June 2009
18 posts
2 tags
Haratanaya Sree
Photo courtesy of Preethy Sivakumar on Flickr.
Song’ Haratanaya Sree’ performed on veena by Veena Kinhal.
*Performance available at the Free Music Archive.
3 tags
A Farm-Picture.
THROUGH the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding; And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.
— Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass. 1891-1892.
3 tags
Photo courtesy of Jessica N. Diamond on Flickr.
The Thousandth Birthday Party Durant Imboden, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, December, 1966.
part 3
It was a simple idea, of course. For that matter, it wasn’t even a terribly new idea. Prophets in the fiction and alarmist propaganda fields had been predicting similar lotteries for several centuries.
In any case, the...
2 tags
Man’s relationship to his environment is a function of his sensory apparatus plus how this apparatus is conditioned to respond. Today, one’s unconscious picture of one’s self—the life one leads, the minute-to-minute process of existence—is constructed from the bits and pieces of sensory feedback in a largely manufactured environment. A review of the immediate...
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Summertime, II
Photo courtesy of nahlinse on Flickr.
Song, ‘Summertime’ by George Gershwin (music) and Dubose & Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin (lyrics). Performed by Aaron Nville on his album Nature Boy: The Standards Album, 2003.
3 tags
A Hand-Mirror
HOLD it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is it? Is it you?) Outside fair costume—within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye—no more a sonorous voice or springy step; Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,...
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The Art of Caricaturing
— Mitchell Smith. The Art of Caricaturing. 1941.
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Summertime
Photo courtesy of Brian Hathcock on Flickr.
Song, ‘Summertime’ by George Gershwin (music) and Dubose & Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin (lyrics). Performed by Doc and Richard Watson on their album Third Generation Blues, 1999.
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When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before,
me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide,
and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with
much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by...
3 tags
Photo courtesy of gilderic on Flickr.
The Thousandth Birthday Party Durant Imboden, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, December, 1966.
part 2
Lots of people worried about the party. Practically anyone in his or her 900’s, as well as the kinfolk of these most senior citizens, worried about the party. For on a person’s 1,000th birthday, the lucky fellow or woman...
3 tags
Poets to Come
Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, atheltic, continental, greater
than before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.
I myself but write one or two inidicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the
darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering...
2 tags
Photo courtesy of tronics on Flickr.
Song ‘Amazigh’ performed by Brahim Fribgane on WFMU’s Transpacific Sound Paradise*.
Brahim Fribgane, oud
*Performance available at the Free Music Archive.
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Shut Not Your Doors
Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all your well-fill’d shelves, yet
needed most, I bring,
Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,
A book separate, not link’d with the rest nor felt by the
intellect,
But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.
— Walt...
3 tags
Photo courtesy of Jasmic on Flickr.
— Song ‘Milestones’ by Miles Davis. Performed by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman on the 1998 record, So What.
Jerry Garcia, guitar | David Grisman, mandolin | Jim Kerwin, bass | Joe Craven, percussion
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I Hear Ameica Singing
I hear America Singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of the mechanics, each one signing his as it should be
blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves
off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the
deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker...
2 tags
Scenes in America
— Rev. Isaac Taylor. Scenes in America, for the Amusement and Instruction of Little Tarry-at-Home Travellers. 1848.
3 tags
Photo courtesy of Mark Coggins on Flickr.
Song ‘Panhandle Country’ written by Bill Monroe and performed by the Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza. 1999.
Sam Bush, mandolin | David Grisman, mandolin | Ronnie McCoury, mandolin | Jesse McReynolds, mandolin | Bobby Osborne, mandolin | Ricky Skaggs, mandolin | Frank Wakefield, mandolin | Buck White, mandolin | Del McCoury, guitar
3 tags
On Journeys through the States
On journeys through the States we start,
(Ay through the world, urged by these songs,
Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,)
We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all.
We have watch’d the seasons dispensing themselves and
passing on,
And have said, Why should not a man or woman do as
much as the seasons, and effuse as much?
We dwell a while...