Report from the garden

Last week I quickly mentioned the unknown demise of the lettuce crop; grasshoppers, slugs???? This is the continuation of the story. I transplanted the next crop of lettuce the following day (we try to
have plants in line for succession planting through the season). 5 years back Mark had gotten us 2 young garden kittens, Spring and Diesel to guard the sweet produce that the rodents always demolished.
We had tried a trap line but couldn't keep up with emptying them or finding them when they were drug off and still had devastated crops. I didn't want cats with birds around but we mitigated that by not letting them out for the day till later in morning and they were worth their keep when finally we got full crops of  beets, carrots and melons. Cats also like to be in the garden and "help" when we're working and they also love fresh worked soil to play in. The day after the transplanting, I found freshly turned out lettuce and soil and loudly grumbled to Mark about the sanity of keeping cats while I replanted the lettuce, only lost one plant. Upon marching out of the garden, continuing to gripe to Mark, I spied sweet Spring with a furry object sticking out of her mouth as she crouched on a path. How could I scold her for one deed when she obviously was also doing her job. Upon closer exam (by Mark) the furry object turned out to be a rabbit foot (feet actually) and we believe the original culprit has been excised. So the beasts are at work protecting the crops and the rabbit hole was found.

Enjoy your greens,
Melinda & Mark

Going for a Sunday ride.

South Brule Road

Last Sunday afternoon I rode from my house on Co Rd 60 to a friends cabin on Poplar Lake north of my house about 25 miles. The plan was for a late afternoon swim followed by a barbecue with several other friends, a great opportunity to fit in a gravel road ride while my wife went to check on the blueberry crop.  As with many destinations in this county there is the fast direct route and an indirect longer route which is many times a gravel road  ride. I rode south on county gravel and paved roads till the south end of the Pine Mountain Road and the start of the interesting and quiet part of my ride. Quiet only for few other humans, I saw only one car on the forest road portion of my ride, as the fauna in the form of dear flies were out in force demanding my attention. The wet summer has created perfect insect breeding conditions. Many insect problems on a bicycle can be dealt with just keeping moving but the dear flies are another story as they can fly very fast, have painful bites and can take full advantage of slow moving cyclists when climbing hills. Enough of the bugs though, the day was sunny and mild with pretty clouds and there is great scenery along the route. There are some big pines on the Pine Mountain Road and views across the river on the South Brule Road. I continued north on the Lima Grade till just south of Poplar Lake seeing a grouse, small hawk and great water lillies on Bow Lake. I made it to my friends house in time for a cooling swim, a few handfuls of fresh blue berries thanks to my wife, and hanging out on the dock before the barbecue. A great day of riding on just a small taste of the countless miles of gravel road routes we are lucky to have out our back door.

View over Brule River valley.












                                                                                                  Which road would you take?

What we're listening to; July 21, 2011

We're starting a regular feature on the blog where we'll give reviews of notable music we've been following. This week Jerry and Olwe will talk about their finds.


Judy Garland - The Golden Years at MGM (Vinyl LP)

The other night I settled in for one of my "listening sessions" and decided to unwrap one I had never heard. I pulled the sealed vinyl of Judy Garland, removed the cellophane and opened the box, did not expect any surprises, just maybe a treat. A bit of the history, I collect vinyl and I bought this on eBay a few years ago and just set it aside for just this nights type of occasion. The album was released in 1969, the year Judy died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs (she did not commit suicide), and it reprised her career with MGM, it contained songs from all of her movie releases. It is not an especially valuable album, they cut a lot of copies, and they can still be had for very reasonable prices, but it has never been released on digital format, so it would be a unique listening session.

And so I warmed up my Jolida tube amp, turned on the phono preamp, and placed the virgin record on my SOTA Sapphire turntable, a ritual we vinylphiles relish, and carefully lowered the tonearm with my favorite Yamaha cartridge, settled down into my listening chair, and . . . I got my surprise. The MGM release was perfectly cut from the studio masters, pristine in sound and full of of what one might expect in a good theater. Wow, what a voice, what a talent, Judy was in my room that night with all the magic that made her a legend. A prodigy at 13 when she released her first recording with MGM "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart," unfortunately not among the gems on this release, but memorable and amazing performances such as "Danny Boy", "Singing in the Rain", "You Made Me Love You", and of course "Over the Rainbow" from the "Wizard of Oz" a film so complete no one has attempted to offer a newer version.

