep he will skulk and creep
To destroy the hapless town.
Be firm as the foe comes on,
Defying the savage crew !
With our trust on high, we will live and die
Like men with their God in view.
Strike home when war-whoops roar!
Strike home at the painted foe !
While to God we pray that the coming fray
Will the Pilgrim valor show.
Fur God is our watchword here
In this wilderness alone,
As we work and pray for a fairer day,
With never a sigh or groan.

And the following stanza is from a song by the Indian princess :
Cometh Lee-li-nau, the princess,
Dancing Fawn,
Daughter of a forest chieftain.
Since the dawn
She has journeyed here to Plymouth,
By the sea,
That the pale-face from the far-land
She might see.

"Lee-li-nau" will have its first production at the Baltimore Academy of Music, Nov. 10, by the Wilbur Opera Company, by which it is now in active rehearsal. — Boston Evening Transcript.

[page 156]
FOLIO "PURITAN DAYS." The story of " Puritan Days," the new opera by Earl Marble and Richard Stahl, opens soon after the settlement of Plymouth, and begins with a Puritans' chorus, after which Miles Standish, Governor Bradford and others express their Indignation that a new arrival of y»ung people from England had refused to work on Christmas Day, the Puritans declaring such obstinacy to be no better than popery, and Governor Bradford singing: —

When I was a lad in England old,
I studied over many a way,
In summer heat and winter's cold.
To make my work seem only play.
I looked all over the universe,
And pondered on the things that I saw,
Abd soon concluded that sport was a curse
To be put down by the arm of the Law.
Sport has an animosity
For work, and the velocity
With which it works atrocity
Is such a dreadful thing!
It favors all rascality,
And harbors criminality,
Hence Puritan fatality
Will have no ting-a-ling.

Subsequently two of the young rebels sing a duet as follows : —

The country it is big enough
For freedom all around,
And we have danced the jig enough
To be no longer bound.
Oh, it is very curious
That freedom is a thing
That seems to be so spurious
When some one else is king.
The Pharisee is ever here,
The hypocriti also,
And always will be, never fear,
Oh, never fear, heigh ho

These are second tenor and second soprano characters, the first soprano and tenor being dignified and lovers, of course, while a baritone and contralto (the latter an Indian princess) are lovers, and, with the others, are married by Indian rites in the last act.

Very old prints have been secured by Mr. Marble of the Indian dance in vogue in such cases, known as the Dance of the Uirdí ;irid Blossoms, of which he hopes to have a brilliant finale made when the opera is produced. It may not be out of place to state that Mr. Marble has taken the name of Doty for this baritone from the Edward Doty who came over in the Mayflower, and who scandalized the Plymouth community by marrying an Indian maid, and from whom Mr. Marble claims descent.

A chorus of Indian girls is one of the novelties of the opera, affording color and action in no small degree, giving a distinct flavor to the second act, which occurs at Merry Mount, which was such an eyesore to Plymouth, and where Thomas Morton (basso) and his followers make merry on the succeeding May Day, and get arrested during the festivities by gruff Miles Standish. An Indian Medicine Man, the Indian princess referred to, and Morton and his reckless followers crowd the second act full of fun and melody. Mr. Marble has retained a portion of the words of one of Morton's bacchanalian songs for one of the numbers, and regrets that the crude old melody, that is spoken of but not preserved in the annals of the old colony, cannot be also utilized The last act is devoted almost wholly to sentiment and wholesale matrimony, though fun occasionally manifests itself.

The composer of the music, Richard Stahl, is a young man, but he has written two operas that have had successful runs in Germany, besides many detached works of a less ambitious character that have enjoyed popularity. He is brimming over with talent, and his music is strikingly original. The score of "Puritan Days" exhibits great versatility and discernment. There are several choruses in it of superior merit; an exquisite solo for the soprano; some catchy humorous movements — in fact, all the variety that is essential to a work of this sort. He has exercised admirable discrimination in making the music characteristic of the subject matter, so that it is an American opera in more than one respect. To do justice to Mr. Stahl's production in the limits of a brief newspaper article is quite impossible. We can only say that "Puritan Days" seems to possess all the elements that go to make up a successful comic opera, and Messrs. Marble and Stahl should have no difficulty in finding a manager suitable to present it properly to the public. — The New-York Mirror.

[page 220] EARL MARBLE. THE STORY OF "LEE-LI-NAU.
The following is the story of " Lee-li-nau," the new American light opera, written by Earl Marble, and composed by Richard Stahl, which was to have been given in Baltimore early in November, but which, owing to insufficient rehearsals, has been delayed in its presentation, and will have its first production at the People's Theatre in New York, December 1, by the well-known Wilbur Opera Company.

The story opens at Plymouth, one Christmas Day early in the settlement of the Colony, by the refusal of a number of newly arrived immigrants to work on Christmas Day, which aroused ihe ire of Governor Bradford, whose anger was increased when a short time afterward he found the }oung people engaged in play, though their consciences would not permit them to labor. The reader of Colonial history will remember how the Governor met this question, telling them if it was against their conscience to work it way against his conscience that they should play while others worked. Various degrees of rebellion are displayed, and singing and Dancing are indulged in; an Indian medicine man appears, frightening the children ; and after a while a messenger announces the approach of a large body of Indians, when preparations are made to rewst them, which preparations are stopped by the arrival of the Indian princess Lee-li-nau, bearing a flag of truce, and expressing friendship and a desire for acquaintance. John Doty, a young Puritan of independent tendencies, become enamored of her at once.

The second act takes place at Merrymount on the succeeding Mayday. Here have gathered Thomas Morton (termed in Puritan annals "the Lord of Misrule") and his adventurous followers, who proceed to have a rollicking good time, in imitation of the old English custom, though without the restraints of civilization. Here come, by invitation, Lee-li-nau and her troop of Indian girls, and of course young Doty, and on various pretexts the Pilgrim lovers from Plymouth, those who rebelled against labor on the preceding Christmas, and the Indian medicine man, who gets drunk on Morton's whiskey in the most approved fashion, and is reckless alike in the manner in which he creates both fun and consternation. The Maypole meantime hae been erected, and the revels about it are at their height, when Miles Standish enters, and arrests Morton, which closes the act.

The third act occurs at Plymouth early in the June following, on a day set for the return to England of the Mayflower, on which it has been determined to send Morton as a prisoner. He is broken in spirit, talks and sings in a doleful way, and goes aboard the vessel in handcuffs, with a dejected air. Love scenes and songs are seen and heard between the Pilgrim lovers, who have walked through the various scenes in a dignified, stately, conscientious way, and abo between two of the young people numbered among the rebels in the first act, but now become quite docile in the Pilgrim harness. The marriage ceremony, it will be observed, is performed by Governor Bradford, one of the tenets of the early Pilgrims being an aversion to having the marriage rite solemnized by any religious ceremony. Here also come Doty and Lee-li-nau, who are supposed to be married in a mystic fashion by the Indian medicine man.

The action of the opera closes with the dance of the birds and blossoms by the Indian girls, when, as the curtain descends, the Mayflower is seen moving out into the waters of Plymouth Harbor, while the strains of the closing chorus ring out merrily on the sweet June air. Susie Kirwin is expected to make a great hit in the title-role, which affords her one of the finest opportunities she has ever had; and Ed. Chapman, as the Indian medicine man, keeps the company in constant laughter by his funny business at rehearsals.

2008-04-29T21:26:00.022-04:00

Indian Princess of the Victorian Stage
The stage career of Emily Pauline Johnson, or Tehakionwake, illustrates that at least some prominent native women participated actively in the "Indian Princess" image presented in Lee-Li-Nau, and made good money at it. In the 1890s, Tehakionwake toured Europe in buckskins and beads, entirely intentionally. For the second act, she'd come out in a ball gown and recite Shakespeare, as befitted her multicultural heritage.

"Throughout the 1880s Johnson established herself as a Canadian writer and cultivated an audience amongst those who read her poetry [which] signaled her membership amongst Canada’s important authors (Strong-Boag and Gerson 2000, p. 101). In her early literary works, Johnson drew lightly from her Mohawk heritage, and instead lyricized Canadian life, landscapes, and love in a post-Romantic mode reflective of the literary interests she shared with her mother (Strong-Boag and Gerson 2000, p. 101).

In 1892, Johnson recited her poem “A Cry from an Indian Wife,” a work based on the battle of Cut Knife Creek during the Riel Rebellion, at a Canadian Authors Evening arranged by the Young Men’s Liberal Club. The success of this performance initiated Johnson’s 15 year stage career and encouraged perceptions of her as a girl (although she was 31 at the time of this performance), a beauty, and an exotic Aboriginal elocutionist (Strong-Boag and Gerson 2000, p. 102).

After her first recital season, Johnson decided to emphasize the Native aspects of her literature and performance by assembling and donning a feminine Native costume (Strong-Boag and Gerson 2000, p. 9-10). Johnson’s decision to develop this stage persona, and the popularity it inspired, indicates that the audiences she encountered in Canada, England, and the United States — like the large crowds who attended shows such as Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show and ethnological Aboriginal exhibits in the 1890s — were educated to recognize representations of Native peoples on stage and were entertained by such productions (Strong-Boag and Gerson 2000, p. 111)."

During my traveling years reenacting the living history of the fur trade, I became fascinated with Pauline Johnson, visited many of her landscapes from Ontario to British Columbia, and set two of her poems to music: Songs My Paddle Sings and Toast to Vancouver. Her work places Tehakionwake among North America's greatest poets of any ethnicity, and she embraced her heritage within the cultural context of her era.

Today's readers encountering the romanticized stage version of the "Indian Princess" may well wince at reading that "A chorus of Indian girls is one of the novelties of the opera, affording color and action in no small degree" to Lee-Li-Nau. These stereotypes may well be painful to modern readers. But Pauline Johnson was a successful author on stage as well as in print, and a chorus of English, Italian, or Japanese girls afforded similar novelty, color and action to Gilbert and Sullivan in equal degree.

2008-04-29T19:31:00.002-04:00

May-Dew Dancers at Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh

The every-day book and table-book; or, Everlasting calendar of popular amusements By William Hone:

2008-04-29T19:25:00.002-04:00

The Lord of Misrule (Alfred Noyes)

All on a fresh May morning, I took my love to church,
To see if Parson Primrose were safely on his perch.
He scarce had got to thirdly, or squire begun to snore,
When, like a sun-lit sea-wave,
A green and crimson sea-wave,
A frolic of madcap, May-folk came whooping through the door: -

Come up, come in with streamers!
Come in with boughs of May!
Come up and thump the sexton,
And carry the clerk away.

Now skip like rams, ye mountains,
Ye little hills, like sheep!
Come up and wake the people
That parson puts to sleep.

