Learning to enjoy the aches and pains

We spent yesterday in driving snow at Stevens Pass, learning that my early successes in skiing at Snoqualmie and Whistler don’t necessarily guarantee continued upright skiing when it comes to tackling blue runs. Best wipeout: coming down a slick steep run, my skis lock momentarily and I go sprawling. Not just a fall, I cartwheel head over heels, my skis going out at right angles to my body, until I land spread-eagled on my back. Needless to say, this happened fairly close to the chairlift, from which I could hear applause and cries of “I love you!” (male voice) and “I want you!” (female voice).

What could I do? I raised one pole in salute. (They were too far away from me to see my finger.)

The Critiquees for Music

The first annual Critiquees awards for Music have been announced over at BlogCritics. Cool differences between the Critiquees and the Grammys? In-line links to interviews with the artists and honest reviews of the albums, for starters, plus a best albums list that includes Wilco, Beck, and Sonic Youth, but also Norah Jones, Interpol, Bruce Springsteen, and Sigur Ros. Plus, for some reason, a Buffy soundtrack compilation. Neko Case’s Blacklisted got a nod as one of the top five Country-Americana album of the year.

What’s interesting is how when you poll a bunch of wildly opinionated bloggers you get something that looks like the Pazz and Jop listings in the Village Voice. Resolution: must be more obscure next year in my nominations.

For the weekend’s listening: Bascom Lamar Lunsford

Finding Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s Ballads, Banjo Tunes, and Sacred Songs of Western North Carolina was an unexpected stroke of luck. With all due respect to the artists on “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, this is the real thing. Old English ballads (“Death of Queen Jane”), historical songs (”Swannanoa Tunnel”), famous songs (“I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground,” brilliantly anthologized on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music), even a whiskey drinking song (“Old Mountain Dew”):

The conductor said with a nod of his head
“My wife she never knew
That I take my fun when I’m out on my run
So bring me a quart or two”

Of good old mountain dew
For those who refuse it are few
But his wife said to me, “You can bring me three
By the time his train is due.”

But the best part is that it’s a connection back into the county where my father was born and where his family was from, for as long as anyone can remember. Bascom is distant kin, and getting to hear him speak on this introducing the tunes as he recorded them for the Library of Congress in the late 1940s is spine-chilling.

The out sound from way in

Does anyone else remember that funny moment in the early 90s when the hot sound of the decade was the Hammond B3 organ?

Yeah, I thought not. But it was for real. It was the Charlatans, from Manchester, later renamed the Charlatans UK (my suitemate said puzzled “why is it the “Charlatans Suk?’”) to avoid copyright confusion in the US, who brought the noble Hammond back from its lingering slow death on thousands of late sixties Verve recordings into its proper place. As, um, a rhythm instrument.

So I’m listening tonight to their first album, Some Friendly. And it is an album. As in, vinyl. As I had to explain to Lisa tonight, WTJU was having a fundraiser. And the pledge prize was an LP. I got to rifle through boxes of LPs outside the studio, in the basement of Peabody Hall. The irony was, I had to find someone in the dorm with a record player to make a copy on tape, because I couldn’t listen to it otherwise.

So the sound. It stands up kind of well, in a nostalgic kind of way.

Sharing the love

It almost escaped my attention this morning; as much as I love reading Moxie’s work, I don’t usually read her writing about reality TV. (Disclaimer: I am lying through my teeth. Others are addicted to the shows; I’m addicted to Mox’s write-ups.) However, I did read her note about the season finale of The Bachelorette this morning, only to find that she asked her readers to, quote, “go give some good lovin’ to Jarrett House North” endquote.

I don’t feel worthy of all that good lovin.’ For one thing, my blog already gets plenty of lovin’; for another, so do I. So I would direct any good lovin’ that you want to give this blog to some of the fine sites in the left hand side, who are collectively and individually a lot more worthy than I.

Nevertheless, thanks to Moxie for making my morning.

