Walking the Berkshires

Family Archive Caption Contest #14

Calling all captions, creative and shrewd,
Amuse with your muse, let no shyness preclude
Your participation in these, our gay revels,
With double entendres on so may levels,
And don't give a thought to the dread Pharaoh's curse;
The crone on the camel's our Mummy, not yours!

The 14th Walking the Berkshires Family Archive Caption Contest is now accepting your entries!

Voting will commence on Monday next.

Introducing the Frog from Hell

Demon Duck of Doom, meet the Frog from Hell.

I'm not going to panic until they dig up Mothra.

Warming Up To Spring

It's official.  I, as well as most everyone else in the temperate parts of the northern hemisphere, am trying to get a bead on spring.  Pitchers and catchers have already flown to fields of green.  Maybe it's the bluebirds and robins outside, and warm foggy days like today when the river swells and the foundation wall seeps.  Or it could be that we have not been able to sustain enough clear cold days for pond skating that were not washed out soon after.  At least this year, for the first time in three, the maple tree has remained dormant through a January thaw.  I think of the sap buckets and the time, coming soon, when I will find another hand-span of trunk between the faded scars to place their spiles.  I wonder if the river herring will return in hopeful numbers to Buzzards Bay, where their season has been closed for three years running.  I think of spring peepers, and red wings, and the osprey following the fish up the coast. 

And it is still February, the traditional month of deep snows and deeper freezes here in the Litchfield Hills, the Berkshires and the high Taconics.  When I was a boy - and this April I will be 40 so I get to say that - the last of the snow melted the week before my birthday.  It is anyone's guess this year, or next, what the weather may bring.  That is part of the package for us New Englanders.  But if I am having difficulty attuning to the signs of the shifting season, what must it be like for those that truly depend on this ability?  What range of variation do they sustain?  For all its astonishing resilience, life on an ecotone is made of great swings and plunges.  The edge frays between transitional and central hardwoods.  The red-bellied woodpecker takes up permanent residence, and the cross bill retreats and is seldom seen.

Somewhere in the pine woods, great horned owls are calling their mates.  Soon, very soon now.

Cabinet of Curiosities #4 is up at Archaeoporn!

Thadd at Archaeoporn has done a splendid job with Cabinet of Curiosities #4 : The Choose Your Own Adventure Edition.  I feel like a proud parent seeing my blogchild out on her own, and Thadd has put his own creative spin on this carnival.  If you would like the chance to do likewise in coming months, you need only but raise your hand.  In the meantime, enjoy!

The Heavy Circles Making Waves

This album hooked me from the first lick. It was a smart piece of market exposure for Edie Brickell and Harper Simon to pitch their new collaboration on NPR, where I and 12 million other listeners were treated to generous samples of their new creation on All Things Considered.  I've had The Heavy Circles in permanent rotation ever since.

Each track has a distinct flavor and feel, and all complement Brickell's ethereal voice and considerable artistic range.  Harper Simon both produced and plays guitar and bass on the album with Brickell (who incidentally is his stepmother) and is responsible for pulling together a number of other talented musicians on this project, including Sean Lennon and Martha Wainwright.

The first track, "Henri", washes over you with vocals and instruments blending in different time signatures, and only later did I recognize in the lyrics an homage to Matisse.  I see it is a free download at Amazon (where I am also posting this review) so do not fail to treat yourself before you buy the album. "Need a Friend" is a reggae vehicle complete with righteous horn hits, while "Dynamite Child" thrashes with pre-techno glory and sounds for all the world like a Japanese punk band covering Bauhaus.  There are hints of Creedence and Lou Reed in "Ready to Play", and "Easier" makes me think of what the Jayhawks or a producer like Joe Henry might have done with a female vocalist of Edie's caliber.

Here's hoping they'll make it a regular thing.  Music this good can't be limited to a single album. 

Why I Read David Churbuck

For writing like this:

[M]y tablemate at dinner asked me if I was still a big fisherman. “Not so much anymore,” I replied. She asked why I fished, was it for food? The sport? Communing with nature? I thought for a second, not quite sure, and realized the answer was too weird to say out loud and that is this: I think people are happiest standing in knee-deep water with a fishing rod or clam rake in their hand, because it’s there, half-in-and-out of the brine, that a few million years ago something strange crawled out of the depths and began the process of standing on dry land, on its own hind legs, with something tasty to eat in its claws. It the place where we started, on that edge between water and land, and the place we’re compelled to return. This, according to my thinking, is why people like to coat themselves with sunblock and lie on the beach reading Grisham novels.

Instead I said, “I like to eat fish.”

And a shared affinity for New England history, and a certain broad spit of sand and its salty bays.

Pan That Picture!

How many of these scathing movie reviews can you figure out - before you Google them?   Or have you seen any films for which any of the following would be equally applicable?

1.  "The competition is enormous, but ... the case could be made for [this] as the worst film series since Thomas Edison got the wacky idea that pictures could move...The story is so convoluted and impenetrable,so impossible to grasp hold of, that viewers sit there wondering if they've had a stroke."