We seem to be overwhelmed with "prodigies" today with shows like "America's got talent" and "American Idol", and I have been impressed by some of them, but the full talent of Judy Garland and the way she grew with that talent over years is not yet rivaled by any of them. A rich, versatile and skilled voice, she touches her audience in ways even Barbara Streisand should envy. In short, it's a keeper, one that will get periodic rotation in my listening sessions for years to come. While many of the songs on this release have been released in CD format, the total album has not, and that's a good thing: I cannot imagine the sound matching the magic produced on these vinyl discs. The bonus was the the 28-page 12x12 accompanying booklet with pictures from her performances and co performers - wow, look at Mickey Rooney and Frank Sinatra as kids.

Till my next audio awakening,
Jerry

Estampie - Crusaders (CD)

I'm sure you've seen those esoteric ethnic or "off on the margins" classical music CDs at the Big City Library, you know, the ones with the textbook-looking jacket and the textbook-sized booklet in three languages. You might have checked out Lute Music of John Dowland, or Mongolian Throat Music, or The Bulgarian State Radio Womens' Chorus, but they didn't really have very many catchy tunes; instead, they were more a faithful rendering of something only a musicologist in that field would appreciate. This is definitely not the style of medieval music you'll encounter with the ensemble Estampie's Crusaders, a CD which came out in 1996.

Why I find a CD this old to be "of current interest" is how big and vibrant the Middle Ages revival movement has become throughout Europe in the ensuing years, especially in Germany, a country that has been very silent musically since the days of Brecht and Weil and the Berlin cabaret scene. Besides the classical repertoire, journeyman participation in modern classical and jazz, rock and pop, Germany has been largely silent musically since WWII. This is also true for much of Continental Europe, the British Isles leading the Great White Diaspora with mass-appeal rock, followed by Ireland with Celtic folk. But in the 1990s Europe Proper began doing roots folk in a big way. The Scandinavian roots folk wave began then, and in that same time frame, Germany's Estampie came along with their unique take on medieval music.

Today there are hundreds of medieval-renaissance acts playing the European folk festivals and RenFaire circuit. And like Fairport Convention a generation earlier, they're largely blowing off North America. Imagine that! One of the biggest names, Germany's Faun, has exactly two CDs available through Amazon. The Scandi folk wave made some inroads here. For years there was the annual Nordic Roots Festival in Minneapolis, sponsored in part by Northside Records. However, the Euro-medieval revolution has gone all but unknown and ignored here. American participation has also been minimal. I only know of two bands, Unto Ashes and In Gowan Ring, who have toured Europe. Of course there is Loreena McKennitt of Canada, but she seems to split her sound between Celtic and medieval. Another surprise entrant is filmmaker David Lynch who produced a Hildegard von Bingen project. Lux Vivens included the wonderful vocalist Jocelyn Montgomery.

So what exactly have Estampie and the other bands done to this 500-plus-year-old music to pull it out of academic obscurity? To put it simply, it's now got a bite to it; now it rocks -- just a bit. Yet for all the bite and rock, it comes across all the more evocative and sensuous. Of course they've changed it, interpreted it, put it though filters, and even eclectrified it. But you can feel love, sincerity, and excitement, often missing or lessened from the scripted, standardized, purist academic fare. I guess this is why I chose Crusaders to introduce you to this phenomenon. With Crusaders you hear what the medieval academes have roundly rejected (some rather snottily), but the Euro public (especially the youth) have responded to with enthusiasm. Maybe listen to Estampie's Chanterai por mon corage and then listen to an academically purer version here done by the tweedy Early Music Consort of London. After listening to Estampie's version, you with your 21st century ears will "get it" when you here the Consort's version. Likewise the CD's version of Walther von der Vogelweide's Song of Palestine, considered by many to be the battle song of the Crusades, is both modern and timeless. I got Crusaders from MnLink. It is also available at Amazon.

Estampie occasionally tours, but there's not been much from them for a while. The principals, Sigrid Hausen and Michael Popp are most active in their parallel group Qntal, as well as other medieval music ensembles. In the meantime, the movement they help start is roaring, and I, an American, have been lucky enough to find it.

