WAY OVER YONDER ~

One of the many hundreds of songs Woody Guthrie wrote and left behind, picked up by the next rover and done in their own method and style. The Guthrie words are never lost, rising with a glowing common ground. Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island was the home made by Woody and Marjorie Guthrie and their four children, a very productive household at the time for Guthrie's songwriting and association with other artists. The goodness of Billy Bragg would come years and years later to mine the spirit of the spot.

"My theory is this; I'm not a political songwriter. I'm an honest songwriter. I try and write honestly about what I see around me now."

~Billy Bragg








Woody and Marjorie Guthrie


Woodrow Woody Guthrie (July 14, 1912-October 3, 1967) American songwriter; guitar, mandolin, fiddle, harmonica player; father of eight children; inspired by Dust Bowl, Leadbelly, American travels; dead-set influence on Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan. Encouraged to write his autobiography by folklorist Alan Lomax, the rambler did — Bound For Glory, published by Dutton in the center of WW2 — my G.I. father gave me his worn copy the year Guthrie died in 1967, (the same year Dylan returned to acoustic music and released his 8th album John Wesley Harding) — one of the great books handed down.















Billy Bragg: liveon35mm.wordpress.com
Woody & Marjorie Guthrie: memory.loc.gov
Bob Dylan & Ramblin Jack Elliott: John Cohen

SUNDAY SUMMER MORNING ~

photo © bob arnold

FAMILY ~

GIRLS ON RADIATORS

for everyone in the photograph




I happen to think there is very little to say about writing


except hug life and learn to live for it. Dialogue will be there.


I visited 20 years at a girls school from the late 70s to late 90s.


I could point to you just the time, the girl, the hour, when I saw


Reagan ruin America. When America decided not to listen to


Jimmy Carter and instead listen to a gimpy actor. Downhill.


I was coming into the school for two months of the year when


my work load for money was lean and mean (winter). I was splitting


wood across town for an elderly couple for those same 20 winters.


Carson born and raised. In the summer months I did the gardens


for the elderly couple. They left me cash under a tea cup in the


kitchen without fail, my paycheck. At the school I was hired to


help out our nearest neighbor at the time, a half mile down river,


who had no idea how to teach poetry (and that was because she was


trying to teach it). I was building a stonewall for her and her husband,


they had Sweetheart and me in one evening after work for supper. She shared


her plight. Her husband said, "Why don't you ask Bob if he can help?"


She said if I would visit the school with her she'd pay me her class pay


that day, $9. In 1979 $9 was $9. It still is. I sold 25 LPs and 5 CDs


yesterday for $54 cash-in-hand. Took Sweetheart out to lunch. When I drove


down to the school with my neighbor I met the kids and the kids met me.


Yes, a little wildfire rippled through the joint, this guy with ponytail and


big beard. The head of the English dept. came for a look, sleek boots,


technical skills, no literary lust. It turns out she was leaving and an


older and jolly sage was taking over. She came for a look, sat right in,


eyes sparkled and she laughed. I was hired for years to come. Not much


official academic decorum in my background, nor driver's lic. Dress the part


(black jeans, nice shirt, vest, boots) and I shot baskets in the gym for the next


20 years in my 1 hour break after lunch, always with the girls. Great games.


This is where I brought in the jocks who "hated poetry". My afternoon writing


session of young writers was crammed to the windows. Girls on radiators. All my


poetry books were bought by teenage girls. What can I say? We laughed a lot.

photo courtesy Bob & Susan Arnold: Friends & family together ~ Susan Arnold, Carson Arnold, Bob Arnold, Janine Pommy Vega, James Koller, 1995

SCOTLAND ~

Photograph of Morven Gregor, and I just love it! You want to wave back.

The photograph is taken by Bryan Evans at Old Kilpatrick on the Forth & Clyde Canal.

"Old Kilpatrick close to our boat - maybe a mile or so," my friend the Scottish poet Gerry Loose tells me in a letter today.

photo © Bryan Evans

Bob! For Your Birthday Today ~

Posted by Sweetheart, with love

DUO



The same bird every night
In the same tree singing
The same song that does
The same very songful
Thing inside of me


from Sky, Bob Arnold

photo - Susan Arnold

EARTH ~









CHANGES


Under the waterfall

Leaves finally reach

Bottom and stay put,

Every known foliage

Puffed into a hive

May strike you dizzy

When the sun is on them

And water above flows

Clear, the shaken colors

Point into your eyes

First winter light




SUGARHOUSE GONE


You’d think it would have

Lasted forever like some

Of them around here do —

This one halfway nested

Beneath the ground, piled

On stone. Downstairs, then

Empty of buckets, if you looked

Above between wide floor boards

You would see where tubs

Of sap are brought to boil

And a few souls go at it day and night

In this tiny place with windows lit

And open shutters of the cupola

Dieseling clouds of sweet steam

Had you at some point in the day

Lean for a cooling moment out the

Sugarhouse door — feeling a realness

In yourself, the redwing’s flight over

Steep pasture, dry mud on high boots —

All of this for warm days and cold nights.