Rubbing elbows over rustic Italian food

Lisa and I went to an event last night at the Dahlia Lounge in celebration of Micol Negrin’s new cookbook, Rustico Cooking. The seating was billed as “festival,” which usually means you get seated with either an alarming assortment of loners or a party intent on making a good time by ignoring you. Not last night: our table-mates included the proprietor of a lavender farm in eastern Washington, the wife of a wine maker from Chateau Ste Michelle and her charming mother, and a salesman and collector of cookbooks (“I’m up to over a thousand now. I need to buy some more bookshelves. But on the plus side, I don’t have to buy other new furniture, I just sit on the books”). A fabulous night, and a fabulous meal composed of recipes from the book.

Appetizers: Sicilian olives marinated in olive oil, lemon, parsley, and garlic; fresh fried sardines with slow cooked onions and sultana raisins; a seafood salad with scallops, scampi, potato, cauliflower, and egg covered in a salsa verde. First course: three-meat agnolotti (rabbit, lamb, and veal). Second course: rabbit with pancetta stuffed fennel over kale. Sweets: chestnut fritters with honey and mascarpone. Cheeses: taleggio, a truffle cheese, and gorgonzola. Each course had Italian wines selected by the proprietor of the Pike and Western Wine Shop (whose mailing list alerted us to the event).

Perks: getting to meet Tom Douglas. Getting reintroduced to Micol, whom we had met previously at a similar event in Washington DC sponsored by La Cucina Italiana, her previous employer. Meeting our tablemates. Tasting the Col Solare that one of our table mates brought from her husband. Convincing Micol that, despite her not having had any food, she had to try a glass with some of the taleggio. A good night all in all.

Digging through Virginia

Esta breaks what was for me a five-year-old cone of silence and gives a peek inside her year as a professional contract archaeologist. Her job had her contracting to the state of Virginia, digging (per state law) at sites where the state planned to construct new public works to make sure that nothing of historical significance would be disturbed. A really cool job, right?

The constant traveling wore thin quickly, but the honeymoon would have lasted longer if not for the minimum wage, lack of decent benefits, creepy bosses and that thing about telling people their houses were going to be bulldozed.

Still, it taught her to swing a shovel. And gave her fantastic grist for the writing mill:

Rolling out of bed at 5 a.m. to get to the site on time and make the most of the sunlight. Living in longjohns, ripped jeans, flannel shirts, wool socks and beat-up boots. Staying covered in a poison ivy rash for nine months straight. Scraping deer ticks from my jeans with a trowel. The infamous black widow bite that didn’t kill me but made me wish it would. Eating lunch wherever we could, with preference given to rural gas stations that serve fried frogs legs and potato wedges, all-you-can-eat Mexican buffets that didn’t mind mud on their carpets, and diners with good pie.

Samuel Pepys: Blogfather or patron saint?

Reading today’s Pepys diary entry, a thought occurs to me: is Pepys the patron saint of blogging? Is he the spiritual father? Or is he just my spiritual father?

A great while at my vial and voice, learning to sing “Fly boy, fly boy,” without book. So to my office, where little to do…and I to Mr. Wotton’s, and with him to an alehouse and drank while he told me a great many stories of comedies that he had formerly seen acted, and the names of the principal actors, and gave me a very good account of it.

Wintering—a novel (of/on/exploiting) Sylvia Plath

Kate Moses’s novel Wintering: A Life of Sylvia Plath uses Sylvia’s calendar, journal notes, and poems—especially poems—to novelize Sylvia’s life. According to the Salon interview.

How do I feel about this?

Let’s examine the last page of the excerpt published in Salon, specifically the last paragraph:

In the eye blink of a god, in a heartbeat, all that she clung to rises up with her like smoke, like ash, into the charged, dead air: The cakes of soap. Her wedding ring. His gold filling.

Hmm. Remind you of anything?

On the one hand, it’s really nice that someone is attempting to illuminate the interior chamber of Sylvia’s life. On the other hand, it’s a bit creepy, and more than a bit sad, that the best writing in the whole excerpt is a direct repurpose from her most strident poem. And that Moses had to work so hard to set up the “gold filling” part.

(On the other other hand, I think I need a “Books” category.)