EARTH ~

B-E-F-O-R-E-- C-H-A-I-N-S-A-W-S

DARIUS (Dee) KINSEY

(1869-1945)

Darius Kinsey operated throughout logging camps and locomotive yards in western Washington State from 1890-1940. His outstanding portraits of the logging life were done in high timber, poor lighting and often rain slop. He was a trouper.

His wife Tabitha (Tib) Pritts developed the negatives from Kinsey's often precarious field work and made prints, many large format portraits, which were sold by the hundreds to loggers back in their camps.

It took falling from a stump at an elder age in 1940, resulting in broken ribs, to end the photographer's tramps.

The Whatcom Museum of History and Art holds a major collection of Darius Kinsey's work.

stump house

EARTH ~

UNCLE EARL

Together for a decade, Uncle Earl is an all-women's band that put its name together by being fans of Earl Scruggs, Steve Earle and Uncle Tupelo. How names are made. And they play as lively and as well as their heroes. Original members of the band come and go, but KC Groves has stayed at the helm since 1999. Their own fans are called "g'Earlfriends", and I'm one.

photo: www.jambase.com/Articles/11885/Joshua-Tree-Ro...

EARTH ~

GUSTAV HOLST

(1874-1934)

"The Planets"

suite for large orchestra, op. 32

seven movements, composed 1914-1916

since its premiere the suite has endured

Sweetheart listens to it some mornings, pre-dawn on Dutch radio

for the Earth series: it's "Jupiter", the bringer of Jolity

tempted by "Saturn", the composer's favorite

the concept is astrological

image: www.movie-erudition.com/holst/
photo: www.gramophone.net/ ComposerOfTheWeek/View/230

EARTH ~

OTIS SPANN

One of my favorite bluesman out of postwar Chicago, voice and player. Maybe his early years in Chicago finding work and gigging and making his day wages as a plasterer put that hoarse voice sometimes into play. He only lived forty years, a real shame (1930-1970), gone to liver cancer. But during the best of those years he was the anchor on piano in Muddy Waters band, starting in 1952 and ending in 1968 when he had a few years left to try to strike out on his own.

His father was a piano player. His mother played guitar with Memphis Minnie, no less! When he had a day off from the very popular Waters band, he did session work for Howlin Wolf, Bo Diddley and many others. If only I could have drummed up his rendition of "Tin Pan Alley". It's almost the heart and soul biography of all the deepest swamp of music making. This one below will have mercy.

EARTH ~

THE DOORS
1965-1971 (54 months)
1971-1973 (w/o Jim Morrison)
Jim Morrisson was gone at age 27,
as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin,
Kurt Cobain, Alan Wilson, and Morrisson's
girlfriend, Pamela Courson. RIP.
Likewise Mikhail Lermontov
who didn't sell 75 million albums worldwide.

photo: Joel Brodsky

EARTH ~

TINY TIM

He could have been Darry Dover or Judas K. Foxglove, Larry Love, maybe Vernon Castle? but Herbert B. Khaury in 1962 chose or was labeled "Tiny Tim" for a stage name when he was booked with his ukulele at a club popular for its midget acts.

A devoted musicologist of vintage tunes, he knew them all, was known long ago to play them on the street corners in Boston. And on any size stage from around the world...Isle of Wright, Las Vegas, any cellar.

Born of a Lebanese father and Polish Jewish mother, the self-made Tiny Tim would die a devoted Catholic in 1996 of a heart attack (b. 1932).

He married three times and without a doubt his first wife "Miss Vicki" will be best remembered, having had their wedding ceremony performed on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. I watched it along with millions of teenagers. Everyone but the two of them thought it wouldn't last, and it didn't.

The musician known for his high voice will sing here without the high voice, straight and clear, and grabbing by the short hairs, fearlessly, one of the anthems from the grand Rock pantheon.

The man left behind one daughter, Tulip Victoria.

Photo: ukulelereview.com/.../

EARTH ~








BEEN GONNA



To Everett everything

He had meant to do was

Termed “been gonna” —

So when you view his

Unfinished farm built on top

Of old farms of the

Past, including the burned

Down house his was above,

And the barn once torched,

Never mind the wrecked cars

Over the river bank and

Sculptures of rusted farm

Machinery pulled into one

Corner of the pasture, and

The sugar house built on a

Slipping log sill, and the

Barbed wire fence line

Fallen in the brook, you’re

Looking at a lot of been gonna.






from Where Rivers Meet, Bob Arnold
photo © bob arnold

RICK COOKIN' SHERRY




Don't look at the hanged man!
Sherry is part of Chicago based Devil in a Woodpile

photo: gallery.photo.net/photo/3738023-lg.jpg

BERNIE FROM VERMONT

EARTH ~







www.poppers performing penguin. com


Three little girls in the
bookshop doorway of rain
say they’ve lost their penguin.


I look into the faces of all three.
Penguin?
No cracked smiles, they each nod.