While the fire that bubbled your syrup

Was somehow the same fire

That burned you down.





IT’S SO


After love, you lift your dress

Wash in cold running water.

I’ve to work in the morning,

Drive through the field, frighten

A flicker from wet grass

To the stone wall, birch, white oak.

It all started with you hugging my neck

Pulling back and laughing.

We’d open a large window upstairs

Lie down in the river sound.




The mason’s young helper unloads stone

Then breaks for a cigarette,

All day guns cement mixer blades.

Long handle shovel stuck in sand

Lime dust blowing

Whitewash peeling from ripped out

Barn ceiling boards.

Two weeks ago this was a new job —

Rotten sills weren’t jacked

Bolts cut —

A buzzard flew up from the valley

Cockeyed in stiff wind

Beating rough edged wings,

Very black on melting snow.




Now 4-wheel drives burn tread

On the hillside, tool boxes slam

Workers pitch vision to the ground,

Black flies sting our skin.




By the end of day a red fox

Hops out of that sunny part of the field.

I hear a school bus downshift miles away.

Two guys clean out a wheelbarrow

Drink from the hose

Talk of bear hunting.






from Where Rivers Meet, Bob Arnold
photo © bob arnold

BACK ROAD CHALKIES

MORNINGS ~

MIRA BILLOTTE


Mira Billotte recorded this Bob Dylan tune in 2007 for Todd Hayne's film I'm Not There. It stood out, and is as haunting as the original off John Wesley Harding, which is saying something. When not working the rounds as a solo artist and with that general free-for-all in today's music so beautifully done by many young musicians, Billotte is housed in the band White Magic.

www.last.fm/music/Mira+Billotte



and, speaking of the devil, listen to him cover a Doc Pomus tune, recorded as well by
Big Joe Turner, with equal glee:

Bob Dylan Woodstock.jpg

and then the pro...








Big Joe Turner
jango.com


. . . finally, here is Bob Dylan introducing Doc Pomus ~
born Jerome Solon Felder (June 27, 1925 - March 14, 1991 )
off his radio program "Theme Time Radio Hour".
He says it all the best.








Doc Pomus

EARTH ~









BOBOLINK


He watches my entry

Down the tilt of pasture

Clumps of mud sinking rubber boots,

Chain saw load and fuel jugs,

Holds an eye on me

In his one position.

When I set to work he sets to work,

Drops off the long spring of telephone wire.

Through the day picks at brush piles, goes

Back onto the wire, withstands the heat, watches.

It is only when the saw is shut down I hear what

He says, the scale of whistles both sharp

And gentle to the ear, no one pitch alike, perhaps

The voice of many birds together, in this new one who

Peers down as I leave and now stars to sing.






DOG MEAT


Up on the hill where the sun warms

Under thick maples he used to

Pull a sled of sap buckets past,

I’d see him right there as I walked the road

Pastured in a circle of stamped snow,

Content with hay and pail of oats —

Soft brown except where the hooves

Bushed long white hairs.

Never seemed to move from that place

Though his eyes would see me from a distance,

Wait and turn his head as I went by —

We would look at one another, and I

Remember it very clear today as I pass

And he’s nowhere around —

Sold for $350 I found out later.

The first time in seven years

I haven’t nodded to him my hello,

And this walk isn’t the same.





SELF-EMPLOYED


Take two squared stones and

Drop them almost side by side

Lift the thinner slab of rock and

Bust your guts setting it on top

Now you got reason to sit down








from Where Rivers Meet, Bob Arnold
photo © bob arnold

EARTH ~

DJIVAN GASPARYAN

The folk master of the duduk, a double-reed woodwind akin to the oboe, was born in 1928 in Armenia and started to play with earnest by age 6. Djivan Gasparyan has circled the globe many times since with his music, often leaving a trance on his audience. He has played with everyone from Hossein Alizadeh to Lionel Ritchie (which is a stretch). He's been with me since twenty years ago when I came upon his first LP I Will Not Be Sad In This World in a dollar bin. Sealed. I was hooked by the title alone. The music was all a blessing.

georgien.blogspot.com

HOUSE OF KEYS ~

NEW BOOKLET OF POEMS & ART WORK BY RAY DIPALMA

please click on image to enlarge



Three color booklet of new poems and art work

by Ray in fold-out splendor.

