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Collier, Lee landscapers and nurseries not yet worried about new whitefly pest
NAPLES - The rugose spiraling whitefly arrived in Miami-Dade County in 2009. The infestation has spread from Monroe to Palm Beach counties.
There's a new bug coming to town.
The new nuisance fly soon could be buzzing in Southwest Florida, but so far local nurseries, garden centers and landscaping businesses say they haven't had a problem with the rugose spiraling whitefly.
This new fly could cause some damage, but it can be fixed, said George Akers, owner of Akers Family Pest Control.
"It would be no problem," Akers said. "I'll tackle it when it comes in."
The rugose spiraling whitefly could gradually work its way to Southwest Florida from South Florida, said Doug Caldwell, a commercial landscape horticulture extension educator and landscape entomologist with the University of Florida Collier County Extension Service.
Fortunately, this new whitefly (also known as the gumbo limbo spiraling whitefly) doesn't seem as damaging as the ficus whitefly. The ficus whitefly was confirmed in Naples for the first time in January 2009.
"It's not going to kill the plants like the ficus whitefly, but try not to park your car or walk too slow near an infestation," said Caldwell, also a Daily News gardening columnist.
The whitefly strips nutrients from host plants, leaving a sticky goo and white residue, which makes plants look nasty. In addition, the fly damages car paint, patio furniture and can impair chlorination in swimming pools.
The rugose spiraling whitefly arrived in Miami-Dade County in 2009. The infestation has spread from Monroe to Palm Beach counties. Miami-Dade and University of Florida agriculture extension office scientists say hot summer weather is causing the infestation of the insects to spread along Florida's east coast more quickly.
Akers said he is always prepared for new insects.
However, Akers is concerned about black olive trees, mango trees and all the palms that he sprays regularly. Currently, mango trees — one of the hosts to the new fly — cannot be treated with contact pesticide because they are full of fruit.
When the fly does make it to Southwest Florida, Akers said, he basically would treat lawns, trees and shrubs the same way he did the ficus whitefly with the same systemic pesticide, plus a different type of plant oil with pesticide.
Some of the 38 hosts besides gumbo limbo include the following: copperleaf, Norfolk Island Pine, live oak, coconut and sabal palms.
The fly deposits eggs in a distinctive spiral pattern, leaving behind a white waxy substance.
"It's not going to kill the plants like the ficus whitefly, but try not to park your car or walk too slow near an infestation," said Doug Caldwell, a commercial landscape horticulture extension educator and landscape entomologist with the University of Florida Collier County Extension Service.
"These insects also produce significant amounts of 'honeydew,' which is the liquid waste it excretes. This 'honeydew' is then colonized by a black fungus and called sooty mold. This sticky 'honeydew' can accumulate on objects beneath infested trees and slow-moving pedestrians," Caldwell explained in his column.
Parasitic wasps and lady beetles have been found killing the whitefly, he said.
So, Caldwell suggested people avoid spraying with long residual pesticides. Due to Florida's hot weather and potential foliage damage, Caldwell recommends waiting for cooler weather and spraying a softer pesticide, such as mineral oils and insecticidal soaps, on a branch or two to see if there will be foliage damage.
John Brossard, general manager of Naples Fertilizer & Garden Center in Naples, said he hasn't seen the new pest in town, nor has he heard anything from his landscaping contractors.
For now, Brossard said he isn't concerned about the fly. Naples Fertilizer & Garden Center, on 14th Street North off of Goodlette-Frank Road, sells mostly citrus.
Once the rugose spiraling whitefly makes it to Collier County, Brossard said, the garden center will search for the right pesticide to treat it. Brossard predicts that the fly will make it to Collier County within six months.
Matt Denny, TruGreen branch manager in Fort Myers, echoed Brossard.
"My people are aware that this is a potential pest for us and we are basically keeping our eyes out for it," Denny said.
"My people are aware that this is a potential pest for us and we are basically keeping our eyes out for it," said Matt Denny, TruGreen branch manager in Fort Myers.
Similar to other lawn-care maintenance businesses, TruGreen hasn't started treating for the fly in Southwest Florida. When, or if, it appears in Southwest Florida, employees will be trained to treat the fly.
Several miles away at Battista Farms, a family owned and operated business in Fort Myers, the new rugose spiraling whitefly isn't yet a cause for concern.
Battista family member Jean Richert said she isn't concerned yet because the business hasn't received a warning letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Richert said there are no plans for spraying pesticides on their farm land or nursery, because Battista Farm doesn't have a license to spray on its own plants.
Battista Farms, on U.S. 41 South, produces sand-grown sod from its farm and operates a retail nursery with a variety of flowers, plants, trees and garden materials, according to its website.