I like their concentration.
Before stepping out into the rain
I say, “I’ll keep an eye out.”



answers to “Magellan”

healing.about.com/.../Penguin.htm
www.methacton.org/.../Ferdinand_Magellan.jpg

EARTH ~

THE SPRING OR AUTUMN LIGHT HASN'T CHANGED FOR FORTY YEARS

& OUR WANTING TO

RUSH OUT INTO IT AT DAWN, JUST THE SAME








The beautiful light. Before or after the leaves. In the background of this photograph is our old cabin, built by me and rebuilt many times, often each spring. Along the river. After a long winter, and the season was colder back then, and after we had lived in two rooms with books and stovewood and kerosene lamps, I would often knock out one side wall of the cabin and fit in larger windows, all used barn sashes, and it would be primarily to celebrate the return of this glorious light. I noticed the other day the spring light falls onto Sweetheart's hair all the same way.

SAVE YOURSELF





MY MORNING



&


you




in


it








LOOK



It is best to look now

At apple blossoms and

Look all you want



Though when they go



You will feel

You didn’t look

Long enough











LITTLE SECRET



We built the house

We own the house

It is our house



But the mouse

Gnawing inside the wall

Owns us right now








WORK DAY



I like

her

sweater



it used

to be

mine








WITHOUT A MAP



We aren’t fooling anyone —

Particularly ourselves



All the way up the mountain

We cleared the trail



All the way back down

We chattered like birds









ONLY A CHILD



Cookstove choco-

late chip cookies

warm the counter

guarded by

toy-soldiers






SUDDENLY THIS



How beautiful is this spring day?

Working low to the ground

In dusky woodshed

See where a stone slips

Out of the foundation

And beauty streams in on

A pinpoint of sunshine

IN THE GARDEN



for a moment —

my steps

with a toad








ETIQUETTE



no one else does —



so the dog rises

as one enters









THAW



We went out together

To the river as it floods

And the misting and mud

With lantern light you

Held we listened and

Watched at all that

Winter going away









BREEZE



who’s that waving

to me when coming

out the door —



ferns









BACKYARD



I knew I wasn’t alone —

This all day presence of raindrops

On the flat stone step









MIDNIGHT AGAIN



The great kidder —

Moonlight spread over the ground

Having me look twice for snow

WISDOM



Three very large crows swept

Over the trees that day

From beyond the river

And the deeper woods

Where no one lived

And laughed at us —



So we laughed back










WHERE TO FIND ME



That place —

Where the

Sidewalk ends

from Save Yourself, Bob Arnold, Longhouse 2010
for more see here.

photos © bob arnold

EARTH ~

DION


Dion (Di Mucci) honed his skills on street corners, one of the best
A major influence to Lou Reed, Springsteen, and even Dylan has tipped his cap
Here Dion remakes a Dylan tune all his own

photo: http://polizeros.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/diondimucci.jpg

THINK BACK, PILGRIM V

Film Clips You May Watch ~ just click a title!

ALPHAVILLE

FAR SIDE OF THE MOON

EARTH ~













I was reading the other day some fine writing by a friend who mentioned how he hesitated about posting a song
better known by the bluesman Reverend Gary Davis, feeling it might be "embarrassing" showing any version other than the Reverend's original.

I wondered if he might have been speaking to me...since I posted on the Birdhouse, for Earth Day in fact, a joyous rendition of the Reverend's "Twelve Gates to the City". I went out of my way to post this version by the Sacred Shakers simply for its joy. Joy is very good and important when you can have it. Do embrace it, share it, give it. There's a flipside to everything.

I own so many different copies of the Reverend Gary Davis on old LP and CDs you would think I might be a relative.




I didn't want to have the familiar and seminal song by the Reverend on that day. The Reverend Gary Davis was a street preacher and street singer, a vintage blues performer. Some were lucky to see and hear him when he was alive. Others passed him by in Harlem and elsewhere on the sidewalk singing and shouting and had no idea who he was. He was blind and he was fabulous. He also sang the blues from the deepest roots of gospel, and everyone knows the charity of gospel is to take it further. That means in any rendition of the song you wish: from Minnie Mouse singing it, to Son House. Sing and work with it in fields, on the streets, in your kitchens, from rooftops. May it reign. So I say, show forth any style and song and pleasure you wish when singing the Reverend Gary Davis. He can handle it.


When I think of songs that struck me blind when I first heard them, and the best for me was always walking into a record store (when we had plenty) and a song was on. Off the top of my head the first time I heard the Stones "The Last Time", or Rev. Gary Davis album "Harlem Street Singer" shook me alive. The lovely crazies running that store played the whole album, not just one stinky little song, and I stayed still and listened to it all, then bought the record! I did as I was told. The Karen Dalton moment ("what and who is this?"), Hendrix "Hey Joe", Townes "Poncho and Lefty". I could go on all day.



Once upon a time in Harvard Square on a spring afternoon I heard four or five street musicians, spread far apart, maybe unaware of one another, singing the same Bob Dylan song ("Masters of War"). All their own way. I'm still amazed.

















Rev.Davis:oscargamble.blogspot.com/2009/09/reverend-gar...
Karen Dalton: indiancountrynews.info/fullstory.cfm-ID=556.htm
Stones: concerts.stubhub.com/artist-discographies/?ar...
Hendrix: people.zeelandnet.nl/mkrecords/singles.htm
Townes Van Zandt: www.2blowhards.com/archives/002530.html
Dylan: beatpatrol.wordpress.com/.../music/bob-dylan/

THINK BACK, PILGRIM V

RAY JOHNSON

EARTH ~

Time for the cat to cry

LINK WRAY

photo: http://www.davidwarnerellis.co.uk/images/large_images/LinkWray_12_A.jpg