headline of the day
NPR’s Winter Songs: Bill T. Jones on Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’
As cold weather descends on most of the country, we’re asking for winter songs — songs that evoke the season, and the memories that come with them. So far in our [NPR] series, we’ve heard some lighthearted or slightly wistful tunes, but this next song goes to a far icier place. It’s the choice of the celebrated dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones.
His winter song comes from “Winterreise,” — or “Winter Journey” — by Franz Schubert. It’s a song cycle about a solitary traveler in a savage winter whose heart is frozen in grief. Jones chose the last song in that song cycle: “Der Leiermann,” or “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man.”
“For me, it’s the musical arrangement underneath,” Jones tells All Things Considered host Melissa Block. “It speaks about a bleak landscape. And this bleak landscape takes me back to a day when I was in fourth grade out on the edge of town, looking at a snow-covered highway many, many yards away from my window — I should’ve been paying attention, but I was dreaming.
Clusterflockers with Children…
…is there a book you wouldn’t want your children to read?
tweet of the day
Home for Thanksgiving
I’m spending time with Miss Nell, who is pushing 92. I tried out some locks/alarms for her last night and left a note by the coffee pot: “Don’t try to open the doors. I’ll disarm them when I get up.” But she wanted to read the newspaper and didn’t want to wait. At dawn, she climbed through a window out onto the porch, then back in again.
She’s taking a new exercise class, at church.
While I’m here, she wants to have a talk with the three of us, her children. “Because when I ‘go,’ I plan on going fast. So y’all need to know some things.”
Where I’m Calling From…
Stoneledge Farm, South Beloit, IL.
Dan’s sister’s new world-champion, three-year-old Morgan gelding, Peeps “Town Affair.” On board and training at Stoneledge Farm, Danny’s niece’s and nephew-in-law’s facility. Peeps is an athlete, IMHO.
Thanksgiving in Rockton, y’all. It don’t get much better. One thing I’m thankful for.
Last Words
Among the last words my mother spoke to me: “I wish money had never been invented.”
30 for Thirty Days, The End.
The last day of my thirty-day project. I don’t claim it as art, just something completed.
coming out of sleep
Ben and Casey (Aflac).
30 for Thirty Days, the latest post…
I’m still following the prompts from someone I know, sort of.
from the comments
Our lead bird dog Tuffy would bring Miss Nell gifts of terrapins and turtles, try to drop them in her lap as she shooed him away. We always wondered why that? But now I’m remembering the people who walked by his pen after fishing the woods ponds and swamps. We’d stop them and examine their catches. They were big on turtle soup and often had a big one on a hook or rope. Did Tuffy “get” that? That the big terrapins he captured and ran with in his mouth back to the one person who resisted his love were considered great prizes by some? I mean, dogs, cats, owls, they just want to be friends.
headline of the day
Man Assaults Wife for Not “Liking” His Facebook Update
Sugar Von Tassels
I’m almost done with a process I started in January of evaluating all the footage I collected for a documentary I’ve been working on that started as an exploration of costume culture. This phase has been long, tedious, a real slog. I’ve been going back through each section of footage, evaluating clips, making notes, and roughing out speculative timelines. After nine months, I’ll just say I’ve gotten tired of evaluating, and wanted to make something. So, I dove into a section of footage that may or may not end up in the film (I ended up getting more footage of Sugar at a performance that may be more relavent to the larger themes of the movie), but I liked a lot of moments in this interview session, and like I said, I was tired of looking and wanted to make something. It’s still a little rough, but I hope you enjoy it.
from the archives: August 25, 2009
Driftless: Stories from Iowa By Danny Wilcox Frazier:
Life in Iowa can be punishing. Many Iowans expend their lives sweating over soil and spilling the blood of livestock; they endure the hardships associated with a life inextricably bound to the ups and downs of nature. Today, those challenges and a shift in our nation’s economy have pushed the youth of rural communities to migrate to the metropolises of America. Those left in the wake of this out-migration continue their lives, seemingly unchanged from the generations that preceded them, and entombed in obscurity.
Something I’m Working On…
I’ll say no more for the moment.
tweet of the day
The legacy of Mr. Peppermint
In memory of Mr. Peppermint, friend of clusterflock, Teresa R., sends two Peppermint-related links.
One: How Mr. Peppermint’s son became the lead singer of the Butthole Surfers.
