Images of the Mississippi in flood lead me into some odd musicial musings:





I'm reminded, somewhat inexplicably, of contrasting versions of the 1926 song "Ol' Man River", with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the musical SHOW BOAT.

The song is one of the few that works outside the context of the musical, as demonstrated by Charlie Rich in 1975. Rich was always more of a blues and jazzman, marketed as country because of the accident that paired him with the legendary over-the-top producer Billy Sherill at Epic Records. Rich performed the song as a nervous, skittery, churning jazz, rather reminiscent of the river at flood stage.

But that's not the one I'm hearing on the soundtrack in my head as I watch the levees breached and the civilian brigades desperately sandbagging stretches of river while waiting for assistance from the National Guard, being called out in more than one state--at least, such as are not deployed overseas. What I hear is the bleak majesty of the incomparable Paul Robeson, for whom the song was originally written, and who sang it onscreen in the 1936 movie version of SHOW BOAT:

I gets weary an' sick o' tryin'
I'm tired of livin' and scared of dyin'
But Ol' Man River, he just keeps rollin' along. . .

That voice as deep and inexorable as the great river itself, resigned to the vagaries of weather and the indifferent power the river wields against our puniest efforts.

I think the Old Man would sing like Paul Robeson, if he sang with words instead of the ominous roar of rising water.

Some herb lore from Auntie: Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) is in folk medicine also known as pleurisy root. An infusion was used in treating pleurisy (an inflammation of the lining between the lung and ribcage), pneumonia and other lung ailments.

Today I saw several places where it's begun to bloom alongside chicory and Queen Anne's Lace. Lovely rich orange color, bright alongside their lovely paleness.

And till next time, fair thee well.

Yesterday Moonstone and the gang over at the messageboard to which I contribute a little hillbilly political commentary and a lot of BS threw me a virtual Bday party. It got a little wild--the food was fantastic, the drinks were scrumptious, the flowers I could almost smell--we took a virtual tour of my home county, had a couple of virtual performances by Chippendales (oh, my!) and ended the day with fireworks.

The great thing about virtual parties is that you can party like it's 1999 (as Moon put it over at Much Ado About Nothing) or like the Soviets are gonna get us (as Miss A the Ornery, a connoisseur of eighties metal, would say) and not be hung over the next day. Nevertheless, after all the excitement, I felt like a fairly quiet day was in order today. So I finished a book (the results of which I have recorded at Gimme a Book--yes, I am indulging in a fury of shameless narcissism) and, while writing in my personal journal, ended up in a van Gogh painting.

Some background first: Last week Auntie was up to visit one day. She knew I was about to fill up my current journal and brought me a new one, a lovely hardback with what looked, to my untrained eye, like a post-Impressionist Paris. I happened to mention this at the party, and Moon, with a percipience that Madame Sadie would envy, found the very picture. (Thanks, Moon.) It turns out that this lovely place is a representation of a street scene in the Provencal city of Arles, where Vincent van Gogh lived from February 1888 to May 1889--the city where he had a violent argument with the painter Gauguin that ended with Vincent cutting off his own ear.

This lovely place was painted at a more placid time:



Looks like a good place to recuperate from one's virtual excesses. So I've shut my eyes and imagined myself sitting under that awning, alone at one of those sturdy little tables, sheltered from a gentle shower of rain--which van Gogh didn't paint in, but hey, we're in a drought here, so I daydream rain--, wearing a beret, sipping an Evian--originally it was a glass of vin ordinaire, but I'm being restrained after yesterday!--, nibbling on a delicate French pastry, alternately sketching and scribbling cryptic lines of poetry and prose in a sketchpad, and flirting with le garcon, who finds my fractured hillbilly French charming.

In short, I'm sitting in a van Gogh cafe, pretending I'm a member of what Gertrude Stein called "the lost generation."

Nice place to visit, for certain.

Moon, Pam, Nan, Laura, Krista, Chris, G, Rory, Auntie, Brenda (and all those who were virtual guests at the bash including lots of kitties), thank you, thank you, thank you. As the Rovers sang long ago, me oh me oh my, WASN'T that a party!

I've always had a weakness for the dinosaurs in the JURASSIC PARK movies.



Stan Winston, the man who made those delightfully ghoulish marvels--and also ET, the robots in the TERMINATOR franchise, and even Johnny Depp's scissorhands-- work, has died at age 62.

http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/ap/20080616/121365984000.html

I've watched documentaries about the mechanics that gave these critters life, but the most fascinating thing about them was the mind behind them.

Truly a master of his craft.

Later, and until then, fair thee well.

Today is not merely Father's Day; it's coincidentally my maternal grandmother's birthday. Were Mamaw still with us, she would be ninety-seven today. She was one of three non-Tennesseans in the family; although her parents were Tennessee natives, she was born in Cook County, Illinois, but they moved home when Mamaw was quite young.

She was married and gave birth to her first son in 1933. Her next two pregnancies ended with two dead children; her first daughter lived six weeks and is buried beside Mamaw and Papaw in a cemetery not a mile from where I sit; her second son lived six days and is buried in California, where my mom was born a year later. They moved home when Mom was about two, and my aunt and uncle were born here.

Mamaw never quite recovered from the loss of her two babies, though. Among hillbillies it was a custom in the old days to preserve the "crown" which was a whorl of feathers said to form beneath the head of a person who died on a feather pillow. She kept that from my older aunt; Mom has it yet, tucked into a big matchbox, just as Mamaw kept it. After Papaw died, her younger children took her to California for a visit and while they were there took her to her other baby's grave--a visit that my usually voluble mamaw never discussed.

I am the third oldest of her ten grandchildren, the oldest child of her fourth child and second daughter. And as many first babies are, I was two weeks overdue. The doctor calculated that I would arrive, most likely, on Mamaw's fiftieth birthday, June 15th.

Except, of course, I was born ornery. I was gonna be born on MY schedule, thank you very much, and arrived at something like 5:30 the next morning in a pouring rain--reminiscent of Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons": "I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine--"

When I was older, Mamaw formed the habit of calling me, every year on her birthday to remind me I was late. It used to piss me off no end; I learned to cope by observing drily, as she decried in my young womanhood my choice of jobs and failure to get married, that I was a disappointment to her from the day I was born.

It's only now, as I near the age she was when I was born, that I see what that phone call was all about: it was our private joke, the one thing she and I shared that nobody else in the family could.

It took years after she passed (eighteen years ago this coming October) for me to stop listening for the phone to ring on my birthday.

That's tomorrow. And strange though it may sound, I think I'll be listening for that call. It won't come, but I'll wait with a laugh anyway.

Happy birthday, Mamaw. Love ya.