They tickled their nut-brown tabors. Their garlands flew in showers,
And lasses and lads came after them, with feet like dancing flowers.
Their queen had torn her green gown, and bared a shoulder as white,
O, white as the may that crowned her,
White all the minstrels round her
Tilted back their crimson hats and sang for sheer delight:

Come up, come in with streamers!
Come in with boughs of May!
Now by the gold upon your toe
You walked the primrose way.
Come up, with white and crimson!
O, shake your bells and sing;
Let the porch bend, the pillars bow, before our Lord, the spring!

The dusty velvet hassocks were dabbled with fragrant dew.
The font grew white with hawthorn. It frothed in every pew.
Three petals clung to the sexton’s beard as he mopped and mowed at the clerk,
And “Take that sexton away,” they cried;
“Did Nebuchadnezzar eat may?” they cried.
“Nay, that was a prize from Betty,” they cried, “for kissing her in the dark.”

Come up, come in with streamers!
Come in with boughs of May!
Who knows but old Methuselah
May hobble the green wood way?
If Betty could kiss the sexton,
If Kitty could kiss the clerk,
Who knows how Parson Primrose
Might blossom in the dark?

The congregation sputtered. The squire grew purple and all,
And every little chorister bestrode his carven stall.
The parson flapped like a magpie, but none could hear his prayers;
For Tom Fool flourished his tabor,
Flourished his nut-brown tabor,
Bashed the head of the sexton, and stormed the pulpit stairs.

High in the old oak pulpit
This Lord of all misrule -
I think it was Will Summers
That once was Shakespeare’s fool –
Held up his hand for silence,
And all the church grew still:
“And are you snoring yet,” he said,
“Or have you slept your fill?”

Your God still walks in Eden, between the ancient trees,
Where Youth and Love go wading through pools of primroses.
And this is the sign we bring you, before the darkness fall,
That Spring is risen, is risen again,
That Life is risen, is risen again,
That Love is risen, is risen again, and Love is Lord of all.”

“At Paske began our morrice
And, ere Pentecost, our May;
Because, albeit your words are true,
You know not what you say.
You chatter in church like jackdaws,
Words that would wake the dead,
Were there one breath of life in you,
One drop of blood,” he said.

“He died and went down to Hell! You know not what you mean.
Our rafters were of green fir. Also our beds were green.
But out of the mouth of a fool, a fool, before the darkness fall,
We tell you He is risen again,
The Lord of Life is risen again,
The boughs put forth their tender buds, and Love is Lord of all!”

He bowed his head. He stood so still,
They bowed their heads as well.
And softly from the organ-loft
The song began to swell.
Come up with blood red streamers,
The reeds began the strain.
The vox humana pealed on high,
The Spring is risen again!

The vox angelica replied – The shadows flee away!
Our house-beams were of cedar. Come in with boughs of May!
The diapason deepened it – Before the darkness fall,
We tell you He is risen again!
Our God hath burst his prison again!
Christ is risen, is risen again; and Love is Lord of all.

2008-04-20T11:04:00.000-04:00

Miles Standish was a little man, a soldier from his youth,
He said he'd fought the Spaniards and I think he told the truth,
For he could fire a musketoon and he could build a fort
And the Pilgrims all admired him, though he wasn't quite their sort.

Tom Morton was a merry man and liked a merry frolic,
He said, "These long-nosed Pilgrims give an honest heart the colic!"
He built a place called Merry Mount to serve his merry ends
And danced around a Maypole with a lot of rowdy friends.

The Pilgrims were indignant, for they didn't like his game,
They said his merry Maypole was an idol and a shame,
They vowed that it was scandalous to dance to such a tune,
So they ordered out Miles Standish, with his fav'rite musketoon.

"Ho,ho!" laughed Morton, merrily, "'Tis only Captain Shrimp!"
"Hew down yon idol!" Standish roared and made him feel quite limp
For they hewed the pretty Maypole down, in spite of all his cries,
And chopped it into kindling wood before his very eyes.

They sent him back to England and they told him to stay there.
--They didn't like those gentlemen with perfume in their hair.
--They didn't like wild gentlemen with mischief in their port.
But they always liked Miles Standish, though he wasn't quite their sort.

He lived with them and fought for them and drove their foes away,
A bold Cock-robin of a man whom nothing could dismay,
And, when he died, they mourned him from the bottom of their hearts.
For it isn't where your inches stop. It's where your courage starts.

Benet, Rosemary and Stephen Vincent. A Book of Americans. NY: Holt, 1961.

Source: http://inquiryunlimited.org/lit/poetry/ghistpoems1.html#F1

2008-04-12T08:12:00.001-04:00

Lynn on YouTube

Videos showing me: typically singing, dancing, fooling, or all at once. Updates automatically when new content is added.

2008-04-07T00:07:00.005-04:00

Introducing Mr. Paddy Washtub

When you play in a band with a pogocello, who can resist a washtub bass? The photo at left is Gloucester Hornpipe and Clog Society founder David Rosen with the inimitable pogocello. On the right is the newest member of the band, a handmade washtub bass from Athens, Georgia: bought on eBay and shipped to Boston on Greyhound.

Who buys a string bass on eBay? Well, not intentionally. I was browsing to find out whether anyone should spend the several hundred dollar estimate I'd heard for repairing the cracked upright bass of our late friend Dave Stryker. Not that I really wanted Dave's bass, which is a full-size monster larger than my car. But we wondered what it was worth, for donating to a school or selling to some local musician as-is. So, go to eBay and plug in "upright bass" and "< $500."

You don't find much in that price range. But what is THIS? A washtub crossed with a banjo? I read on. "Handmade washtub bass. Full 3/4 size fingerboard of black walnut, maple face. Piezo pickup. Impervious to heat and cold. Fits in the front seat of a Prius. Local delivery to Athens area only."

I was enthralled. I visited the page for days, telling myself not to be ridiculous. But--I am a Fool, after all. And truly, the idea of bringing this unique item to our eclectic and eccentric band was irresistible. So, the crazy lady from Boston wrote to Athens and asked, "How much to ship?"

Mr. Pat Lyons of Georgia's Magpie Paddy ("Traditional Irish Music for the Deep South") was bemused, but eager to help once he realized I was serious (and prepared to pay a shipping cost close to his asking price for the bass itself). By way of explanation, I sent him our website photo, complete with pogocello. According to Pat, his wife looked over his shoulder at us on the screen and exclaimed, "They look like people we already know!" Indeed. I knew that from looking at this bass. It just had to be. This wasn't a sale. It was a North-South cultural exchange, Irish band to Irish band.

And so, the deal was struck, the auction bid, the instrument crated, and a cross-the-Mason-Dixon-Line bus ticket bought for what has to be one of the larger packages to go Greyhound. (I had visions all week of Georgia Paddy riding North in a bus seat with a backwards feed cap on his peghead, staring out the window and wondering what the Yankee Irish gal from Boston was going to ask him to play...)

Once arrived, Mr. Paddy Washtub's evident personality, humor, and dignity earned him his name the moment he emerged from his crate. And yes, he sounds like a "real" string bass, with a remarkably clear, warm, accurate tone both acoustic and amplified. The band is amused and mostly delighted, and we're finding all sorts of use for him once we get used to his taking up the space of a seventh member onstage.

And no, I don't--or didn't--actually PLAY bass. But for such a splendid creation, I had to learn. After all, it's just the bottom four of the guitar, which I do (or did) play, so I'm gettin' along. Bandmate Jonathan Gilbert also plays, and has outfitted Mr. Paddy's fingerboard for me with a set of sailors' stripes, Suzuki-fashion, for those of us who still need to fret. And fortunately, open strings lend themselves well to our band motto: "Play D Until Something Happens." So I plunk along happily on the downbeat, alarming our guitarist (who's used to being the bottom of the band) and apparently entertaining the audience no end.

Paddy's been the talk of the town at our "St. Patrick's Month" concerts, finding his niche from Murphy's & Ryan's Polkae and Drowsy Maggie to the Flop-Eared Mule and the Jamaica Plain Rag. He was a huge hit on St. Patrick's Day at Honey Fitz Pub in Malden, where he got the chance to be played by a REAL bass player from our friends The Kellsmen. And this summer, he may get a boat ride out to Georges Island to play for sea chanteys at our annual Fourth of July with Boston Harborfest. Meanwhile, I plan to teach Mr. Paddy some work songs and gospel at a few hallway jams at NEFFA--and I do mean JAMS, if I know what a bass can do.

Just goes to show: eBay can change your life! You just never know what you can do until you try.

2008-04-02T23:04:00.014-04:00

Morris and Maypole Return to Merrymount

The Inhabitants of Pasonagessit (having translated the name ...to Ma-reMount [MerryMount]; ... did devise amongst themselves to have it performed in a solemne manner with Revels, & merriment after the old English custome: prepared to sett up a Maypole upon the festivall day of Philip and Jacob .... And because they would have it in a complete forme, they had prepared a song fitting to the time and present occasion. And upon Mayday they brought the Maypole to the place appointed, with drums, guns, pistols, and other fitting instruments, for that purpose ; and there erected it with the help of Salvages, that came thether of purpose to see the manner of our Revels. A goodly pine tree of 80 foot long, was reared up, with a pair of buckshorns nailed one, somewhat neare unto the top of it : where it stood as a faire sea marke for directions; how to finde out the way to mine Hoste of Ma-reMount.

May 2008 marks the 381st anniversary of the first and most celebrated Maypole in North America at Merrymount, in Quincy, MA. English trader, attorney, and adventurer Thomas Morton brought his West Country customs from Devon in 1624, and raised a Maypole in 1627 to revel with the Massachusetts and other Native peoples at the Merrymount settlement.

The Plimoth Puritans disapproved. Myles Standish arrested Morton in 1628 for trading in guns and liquor. Morton was exiled without trial on the Isles of Shoals, shipped back to England, tried, and then freed to return to his "New Canaan." Pilgrim John Endicott chopped down the Maypole and the Puritans of Boston burned Merrymount. Morton settled in Maine and died there in 1647, after having been instrumental in revoking the Pilgrims' Massachusetts Bay Colony charter. Sadly, it came too late for his Maypole.

In celebration of Morton's life and times, morris dancers will raise a Maypole on the site in Quincy, MA (map) and dance around the Maypole as we did in 2007. Quincy native Chris Pahud leads us in the title song from his CD Morton's Return, composed by Jim Ryan who also sang and danced with us that day. Check out Chris's MySpace page for his arrangement of Morton's Songe.

There was likewise a merry song made, which (to make their Revells more fashionable) was sung with a chorus, every man bearing his part; which they performed in a dance, hand in hand about the Maypole, whiles one of the Company sung, and filled out the good liquor like gammedes and Jupiter.