Those who think they have the rugose spiraling whitefly can contact the University of Florida Collier County Extension Service at (239) 353-4244.
__ Connect with Tracy X. Miguel at www.naplesnews.com/staff/tracy_x_miguel/


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Blue Star Museums is a partnership among the Blue Star Families, National Endowment for the Arts, and more than 1,800 museums across the country. The program offers free admission to active-duty military and their family members from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
If you are active duty military personnel and/or an immediate family member, all you need to do is show either a Geneva Conventions CAC Card, a DD Form 1173, or a DD Form 1173-1 at the museum admissions desk. Immediate family members under the age of 10 must be accompanied by an appropriate ID holder.
We encourage you and your family to explore as many museums as possible.
What is Blue Star Museums?
Blue Star Museums is a program that offers free admission to museums for all active duty military personnel and their families from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
What museums are participating?
More than 1,800 museums in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and American Samoa are participating in Blue Star Museums. These include children's museums, fine art museums, history and science museums, and nature centers.
Who is eligible for free museum admission through Blue Star Museums?
The free admission program is available to any bearer of a Geneva Convention common access card (CAC), a DD Form 1173 ID card, or a DD Form 1173-1 ID card, including those stamped URW and DB. These include active duty military (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard), active duty National Guard and active duty Reserve members and up to five family members. Please see the chart of the acceptable IDs.
What is the definition of a family member?
A family member of active duty military may include a spouse or child, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.
What if my spouse is deployed? Can my family and I still participate?
Yes, spouses of deployed military are eligible for Blue Star Museums. Just bring your DD Form 1173 ID Card, or DD Form 1173-1 ID Card, for active duty military family members.
How many military personnel and/or family members are allowed in for free per visit?
The military ID holder plus up to five family members.
What if my child is under the age of 10 and doesn't yet have a military ID?
Children under the age of 10 without military ID are welcome to attend with their parents who either hold a Geneva Convention Common Access Card (CAC), a DD Form 1173 ID Card, or a DD Form 1173-1 ID Card.
Does the Blue Star Museums program include admission for veterans and retirees? For unmarried partners? For parents with a child currently serving on active duty, or for those who have lost a child on active duty?
Admission for these individuals is not included in the scope of this program, unless they are the bearer of a Geneva Convention Common Access Card (CAC), a DD Form 1173 ID Card, or a DD Form 1173-1 ID card, including those stamped URW and DB.
Blue Star Museums is a partnership among Blue Star Families, the National Endowment for the Arts, and more than 1,800 museums across America to offer free admission to families with a member serving during this time of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially focusing on the approximately 1 million children who have had at least one parent deployed. This program offers these families a chance to visit museums this summer when many will have limited resources and limited time to be together.
Will I receive free entry to special, fee-based exhibits?
Some special or limited-time museum exhibits may not be included in this free admission program. For questions on particular exhibits or museums, please contact the museum directly.
Is there a limit on the number of Blue Star Museums I can visit this summer?
No, there is no limit on the number of participating museums that eligible parties can visit.
If a museum already offers free admission, can it still participate in Blue Star Museums?
Museums with free admission are also welcome to join the Blue Star Museums list on the NEA website.
How can museums join the Blue Star Museums program?
Museums that wish to participate in Blue Star Museums may contact email@example.com, or Wendy Clark at 202-682-5451.
Who are the national partners on Blue Star Museums?
Blue Star Museums is a partnership among the National Endowment for the Arts, Blue Star Families — an organization which raises awareness of the challenges and strengths of military family life — and more than 1,800 museums. To learn more about Blue Star Families, please visit BlueStarFam.org.

subset: commoncrawl


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Learn how economic and infrastructure strategies can reduce obesity and chronic disease by creating more equitable communities. These economically vibrant communities can make good food, opportunities to be active, and preventive healthcare services accessible to all.
The conference will focus on innovative, replicable, and sustainable solutions for healthy community development. Such solutions involve creating jobs/training opportunities, improving employee health and productivity, increasing active living through infrastructure design, and expanding access to preventive healthcare services.
This conference is a networking and partnership development opportunity for multiple sectors: advocates, business and private sector, agencies, practitioners, planners, researchers, and community-based groups.
View DASH –NY 2014 Coalition Conference Video
Download a copy of the conference brochure!
Conference Agenda
2013 Conference HighlightsView Highlights of the 2013 DASH-NY Coalition Conference: Community Partnerships to End Obesity Disparities.
WebinarsView our Webinars!
Sustainable Partnership Development and Coalition Building Webinar
Leveraging Policy for Healthy Food Retail
Join Part 2 of our 2* Part Webinar on Regional Economic Development Councils (REDCs): How they work and how to get involved! Learn more about Funding Opportunities Through the REDC Process!