Both signed and unsigned editions.

Longhouse offers a free half-reading above.

Enjoy!

Signed $15.
Unsigned $8.95

(International orders kindly inquire)

order here through Paypal with free shipping

image: greeninteger.com

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ~

Oklahoma born and Texas raised, Terry Stafford was the one-or-two-hit-wonder who covered Elvis Presley's version of "Suspicion" two years after Elvis in 1964.

It was a favorite of a certain someone I know that year, and endured.

On the Billboard chart for that spring it was #6 — the same time the Beatles had locked in positions one-through-five.

The Elvis original is deep and lusty, maybe finer, but somehow he missed out having the cooing backup singers which shiver goosebumps up both my arms. Instead, on the Elvis version come guy-shouters, which often sends our kitten Kokomo flying up the stairs.

"Suspicion" (which sold one million copies) was written by the esteem Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, and produced by Bob Summers the brother-in-law of Les Paul. Terry Stafford passed away in 1996 at age 54 due to liver failure.

Terry Stafford and The Pixies Three



Of course I'm not about to avoid The King's version:







elvispresleytheking.com





now, put the two songs together and it just might sound
like this ~








chris isaak / www.100xr.com

HELPER ~

stone construction & photo © bob arnold

Bob Arnold's ~
DREAM COME TRUE

please click onto pages to enlarge






Bob Arnold's Dream Come True (Sanndroymd)
Published by Nordsjoforlaget, 2009
Bilingual edition in English & Norwegian
Translated by Lars Amund Vaage
Illustrated by Laurie Clark
Exclusive cloth edition
60 pages

$25 signed


order here through Paypal plus $2 shipping

LAW ~

LITTLE THINGS TAKE 2

Speaking of little — while I proceeded to clean up my tool room last night, still barefoot, handling hammers, saws and sharp blades, I managed to knock over a small box of screws from a shelf

The screws fell without a care, scattered like metal seeds all over the strong plank floor

I picked those up and put them back into the box, only to lift the box and have the entire bottom of the box collapse and all the screws fall and scatter again

I stared down at the screws-------Saw my bare feet

This time a handful were caught between the planks of the floor

I could see them, brass tipped, not entirely lost to the below

I went to get tweezers, and the tweezers picked each one out like the doctor that once used these tweezers and picked out the stitches in my forehead after I smashed heads with a player in a backyard pick-up basketball game

I asked for the tweezers, knowing the doctor would ditch them after me

He looked at the tweezers, then into my eyes. "Sure", he said.

photo collage in tool room: © bob arnold

EARTH ~

TREEPLANTER

Never see how —

But see how —

The pine tree

Has grown a foot

Since a year ago







SKY


Hiking down from a hillside

Snow packed, saw on the shoulder

There is no doubt now

Of rain in the air

I stop at a sound

Far / nearing / wait

Two crows flying

Calling, wide apart

One straight south

The other — eastward

Belly on the tree line

I've lost sight of one

For keeping with the other







ON BUILDING A STONEWALK IN NOVEMBER


This river drifts the land,

In the long air of pines

I smell spring.

Down here, don’t wear gloves,

Don’t wear boots with leaks,

Stay working, and of course

Use the flat stones —

All the things

One learns

In a first year —

The boots take awhile, I know.

But come to you water gentle,

Very clear

Draw strong

Carry the river home to bathe.

It is November / wide open / colding

There is ice you shouldn’t trust.







from Where Rivers Meet, Bob Arnold
photo © bob arnold

SUMMERY ~

june '10

july '10

july '10

now '10

drawings © bob arnold

FLOWER ~

COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER

For me, Wildwood Flower will always be sung by the Carter Family, and after them June Carter Cash.

Written in 1860 by Maud Irving with music by Joseph Philbrick Webster, this legend has seen many variations, including some retooling by Woody Guthrie, the master of tools...plus Joan Baez, Iris Dement; Merle Travis gave us an instrumental and so did Bill Frissell, plus Jean Ritchie, Hobart Smith, and even Mike Ness took it home, wherever.

Now we have Loretta Lynn with a mountain stream opening and her usual but ever genuine Butcher Holler Kentucky way of phrasing and keeping it honest.

Born the second of 8 children, Lynn married at 13 and stayed married 50 years to a man named Doolittle. Their lives at the start was portrayed by Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones in a film with the above title, directed by Michael Apted (1980). It is well known Lynn and Doolittle tusseled but, she said, "he never hit me one time that I didn’t hit him back twice."

Lynn, at age 75, has never stopped singing. Always this good.