Vern Gosdin: or, When I want to listen to country . . .

. . . I want to listen to country. FM country stations do not play country music anymore, but some pop/ country hybrid music. I don't think most people under the age of, say, 28, even know what country music is. It's so bad that when someone asks me who my favorite male country singer is, and I say, "Vern Gosdin," they look at me like I'm wearing my drawers on my head. Everyone has his or her own musical tastes, and I am tolerant enough to acknowledge that. So you can have your Taylor Swifts, Keith Urbans, and pop-masquerading-as-country-sound-alike-band (take your pick; they seem to multiply like germs on a petri dish)--Vern is THE VOICE.

Merchandising, merchandising

The Great Spirit, when He made the earth, never intended that it should be made merchandise. 

--Sosehawa, Seneca

The Price of Water

( Attribution: W.J.Pilsak at the German language Wikipedia )

I haven't been to the movie theater in years. The last movie I went to see was We Were Soldiers, if that helps to give you an idea of how out-of-the-loop I am. So you can imagine my shock when I heard on a morning news show that a small bottle of water at a movie concession costs around $4.00. (I verified this price with my movie-going daughter. This is true.) Who in the hell would spend that kind of money for a bottle of water?! Unless someone was shriveling up in a desert, or a castaway at sea, I just cannot imagine it. If I spend $4.00 on water, it better be in the form of two cubes adequately surrounded by scotch or bourbon.

Seamus Heaney audio presentation. And a poem.

(credit John Minihan)

Seamus Heaney. One of my favorite living poets. I had the chance to listen to this Royal Society of Literature presentation the other day--if you like poetry, you might think of taking the time to listen for yourself. In the meantime, here is a selection from Heaney's poem series named Squarings.




Crossings: xxxvi

And yes, my friend, we too walked through a valley.
Once. In darkness. With all the streetlamps off.
As danger gathered and the march dispersed.

Scene from Dante, made more memorable
By one of his head-clearing similes--
Fireflies, say, since the policemen's torches

Clustered and flicked and tempted us to trust
Their unpredictable, attractive light.
We were herded shades who had to cross

And did cross, in a panic, to the car
Parked as we'd left it, that gave when we got in
Like Charon's boat under the faring poets.

Distances

For Three Word Wednesday, prompt words banter, duty, element. Inspired by memories of my Papaw (brought on by my parents' recent visit) and Neil Armstrong's passing.

Distances

We laughed at him, shuffling

his feet down the hall, squinting

age-dimmed eyes as if surprised

by the tenacity of life.

His old-timer pace

just would not do

for children of the Space Age,

living in a world made fast

by spark and fuel. He never

walked too far: from bed

to john, to corduroy reclining

chair where he would sit

like a duty fulfilled,

looking at his mangled hands

and marveling at the work

they had once accomplished.

In fine weather he would ride

with us to Lake Tohopekaliga,

choosing the nearest bench

as an observatory. The expanse

of elements and circling flight

of bantering gulls seemed

to satisfy a need for distances—

for though we couldn’t imagine

it he hadn’t always been limited.

We didn’t see him as a boy, striding

tall in the dark furrow,

guiding the team with

gee and haw in Uncle Lanta’s

field; or later, fearful but

resolute, heading to the Reisden’s

to ask Bessie to the dance. Nor

could our little minds

calculate what it took to walk

deep into the earth for

forty years, finding coal

and breathing the dust that

finally laid him down.

We saw only a slow old

man, so earth-rooted

that he was sure the lunar

landing was a stunt;

but in the sum

of his small steps I

reckon he traveled

broad distances, each step

one giant leap.

Immortal by Beauty

(Sunrise, Daufuskie Island)

June 8, 1838. Why do we seek this lurking beauty, in skies, in poems, in drawings? Ah because there we are safe, there we neither sicken nor die. I think we fly to Beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature. We are made immortal by this kiss, by the contemplation of beauty. 

--Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Journals

Loss of Sacramental Thinking

Man knows how to use machines but not how to use the world; he earns his bread by technology, not by his art. This is why it is impossible for bread and wine to represent for urban man the summing up of life, the life and work of a whole year with four seasons, a year of sowing and harvest, subject to weather and winds.  

--Christos Yannaras, from The Freedom of Morality