#DASHNY2014 on twitter to view conference attendees comments


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NEWFANE, N. Y. - Olcott Beach closed on Wednesday. Again.
It's the second time in a week and the 13th time since 2011 that swimmers could not jump into Lake Ontario due to dangerous levels of E. coli. In fact, the Natural Resources Defense Council rated the beach at Krull Park as the second-most bacteria-infested waterway in the entire state of New York.
But nobody's exactly sure where the bacteria is coming from.
Not even Tim Horanburg, the supervisor of Newfane.
"It's frustrating because we can't find an answer for it," Horanburg said. "This hurts our reputation. We know that."
Horanburg and Ronald Gwozdek, the principal engineer for the Niagara County Health Department, both have similar theories. For one, animal waste could cause the bacteria. Gwozdek said his department conducts DNA testing of the water, which has revealed waste from various animals, including geese.
Gwozdek said 18-Mile Creek, located just miles from Olcott Beach, is a "contributing factor." And there's the issue of raw sewage, too, a problem our Investigative Post partners tackled earlier this week in Erie County.
"It certainly could be part of it," Horanburg said.
No matter the cause, Horanburg said he's worried he may not ever find a solution.
After all, this is hardly a new issue.
"This may have been going on for years and years and years. I grew up swimming in this lake. Most kids did," Horanburg said. "But now that the state has new health codes, we have to follow them. And they're very strict."


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We are the visionaries behind this healthy community…
the heartbeat of Fresh Start for Health!
We work everyday to bring you simple doable steps to Eat * Move * Think ** FRESH!
Our heart's desire is to provide you with the resources, training, accountability and encouragement you need to get you and your family healthy in mind, body and spirit!
We welcome you to share this journey with us, and look forward to serving you!
Bess Blanco -Lead Health Coach, Founder and President of Fresh Start for Health
In the roles of Health Coach, radio show host, speaker and author, Bess Blanco lives her dream daily! In every setting, from one-on-one coaching to small groups or large audiences, Bess's heart for sharing empowered & freeing Eat*Move*THINK Fresh principles is crystal clear.
Bess has personally coached over 150 people of all ages and circumstances in small, doable healthier-life steps that have led to lasting lifestyle transformations. As she saw lives changing, Bess quickly she realized that this "small steps to lasting change" message must be shared with a wider audience.
As the author of the "FRESH Start for Health" system she's now bringing these simple steps to a ever growing audience through the Fresh Start blog, her Ask Coach Bess video trainings and the FRESH Start Bible Study now taught in churches across the country. And now as part of the ongoing mission of Fresh Start to reach she's created the FRESH Start Leadership Academy to empower health coaches to serve their community with the inspired message of Eat*Move*THINK Fresh.
Her husband of fifteen years and business partner Juan, supports her wholeheartedly and together they are raising their four children with all the Fresh living principles Bess teaches. In fact, her children are taste-tester's extraordinaire of all the recipes and meal plans Bess creates for Fresh Start!
{Contact Bess via our Contact Us page, just click here!}
Together Bess and Arika lead an inspiring and dedicated team!
Arika Lewis - Co-Founder & Executive Business Director
Arika Lewis is a powerhouse business coach and mentor who's mission to help others recognize and utilize the gifts they've been given by God is evident in everything she does. After building successful businesses online and off, she has joined forces with Bess here at Fresh Start, bringing her unique knowledge and qualifications to the needs of this community as we grow. Arika is also a writer, trainer and visionary dedicated to sharing the Eat*Move*Think FRESH principles with the world!
Happily married to Jerry and mom to three wonderful kids, she has her hands full, and shares freely from a ready and willing heart!
{Contact Arika via our Contact Us page, just click here!}
Lolita McNeal – FreshStart Associate Health Coach
As a passionate leader in the healthy living field, Lolita McNeal has been educating and encouraging others to make healthier lifestyle choices since long before it became a trend. Having been through her own significant weight loss journey, she is committed to compassionately help those she serves walk in the same freedom. Lolita is a strong prayer warrior, leading our team prayer calls and often bringing fresh truths to our Fresh Bible Study series.
Married to Eric & mother to three beautiful young adults, she lives the principles she teaches daily! Her heart is to serve and be an example of wholeness in every area of her life.
Lolita looks forward to getting to know you and helping you walk into your healthier life through this journey!