Drinke and be merry, merry, merry boyes,
Let all your delight be in Hymens joyes,
Lo to Hymen now the day is come,
About the merry Maypole take a Roome.

Make greene garlands, bring bottles out;
And fill sweet Nectar, freely about,
Uncover thy head, and feare no harm,
For here's good liquor to keepe it warme.

(For group participation, the morris dancers sing The Songe to our familiar traditional tune of Staines Morris, sung each May morning on the banks of the Charles River from 1974 to this coming Mayday.)

The Merrymount Maypole festivities are part of the 2008 Kettle of Fish Morris Ale, organized by Red Herring Morris of Belmont, MA. This year we will have a special guest, Morton scholar Jack Dempsey, who has produced both a critical biography of Morton and a new edition of the colonist's New English Canaan. Dr. Dempsey, who teaches at Bentley College, has also written a movie script about Morton's 1627 Revells, entitled Merrymount: A True Adventure Comedy. Jack will be leading an informal discussion on Morton's life and times on Maypole Hill while we await the morris dancers' return.

I look forward to researching and photographing traditional and revival West Country Maypole sites and customs from Morton's home ground of Devon and Plymouth on my August 1-15 trip to Sidmouth Folk Week this summer. I'll be the guest of Mike Gibson and the Middle Bar Singers for their session at the Anchor Inn, continuing on to South Devon and Cornwall the following week.

For more information about Thomas Morton and Merrymount, check out my collection of del.icio.us links tagged Merrymount. Or enjoy this video of Staines Morris and other dawn festivities at the 2003 Newtowne Mayday on the Charles.

2007-12-10T23:49:00.002-05:00

I went to the Bennington (VT) Museum to meet with Lisette's soon-to-be publisher and the museum archivists. There was a present waiting for me: a photo from the Museum's "Highlights of the Collection" catalogue. To wit:

"Figure 51. PA-TUS-SE-NON (SHOT BAG), 1810
Lizette Harmon, Cree Indian, 1790-1862
Porcupine quills, red floss, beads, leather
H: 11 in. W: 7 in
Gift of Mrs. Nelson Bradley Carter

"…This shot bag was made by Lizette for her husband and was decorated with naturally-dyed porcupine quills. Although shot bags do survive, few can be found with leather in such fine condition, with such vibrant colors still evident, or with such strong documentation and history.""

Just imagine. After ten years roleplaying this obscure Métis woman, to see a color photograph of something she made with her own hands. And such an artifact. I'm thunderstruck. I must see the actual thing itself asap, and *of course* I'm burning to try to copy it as it's gorgeous. Now I have to find someone who can teach quillwork.

We also discovered where she died—Sault au Recollet, now a suburb in North Montreal—and where she is buried–Lot G.11 at the Mount Royal Cemetery. From 1821 to 1843, she lived literally an hour and a half up the road from me, in Coventry, Vermont, founded by the Harmons and funded by Daniel's NWC earnings. She lived to the age of 70, having her first child at age 14 and her 14th at age 47. We've got the Harmon family genealogy waiting to be worked on, and best of all, I have her marriage date at your fort!

"Daniel Williams Harmon, b. in Bennington, February 19, 1788; m. Lizette (or Elisabeth) Laval (or Duval), in Fort William, Canada, August, 1819." (source: John Spargo, "Two Bennington-born Explorers and Makers of Modern Canada," 1950) Note: the other "Bennington-born Explorer is Simmon Fraser, as in River and University. He took Daniel's place as the leader of the Mandan Expedition of 1806.

Finding Lisette's Grave

2007-12-10T23:47:00.001-05:00

Finding Lisette's Grave

Yesterday we found Lisette’s grave. Helen Meredith had wanted to help me look from the beginning, and having a Montreal native along really smoothed the way. I had written to Mount Royal Cemetery before and gotten a location number, G-11, which as it turned out wasn’t much help. We went in to the office and asked for Elizabeth Harmon d. 1862 and Abby Maria Harmon d. 1904, and the woman at the desk went in the back and came back in five minutes with a Xerox of two index cards. Yes, she was there, all right, and so were Mary and Calvin and their son Andy and a few others as well. Calvin Ladd had purchased the plot, but didn’t appear to be buried there. She gave us a plot map of that section of the cemetery, marking it on the main map. So off we went to G-1, Lot number 11.

Helen had done this before with her friend Jill’s relatives, so she knew how hard it was going to be. And we walked all around the edges of the section, which joins G-2 with just a dotted line between them. We parked at the top of a long grassy strip and hunted for about 45 minutes with no success. I was sure by now that either the family had died too poor for a stone or that there was a flat marker that had been grassed over. Poor Lisette, buried in an unmarked grave.

I went back to the car to check the order people had been buried. The first was a little girl, aged 4, in 1854. Was this why Calvin had bought the plot? She would probably only have a tiny marker. Next was Mary, Calvin’s beloved wife, in September of 1861. Surely she would have a gravestone? He was a well-to-do blacksmith, and had had enough money and connections to petition the courts on Lisette’s behalf in the 1840s. Had he come down in the world in twenty years? Hardly, because his son was listed in the 1870s as buried here, “brought from New York.” If they had had money to transport a body, surely there would be a marker. And the last one in 1904, Abby Maria, her daughter a suicide by drowning? We could hardly expect much of a marker for her, even though I knew she’d been brought here from Hull for burial. Someone must have cared, but how much? We weren’t finding them. I lined up the north arrows on the two maps for about the fourth time and tried to see where we could be going wrong. Helen was by now convinced we were in the wrong section and was methodically quartering the neighboring areas.

“Let’s go back to the office before they close and get the names of the other plots around her,” I said. “At least that way we can narrow it down.” So back we tooled to the office, where she obligingly gave us the family names of every plot surrounding the Harmons/Ladds. This time we took a different route, and were certain we had found G-1. I determined to walk all the way around the section, looking for any name we’d now got. Helen worked across the road, finding some Hollands (one of the names we’d got) but not any other neighbors. Probably not the right Hollands, we agreed, and moved on.

The edges of the G-1 section were clearly mapped out, and it didn’t match the line of the road on the main map. Could the roads have changed? I found myself at the top of the grassy ride we’d parked at earlier. Was this a “road” on the map? It certainly fit the shape of the section better than the asphalt one. I decided to walk down its edge to hunt for names. Here was the convex, then the concave curve: and right where it was supposed to be was a large, sarcophagus-style monument sporting a turbaned wasp’s nest and the name Holland. There were Hollands to the right of the Harmon plot, all right. I looked to the left.

And glory be, there she was. “Yeeeeee-HOUP!” My whoop of triumph would have done justice to a canoe arrival, but probably shocked the cemetery. I was standing in front of a polished red granite marker “in memorial to Daniel Williams Harmon, died at Sault-au-Recollet, Que, ##, 1843, to his wife, Elizabeth Laval, ##, and to their daughter Abby Maria, d. ## 1904.”

2007-12-08T21:27:00.002-05:00

The Book of Christmas: Descriptive of the Customs, Ceremonies, Traditions ... By Thomas Kibble Hervey:
"

Christmas Mummers Kit

2007-12-08T21:27:00.001-05:00

The Book of Christmas: Descriptive of the Customs, Ceremonies, Traditions ... By Thomas Kibble Hervey:

""

Definition of Mummers

2007-12-08T08:29:00.000-05:00

THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN MILTON By THE REV. HENRY J. TOOD:

"

An Unusual Wassail Ingredient: Roasted Crabs

2007-12-08T07:21:00.000-05:00

The Family Oracle of Health: Economy, Medicine, and Good Living : ""

Recipe for Wassail with Eggs

2007-12-08T07:19:00.000-05:00

The Cook and Housewife's Manual: Containing the Most Approved Modern ... By Christian Isobel Johnstone:

"""

Origins of the Expression "To Drink to the Pin"

2007-12-08T06:53:00.000-05:00

Publications By English Historical Society:

Colonel Pickering's March to Lexington, 1775

2007-11-28T16:35:00.001-05:00

The National Music of America and Its Sources By Louis Charles Elson:

"

Advice to Dancers, 1729

2007-11-26T11:33:00.000-05:00

The Art of Dancing, a Poem, in Three Canto's: A Poem, in Three Canto's ... By Soame Jenyns:

Advice to dancers, from 1729. Still useful today!"

2007-11-24T11:01:00.001-05:00

The Columbian Songster: Being a Large Collection of Fashionable Songs, for ... By Readex:

A 1799 songster with a fine collection of secular songs suitable for RevWar taverns and encampments.

Lynn's Colonial Ancestors 1750-1815

2007-11-21T08:32:00.001-05:00

HIBBARDS, HILTONS, & PARKERS: LOYALISTS

Eleazar Hibbard (4gGrandfather) b. CT 1730, d. Yarmouth NS 1798; wife Hannah b. 1746, d. 1842. Mother Martha Durkee b. 1705 Ipswich MA, d. 1801 CT (did not go to NS!)

Amos Hilton (4gGrandfather) b. 1738 Manchester, MA, daughter Susannah b. Yarmouth NS 1780; wife Hannah Lufkin

Daniel Parker m. Experience Hatch CT 1746, d. Cornwallis, NS 1789

McCLAYS: IRISH FARMERS

COOLEYS: REV SOLDIERS (6gUncle)

Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the War of the Revolution (17 Vols.)

Volume 3, page 960

Cooley, Charles, Ludlow. Private, Capt. Paul Langdon's co., Col. Timothy Danielson's regt.; muster roll dated Aug. 1, 1775; enlisted May 15, 1775; service, 2 mos. 22 days; also, order for bounty coat or its equivalent in money dated Roxbury, Nov. 27, 1775. (Note, Ludlow is just north of Wilbraham.)

Lynn's Planter Ancestors: Eleazar Hibbard Homestead in Yarmouth, NS

2007-11-20T22:52:00.000-05:00

Yarmouth, Nova Scotia: A Sequel to Campbell's History By George Stayley Brown, John Roy Campbell:

Eleazar Hibbard was my paternal great-great-great-great-grandfather. Originally of New England Planter stock, Eleazar left the Connecticut Colony during the Revolution and settled back in his ancestral lands in Nova Scotia. Eleazar's granddaughter Harriet married Abner Parker, whose son William Parker came to Boston to work in the Lynn factories after obtaining master mariner's papers on a fishing schooner. Captain William Parker's sea chest is still in the family, with his master's paper tacked inside the lid. His daughter Elizabeth (Betty) was my grandmother and my namesake.

