IT'S COLD HERE IN THE KNOBS! Hasn't gotten above freezing the past three days, wind that takes your breath, cuts through the middle of your gut, icicles on the tip of your nose--You know it's cold when a hillbilly can't go barefoot even in the house! I'm padding around in socks. The Princess, who would wear flip flops fulltime if she could, has even agreed to wear socks and boots.

No snow yet, though.

The guy from the gas company came today and topped off the tank. I watched from the window, thought about vehicle gas prices and crude oil prices hitting record highs in trading the past couple of days, and I remembered a song recorded during the energy crisis of the 1970s by the great singer-guitarist Jerry Reed about that very topic: "Crude Oil Blues."

Now listen people let me tell you some news
I'll sing ya song called the Crude Oil Blues
We're low on heatin' oil, we're low on gas
And I'm so cold I'm bout to freeze my. . .self

We got the crude oil blues

He goes on to sing about a friend of his who makes moonshine, only to end up burning his stock to keep warm, and then about wondering if his record will ever come out, only to be told:

We ain't got enough oil to keep the presses greased. . .
We got the crude oil blues
And son if we can't make records, then we don't need you. . .

Reed ends the recording with a rambling recitation about remembering, when going to the gas pump to "remember what ol' Albert Winestein said: he who expects nothin' ain't gon' be deceived."

Don't think things are quite that bad--and if the voters in Iowa had their way, we'd all be running and heating on corn byproducts anyway--

If you're somewhere cold, stay warm; if you're somewhere warm, count your blessings! And on that admonishing note, fair thee well.

Good New Year's Day to all. If I were in a cynical depressed mood I'd quote from U2's classic--i.e."nothing changes on New Year's Day"--but I'm feeling expansive and optimistic.

No snow yet, although it's scheduled to move in later.

Apparently Madame made it to Dublin without attacking Anderson Cooper on live TV. I couldn't watch--too nervous. The most excitement we had here was, just before midnight, a stink bomber--literally. At first a godless screech that might have been a firework; there was no accompanying bang, but the smell that followed was not gunpowder--it was pure unadulterated eau de skunk. Don't know what caused the little critter to detonate; fortunately it wasn't the cat.

Have a great day, y'all. As Bono sang in the same named tune, I will be with you again. Until then, fair thee well.

No word yet as to whether a woozy ol' psychic has been spotted in NYC. I decided I was gonna have to do something to distract myself from worrying about Anderson Cooper's safety (if Madame were to ravish the poor baby, he might never recover). So I turned, while I was making Mom's supper, to some of the most gorgeous heartrending music I've ever heard: the Irish group Clannad's 1993 CD, BANBA.

Again, it was Tooey who got me into their music, sort of by the scenic route; she is a major fan of their sister and onetime bandmate Enya, and I moved on from Enya to Clannad. The band, which in its latest incarnation consists of Maire Brennan, her brothers Pol and Ciaran, and their twin uncles Noel and Padraig Duggan, have recently regrouped after a ten-year break from recording and touring. They are natives of the town of Gweedore in County Donegal in northwest Ireland. They have been performing since the early 1970s, and their work has been featured in several movie soundtracks and as theme music for British television.

BANBA takes its name from an ancient Irish goddess. I was transfixed by the opening track, "Ne Laethe Bhi," which is like many of their songs sung in Irish Gaelic. It is a slow stately song with exquisite harmony singing by Maire, Ciaran, the Uncles and Maire and Ciaran's sister Bridin.

For me, however, the high point of the CD is track 6, "I Will Find You." A snippet from this song was featured in the soundtrack of the 1992 Daniel Day-Lewis movie THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. The lyrics are in English, Mohican and Cherokee. Maire sings the lead with an ethereal breathiness, and the harmonies are rich and choral. The instrumentation features mostly synthesized music, and the bass hits you right about the base of your spine. As I understand it, the lyrics were inspired by a scene in the film where Day-Lewis's character is being separated from his love interest, played by Madeline Stowe; he tells her "no matter where you go, I will find you." The song can be listened to strictly in that sense, as a love song; or it can be the soundtrack for a fantasy of seeking a true love who's somewhere out in the world but not yet found (the way I hear it).

The final track is an instrumental duet of harp and alto flute, "A Gentle Place." Dedicated to the memory of a friend of the group named Niall McGuinness, it is a fitting tribute to anyone we've lost in our lives. Tonight, after news of the death in Michigan of a cousin, it moves me to tears.

Should you get a chance and be interested, this CD is probably available for download, but I still haven't gotten COMPUTERS FOR DUMMIES and couldn't begin to accomplish that! Happy New Year, all!

Willard and I intended, for our final posting of 2007, before we watch the ball drop and sing "Auld Lang Syne" over the phone, to get a Madame Sadie's Top Ten Predictions for 2008 list.

We snuck off down the crick and up the holler only to find a cryptic note on Madame's front door: GONE ELSEWHERE. ELSEWHERE IS EVERYWHERE.

This concerned us. Well-read in the paranormal brats that we are, we knew this was a message passed on to Abraham Lincoln from a friend killed in the early days of the Civil War by one of Madame's psychic forebears. So now we've created a new game for ourselves: WHERE IN THE WORLD IS MADAME SADIE? (Okay, it doesn't have the same ring as the old kids' series WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO, but one works with the material at hand.)

We remembered that, a day or two after her Christmas Eve adventure with Captain Morgan, Madame had told us that some of her generous psychic friends had taken up a collection and were gonna whisk her off to Dublin to step dance in the new year. She added airily that she might also participate in a couple of those curious rituals that send wandering spirits "to the light."