Being the son of Mr. Peppermint has always figured into Gibby Haynes’ myth, as has a past that includes being an “A” student and basketball star at Lake Highlands High School and an accounting/economics major at Trinity University in San Antonio. Almost from the get-go, Gibby has been asked about his old man in interviews–”He’s, like, the coolest guy in Dallas,” he says on this particular occasion–and, in turn, Jerry has become something of a cult figure among Butthole fans who still find the images of father and son so much at odds. Gibby was headed for the straight life till he and guitarist Paul Leary steered the van down the crooked path in 1981, formed a partnership that would eventually lead to the Butthole Surfers, and played a San Antonio art-gallery gig where surely they were embraced as the avant-garde: Nail Gibby to the wall and call it “art.” But how Gibby got from one place to another is a story seldom explored and rarely told.
Two: How Mr. Peppermint encouraged Erykah Badu to sing.
First time I met Erykah Badu was in February ’96, at the old Grinders on Lowest Greenville, where she’d poured coffee just a few months earlier. It was a full year before her debut Baduizm was released; those Grammys were still in the distant horizon. It was her first interview, her first chance to tell her life’s story — the transition from Booker T. to Brooklyn, from a would-be with a demo to a singer with a recording contract. And one of the first things she said that afternoon was: She became a singer in large part because of a man best known as Mr. Peppermint.
Which, finally, reminds me of the Erykah Baduh tweet I made yesterday.
from the comments
Joel Bernstein (quoting):
I’m a fucking nice person. I can cook like a motherfucker, make some fucking straight-up fucking grub, fucking chicken fried steak, fucking collard greens, fucking mashed potatoes, all that fucking good-ass sausage gravy biscuits, fucking everything man, I cook like a motherfucker.
I want to find a skinny-ass little bitch, and make her fat, and then we could lose weight together, and we’ll bond.
American Juggalo, directed by Sean Dunne
American Juggalo is a look at the often mocked and misunderstood subculture of Juggalos, hardcore Insane Clown Posse fans who meet once a year for four days at The Gathering of the Juggalos.
I found this in Andrew’s Stellar links, and was immediately pulled in. Even though it’s twenty three minutes, it’s video for the web that makes that irrelevant. Sad and beautiful. Highly recommended.
Update: There is some nudity, and drug and alcohol use, so be careful at work.
what I said
Or, what I planned to say when I officiated my little sister’s wedding on Saturday. There was a technical issue (broken Kindle which contained these words) and the inevitable mispoken phrase, but more or less, here it is:
Marwage…
Now, with my obligatory Princess Bride reference out of the way…
Welcome to the Tour de Wilson.
Cait and Brad have invited you all here today to witness their official union as a married couple and, because I’m an expert in both marriage and cycling, I’ve been asked, and granted the power to officiate the ceremony. On their behalf, I apologize.
One day, about 10 years ago, I needed someone’s help moving furniture for my mom. I don’t really remember much of the story, but I vaguely remember driving to Alameda from Sacramento with a lifeguard I worked with at Sac State.
tweet of the day
from the comments
My friend Ed’s family went on road trips every summer, and they camped. I recall Ed telling me that for a while his little brother, Tom, had a pit toilet fixation. Tom just ached to know what all was down there.
What Happened When We Moved Out Here
It’s a little out of the way. We love our new home but the location is relatively remote. Not Montana prairie far, and not Desolation of Mordor far, but you have to drive for almost fifteen minutes to get a gallon of gas or milk. We’re twenty-five minutes from the Interstate, so for the first time in decades I cannot sit on my porch and hear the hum of highway traffic. Are these the metrics that define civilization? Do you choose isolation or insulation?
headline of the day
Wrestling Sisters Take Down Hit-And-Run Suspect In Oklahoma
The story of Gadafy’s invisible daughter
Yesterday in the terracotta-coloured section of Bab al-Azizia where the Gadafy family lived, I came across a room which seemed to be part-study, part-lounge. Its contents – including a Sex and the City DVD box set; CDs of the Backstreet Boys; cellulite treatments; WellWoman vitamin supplements and stuffed toys – hinted that it belonged to a young woman.
Amid the bookshelves lined with medical textbooks and copies of Col Gadafy’s Green Book, I found passport photographs of a woman, dressed in medical garb, who appeared to be in her mid- 20s.
Some of the rebels sifting through the room’s contents shouted excitedly: “It’s Hana, it’s Hana, the daughter Gadafy lied about. This was her room.”
(via @tcarmody)