""

The Music of the Waters: Sailors' Chanties, 1888

2007-11-20T22:19:00.000-05:00

The Music of the Waters: A Collection of the Sailors' Chanties, Or Working ... By Laura Alexandrine Smith:

This relatively rare and out-of-print collection has a larger and more diverse array of the non-English chanteys and maritime songs than those found in Hugill, Colcord, or Doerflinger. Many of the songs have notated tunes, making the collection especially useful to singers.

""

Lynn's Yankee Ancestors: Cobbs and Parkers of the Plymouth Colony

2007-11-20T22:18:00.000-05:00

I have several family branches that were early settlers of Massachusetts, primarily Cape Cod, the North Shore and the Connecticut Valley.

One of the earliest, through my paternal grandmother, is the Cobb/Parker family line of Barnstable. My 9G-grandfather Henry Cobb was born in Kent, and came to Plymouth in 1629. He settled in Scituate in 1633 and became an Elder of the church there (note), then removed to Barnstable where he married his first wife, Patience Hurst. Her father James Hurst was a Deacon in Plymouth.

Henry's second wife Sarah (Hinckley) Cobb was sister to Thomas Hinckley, the last Governor of Plymouth Colony. As children, Thomas and Sarah came out from Kent with their parents Samuel and Sarah Hinckley in the ship Hercules out of Sandwich in 1634. While my own line is not related by blood to the Hinckley family, Patience Sr. died when Patience Jr. was seven, and Sarah became her stepmother within a year. With the Hinckleys, the Cobbs were very influential in the Plymouth Colony, and there is a monument to the Cobb family in the Lothrop Hill Cemetery of Barnstable.

Henry and Patience's daughter Patience (Cobb) Parker first married Robert Parker, whose family had come out from England in about 1635 as part of the Puritan Emigration. Robert and Patience were members of the Congregational Church at Barnstable.

Patience was apparently a woman of some property and independence. She was named in the wills of both her grandfather and her father, and when Robert died she married Deacon William Crocker. On William's death and in his will, Patience had ""liberty to dispose of all ye Estate which she brought with her or had at ye time of our inter-marriage." Twice widowed by age fifty, Patience lived to be eighty-seven and is buried in the Lothrop Hill Cemetery.

Patience's grandson Robert Parker Jr. emigrated from Barnstable to Connecticut, where his son Daniel was born in 1746. Like many Loyalists during the Revolution, Daniel's family emigrated to Kings County, Nova Scotia where he died in 1789. Daniel's grandson Abner Parker married into another Planter Loyalist family, the Hibbards.

Lynn's Revolutionary War Ancestors: Hibbards of the Connecticut Militia

2007-11-20T21:44:00.000-05:00

A National Register of the Society, Sons of the American Revolution By Sons of the American Revolution:

Rufus Hibbard was my great-great-grandfather. Both he and his son William fought in the Connecticut Militia.

Primary Source Texts: Google Books for Singers

2007-11-20T21:00:00.000-05:00

Want a first edition of the Child ballads (1860) or Ritson's Ancient Songs and Ballads (1829)? A facsimile edition of The Universal Songster, or Museum of Mirth (1834) or D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719)? How about a collection of full-text books on American naval song from 1800 to 1820? They're yours, in print, for the cost of the paper and your time. Download them to your own machine as PDF and have at it. Or leave them online: simply add them to your library and search them with a few clicks. All that's missing is that lovely musty smell of leather bindings.

Google Book Search is a feast for the desktop scholar. Visit the site to see all their amazing features--this isn't a how-to piece per se. Take away the news that it has never been easier to do your own primary source research. Find out for yourself where a song came from; where and how it was first collected and printed; what the collector said about its time and place; and see for yourself the original illustrations, from blackletter ballads to lithograph engravings.

If a book is in the public domain, otherwise out of copyright, or the author has given permission, you can read and download the entire book, in facsimile, as PDF. This covers a HUGE amount of material of interest to singers and collectors. In particular, the collection abounds with 18th and 19th century editions of books on music, folklore, theatre, dance, history, travel, and literature. It's a gold mine for singers in the folk tradition, historic reenactors, and others of our ilk.

My own library now holds the results of keyword searches for, among others: ballad; song, English; song, American; song, Scots; morris dance; Fool; wassail; naval history; and more to come. You can visit my ever-expanding library here:

noelegance's library

Try searching my library for any of these keywords, and enjoy what you find. Or create your own library, do your own searches, and then when you find a book you like, just click Add to My Library and it's saved for your perusal.

If you're looking for the words to a song and you've found it in a book, open the Google Book and choose View as Plain Text. Because these were scanned and OCR'd, the raw text can be pretty raw, but editing and cleaning it up is still faster if you need electronic text. If you just want hard copy, download the PDF and print just the page(s) you need, then delete the file. It will still be online the next time you need it, and doesn't eat up your hard drive with gigabytes of books.

It's a snap to clip images or text into a scrapbook with Google Notebook, or post them directly to your blog if you use Blogger. See below for some of my trasures brought to light as I dig down into the 350+ books I've collected so far. Just click to follow each link straight to the original online edition!

The Golden Whales of California and Other Rhymes in the American Language ... By Vachel Lindsay

2007-11-20T20:46:00.000-05:00

The Golden Whales of California and Other Rhymes in the American Language ... By Vachel Lindsay:
A chantey just waiting for a tune!

""

Morley Madrigal: The Morris Dance 1600

2007-11-20T20:10:00.000-05:00

Early English Poetry, Ballads, and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages By Percy Society:

This 1844 collection gives this text for one of "T. MORLEY'S MADRIGALS. 1600. (From Thomas Morley's " Madrigals to foure voices. At London. Printed by Thomas Estc. 1600." 4to.]" Who can find me the madrigal with its sheet music, online or otherwise?

""

2007-11-20T20:04:00.002-05:00

The Columbian Naval Melody: A Collection of Songs and Odes, Composed on the ... By Henry B Anthony:

An 1813 collection of American naval ballads, hymns, and songs covering the era from the American Revolution through the War of 1812.
"

2007-11-20T19:50:00.002-05:00

Bentley's Miscellany By Charles Dickens, William Harrison Ainsworth, Albert Smith:

Three of my passions here conjoined: whiskey, May, and song. Ah, the wonder of the keyword search.

OH the May-morn of yore was a blithe one, I ween,
When they danced round the pole on the old village green ;
When the maids gather'd dew at the break of the day,
And they wore a bright wreath for the Queen of the May.
Though the good times are past, and the world has grown cold,
Still the dew and the flowers are as sweet as of old ;
Still the sky laughs with love, and the earth with good cheer,
And the birds sing their merriest song of the year.
Wake up, Marion, wake — come away, come away !
Tis the morn that we love, — 'tis the morn of the May !
Our steeds but thy coming, fair loiterer, wait ;
Hark the neigh of Black Gipsey below at the gate !
Her bridle I've wreathed with the freshest of green,
And I 've cull'd thee a rose, love, that 's fit for a queen.
The hedge-rows are sweet, and the meadows are fair ;
But the breeze of the Downs is more racy and rare :
O'er their soft turf careering, together we 'll go,
As the sea-birds skim light o'er the waters below.
Wake up, Marion, wake — come away, come away !
Tis the morn that we love — 'tis the morn of the May !

The Wassail, Robert Herrick, 1900

2007-10-17T14:06:00.000-04:00

Poems of Robert Herrick: A Selection from Hesperides and Noble Numbers By Robert Herrick, Thomas Bailey Aldrich:

A wassail poem from the author of the much-beloved song Candlemas Eve.

2007-10-17T13:04:00.003-04:00

Comic sketches from The wassail bowl By Albert Richard Smith:
"In comes I, as never been yet / With my big head, and little wit!"

Back to the Source: Online Links to Morris Musicians of the Past

2007-09-11T13:53:00.000-04:00

Red Herring Morris has recently engaged in a typical fall discussion around morris musicians and their role on the team. Foreman and head musician Jeff Bigler has reminded us of two core "rules" (remember, they're more like guidelines) for the new musician. To wit:

1. Musicians should dance (health permitting) or observe for a few weeks before playing in. 2. Musicians shouldn't play in on a tune until they're off book.

Rule #1 is to ensure that new musicians have some idea of how the music fits with the dance.

Rule #2 is to ensure that new musicians know the tunes well enough that they can pay attention to ensemble, both with the other musicians and with the dancers.

I responded to the team, and then reflected that this was a common enough discussion that it might be of interest to other morris folk as well. Here's my post to the Red Herring list:

__________________________

JB's Rule 1 and Rule 2 get it in a nutshell. What he said. Hasn't changed in thirty years, that I can recall. ;-)

I'd add two more rules, if I may, under the heading of "get a feel for the tradition." Meaning, learn the rules so you can break them intentionally and intelligently ;-). Listen to the old guys (and the old gals too).

Rule 3: Read about morris music.

Rule 4: Listen to morris music.

RULE 3: READ ABOUT MORRIS MUSIC

I attach links to a pair of "ancient" 1977 articles from Volume 1, Number 1 of the American Morris News (AMN) by Russell Wortley on "Music and the Morris".

http://www.americanmorrisnews.org/pastissues/april1977v1n1.pdf

http://www.americanmorrisnews.org/pastissues/july1977v1n2.pdf

I remember this piece as being most influential when I was learning the morris in 1979, and later in the 1980s with Ha'Penny, where Jan Elliott's playing so well articulated Wortley's ideas. I particularly love this quote:

"...it is vital that all stylistic frills, all the decoration and twiddly bits, should be made to subserve and not hinder the basic rhythm. At the same time, it is equally important that this elemental pulse shall not be wooden and unyielding but responsive to the dancers, strong but subtly pliable."

And DO read what he has to say on the subject of the musician and the Fool! :-D

I find Russell's writing still very relevant and thought-provoking (not to mention the entertainment value of reading that "Marlboro Ale doubles in size!") It's worthy of note, in fact, that

a) the very first issues of the AMN devoted so much space to playing music, and

b) the author considered "respect for traditional practice" to be part of an article entitled "Music and the Morris."

I would hope that new and current dancers consider subscribing to, or at least browsing the online editions of, both the AMN (http://www.americanmorrisnews.org) and the Morris Dance Discussion List (MDDL) (http://web.syr.edu/~hytelnet/mddl/).

MDDL is free, AMN is free online, and both offer RSS feeds. Both have LOTS of sound and fury, some of it most illuminating and/or instructive, on the subject of playing for the morris.

RULE 4: LISTEN TO MORRIS MUSIC

"We'll drink to John o' Gaunt, me boys, we'll drink to Jinky Wells

We'll drink to William Kimber, who was buried in his bells..."