We have our doubts about the step dancing; when Madame dances she cannot to save her life keep from flailing her arms. We also have our doubts about the rituals; Madame does about as well at that as she does at channeling, and is like as not to come home with an entourage of wandering spirits. If she brings a banshee, WE'RE taking up a collection to transport it home; that's all we need, a weeping wailing spirit roaming up and down the creekbank, unless this year we get a visit from the bobcat, whose screams would send a banshee running for cover.

Either way, Madame will assuredly come home from Ireland affecting an accent and drinking Guinness.

But this gave rise to another worry; what if, for some reason, she got stuck at an NYC airport for a long layover? She might have time to work her way down to the celebrations in Times Square. Madame, I regret to say, has another of her adolescent crushes on Anderson Cooper. She has been heard to say it's her dream to be in Times Square to kiss him at midnight on New Year. Willard and I were hit with simultaneous visions of Madame rushing Anderson's platform, pursued by policemen, and going down shrieking, "DON'T TASE ME, BRO!" Or maybe it's "PLEASE TASE ME, BRO!"; with Madame you never can tell.

Either way we have sent emails and telegrams and tried frantically to call Ace in NYC, leaving the same message everywhere: RUN, ANDERSON, RUN! So far we haven't heard anything. If anybody happens to be watching on CNN around midnight and spots a scrawny lady with a red wig and a parka diving toward Anderson, we'll know we failed in our efforts to save him from his fate. And if he comes up for air covered in spots shaped like fire engine red puckered lips, God help him.

All we know for sure is that Madame will be back no later than noon on January 7th, when her beloved Stephen Colbert is scheduled to return to air. No way will she miss that.

But that's then and this is now. Guess we chew our fingernails for the next nine hours or so. And on that nervous note, hang in there, keep it ornery in the new year, love and blessings to you all, and fair thee well.

Awhile back I wrote a blog about my favorite British ghost stories. In the interests of patriotism, I felt I should take the time to do another about my favorite American ghost tales by eminent writers. When I began the research, I found just how eminent the authors of my five favorites are: three of them were Pulitzer Prize winners, but not for their supernatural works.

In reverse order, as always. And please hold both yawns and groans till the end. It's better for my self-esteem that way.

Of course "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving has to be on the list. First published in 1820 in THE SKETCH BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON, this tale of Ichabod Crane and the ghostly antics of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow is based on legends from the old Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (now of course the state of New York). Although Irving would go on to write other tales of the supernatural ("The Adventure of the German Student," "Guests from Gibbet Island") this is the most famous. A number of movies have been based on it, most recently Tim Burton's SLEEPY HOLLOW, a very loose retelling of the story starring Johnny Depp. Fun fact: Irving was buried in a cemetery in North Tarrytown, NY; a few years ago the town officially changed its name to Sleepy Hollow.

"The Shadowy Third" by Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945). Richmond, Virginia native Glasgow was better known as a novelist; her IN THIS OUR LIFE (1941) won a Pulitzer the following year. This creepy story was published in her 1923 collection THE SHADOWY THIRD AND OTHER STORIES, but may have been written as early as 19l6. It's fairly standard Victorian fare: a sickly wife married for her money by a society doctor, positive he murdered her daughter so he would inherit a fortune, a nurse who is told the woman is mad but who, like the mother, can see the child's ghost--and the ghost's revenge against the doctor following the mother's death. Very eerie.

"The Lady's Maid's Bell" by Edith Wharton (1862-1937). The novelist Edith Wharton (a 1920 Pulitzer winner for THE AGE OF INNOCENCE; the first woman to win the award) was born into the wealthy Jones family of New York, from whom we derive the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses." This story, about another sickly woman tolerated for her money by an insensitive drunken husband, treats of how her deceased personal maid returns from the dead to protect her beloved employer. The maid, Emma Saxon, usually appears after causing her bell, disconnected after her death, to ring, thus summoning her replacement; on at least one occasion she blocks the husband's view of the new maid, prompting that worthy to blurt, "How many of you are there, in God's name?" Originally published in Scribner's Magazine in November 1902, this story leads off the collection THE GHOST STORIES OF EDITH WHARTON, first released in 1973.

"The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943). Like Washington Irving's "The Devil and Tom Walker," Benet's story of a New Hampshire farmer who sells his soul to the Devil is based on New England folklore. It fits into this category because of the satirical but spooky scene in which Old Nick summons a jury of Americans remembered for their infamous lives: the Tory guerrilla fighters Walter Butler and Simon Girty; the New England Native American King Philip; Salem witch trial judge John Hathorne (an ancestor of author Nathaniel Hawthorne) and others. Benet also used the great New Hampshire native statesman and attorney Daniel Webster as the instrument of Jabez Stone's salvation. Much of Benet's output deals in the same mythic way with American history; he won a Pulitzer in 1929 for his long poem about the Civil War, JOHN BROWN'S BODY.

And at last (you still awake?) "The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall" by John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922). Bangs's stories remind me no end of the humorous writings of Mark Twain; they combine sidesplitting funny elements with genuinely frightening ones. The title story of his 1894 collection THE WATER GHOST AND OTHERS treats of an American who inherits an English manor house haunted by the extremely wet ghost of a suicide by drowning, and how he uses the new technologies of the time to lay the ghost.

All these stories are available online. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "The Devil and Daniel Webster" are available in any number of anthologies as well; the others are a little harder to find.

Hope you don't mind too much my rambling on like this; it's a damp chilly day and I needed something to occupy my mind; I get whiny unless I can get brain and hands working together. Think I managed quite well. And if I don't get the chance to say so before, Happy New Year to all!