{Get in touch with Lolita through our Contact US page, just click here!}
Elise Adams – Growth and Development Assistant
A lifelong passion for empowering others growth via professional organizing services, blogging, motivational speaking, small group leadership and online business development has brought Elise to us with wide-ranging gifts. She is wholeheartedly dedicated to the mission and message of Fresh Start. Elise has come through addiction recovery and a struggle with fibromyalgia and knows the power of Fresh Living principles to tackle depression & physical pain. She is managing our website, has been instrumental in redesigning our brand and always adds a fierce 'can do' spirit to our growth in all she does. As Bess has said, Elise is irreplaceable around here!
Married to Franklin Adams and mom to 4 children ages 18 – 3, Elise enjoys gardening, reading and singing in her church choir at her local Orthodox Christian church.
{Reach Elise through our Contact Us page, click HERE!}
Our yearly reFreshed retreat always refreshes, rejuvenates and re-energizes our mission!


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Corine Mauch on Manufacturing in Cities
Corine Mauch, mayor of Zurich, Switzerland, had this to say in Monocle Issue 25 when asked, "Do we need to bring back craft and manufacturing to our cities?"
Cities are expensive locations, and so firms must be innovative instead of producing at the lowest costs. Besides the service sector, research and development as well as custom-built products are examples of industries that could remain within city borders. Nevertheless, diversity is important for a city and this includes craft and manufacturing. There must be affordable space for niche producers and experiments
I am a big believer that we need to strive to maintain manufacturing capabilities in our cities and that craft and specialty manufacturing is the way to go. See my post, "The New Industrial City" for more on this.
Emmylou Harris on Nashville
There is an interview with Emmlyou Harris in issue nine of Lula magazine. She had an interesting take on living in Nashville that think is very relevant to many cities of similar size. This is in response to the question, "How would you describe Nashville to someone that's never been there before?"
You know I really love it. I don't know if it's a place you immediately love though. Nashville's a little funky, the downtown area is in a period of transition, it's got a lot of touristy stuff with the country music thing, a lot of really junky tourist shops, but then there's Vanderbilt University, there's Centennial Park which is really quite beautiful….but for me I think you really have to live there. When you live in a place for a long time and you know how to get from one place to another, and you have really great friends that you can actually bike to their house and you have funky little neighborhoods, you kind of fall in love with it. It's not like you get a crush on somebody, it's like an old friend that you gradually realize that this is the person you want to spend your life with.
When you visit New York City, its coolness smacks you in the face immediately. Dittos for lots of other cities. But for smaller cities, like Nashville and the places I often talk about in the Midwest, it's not like that. It's like the buildings you see in Mexican towns. The outside is rather blank and sparse, but open the doors and find a beautiful, lush courtyard. The beauty is on the inside. Instead of surface flash, there are more discreet charms only accessible to those in the know.
For any Nashvillians out there, it is worth picking up this Lula. The guest editor is Karen Elson, who I believe lives in Nashville now. It is sprinkled with Nashville references and connections, rather tastefully and well integrated into a publication where London, New York, and Los Angeles are more commonly heard. But it is done without excessive boosterism or self-consciousness. Definitely worth checking out.
Pitchfork on Indianapolis
IU grad student Eric Harvey, writing an album review at Pitchfork, had this to say about Indianapolis:
It aired back in 2007, but I still vividly remember the end of VH1's documentary "NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell", when the talking heads were mulling over what had become of the formerly dangerous and tawdry Times Square, placed in contrast to that historically accursed year. "They turned it into Indianapolis," Jimmy Breslin succinctly said. And more or less, here you go: Aside from David Letterman and the Colts, Indy gets a bad rap, when it gets a rap at all….My uncle used to jokingly tell out-of-towners he was from "India-no-place," as a way of acknowledging the sort of cultural invisibility that guys like Breslin attribute to Indy.
I'm not surprised Harvey remembered that quote from two years ago. Hoosiers are a modest, self-effacing people by nature, but quick to take offense at and remember slights. Clearly, the national reputation of Indianapolis – apart from the Colts and Letterman – is either non-existent or negative. That's a fact. But while I think it is always good to get your message out in a positive way, you can't let people in the likes of New York or Chicago get under your skin. Those cities define their own coolness in part by how un-cool they like to think of everyone else. So it is impossible to ever measure up. Rather than plan that sucker's game, a better course is to put that famous ornery, contrarian Hoosier nature to work and chart a path to your own success. You won't please everybody, but if you've got a message that appeals to some, you'll find your own niche and your own place.
Thanks to longtime reader Ablerock for sending me this link.
