I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES— an exhibition entitled Joan Didion: What She Means— a career retrospective with more than 200 works include painting, photography, sculpture, video, and footage from a number of the films for which she authored screenplays — is at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California through January 22nd.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is this essay by the redoubtable Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian, noting that new prime minister Liz Truss is off to a bad start in part due to … not disguising her right-wingness (as her predecessors tried to do) and it includes this line referencing both a present (and former) cabinet member:
When you’ve got both (Jacob) Rees-Mogg and (Nadine) Dorries – the Sid and Nancy of the Tory hard right– to your left, you know you’ve strayed far from even the wildest shores.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Geoffrey Chaucer the Cat— one of the felines profiled in a story about independent bookstore cats in Philadelphia.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #2 is the latest essay by Jonathan Freedland, on how the events of today (Liz Truss sacking her finance minister) is just the latest in a saga that … will not end well:
Truss was acting as if Britain were the USA, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit — and was fed by it.
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Orangina the Cat— a Massachusetts kitteh nominated for a Hambone Award by Nationwide Insurance, which recognizes “the most unusual pet insurance claim of the year" — in this case, because of an encounter with spray-foam insulation (that was successfully removed).
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz.
ON TODAY’s QUIZ— for those wondering why TFG isn’t there: besides my normal practice of not including him most weeks (so as not to do a lot of work compiling other names for naught) — the subpoena from the Jan 6th committee was nice but will be stalled (and Charlie Pierce argues we should be grateful), the Supreme Court didn’t intervene on his behalf (but he still has his friendly judge) plus Tish James taking action against Trump Organization II… means he gained a step.
SEPARATED at BIRTH— two cousins in 1913: Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, whose abdication in 1917 (and execution the following year) ended the Romanov dynasty after 304 years … and King George V of Great Britain (who reigned from 1910 to his death in 1936) and was the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… someone whose work grows on you (the more you hear it) is Rhiannon Giddens— who rose to fame in the Carolina Chocolate Drops and delivers folk, bluegrass, country Gospel from an African-American perspective … and then for good measure, adds jazz and Celtic music. She is an ace on banjo, which has its own (not well-known) history in the rural South among black musicians and — always — seems to have a multitude of projects in motion.
She was born in 1977 to a white music teacher father and a Native/Black mother (with a classical music interest) in Greensboro, North Carolina (at a time when interracial marriages were uncommon) — yet was not named after the Fleetwood Mac hit single (although that year it was a popular name given to baby girls). Her parents split soon afterward due to her mother finally recognizing that she was gay. Rhiannon was a standout in a local youth choir, and is grateful that her father did not allow voice lessons until she was sixteen (as he had seen young voices burdened with overwork). She attended a science-and-math prep school (where she felt a kinship with other Black “girl nerds”) then attended the conservatory at Oberlin College with an emphasis in opera.
She had studied banjo, with a tie to the historical legacy of Black violinist Frank Johnson (from the 1800’s) and a later banjo player Joe Thompson (whom Rhiannon was delighted to see perform in 2005). At that show, she met two other young musicians who were to join with her in the Carolina Chocolate Drops (which existed until circa 2014) … all-the-while, serving as a caller at local contra dances and featured in a Celtic band named Gaelwynd. Eclectic music, indeed.
She went out on her own in 2013, and the recording industry (especially producer T-Bone Burnett) took note of her performances: at a concert showcasing the release of the film Inside Llewlyn Davis as well as a 2014 album album (with other guest performers such as Elvis Costello and Marcus Mumford) to write/perform new music to recently unearthed Bob Dylan lyrics.
She recorded some albums (some produced by T-Bone Burnett, who produced the Robert Plant-Alison Krauss duets) with 2015’s Tomorrow is My Turn having covers of songs by Dolly Parton, Odetta, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Charles Aznavour. 2017’s Freedom Highway by contrast has mostly originals and 2019’s There Is No Other— referring to an inter-connectivity between cultures — has a blend of original songs, traditional ones and also one by Gian Carlo Menotti.
Her most recent album is They’re Calling Me Home— recorded during the lock-down in 2020 — but she has had other projects the past few years. In 2017 she won a MacArthur Genius fellowship (which she said enabled her to focus on her own works), appeared as a recurring character in the TV show Nashville, recorded a 2019 album (with other female singer-songwriters) Our Native Daughters and for the 2020 Spoleto Arts Festival was commissioned to write an opera entitled Omar (based upon a Senegalese slave) … while at the same time, she was hired to succeed Yo Yo Ma as artistic director of the eclectic Silk Road music ensemble.
She lives in Ireland today, was one of the few performers to appear at both the Newport Jazz (and Folk) festivals in the same year (2017) and just three months ago: joined Paul Simon on-stage at this year’s Newport Folk Festival to sing his 1973 song American Tune. Wotta career, and all by age forty-five.
A multitude of material ….. for a more classic blues: she and Tom Jones sing a big band version of St. James Infirmary — at this link…. and a quite dramatic version of O Death (that Ralph Stanley won a Grammy for singing a-capella for the 2000 film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?) — backed by her Silk Road ensemble from last November — is at this link.
I must include one song that she wrote, Julie— set during the Civil War, it imagines a conversation between the woman of the house and a slave named Julie as Union troops approach a plantation. She begs Julie to protect their families’ riches, but is told in response, "That trunk of gold is what you got: when my children you sold."
And finally, her rendition of one of my favorite folk tunes: Wayfaring Stranger.