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Category: Amusements (Page 15 of 31)

Things that are amusing

Stirred up over Stir up Sunday

Amongst American Episcopalians, this is Stir Up Sunday (see last year’s post). Others hold that Stir Up Sunday is the first Sunday before Advent, but we go with the American Prayer Book (the Commonality of the Book of Common Prayer is only national).
We are all astir as this is a very busy season for the North Carolina Boys Choir. Tucker and the Choir were in Raleigh singing the Service in Lessons and Carols at Saint David’s while Sally and I made the rounds to various School parties.
The Boys Choir big Christmas Concert is Monday, December 19th at 7:30 at Duke University Chapel.

Getting there – to the Grind and in the Triangle

First important news! The Daily Grind is accessible again. We’ve had to weave through Student Stores for coffee and tea for what seems like forever, but now the fence that blocked us from the beloved Grind is down and you can walk right into the Grind! But all is not completely clear, according to UNC ConstructionWatch work on the Daniels aka Student Stores Building will continue through December 2006.

Second, Councilman, Triangle Transportation Board member, and Goodmon Award winner Bill Strom replies to my forwarding him notice of Google Transit’s Portland only transit planning maps by sending me a link to RideTTA which does the same thing for the Triangle and does, to my mind, a better job too. Unfortunately, the maps all tell me to walk over a mile to get on the transit grid just to get started. Others might be better situated to take advantage of RideTTA.

Update: Bill writes again to say that if there is no bus stop within .25 miles of you, Chapel Hill Transit will send a shuttle to you. I don’t mind a little walking but I might try a shuttle to start a trip to Raleigh.

Podcastercon – Getting iTuned

One nice thing about the upcoming Podcastercon as an unconference is that you can propose a session on a topic that you know something about but want to know more about — sort of like Birds of a Feather sessions. TJ and I have proposed a session on iTunes and podcasting.
We were early in getting Roger McGuinn’s Folk Den registered and working with iTunes so we learned a lot about the iTunes extensions to RSS, but there are a couple of things that still drive us nuts. Like, how do you get the image to show in the “Drag Album — Art Here” area under Selected Song? LeShow from KCRW gets their picture there most, but not all, of time. We have the same RSS extensions that we see coming from KCRW but we can’t get our image in place. Not that Roger has a “Drag Album” ;->

Podcasterconpodcasterconpodcastercon
Where: 116 Murphey Hall, UNC, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
When: Saturday, January 7, 2006 11am – 4pm

Michael Parker reads from Ain’t Gonna Bump No More

Leslee Farish write to alert us that Michael Parker will read from his story Hidden Meanings: Treatment of Time, Supreme Irony, and Life Experiences in the Song “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More Big Fat Woman.” I blogged about being delighted by this story when I read it in the Oxford American back in January.

Who: Michael Parker, UNC alumnus, award-wining novelist and fiction professor in the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s MFA writing program
What: Parker will read from his story Hidden Meanings: Treatment of Time, Supreme Irony, and Life Experiences in the Song “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More Big Fat Woman.” He will also be hosting a discussion focusing on the issues raised in the story: body image, stress, family life, and relationships, in addition to sharing his own thoughts and feelings about the piece.
When: Noon, Friday, December 2
Where: the Mary Turner Lane Reading and Resource Room at the Carolina Women’s Center 134 East Franklin St, Suite 215

Google Map overestimates OBX trip time

With the blazing new roads that now take us to the Lone Cedar Restaurant at legal speeds of up to 70 mph, the trip out to Ocracoke is a much faster one than advertized. Of course the reduced ferry schedule nearly makes up for the time savings. We made it to the Ocracoke – Hatteras ferry at 4 past 7 am this morning. In time to see the ferry round the end of the island. The next ferry was at 8 am. Luckily the friendly station mistress was generous enough to share some of her coffee and some talk.
We still made it to Chapel Hill in record (for us) time and in time for Tucker to get to his afternoon meeting.

Part of being a pirate…

Is not having all of your parts. So goes the chorus of the sing-a-long song from Capt. Rob Temple of the Red Sailed Schooner, Windfall, as he and his daughter led us all at the Ocrafolk Festival Thanksgiving Concert last night. The sold out show at the Community Center featured all kinds of local Ocracoke talent lead by the Molasses Creek folks — Fiddler Dave and Gary Mitchell. Lou Castro of Coyote added slide and dobro to a lot of the selections. Martin Garrish and his 80+ year old uncle Jule sang together. Donald Davis told a wonderful tale of deception over a red coat. Roy Parsons who is easily as old as Jule Garrish and then some played his famous single chord. Cheryl Roberts showed the crowd that a fiddle can be a violin and can play more than bluegrass (not that bluegrass is bad, but she def took us down a classical track with a bit of new Old Time tossed in).
This was a fundraiser for the upcoming 2006 Ocrafolk Music and Storytelling Festival to be held June 3 and 4 on the Island.