Richard Rodriguez on the City and the Newspaper
Writing in the November 2009 issue of Harper's, in a lengthy piece on the death of the newspaper as told though the lens of the San Francisco Chronicle, Richard Rodriguez (not the one who is CTA President) had this to say:
We no longer imagine the newspaper as a city or the city as a newspaper. Whatever I may say in the rant that follows, I do not believe the decline of newspapers has been the result solely of computer technology or the Internet. The forces working against newspapers are probably as varied and foregone as the Model-T Ford and the birth-control pill. We like to say that the invention of the internal-combustion engine changed us, changed the way we live. In truth, we built the Model-T Ford because we had changed; we wanted to remake the world to accommodate our restlessness. We might now say: Newspapers will be lost because technology will force us to acquire information in new ways. In that case, who will tell us what it means to live as citizens of Seattle or Denver or Ann Arbor? The truth is we no longer want to live in Seattle or Denver or Ann Arbor. Our inclination has led us to invent a digital cosmopolitanism that begins and ends with "I". Careening down Geary Boulevard on the 38 bus, I can talk to my dear Auntie in Delhi or I can view snapshots of my cousin's wedding in Recife or I can listen to girl punk from Glasgow. The cost of my cyber-urban experience is disconnectedness from body, from presence, from city.
Something funny I have noticed, perhaps you have noticed it, too. You know what futurists and online-ists and cut-out-the-middle-man-ists and Davos-ists and deconstructionists of every stripe want for themselves? They want exactly what they tell you you no longer need, you pathetic, overweight, disembodied Kindle reader. They want white linen tablecloths on trestle tables in the middle of vineyards on soft blowy afternoons. (You can click your bottle of wine online. Cheaper.) They want to go shopping on Saturday afternoons on the Avenue Victor Hugo; they want the pages of their New York Times all kind of greasy from croissant crumbs and butter at a cafe table in Aspen; they want to see their names in hardcopy in the "New Establishment" issue of Vanity Fair; they want a nineteenth-century bookshop; they want to see the plays in London; they want to float down the Nile in a felucca; they want five-star bricks and mortar and DO NOT DISTURB signs and views of the park. And in order to reserve these things for themselves they will plug up your eyes and your ears and your mouth, and if they can figure a way to pump episodes of The Simpsons through the darkening corridors of your brain as you expire (ADD TO SHOPPING CART), they will do it.
We are a nation dismantling the structures of intellectual property and all critical apparatus. We are without professional book reviewers and art critics and essays about what it might mean that our local newspaper has died. We are a nation of Amazon reader responses. (Moby Dick is "not a really good piece of fiction" – Feb. 14, 2009 by Donald J. Bingle, Saint Charles, Ill. – two stars out of five). We are without obituaries…
This article is not online unless you are a subscriber. If you are one, click here to read. If not, it is worth grabbing the hard copy to get it at the news stand. It is the least we can do.


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From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
Scottish Prayer
24th of October, 2004
Live Performances
Recorded Music
Elizabeth Vail piped up, 'Lessee -- for winter,
my favourite treats are the three goodies that my mother bakes
every winter for Christmas -- fudge (just that, super good, though),
snowballs (orbs of brown sugar and pecans rolled in icing sugar,
although for the last two years I've developed allergies to them
she says smiling, and cheese crackers - the sharpest cheddar imaginable,
mixed with Rice Krispies and other ingredients... Every year she
makes these for us and the relatives.' Her 'favourite winter movie
is, and has always been since I first saw it -- Bernard and
the Genie, a sweet little BBC film starring a young Allen
Cummings, Lenny Henry, and Rowan Atkinson. Cummings plays a nice
bloke who is fired from his job by his evil boss (Atkinson, whose
character inserts 'ye' into every sentence -- 'Sit ye, sit ye.
Bugger ye off!') right before Christmas,who rubs a lamp summoning
a genie (Lenny Henry) who grants him an unlimited amount of wishes.
Hilarious stuff.'
Gary, over a pint of his favourite libation, said
'OK, here's mine. A flagon of Snow
Cap Ale with something sweet -- homemade gingerbread with
lemon icing will do, or a morsel of dark chocolate. There should
be a fire going, and some good music: Maria
Kalaniemi's wintry accordion music perhaps, or Beethoven's
7th, Bela
Fleck & Edgar Meyer, or some Edith Piaf.' Cat noted
that he likes homemade cocoa made with dark chocolate and warm
gingerbread which caused Maria to look up from her book, a Braunbeck
short story collection, and say with a wicked grin, 'Warm gingerbread
with hot lemon brandy hard sauce. Drool. Or hot snickerdoodles.
Mulled wine full of damiana, which has aphrodisiac qualities.'
Ahhh, I do like a lusty lass who's into bundling! Now Huw is into
'nother sort of bundling: 'A log fire with a dog snoozing by it,
a glass of port in one hand, a P. G. Wodehouse novel in the other
-- or maybe some M. R. James ghost stories -- that's just about
my perfect winter's evening.'