2.  "boring and near-unwatchable; its title sums it up with cruel accuracy."

3. "Fishtar" "One bajillion dollars.. for this? ...if they'd waited 5 years a high school AV class could have green screened it for them for a few six packs of beer." 

4.   "just to prevent any confusion for first time viewers, if somebody is called an "Indian" (or nasty derivative) then they are probably referring to the Caucasian guy in the denim jacket and black hat."

5.  "[She] has been a terrible actor in many, many films and now - fiercely aspirational as ever - she has graduated to being a terrible director. She has made a movie so incredibly bad that Berlin festivalgoers were staggering around yesterday in a state of clinical shock, deathly pale and mewing like maltreated kittens. She is also the producer and co-author of the script. If she'd done the location catering as well, they'd have had a Jonestown situation on their hands."

6. " It's a movie Trent Lott would defend, at least in private. If a Confederate flag flying in South Carolina is cause for uproar, how is this movie escaping into theaters without precipitating an NAACP press conference? Ballooning, jingoistic goat spoor..."

I've endured viewing all but #5, which is brand spanking new!

More (2/19/2008):  1.  Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)

                             2.  Batman Forever (1995)

                             3.  Waterworld (1995)

                             4.  Billy Jack (1971)

                             5. Filth & Wisdom (2008), Madonna's feature film directing debut

                             6. Gods and Generals (2003)

My Kingdom for a Babblefish!

Why Johnny can't read Norwegian:

Av rettighetsmessige årsaker kan vi dessverre ikke tilby deg denne videoen i det landet eller området du befinner deg.

At rettighetsmessige causes able we alas no matter offer you this video in facts country or area you tied up you.

Well, that certainly clarifies things.  Thanks, Monolingualism!

The Naked Cowboy Gets the Drop on Mars: Exhibitionist B

He's "NYC's third-rated tourist attraction, following the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building." He doesn't wear any pants.  And no candy-coated wannabe is going to appropriate his image without compensation. $6 million, to be precise.

I'd say the Naked Cowboy is has a case.  Pretty dumb to put the billboard where the cowboy struts his stuff.

Exhibit A:                                           Exhibitionist B:

Terry Tutorial

A challenge from far Mississippi,
And a blogger so daring and hip, he
Asks us for a meter most skip, we
Bemoan a sestain,
Beg for limericks again,
And what muses for his readership be!

More: Having taken on this fiendish AAABBA rhyme scheme meme, I've been gleefully scattering poems at the blogs of others (and some more from others have started popping up here in various comment threads as well).  I'll add links to my verses as they come online...

Smoky Mountain Family Historian:

Unlooked for gift from Lori I see,
Such praise from a poet in East Tennessee,
(Quite undeserving though I be)
If you're seeking a secret admirer
This Valentine's Day, you should hired her,
You'll be in cross-stitches, just take it from me!

Cow Hampshire:

There once was a cow from New Hampshire
A poet inspired, for damn sure
A rarified wit, and a ham, her
But Sitemeter gives me a pleurisy:
It says that she comes from New Jersey!
Perhaps that's to confound the spammer.

Genea-Musings:

For Randy, whose Genea-musing,
Illuminates posts of his choosing,
Conducive to eager perusing,
So now let us praise,
His most generous ways,
It is he we should all be enthusing!

Geneablogie

Craig Manson, the Geneablogie,
Though he lives where the gold rivers ran free,
Now prospects for lore in ancestry.
With his posts he reveals,
Old wounds that he heals,
A service to kin and to country!

Destination: Austin Family:

A Man with Dolls is Tom MacEntee,
With curios diverse and plenty,
To my cabinet proudly some sent he.
And with captions he's deft,
For rhyme has a gift,
Erato herself must have sent thee!

The Apple Doesn't Fall From The Tree:

I must confess the Apple of my eye
Is not Macoun, nor yet a Northern Spy,
But she who's tree I often wander by,
It's clear she's given family roots and wings,
And though it's she to others praises sings,
There beats a noble heart, let none deny!

Civil War Memory:

Unique among buffs is this fine Charlottes-villain,
He's unmoved by manoevers, knows that war's about killin',
Black confederate myths to debunk he's most willin'.
A fresh look at our past offers Civil War Mem'ry,
(And fresh templates as well, he's gone through 43),
His High School is blessed, makes me wish I were still in!

Dum Luk's:

Oh, dinner at Dum Luk's, a feast of delights,
You'll flip for his fruitcake, in single serve bites,
Which I can attest, for Dum Luk's overnights.
His way with a wok is a wonder to watch,
He marmalade laces with single malt scotch,
You're bound to find something you like when he writes!

West in New England:

Three cheers for Bill West in New England!
And his penchant for distant kin minglin!
(Though this meter his tongue sets a tinglin')
A droll wit, ever wry,
Genealogist spry,
So with poetic praise him I'm singlin'!