Want to listen to the source musicians of the morris revival? Rare recordings of Bampton fiddler Jinky Wells and Headington concertina master William "Merry" Kimber have been released on CD by Topic Records and can be ordered online or downloaded:

RIG-A-JIG-JIG: DANCE MUSIC OF THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND Volume 9 of The Voice Of The People. A Series Of Anthologies of Traditional Music edited by Reg Hall

ORDER CD ONLINE: http://www.topicrecords.co.uk/acatalog/index2.html

DOWNLOAD this, and the other albums in the VOTP series, from www.emusic.com for a per-item fee.

This is a GREAT series of English trad, and I have a number of the albums on LP. It's rather wonderful, and revealing, that on the cut where Jinky Wells plays Flowers of Edinburgh and Bobbing Around (Bobby and Joan), you can hear him singing/humming the tune as he plays--clear indication that he knows this tune in his bones, and was almost certainly dancing it in his head as he played it (Wells was the Bampton Fool and Squire).

Both Wells and Kimber are classic examples of the "elemental pulse" inherent in the morris, and it's so great to be able to hear them "live".

I would also recommend another Topic CD, Hidden English, with more William Kimber, the Coppers, and other source singers of English trad.

Hard core box players, and musicians borrowing from this style, may also love the EFDSS CD, Absolutely Classic: The Music of William Kimber (http://www.concertina.net/rd_review_kimber.html).

"First things first: William Kimber was a superb dance musician. His music is crisp, precise, controlled, dignified, unmistakable, and unerringly rhythmic. ... Listen to this music. Words can add nothing." ---Roger Digby

So please. If you're going to PLAY morris music: LISTEN to morris music. Steep yourself in the old stuff. Get a feel for it. Get a little recorder and collect tunes you like at Ales. Get other musicians to play with you, outside of practice, so YOU can practice. And LISTEN. There's never been a better time to hear the old music--for free/cheap on the Net!

On Planning a Set: Hook, Line, and Sinker

2007-09-08T20:36:00.000-04:00

prepared for fellow NEFFA workshop participants Spring 2000 by L.E. Noel

October is the deadline for NEFFA applications, and I've had several requests to republish this piece from the NEFFA News. Thanks for your interest!So, you have a festival gig. You know your venue, audience, time, location, and set length. You have your performers, and you know what they can do. You have a workshop title, which is probably a theme of some sort. You probably also have a list--a long list--of material you'd like to present, from which you need to select, arrange, and rehearse a set in not-enough time. How do you get from here to there, where THERE is the applause at the end of a dynamite set?

There are lots of ways to organize a set list. The easy way is to go round robin, but we know how to do that. How do you develop a theme? Here's how I work with material that has a lot of content and narrative flow: entertain first, educate second . Start with the basic rule of 1-2-3.

Rule #1: One-Two-Three

If you get ONE song, choose your most upbeat attention-grabber: hook, line, and sinker all in one. It should be SHORT (under 3 minutes), simple, and require NO introduction. Hop up on stage. Sing. Hop down. Say nothing. Just sing. Everyone will say, Who Was That Masked Musician? Your song will tell them who you are. (Then the organizer will call out, "And that was the Masked Musician, folks! Give her a hand!")

If you get TWO songs, pick the upbeat one and another one with an easy but rock-em-sock-em chorus. Put the one with a chorus SECOND. Hop up on stage and sing. Introduce yourself and the next song for no more than 30 seconds, including teaching the chorus. Sing. You're done. Everyone will say, "Boy, that Masked Musician sure can sing." (Because you got them to sing.)

If you get THREE songs, you can have a slow one. Put it in between Song One (your attention-grabber) and Song Two (your audience involver). This is your solo, your reflective moment, the story you are telling. Your three-song set goes:

One, Here I Am. (The Hook)

Two, Here's My Story. (The Line)

Three, Let's Tell It Together. (The Sinker)

Three songs is a fifteen-minute set, because just getting up and down off the stage takes time, and one does talk between songs even if one doesn't mean to. Also, it's incredibly polite to run under time (I think I did it once...) Focus on entertainment. Deliver your educational message, if you must, in Song Two, which should also be entertaining.

To plan a longer set, fill in from the middle using the 5-minutes-per-song rule. 25 to 40 minutes allows you to develop your basic festival workshop set from thematic material with a lot of content and narrative flow. But where do the extra songs go? One BEFORE and the rest AFTER the first song. Why? Read on.

Rule #2: Before and After

So, let's take a 40-minute set at NEFFA. 40 divided by 5 means 8 songs. Three we know already: the beginning, the middle, and the end. Using the before-and-after rule, your new songs are #1 and #3-6. The ending doesn't change, the middle gets to be four songs that tell a story (in some order), and the beginning gets a one-song throwaway before your bang-up opener, which is now Song Two. Why? Because people will be trickling in, you will be clunking around with the mike setup, and your engineer will be doing an on-the-fly sound check. Pick something good, but not your best: save that for second and for last. Choose the simplest song that you do well, one you'd be willing to sing to an empty hall, and stick to the Masked Musician approach: don't talk until after you sing. But DO sing, because they won't trickle in until you do.

In a longer set, you can have an introduction. Put it before your second song: remember, this is really your Song One, the hook. Introduce yourself before and your theme after the second song, so that the hook sets the line. Then pay out the line: tell your story, in four songs (numbers 3-6). Songs 3-6 form a mini-set, which should also follow the 1-2-3 rule in a low-key kind of way, developing whatever narrative line you want to throw out.

Song Six is about where the set starts to drag. If you have been telling your story well, you are really into it now, and performers tend to talk a LOT between songs Five and Six. Develop your theme with a few reflective songs: slots Three, Four and Five are the place to put soloists or small groups, as well as ballads and long songs without choruses. Then pick up the pace with an upbeat Song Six with some kind of a chorus. The audience has been listening happily to you for half an hour now, and it's time to let them know the end is coming (so they will wish it weren't).

You HAVE been checking the time, haven't you? Oops. You're over. (Everybody always is.) If you need to cut to the chase, cut Song Five and/or Six. This is why Seven and Eight remain your original Song Two and Three: deliver the message, THANK the organizers and make any announcements (like where to buy your product) and then head straight for the finish line with that good all-sing closer, your original Song Two of Two or Three of Three. And of course, audiences LOVE it when you reprise your opener as a grand finale.

The Set List

So, let's review the 8-song set. This will get you through 40 minutes at NEFFA slicker 'n a smelt. This type of nested structure will also let you plan anything from 15 to 50 minutes on the fly. Each song has a purpose:

The Sound Check

Introduce the group and hand out words if you must (better they should look at you than at the paper in their laps; I prefer to give handouts at the end)

The Hook

Introduce yourself and your group; present the theme in one sentence, then sing

The Line, or Story Part I (another throwaway; keep intros brief)

The Line, Story Part II (another hook; choruses are good)

The Line, Story Part III (another throwaway; cut to #6 OR #7 if you need time)

Tell how the last three songs fit together, and then teach

The Chorus (a wake-em-up and/or a wrapup to your story)

The Message

Introduce group members, thank the organizers, announce who's on next in this slot and where you're performing next, hand out any flyers, say where your product is on sale, thank the sound crew, and do all this in under 3 minutes!

The Sinker, or the Grand Finale (all sing, with the audience)

And of course, if you cut something and finished early, you have it for an ENCORE!

The Amateur is the Audience

Of course there are lots of other ways to plan a set. For one thing, you may need to put certain songs together because they are in the same (or conflicting) keys, or need certain tunings or musicians, or whatever. But this outline, or ANY set list outline, will prevent most of the more embarrassing moments of amateur performance. Remember, being an amateur means you LOVE what you do. Help your audience to love it--and you--as well, by refraining from the following common faux pas (that's French for no-no's) of set list planning:

Endless intros before the first song (like sitting in a plane on the runway)

Endless explanations of the song you just sang (like sitting in a plane at the gate)

Er-um, ah, what shall we sing next? (unless you are taking requests)

No, no, after YOU! (If you are next in line, SING. If no one else is, count to three, make eye contact with the designated Mouth, and sing anyway. You will be forgiven for toe-stepping faster than for dead air.)

Oh, wait a minute--no no, start over. (This is the difference between performance and rehearsal. Please do not ask the audience to indulge you more than necessary.)

We just have ONE more song, and it's our BEST song... (When your time is up, you are DONE. A good workshop leader WILL cut you off so that the next group can start on time. Plan accordingly, and finish early if you can. You can always have an encore.)

Hook, Line and Sinker

Plan your set like a plane trip that spends more time in the air than on the ground. Plan it like a vacation that spends more time out of the car than driving. Plan it with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and give your audience a map. Remember, they're along for the ride. And do plan your set like a fishing trip: you want to bring home the whole audience, having fallen for you and your music hook, line, and sinker.

Who was that Masked Musician?

Lynn Noel (lynnoel@lynnoel.com) rarely practices what she preaches onstage, but she does observe the rule of 1-2-3 religiously and has been known to perform en masque.

2007-09-08T19:47:00.002-04:00

Visit Mina's photo album!

A silly bit of doggerel (c) 2001 Lynn Noel

There once was a spinach burrito
Plump with posole and beans
And barbecued pollo con frio
And salsa, cilantro, and greens.

Bought in a moment of impulse
It could have fed four, 'twas so big
A couple of bites per musician
And the rest shared out after the gig.

But the burrito soon had competition
In the form of a friend of the group
Who offered them all a late supper
At a pub that made great oxtail soup.

Hey, lunch is just fine for burritos.
We'll wrap it in foil to save
As a bite of refrito reheato
And pollo con el microwave.

Ah, pity the spinach burrito
Forgotten, abandoned and lost
In a car in a bag in the back seat.
In the morning, 'twas covered in frost.

Sad is the burrito owner
Who hastens too swift and too fleet
To an eight a.m. morning appointment
And leaves a dog in the back seat.

Ay de mi! Pobrecito!
The search was too late. Naught availed.
There was nothing but scraps of clean foil
Shaped like two ears--and this tale.

2006-09-23T10:53:00.002-04:00

After a three-year hiatus from knee and back injuries, I'm back on a morris team, serving my three-month apprenticeship as the (non-dancing) Fool for Red Herring Morris (that's me in their team photo with The Fish Called Waldo). I'm honored that my new teammates and other fellow morris singers have recently been asking me for songs of the morris, including requests from Toronto Ale singers, Red Herring, Banbury Cross, and Cold Barn of Toronto to help promote singing among their new dancers, and to become stronger song leaders themselves. Thanks to all of you who have been so kind as to ask me to share my experience; it's made me feel immensely welcomed back to be so honored.

This provides the great opportunity to dust off my morris-song bookmarks and post them in del.icio.us so as to keep them updated. Check this link for periodic updates; here's my idiosyncratic collection of Songs of the Morris resources on the web.