Olwe

Space Age ends with a whimper

On July 20, the space shuttle Atlantis will land with its crew, as well as all the crew of the International Space Station. This means that for the first time in over a decade no human will be in space, and for the first time since the Mercury mission back in the 1960s the U.S. will not have a way of putting a human in space. This is a rather strange and almost depressing ending to the so-called "Space Age."

It's clear to me the Space Age ended some time in the late 1980s, early 1990s when it was obvious the space shuttle mission was on a treadmill, NASA's budget was losing altitude, and no new big push into space would occur. The so-called "Information Age" may be roaring along with new whiz-bang computer stuff coming out all the time, but it's hard to get excited or romantic about computers, which are basically a composite TV, phonograph, filing cabinet, and typewriter. Sure, Ages have been named after basic trends, tools, or inventions (Bronze, Iron, Industrial Age), but after the heady romance of space with heroes like John Glenn, Werner von Braun, Spock the Vulcan, and Albert Einstein with his relativity theories, it's hard to come back to something called the Information Age.

Science fiction bailed on the Space Age sometime in the 80s, too. Instead of big adventures in space, you saw authors like William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, and Rudy Rucker turn back to the home planet where, in a near-future timespace, they wrote about very depressing, unpleasant dystopian scenarios. Today it's very hard to find a good old-fashion space-based sci-fi book or movie. Yes, the new Transformers film will pack 'em in this summer, but it, too, is far more apocalyptic cyberpunk than real space adventuring. And as soon as the final Harry Potter film comes out this Friday, Transformers will have been forgotten.

I grew up with the Jetsons and Star Trek. My boys are growing up with Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. What does it tell you when I see the neighborhood boys using sticks as swords rather than as pretend guns? Indeed. At this point you're probably wondering what my point is in all this. Actually, it's rather simple. If there's anything left in this whole millennia-long science and technology progress campaign, would it please, please, please come up with some alternative energy solutions? Like real quick. If this whole science and technology juggernaut can give us anything we really, really need, yes, it would be renewable energy sources.

We humans have doubled our population in just my lifetime. Very soon we will number 7 billion humans. And this massive blob of humanity is consuming circa 14 tera-joules of energy per year - most of it in the form of dirty fossil fuels. But our science gurus tell us we've hit a brick wall with fossil fuels: Fossil fuels are destroying the planet and they're running out. No surprises, though. My 8th grade teacher told us oil is a finite and non-renewable energy source - just like yours did, too. We all knew there was no real future in fossil fuels. Oil, for example, will not be around as a serious base resource for even another 50 years. Many argue that its production has already peaked and will now dwindle, the price rising accordingly. And of course coal is our main worry with global climate change. Dead end there, too. Natural gas is supposedly still plentiful (this is debated, however), but plentiful or not, it, too, creates greenhouse gases. The clock is ticking. . . .

I guess I'm not too sad about the end of the Space Age. Space is, well, very spacious, and it's not easy to overcome its spaciousness and actually do anything worthwhile out there in it. The dull realization of this basic fact has finally caught up with us. Other pieces of the high-tech pie are impressive, but seem to be a bit of the cart before the horse, seeing how we don't have our basic energy house in order. Sure, we've seen great strides in medicine and especially great things come on with computer technology. But the real challenge is to get ourselves off of fossil fuel and onto things like solar and wind. Because soon it won't matter if we've cured cancer, figured out how to not pass your ugly genes to your kids, or whether we all get iPad 5.0, 6.0, 7.0s. . . because if we can't get off risky, dwindling fossil fuel, it will be game over very soon!

Again, for someone who grew up in the Space Age, it's a rather odd feeling to see its end. I mean, who would have guessed that it would simply die one day in the early 21st century due to lack of interest? And it's also a rather odd thing to see the end of nuclear energy, another one of those "miracles of science" that came up parallel to the Space and Information Ages. Sure, there's still hundreds of nuclear reactors worldwide, but Germany's recent decision to bail on nukes and replace them 100% with renewable energy inside of ten years is really the death knell for this orphaned technology. Technically, the "Atomic Age" will go on with nuclear weapons, but that's a whole other can of worms. I'll wrap this post up by reiterating, We need to get to a new energy base and off of fossil fuels very soon. We've been riding this progress mule now since the ancient Egyptians, and unless we want to see 7 billion people in serious disarray (if not collapse), we'd better get moving!