Now it's time to be off to the signing for Emma
Bull and Will Shetterly's War for the Oaks screenplay.
It's being held in the Great Hall as we expect members of both
The Summer and The Winter Courts to be there. Now you should know
before you come down with me to the party that Emma arranged both
the bands and the food. Really. Truly. Let's see... Reynard, have
you got those notes from Emma on what she wanted? Ahhh, good.
Here's what she wanted:
Boiled in Lead, of course, and Leslie Ball, and
Prudence Johnson. The Tim Malloys, Lojo Russo, and Folk Underground.
Sugar reunited, if Bob Mould isn't doing anything this week.
Molehill Orkestrah. The Dolly Ranchers. Faun Fables. How many
days does this signing go on, and is it 'round the clock?
Can I have Afro-Celt Sound System, too? And Mary McCaslin?
And the throat-singing guys from Tuva, and Te Vaka, and of
course Richard Thompson (don't leave home without him). Is
it going to be, like, a music festival with six stages, 'cause
otherwise this could be hard to schedule... Oh, and Riders
in the Sky! (Unless you want to save them for the signing
for the book I'm working on now.)
Boiled in Lead, of course, and Leslie Ball, and
Prudence Johnson. The Tim Malloys, Lojo Russo, and Folk Underground.
Sugar reunited, if Bob Mould isn't doing anything this week.
Molehill Orkestrah. The Dolly Ranchers. Faun Fables. How many
days does this signing go on, and is it 'round the clock?
Can I have Afro-Celt Sound System, too? And Mary McCaslin?
And the throat-singing guys from Tuva, and Te Vaka, and of
course Richard Thompson (don't leave home without him). Is
it going to be, like, a music festival with six stages, 'cause
otherwise this could be hard to schedule... Oh, and Riders
in the Sky! (Unless you want to save them for the signing
for the book I'm working on now.)
Refreshments: Coffee. Lots of coffee. Really
good coffee, roasted dark. Order it from Seth at Old Bisbee
Roasters, because it is the very, very best coffee. Guinness,
especially if we get the folks from The Field in San Diego
to tend bar -- they know how to pour it. Blackstone or Ravenswood
merlot, 2000. Any single malt old enough to vote, especially
Highland Park.
For food, there must be cheese. Devastatingly
good dark chocolate. Caramel apples from the Candy Jar on
Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis. Cheese and pepper boureks from
the Armenian bakery on Lankershim just north of Burbank in
Los Angeles. Hummus and babaganoush from the Carnival restaurant
in Sherman Oaks. Crispy Juicy String Beans from the chef who
used to work at all the really good Hunan restaurants in Minneapolis
and St. Paul. Bread -- we must have bread! Mexican bolillos
from Marissa's on Nicollet in Minneapolis, whole-wheat bolillos
from La Mejor in North Hollywood, and that French bread that
used to be baked by a Twin Cities outfit called Four and Twenty
(though my friend Rae makes sourdough French that nearly eclipses
it), and scones and artisan bread from Il Fornaio in Los Angeles.
Oh, and Will wants really good cake doughnuts.
And we need one of Bill Colsher's cheesecakes,
because a) It's the best, and b) He made one to celebrate
the very first War for the Oaks book release party
at First Avenue, way way back when.
Given the number of bands, that may not be
enough food...
Refreshments: Coffee. Lots of coffee. Really
good coffee, roasted dark. Order it from Seth at Old Bisbee
Roasters, because it is the very, very best coffee. Guinness,
especially if we get the folks from The Field in San Diego
to tend bar -- they know how to pour it. Blackstone or Ravenswood
merlot, 2000. Any single malt old enough to vote, especially
Highland Park.
For food, there must be cheese. Devastatingly
good dark chocolate. Caramel apples from the Candy Jar on
Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis. Cheese and pepper boureks from
the Armenian bakery on Lankershim just north of Burbank in
Los Angeles. Hummus and babaganoush from the Carnival restaurant
in Sherman Oaks. Crispy Juicy String Beans from the chef who
used to work at all the really good Hunan restaurants in Minneapolis
and St. Paul. Bread -- we must have bread! Mexican bolillos
from Marissa's on Nicollet in Minneapolis, whole-wheat bolillos
from La Mejor in North Hollywood, and that French bread that
used to be baked by a Twin Cities outfit called Four and Twenty
(though my friend Rae makes sourdough French that nearly eclipses
it), and scones and artisan bread from Il Fornaio in Los Angeles.
Oh, and Will wants really good cake doughnuts.
And we need one of Bill Colsher's cheesecakes,
because a) It's the best, and b) He made one to celebrate
the very first War for the Oaks book release party
at First Avenue, way way back when.