So, how to get your team singing? It starts with one singer and one song. There is no single Ur-Songbook for the morris, although many teams have collected their own songbooks and some have published them (see links). Some teams (including Red Herring) include "singing practice," which is often congenially combined with "drinking practice" after dance practice. This is a splendid institution and should be encouraged.

How to start? PICK A SONG. Just one. If you feel you can't sing, pick an easy one. It should have a chorus and be one that you like; something that you've heard at an ale or on tour is good. Start yourself off with three or four verses; three is enough for people to get the chorus, four is enough for you to remember the verses. That's all.

I am often asked to recommend a First Song. I feel this is a very personal decision, so I do so one-on-one. It helps if I've heard you sing, but I'm game to work with you if you email me. Good first songs for a team include (but are not limited to) the "massed pub songs" like Country Life, Ilkley Moor Baht Hat, Let Union Be In All Our Hearts, or Pleasant and Delightful. Search for them in my links list.

But how do I teach everyone my song? (I hear you wail.) It's NOT that hard. And you don't have to have some fabulous and intimidating voice (in fact, having one can be a real drag when you want everyone to sing together, believe me). Here's how it starts.

Get the words and the tune to your ONE SONG. Use my link list for starters.
Sing your song by yourself, in the shower, at the bus stop, washing dishes, &c, until you feel like you can really get into it, singing it from memory and remembering all the words. You can TOO carry a tune, it just takes practice.
Count the verses, so you can remember (ah yes, this one has THREE verses...)
Ask your foreman for 5 minutes at the end of practice to sing your song. I recommend that you NOT hand out song sheets--after all, we don't hand out dance notes at practice. Just sing. Since you like it, people will join in. Sing the chorus a couple times, just like you dance the chorus a couple of times in practice.
Think of a song as a jig or a corner dance, with a set dance chorus. Only the leader has to know the verses, which are the figures. Everyone dances in on the chorus, and then there's another figure.
Sing your song every week at the end of practice. After a couple weeks, you'll have everyone singing the chorus.
Pick someone else who thinks this singing stuff is really cool. Pass this info on to them, and coach them like I just coached you. Get them to pick ONE SONG. Now you have two songs at practice.
Sing your song(s) at an ale or a tour. Since your team already knows it, they will join in. How cool! We know a song. We are a singing team. There you are.

If you don't already have one, start a songbook. Get a looseleaf notebook and start sticking song sheets in it. Concentrate on a FEW SONGS, so you don't get overwhelmed and start telling yourself you can't do it. After all, you don't teach 12 dances or 3 traditions at once. However, you may well teach three or four dances in the same tradition, so it's a good idea to have three or four songs in your learning repertoire. This is your own personal songbook. Eventually, you'll want to compile a team songbook (see links for examples), but beware of using it as a Rise Up Singing at ales.

My very personal and very strong opinion is that song sheets are about as effective for the morris as trying to dance by holding a copy of Bacon (or worse, handing copies out for everyone to hold). Alastair Brown made this point quite hilariously at a Toronto Ale about 10 years ago by doing exactly that--Number One read out the figures, and everyone danced clumsily along, while peering at their photocopy of the entire unwieldy book. Alastair's sober voiceover informed the howling audience that we had just witnessed a demonstration of Rise Up Dancing.

This is NOT why we sing. We love morris & pub singing for its spontaneity, its rich harmonies, its sweep-you-along sense of communal participation, and above all its energetic joy. This passion does not live on the printed page. Song begins and ends in the heart and soul of the singer. Find your song and nurture it in yourself--you can TOO sing! Once you believe YOU can sing, then you will believe that others can sing, and you will show them how. Then, quite effortlessly, you find you are a singing team.

The Spontaneous Triad: 1986-1988

2006-08-14T00:40:00.000-04:00

My graduate school-era trio in Madison, Wisconsin, with Mark Fulton and Rebecca Lee. We formed through our association with Madison’s Oak Apple Morris (Mark, foreman; Lynn, squire; Rebecca, musician) and explored traditional English harmony, early music, parodies, and even a little jazz. Our recording The Last Sheaf was Mark’s swan song before he headed to Sweden for Ph.D. work, while Rebecca continued with her jazz work to form a new quartet in Madison.

From the introduction to my first book of original songs, Songs My Paddle Sings:

"The Spontaneous Triad. That was the name of my favorite trio, the best friends I ever sang with, but it also seems to describe a lot about my music, my career and my life. How do all the parts fit together? Like chords. A chord isn't a single note: it helps to think in threes. Geographer, musician and environmental educator. Songs of waterways both fresh and salt, tales of adventurous women, and the magic of the seasonal round. Three-part harmony, three instruments (guitar, dulcimer, and voice), three cultures (American, English Canadian, French-Canadian) and plenty of spontaneity in all those triads and the harmonies they make."

University of Wisconsin Heritage Ensemble: 1988

2006-08-13T00:54:00.000-04:00

My first professional touring ensemble was a core influence in using music and storytelling in heritage interpretation. The winter/spring 1988 tour featured “Sacred Fire of Liberty (American Revolution), “Steamboat ‘Round the Bend” (Mississippi River), and a quintet version of “Skillet, Ballot, and Book” (women’s history). Papers of the Heritage Ensemble’s founder are archived at the University of Wisconsin’s David C. Peterson Collection.

Lingua Franca: 1999-2001. Where Are They Now?

2006-07-14T00:33:00.000-04:00

From 1999-2001, I sang with a wonderful quartet of like-minded musicians who loved close harmony and travel as much as I did. The only problem with a world music group, of course, is that they all go off to see the world, and so we parted ways as a quartet, contenting ourselves with the occasional harmonic convergence at a folk festival or a party.

Lingua Franca was founded by Liz Lewis and Ed Softky, who performed with Alan Field as the a cappella trio Lewis, Softky & Field. Lynn Noel became the "fourth volume of the trilogy" in January 1999. Lingua Franca were featured in the Folk Song Society of Greater Boston's May 2000 production of "Bound For Glory: The Words and Music of Woody Guthrie." The quartet performed at NEFFA, NOMAD, local festivals, senior centers, and anywhere else they received the slightest encouragement to sing.

Lingua Franca is not currently performing as a quartet. Liz Lewis sings with the women's a cappella sextet Constellations. Lynn Noel performs solo and with several groups: see www.lynnoel.com. Ed Softky is now based in western MA after his return from northern India, becoming fluent in Tibetan on three year-long sabbatical sojourns to Buddhist retreat centers in Dharamsala. Alan Field spends most of his time on Macintosh computers in KwaZulu_Natal, South Africa with Donna Wainwright, leading the fifth year of their South Africa Township Schools Project with Computers for Africa.

Who Were They Then? (from the Lingua Franca webpage)

Lingua Franca is an a cappella world music quartet whose name stands for "music as the common tongue." Quartet members have collectively visited 23 countries, all 12 Canadian provinces and territories, and (we think) all 50 states, and speak over a dozen languages. Powerful harmonies blend in a joyful and infectious celebration of music, the universal language.

Our popular set GLOBAL HARMONIES begins with freedom songs from South Africa, where bass Alan Field works with local communities to install Macintosh computers in classrooms while touring with the international chorus Sharing a New Song. Mediterranean harmonies then move to the Balkans, Italy and Spain, where alto Liz Lewis spent her junior year abroad. Lingua Franca crosses the Channel with chanteys from the Netherlands and Britain, to England where tenor Ed Softky and soprano Lynn Noel have collected pub songs and sea music as morris dancers. Sailing out across the North Atlantic, we return to North America with French-Canadian voyageur songs and Ojibwa chants from Lynn's decade of work with the Canadian Park Service, and sacred harp and Appalachian hymns from Ed and Liz's roots in American popular music. South of the border, the set celebrates Latin rhythms with traditional and new music from Latin America, where Liz works in international health care.

2006-06-30T22:32:00.001-04:00

June 2006 marked the third annual gathering of certifiable fringe elements at the Old Songs festival in Altamont, NY. We take group camping to splendid excess with a 10x20' Renaissance-style pavilion, courtesy of SCA actor and blacksmith Carl West. We enjoy our elegant and shady "living room" for sharing meals and relaxing between workshops, but its primary purpose (besides announcing our presence to the camp at large) is to host a full-service High Tea.

We serve 15-30 invited guests, complete with china teacups and saucers, loose tea in teapots, linens & silver, proper cream and lump sugar, and a full menu of sweets and savories. This year featured Earl Grey and Darjeeling, cranberry-orange and cinnamon chip scones, cucumber-mint and salmon tea sandwiches on homemade tea bread, "wrye smiles" (stuffed rye crescent rolls), cookies and bars galore, and strawberry-rhubarb shortcake with whipped cream.

Last year's heat wave inspired a Days of the Raj theme, which was made complete this season with the contribution of a collapsible palm-leaf punkah from IKEA. Our most elegantly dressed coolies (April Grant and Angela Kessler) performed their punkah-wallah duties in long gloves and proper conehead coolie hats, acquired at the Festival.

Tea-wallah David Kessler might have found his duties eased by a high-heat propane burner donated by Jake the Master Cook, whose outdoor catering (dinner for 60 in the lower field) puts our modest efforts to shame. We might have poured the tea on time had we closed the propane stopcocks all the way, but still, it was 3 am when Jake made the loan...and in the event, Bill Lehrman's family was kind enough to produce a Coleman stove.

We look forward to even better logistics for Old Songs High Tea 2007.

2006-05-16T22:37:00.002-04:00

Floodspotting

Most people hate the rain. Not me. Give me a good thunderstorm and you're likely to find me in a wet T-shirt and bare feet, splashing happily down the street to unfoul the rain gutters and bust the leaf dams.

Once upon a time, being a river rat meant heading north to huge wilderness watersheds in Canada. These days, I stick closer to home, eagerly tracking the latest precipitation event online, and planning my next floodspotting field trip.

If you want to see whitewater inside Route 128, you had better move fast--most flood events last only a matter of hours, as we are so close to sea level and the terrain is relatively low. But if you get your skates on, you can see a roaring waterfall in Greater Boston with a little floodspotting.

Real-Time Stream Gauge Data for Massachusetts

Want to be a floodspotter? Start with the USGS real-time stream gauge data for your local state. I start paying attention when the dots turn dark blue, but the real fun starts when a dot turns black. Blue dots mean the river is higher than the 90th percentile for that day of the year, and a black dot simply means "High." Hovering over a dot will show you some of its statistics, and clicking on it will take you to the real-time data page for that gauging station, with spiffy graphs.

How Fast? How High? How Full?