Albert Styron’s Gone

Coming to Ocracoke after about 18 months off island brings some surprises. First the Jolly is closed for Thanksgiving as is the Silver Lake Hotel which is part of the same enterprise. Next we walked over to the lighthouse and noticed that Albert Stryon’s Store is now a printing company. “No longer retail” reads the sign on the steps. Along the road on the point, the North Carolina Coastal Land Trustees have purchased some property and made a nice walk out to the inlet available. Along the way is the grave of Sam Jones who is seriously awaiting resurection. The rumor is that Sam is buried with his horse. At the blast of Gabriel’s trumpet, Sam will jump on the horse and ride to Glory. Teach’s Hole our favorite pirate store gave us a scare. They has a For Rent sign on their building. Our last trip they told us that their landlord was going to boot them and install a bakery in their place. Our waitress at the Pelican, where we had a grand Thanksgiving dinner, told us that Teach’s would be moving to the Main Road up across from the Variety Store.
[more tomorrow]

Tyndall Holiday Show

Sylvia pulled Sally and me out of the crowd and took a couple of pictures of us at the Tyndall Galleries Holiday Show on Sunday.
Later on Sylvia’s group, the Janes (no relation to Jane Tyndall), sang a set, then Sylvia and jazz pianist Chris Reynolds sang some duets. We had to run out before the duets really got going.
The great thing about the Holiday Show is that all the artists show up and hang out. And you get a good selection of all the work that Jane Tyndall represents.

Afro-Celts Talk

Michael Newton’s talk in the Afro-Celts were not only a good one but one that kept people talking during a long question time. And it drew an interesting collection of people who seemed to belong to every cultural configuration available including a sociolinguist who might be called Afro-American but is also Catawba and probably Scotts as well. A wonderful woman who sang “Motherless Child” in a duet with Michael whilst he sang a song in Gaelic about the Highland Clearances. Several people wanted to talk about geneology and several wanted to claim themselves as Scots-Irish which Michael would say is not a Celtic culture, but a culture of those who rejected Gaelic and who sided with the English rejecting the culture of the Highland Scots. For Michael, to be Celtic is to speak Gaelic and to embrace the culture of those who are Gaelic speakers; that is, Highland Scots and anyone who would be like them or better would be adopted by them. So that if an African were to enter into Scots culture and speak Gaelic then … There is plenty of evidence that Scots culture in music and in dance and even language (as well as mixing of Scots and Africans) happened often in North America and in the Carribean .

“Lost Voices of the Afro-Celts” Thursday

What: “Lost Voices of the Afro-Celts”
Who: Michael Newton, PhD Celtic Studies
Where: Toy Lounge, Dey Hal, UNC
When: Thursday November 17th, 3:30 PM

Summary: Modern American consciousness is highly racialized: we are told implicitly and explicitly that our skin color determines our race, our identity, to whom we belong and what belongs to us. The reality of American history, even in the South, is not so easily segregated, however. There have been many fascinating exchanges and interactions between people of African ancestry and people of Scottish Highland ancestry.
African-Americans came to speak Gaelic fluently during the eighteenth century, and services in Gaelic lasted even longer in black churches than in white churches. African-Americans, as professional musicians in the South, played a variety of instruments and styles, including Scottish Gaelic tunes for dances. Like every other group of European immigrants in America, Scottish Highlanders took different roles in the institution of slavery: many Gaels, especially in the South, became slave-holders, while others were fire-brands agitating for
abolition. In both cases, Highlanders left their mark on the history of African-Americans. Those expressing the injustice done to Scottish Gaeldom, especially during the Clearances, made explicit parallels with the African experience.
This lecture will explore some of the forgotten connections between African-Americans and Scottish Highlanders and remind us of the rich cultural interactions between people of all ethnic origins in North America. Celtic heritage is not reserved exclusively for “white” people: it is an important element in the history of our nation and belongs to people of all colors.

More on Michael Newton:
Dr Michael Newton has a PhD in Celtic Studies from the University of Edinburgh. He has written several books and numerous articles on Highland history and tradition, and has become the leading scholar on the culture and history of immigrant Highland communities in the United States. He is a fluent Gaelic speaker, a proponent of Highland song and dance, and a published creative writer in the Gaelic language.

Sponsor:
The Centering the American South lecture series of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Rule of Sevens so far

I’ve six poems written and five of those published for the series I’ve been working on based on the number seven. Since each of the six corresponds in some ways, often obliquely, with each of the seven days in Genesis’ first creation story, I could take the seventh day off for rest.

Here’s how it looks so far:

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