Given the number of bands, that may not be
enough food...
Refreshments: Coffee. Lots of coffee. Really
good coffee, roasted dark. Order it from Seth at Old Bisbee
Roasters, because it is the very, very best coffee. Guinness,
especially if we get the folks from The Field in San Diego
to tend bar -- they know how to pour it. Blackstone or Ravenswood
merlot, 2000. Any single malt old enough to vote, especially
Highland Park.
For food, there must be cheese. Devastatingly
good dark chocolate. Caramel apples from the Candy Jar on
Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis. Cheese and pepper boureks from
the Armenian bakery on Lankershim just north of Burbank in
Los Angeles. Hummus and babaganoush from the Carnival restaurant
in Sherman Oaks. Crispy Juicy String Beans from the chef who
used to work at all the really good Hunan restaurants in Minneapolis
and St. Paul. Bread -- we must have bread! Mexican bolillos
from Marissa's on Nicollet in Minneapolis, whole-wheat bolillos
from La Mejor in North Hollywood, and that French bread that
used to be baked by a Twin Cities outfit called Four and Twenty
(though my friend Rae makes sourdough French that nearly eclipses
it), and scones and artisan bread from Il Fornaio in Los Angeles.
Oh, and Will wants really good cake doughnuts.
And we need one of Bill Colsher's cheesecakes,
because a) It's the best, and b) He made one to celebrate
the very first War for the Oaks book release party
at First Avenue, way way back when.
Given the number of bands, that may not be
enough food...
Given the fey nature of Green Man, there
will be enough food and drink. So come along -- bring your soft
soled dancing shoes, your appetite, and a mighty thirst as it's
going to be a truly amazing party!
Our feature this week is more of an interview than
a review. Faithful readers will know that Green Man's association
with and admiration for Emma Bull, and her fantasy War for
the Oaks, go back a long, long way. We've reviewed the book,
the associated CDs by her band Cats Laughing, and even the trailer
for the film that should have been, but never was, made from the
novel. Now, as we've discussed above, Black Coat Press makes the
full screenplay for that movie available. Cat
Eldridge looks at the script and discusses
it in more detail with Emma and her husband, collaborator,
and sometime GMR reviewer Will Shetterly. Read the review
before the signing party gets underway!
Cat Eldridge
has a look at a Robert Heinlein novel originally released almost
40 years ago, and just re-released in hardcover by TOR. Cat says:
'If this were a play, I'd tell the theater company to drop
the last act and keep the first two acts -- or else risk the groundlings
throwing things, including rotten eggs, at them. Why this is so
is a tale I'll tell in a while, but first let's talk about The
Glory Road as a novel that reflects Heinlein's transition
(of sorts) from writing juvenile fiction to writing what would
later be called his World as Myth novels.'
Halloween is coming up, and Nellie
Levine has two reviews of materials appropriate to the
season. She found the first somewhat wanting: 'The south
has an air of mystery when thoughts turn to hoodoo, voodoo, root
doctors, and zombies. Those of us from the north can only compete
with tales of hauntings in centuries-old clapboard houses, or
perhaps, with an odd recalling of the Salem witch trials -- which
really aren't the same thing. In Play
Dead, author Anne Frasier uses hoodoo as a main ingredient
in her story-telling formula. Or at least, she pretends to.'
The second book, The
Pagan Mysteries of Halloween, gets Nellie's stamp of approval:
'Jean Markale's telling of many traditional stories illustrates
this history vividly and causes us to reflect on the essential
nature of the holiday. Identifying, through Markale's exploration,
with our pagan ancestors, gives Halloween the serious reflection
it deserves. We can look now at this black and orange night and
see beneath the mischievous spectacle, a holiday of changes, of
reverence, of comprehension and wisdom.'
Dragons are dear to us here at Green Man
-- they'd better be, or Ermintrude (our very own) would be one
unhappy reptilian! So a book about dragons is always welcome.
Of Anne Petty's Dragons
of Fantasy, Elizabeth
Vail says 'The best thing to do with this book is
assign it to a University course. Meticulously researched, highly
analytical, and expertly organized, it is the ideal handbook for
anyone who has to write a midterm or a thesis on the origins of
'It opens with a faded map of north Ontario,
Kapuskasing dead centre. Then the camera pulls back and from the
middle of the screen comes a train -- an old Canadian National
engine, and tracks, lots of tracks. This is a movie about that
train and the people who rode on it, and the places it stopped,
and what happened one week in 1970 when this train went from Toronto
to Calgary...with a cargo of rock'n'rollers and all their paraphenalia.
What a summer.' David
Kidney reviews one heck of a film: Festival
Express. And since it's one heck of a review, he gets
an Excellence in Writing Award!