Stream gauge graphs will show you how full the river is (volume in cubic feet per second, or CFS), how fast it's flowing (velocity in feet per second), and how high the water is (gage height in feet). If the river has reached flood stage, a red line appears on the graph at the flood stage. Red triangles show the mean, or average flow, so you can see how much fuller, higher, or faster the river is than usual.

I especially love finding a log graph, where the horizontal lines get closer together at the top. That means the river is SOOO much bigger than normal that it can't be graphed on a linear scale, so they've had to use a logarithmic scale.

Log graphs have abounded this month on rivers I've never seen them on before. Alewife Brook usually runs about 1-2 CFS this time of year. On May 15, it was running at 100 CFS - two orders of magnitude more than usual! Alewife crested at 6 feet above sea level on May 15, before subsiding to its normal 2 feet. That translated into water nearly over the road on the back streets around Alewife Marsh--excellent for splashing about.

Chasing Waterfalls
Once you've marveled at the data in real-time, it's time to go see it live! Use your trusty local watershed map, Google Maps and/or Yahoo! Maps, and the indispensable Delorme Massachusetts Atlas & Gazetteer to locate the gauging station, plan your route, and find nearby parking or public transit. Never mind the rain--get yourself a serious raincoat, a waterproof hat, and knee-high boots. A Ziploc bag or a small dry bag lets you bring your camera along in a pocket, and presto! You're a floodspotter.

Most Accessible Waterfall Award: Lower Falls on the Charles River

From Route 128, take the Route 16W exit and turn towards Newton Lower Falls. Immediately, turn in to the Arthur T. Gregorian parking lot (map). A small iron bridge just behind the parking lot runs across the falls, providing excellent viewing both upstream and downstream. Footpaths are accessible for a short distance on either side of the river.

Sea Music: The Launching of the MIT Chantey Sing

2006-02-23T18:06:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday, February 2006, we had 70 people at our monthly chantey sing at the MIT Museum. One of them was a reporter from the Boston Globe who asked me the usual questions about how the sing got started, and how I got into this. It's such a long story, I said...I've loved water, music, and boats as long as I can remember, and to love something is to sing about it. But if I had to trace a line on a map of how I got from there to here, now is as good a time as any to point out some landmarks along the voyage. This sing may be newly afloat, but it's got a good 30 years of my life for a hawser, with the lives of many more folk braided into the rope.

1974-81: Growing up on the Charles River in Natick and Newton, I was a certified lifeguard and paddling instructor by age 16. I taught canoeing on Cape Breton Island and later on the Connecticut River (Dartmouth '81). A strong voice is as useful for teaching water sports as it is for leading songs, and I soon learned to use mine to do both at once. Also in high school, I started folk dancing with the MIT Folk Dance Club, learning dances, songs, and faces that would come back to haunt me thirty years later!

1981-1985: Returning to Boston after college, I danced "eight nights a week" in the rich Boston folk community, and got my chops as a song leader singing pub songs after morris dancing. Revels, Inc. did its first Sea Revels in 1982, and I was a soloist on the Sea Revels album Blow Ye Winds in the Morning.

1986-88: I worked summers in Newfoundland as environmental educator with QLF/Atlantic Center for the Environment and did my M.S. research at Gros Morne National Park. My first album of Newfoundland music, Crosscurrents, was submitted with my graduate thesis. It and I won some awards, and I left a Ph.D. program to become a fulltime musician and outdoor educator. It's a long story, and one to be told further in this blog.

1988-98: The traveling years of Crosscurrents: Bluewater and Whitewater Music. I toured sea music programs from NYC to Newfoundland, including Seabourn Cruise Lines, the Sloop Clearwater, Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival, and Mystic Sea Music Festival, where I was a regular for seven years. My profession was heritage interpretation and environmental education, which means parks, museums, nature centers, and schools. Oh, and I wrote a big book about Canadian rivers called VOYAGES.

October 1998: I moved back to Boston and took a day job as boating editor for Maptech Embassy Guides to Massachusetts, Maine and Bahamas. Being a photojournalist got me sailing on tall ships Roseway, Ernestina, Margaret Todd, Cory, and Empire Sandy.

Summer 1999: Boston had a hot new Seaport District with the acoustically amazing Fan Pier. When tall ships HMS Rose and Empire Sandy came to town, I called out my chantey buddies for what became our first "Chanteyblast." At Mystic and at the New York and San Francisco chantey sings, I'd developed an addictive taste for the intense camaraderie and glorious harmonies that sea music creates. But both those sings are held at the local maritime museum, Hyde Street Pier or South Street Seaport Museum, as community extensions of their regular public programs. Why on earth, I wondered, does Boston, of all cities, not have a major maritime museum? One answer, I was to learn, was that we have many maritime museums rather than one big one. Which one could host our sing?

September 2000: Boston Folk Festival booked me with Barry Finn for harbor cruises, which we discovered were much more fun as a chantey singalong than as a floating coffeehouse stage. Surely it was time to make this more than a semiannual sing.

2000-2005: At the New England Folk Festival (NEFFA), I continued to lead my annual Open Sea Music Sing that had been drawing 75-150 people since 1991. With Barry, Celeste Bernardo, and other local chanteyfolk, we explored metroBoston venues for a regular monthly chantey sing, including the North End, Jamaica Plain, Constitution & Tea Party Ship museums, the downtown waterfront, Hull, and Southie. Nothing clicked. Sites with ships already had programming, especially on weekends. Ships without sites couldn't afford to offer free space. Sites with program space were too far from the water. Anyplace with a liquor license was going to turn away college kids and families. Known chantey singers, and the folk audience, are spread out in the suburbs too far from downtown. Boston, in short, is NOT New York or San Francisco.

Summer 2003: David Kessler joined me on a chantey sail aboard the replica USS Providence in Rhode Island. He had crewed aboard tall ship HMS Rose and is a professional logistics manager and theatre tech at Harvard and MIT. Notably, DK is a dauntless field collector who will demand a song from a total stranger in a bar--and get it! David wanted a chantey sing he could get to without a car, and certainly without driving to New York. He signed on as crew for the BFF Chanteyboat.

September 2001-2004: BFF Chanteyboat harbor cruises were "packed throughout the day" each year with up to 14 performers, but 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina hit the festival hard. Dockside and stormbound in 2004, we suspected it would be our last year.

September 2005: Boston Folk Festival regretfully ended the BFF Chanteyboat. David Kessler, Alison Lee Freeman, Jeff Keller and I committed ourselves to finding a new chantey sing venue within reach of Cambridge/Somerville, on the water, accessible by public transit, free to the public, and family-friendly.

Winter 2006: David Kessler, now working at MIT Sloan School of Management, made two key contacts within MIT: the Wood Sailing Pavilion and the Hart Nautical Gallery of the MIT Museum. It seems MIT has a hidden but world-class maritime heritage, from ship design to deep-ocean engineering. Also strongly oriented to the Cambridge community and with an active arts scene from folk dance to early music, MIT proved a great fit.

July 2006: We kicked off the first "Chantey Sing on the Charles" at the Wood Sailing Pavilion, with special guest Danny Spooner from Australia. The new NE_ChanteySings Yahoo! Group drew 23 members in its first month.

February 2006: The MIT Chantey Sing hits 70 people with a mention in the Boston Globe. The Yahoo! group has 67 members, and the reporter says her article will come out next Sunday. Look forward to future Chantey Sing installments of this blog!

2006-02-05T14:44:00.000-05:00

Trouz Bras: Making a Big Noise with the Breton Boys

I love craigslist. You can log on looking for basement shelving and come away with a cat and a band. At least that's what happened to me. I adopted Cleo the Maine coon cat, and was in my turn adopted by Trouz Bras, "the only band in North America devoted to the music and dance of Brittany." A week after my audition with Ray Price and Barry Hall, I found myself on stage at Passim, making my debut at the Boston Celtic Music Festival with a French sea chantey. Le Capitaine de St. Malo lived up to the band's name--Trouz Bras means Big Noise in Breton--and I'm delighted to find myself singing call-and-response with a bagpipe. Not to mention a jazzy medieval vielle, a rockin' bass, and the USA's first NEA Master of the Bodhrán. These guys have some chops.

For my first official gig with TB at the Dance Flurry, I have 3 weeks to learn 9 songs in a language I don't speak. What fun! The dance songs are a joy, drawing on my experience as a dancer and dance leader in a way I haven't used since my back and knee injuries in 1998-99. But for me, the most exciting aspect of this new venture is the discovery of a treasure trove of traditional ballads, in the Breton tradition called gwerz.

A gwerz is a ballad, or "complainte," that parallels the Child ballads both in historic, heroic, and/or mythic material and in anchoring the a cappella tradition. The research site I've worked most with so far is Son Ha Ton. Among its deep collections is an online version of Barzaz Breizh, the definitive 600-page Breton song collection from 1839. I'm looking forward to studying the epic ballads of the young Merlin, King Arthur, and the drowned City of Ys.

We have begun with the well-known (in Brittany) Ti Eliz Iza, the tale of a young girl orphaned by the Crusades who enters the convent of Rumengol, making a gift to the Blessed Virgin of her golden hair. The medieval melody is breathtaking (in several senses of the word!), we've added a Steeleye Span-style bass, and I now have the ambition to visit Rumengol in Finistère. There you can tour the 16th-century nunnery of Our Lady of All Aid, patron saint of Brittany. Their chapel dates from the 5th century, and is said to have been founded by King Gradion, ruler of the Kingdom of Ys.

Trouz Bras is a delicious synchronicity of my interests in French, balladry, Celtic music, folk dance, sea music, and the great bardic epics--not to mention a puzzle piece that drops right into the geography of the North Atlantic region. It's going to be a great year with this hot new band. Who cares if I still don't have basement shelves?

2006-02-03T11:47:00.000-05:00

Crosscurrents: Have I really been at this for 20 years?

Since 1986, I have been researching and presenting traditional music, living history, and heritage interpretation under the banner of Crosscurrents: Sense of Place in Song and Story. Sometimes called Bluewater and Whitewater Music, this work has taken me down wild rivers in every province and territory in Canada; to a Russian monastery and an Icelandic glacier; to a shamanic workshop on the ancient Vikings; and to untold maritime adventures, from being rescued by a Newfoundland dog in Boston Harbor to sailing a tall ship in Penobscot Bay. And then there was celebrating my birthday at a whisky distillery...not to mention my current adventures of joining a Breton folk-rock band and running a monthly chantey sing at MIT.

In celebration of the past 20 years of musical journeys, I decided to start this blog to share my newest research and to make myself write down some of the more splendid memories. I hope to find blogging informal enough that these tales would actually get written down, and public enough that I could share them with the folks who made them possible. Hopefully, some of you who share my travels will be moved to share your versions of our adventures together. But first and foremost, consider this a draft for your review!

CBC's The Pathfinders: Background Research Q&A for documentary film on Daniel Harmon

1999-04-27T23:07:00.000-04:00

Background research provided to the CBC for their Spring 2000 documentary Harmon: The Winterer in The Pathfinders series for Canada: A People's History.

Q: Can you describe the type of relationship that [Daniel] Harmon had with Lizette?

They achieved Harmon's stated ideal of a relationship (1800), to "live in harmony together." Their partnership was lifelong, devoted, based on mutual respect, a source of cross-cultural exchange in which each gained entry into the other's milieu, and a dynastic union which satisfied both Harmon's deep need for family connection, and the custom, which he often observed amon Indian women, of cheerfully choosing large families. Harmon wrote that "I cannot conceive it right for a man and woman to cohabit when they do not agree," and their decision to come East together was clearly a mutual one. "I consider that I am under a moral obligation not to dissolve the connexion, if she is willing to continue it," and clearly she was so willing, for his lifetime and for the remaining 29 years of hers.

Much has been made of the fact that Harmon never mentioned Lisette by name. He writes in his appendix that it is a mark of respect among the Cree not to speak the name of a person under discussion, but to refer to them indirectly. In the world of man whose highest devotion was to family and community, there can be no higher state than the one Daniel accorded Lisette. She was "the mother of my children."

Q: Who is Lizette Duval? Can you write up a character sketch? What made her tick? What's quirky and fascinating about her?

Elizabeth Laval, or Duval, was the Métis "daughter of a French-Canadian voyageur and a woman of the Snare people, whose country lies along the Rocky Mountain." She was born circa 1791 in the western Canadian Rockies, and was long thought to be a Snake Indian from the Kootenays. "Snare" was considered a misspelling in Harmon's original journal, of which only copies are known to exist. Recent scholars have speculated that the "Snare" people do exist, and are now the Secwepemec band of the North Thompson River, BC, but band leaders were unable to confirm this in 1997.

Lisette, as she was known, was given into Daniel's care "à la facon du pays" at age 14, in South Branch Fort, Saskatchewan, October 10, 1806. She was "a fair Partner…of a mild disposition and even-tempered." After sixteen years together, she and Daniel were formally married in the Congregational Church before leaving the NWC country. Biographers Kaye Lamb and John Spargo give their marriage as occurring at NWC headquarters at Fort William, ONT, a few days after Daniel's journal records their arrival there on August 18. Their son John, incidentally, was born there on August 24, and the family continued on to arrive in Vergennes, VT on September 11 of the same season.

Lisette was a woman of endurance. She made an epic transcontinental journey while pregnant and nursing a newborn, as well as caring for two daughters aged eight and two throughout the canoe trip. She bore fourteen children, ten surviving infancy, and outlived all but one. She was a devoted and by all evidence beloved mother; she grieved with Harmon over the loss of "our darling son" their firstborn George, and her youngest daughter Abby Maria was buried in her mother's grave. Lisette died at Sault-au-Recollet, Montreal, February 14, 1861, aged 72. A stone to both Harmons in Mount Royal Cemetery was probably a gift of Abby Maria's friends.

Lisette's patient, listening ear and keen eye for detail live on in her work. Harmon's journal, edited by the Rev. Daniel Haskell, includes a Cree dictionary which was made correct "by making the nice distinctions in the sound of the words, as derived from her repeated pronunciation of them." Her one surviving artifact is a quillworked leather shot bag in the Bennington Museum, acclaimed by art historians and anthropologists as one of the finest surviving examples of its genre. The stitches are tiny and close-set, the vegetable dyes rich and bright, the leather fine and supple, and the design exquisite. One can only imagine how many long summer days on canoe trips, and harsh winter nights from the Rockies to Vermont and Montreal, found her sewing by the fire, attentive to her task.

Who is Daniel Harmon? Can you write a short character sketch? Why did he leave Vermont and enter the fur trade? What is his motivation? What did he hope to accomplish?

Daniel Williams Harmon was a moral man whose passions were conversation, religion, and family. He was intense but not an intellectual, intelligent but not educated. Though one of his brothers went to Dartmouth, Haskell bemoans Daniel's lack of a classical education as it shows through in his rough writing style. He was passionately spiritual, intensely reserved, and extremely hard on himself. Every single birthday in his journal finds him condemning his life of “folly and sin," though apart from one or two occasions where he admits to being "three sheets to the wind," it is hard to find evidence of his transgressions. He was serious, earnest and responsible, and inclined to be dry, especially without the society he craved. This was the society of close friends and their books, and he constantly laments the lack of good conversation especially about religion. He missed his family intensely, and yearned for their letters; we can only regret that none of his survived.

As the youngest son of a conservative Yankee innkeeper, Daniel found both the reason and the means to leave Vermont in his father's tavern. The Harmons and the Deweys, his mother's family, were "deeply religious people".

A Voyageur Song for Daniel and Lisette

Certain songs go with certain types of paddling water and thus certain sections of the route. You’ll find most of them, including melodies, at http://infoweb.magi.com/~yvondian/chanson/chanson1.html or http://ingeb.org/catca.html. For a theme song for the whole Harmon story as you’ve framed it, I would use “En montant la riviere.” Though it’s on the first site above, it’s worth quoting here.

EN MONTANT LA RIVIÈRE

C’est dans le mois de mai, en montant la rivière, C’est dans le mois de mai, que les filles sont belles Que les filles sont belles o gai, que les filles sont belles.

Et que tous les amants, en montant la rivière, Et que tous les amants y changeant leurs maîtresse Y changent leurs maîtresse o gai, y changent leurs maîtresse.

Mais moi je n’changerai pas, en montant la rivière, Mais moi je n’changerai pas, car la mienne est trop belle Car la mienne est trop belle o gai, car la mienne est trop belle.

Elle a de beaux yeux bleus, en montant la rivière, Elle a de beaux yeux bleus, une bouche vermeille Une bouche vermeille o gai, une bouche vermeille.

Oh! qu’il me serait doux, en montant la rivière, Oh! qu’il me serait doux, doux de vivre avec elle, Doux de vivre avec elle o gai, doux de vivre avec elle.
This is Harmon’s song: all the rest of those gauche Canadiens are faithless lovers, but he won’t change his sweetheart, she’s too lovely, it’s too sweet to live with her. I’d have the voyageurs singing this as he departs, with him sitting clueless in the bow (poor dumb maudit Anglais). By the time he comes home, with his French wife and a family of his own, he’s learned the truth of the voyageurs’ song as he mounts his own river, the Richelieu, for Vermont and home. I’d have a woman’s voice singing it then as a lullaby (Lisette to Sally and John), and Daniel smiling and nodding along as he remembers. Now he understands.

As-Yet Unanswered Questions

When did people start calling Harmon "the priest?" Do you have any other tidbits about him that would make his character come alive?

Was Harmon in love with the land before he met Lizette? Did he embrace or accept his surroundings and its people (natives)?

What kind of values did he uphold in the interior?

What was his religious evolution? Take me through the steps - from him entering the business to leave his religious background, to him reading the bible because he's bored, to his conversion?

Tell me about his family and father? Who was he? what was his influence on Harmon?

How do you become a winterer? how did Harmon become one? What are the qualifications for the job?

How do you get promoted in the interior? It took Harmon 18 years to become a partner!

What did Harmon think of the fur trade? What did he think his life was going to be like? Did he have a romanticized notion?

Did Harmon feel like an outsider in the interior? Tell me about his loneliness?

How was Daniel and Lizette's wedding conducted? What happened exactly?

what kind of father and what type of husband was Daniel Harmon?

Which English books did Harmon use to teach her daughter Polly to read?

Crosscurrents Blog

Lynn's Decluttering Planner

1) FlyLady.net: How to Declutter

FlyLady.net: FAQs like What is a 27 Fling Boogie?

2) Who Picks Up What

Vietnam Veterans of America: Schedule a pickup online

FX - MIT Furniture Exchange

Donate Books | Got Books?™

Big Brother Big SisterFoundation (takes computers & cars)

Computers with Causes

3) Where to Take the Rest

Clothing, Sporting Goods, Housewares to Goodwill

Bicycles to MIT Women's League - Service Projects

Interview Clothing to MIT Women's League - Service Projects

Book Trade to Book Rack: 1/4 Cover Price for Store Credit

Books to Hands Across the Water Arlington

Food to Arlington Food Pantry

Rosie's Place Shelter: clothing, toiletries, non-perishable food

4) What to Keep and How Long to Keep It

Which Financial Records to Keep (and How Long to Keep Them)

LIGHT from Ed Softky

Finding Lisette's Grave

Finding Lisette's Grave

Christmas Mummers Kit

Definition of Mummers

An Unusual Wassail Ingredient: Roasted Crabs

Recipe for Wassail with Eggs

Origins of the Expression "To Drink to the Pin"

Colonel Pickering's March to Lexington, 1775

Advice to Dancers, 1729

Lynn's Colonial Ancestors 1750-1815

Lynn's Planter Ancestors: Eleazar Hibbard Homestead in Yarmouth, NS

The Music of the Waters: Sailors' Chanties, 1888

Lynn's Yankee Ancestors: Cobbs and Parkers of the Plymouth Colony

Lynn's Revolutionary War Ancestors: Hibbards of the Connecticut Militia

Primary Source Texts: Google Books for Singers

The Golden Whales of California and Other Rhymes in the American Language ... By Vachel Lindsay

Morley Madrigal: The Morris Dance 1600

The Wassail, Robert Herrick, 1900

Back to the Source: Online Links to Morris Musicians of the Past

RULE 3: READ ABOUT MORRIS MUSIC

RULE 4: LISTEN TO MORRIS MUSIC

On Planning a Set: Hook, Line, and Sinker

Rule #1: One-Two-Three

Rule #2: Before and After

The Set List

The Amateur is the Audience

Hook, Line and Sinker

The Spontaneous Triad: 1986-1988

University of Wisconsin Heritage Ensemble: 1988

Lingua Franca: 1999-2001. Where Are They Now?

Who Were They Then? (from the Lingua Franca webpage)

Sea Music: The Launching of the MIT Chantey Sing

CBC's The Pathfinders: Background Research Q&A for documentary film on Daniel Harmon

Q: Can you describe the type of relationship that [Daniel] Harmon had with Lizette?

Q: Who is Lizette Duval? Can you write up a character sketch? What made her tick? What's quirky and fascinating about her?

Who is Daniel Harmon? Can you write a short character sketch? Why did he leave Vermont and enter the fur trade? What is his motivation? What did he hope to accomplish?

A Voyageur Song for Daniel and Lisette

As-Yet Unanswered Questions

Big Brother Big Sister
Foundation (takes computers & cars)