Excess is the theme for this week's live reviews.
Vonnie Carts-Powell reports
on David Ingle's lecture/performance, 'The Bacchanalian Tradition
in British Isles Songs, 1600-1900.' Though the title may
seem formidable and decidedly sober, Vonnie reports, 'It's
hard to go wrong when you're talking about (and singing) drinking
songs to a group of amiable and lubricated folkies in a warm room
on a cold, rainy night.' Also, there was beer! To learn more
about three glorious centuries of British intoxication, click
Barb Truex,
meanwhile, can't get enough of the Swedish band, Väsen. 'Each
recording,' she says, 'reveals music that just gets
deeper and more meaningful.' Throwing moderation to the winds,
Barb has opted to review Väsen's latest recording, Keyed
Up, and a live
performance by the band at Portland,
Maine's State Street Church.
Bloody 'ell, it's been cold this week. Sittin' in
the office in the basement, electric fire goin' an' a bottle of
Guinness at hand. Thassright, it comes in a bottle now, wif a
widget for carbonation. Ain't modern science amazin'? Quite a
variety of CDs to look at today. Ain't modern music amazin'?
The boss (that's Cat
Eldridge to any newcomers) spent a long time listenin'
to the new CD
by McDermott's 2 Hours an' had more than a jot an tittle
to say about it. '
the bottom line is, I like this CD
every bit as much as the other three McDermott's endeavors. The
with this CD
is a more pronounced Irishness
not the
Ireland of wee drams, the fairy folk, and old men in flat caps,
but rather the angry Irish who still feel the oppression of the
British to this day. Good stuff it is
if you like your Irish
music with a political edge
' Oy, Cat, an' wotsamatter
wif a wee dram an'a flat cap anyway? 'Ave ya looked at Dave lately?
Peter Massey
wasn't as thrilled wif Ani DiFranco's Educated
Guess album as he thought he might be. 'Whilst her
candid outspokenness is to be admired, to be fair, you have to
be in the right mood to listen to this type of music. So for this
reason only, I recommend you listen to a few tracks on Ani's Web
site first before buying.' Well, I reckon that's pretty good
advice 'bout most things.
Lars Nilsson
steps up wif a review of some kids music, a couple examples of
kids music in fact. One is by Steve Schuch and one is a collection
from Alan Lomax. He liked bof'of
em an' 'ad this to say, 'Both these CDs could be
labeled children's songs, but how different they are. One contains
songs written for children, the other songs sung by children.
One is clearly a pedagogical effort, the other one of historic
Resident classicist ('owzat fer language, mate?)
Robert Tilendis
also 'as a bit of thing fer Scandinavian music. Today he listens
to Fylgia's Strå
CD. He 'as this to say, 'Although uneven and not offering
any real challenges, Strå does reward attention
and offers justification for Fylgja's popularity.' Any music
wot rewards ya fer listenin' is allright by me! He's also, our
Bob, into world music (very eclectic he is!) and reviews a fascinatin'
album of African drummin' by Mahmoud Fadl. 'Drummers
of the Nile in Town is, to put it quite simply, a collection
of contemporary Egyptian dance music...traditional dance music...you
will hear at weddings and other celebrations in Cairo and other
cities along the Nile. Listening gives a very good sense of what
is meant by 'celebration' in that part of the world: lively, tuneful,
more than a little engaging...Intricate, direct, very sophisticated
[rhythms that]...become part of the melody. There are tones here,
highs and lows, crisp, sometimes fluttering, sometimes throbbing
- the word that comes to mind is 'ecstasy.'' Hmmm...let's
give it a spin, wot! An' let's give Robert an Excellence in
Writing Award fer this one too!
Robert also wuz diggin' some music by an 18th Century
composer named Silvius Weiss. Wot a cool moniker! Any road, this
one is an interpretation of some concertos (concerti?) by the
Tempesta di Mare
an' Robert seemed quite keen on it. 'The works presented on this
disc are reconstructions by Stone of six of Weiss's concerted
works for lute, based on the surviving sections, mostly the lute
parts, and the modes illustrated in the music of Weiss' contemporaries.
Taken together, they offer an intriguing survey of works by a
largely forgotten composer that reflect the scope of an instrument
that more often calls up images of medieval troubadours than the
glittering courts of the eighteenth century.' Sounds like a string
driven thing, might be okay! See fer y'self!
Master Reviewer Gary
'Don't fergit ta vote cuz we need somebody in the' Whitehouse
is on board wif alt-country band Amelias new CD. Sounds like he
wuz @#$%in captivated. 'After
All isn't all lazy, torchy, noir-ish ballads
James' has a Calexico-style vibe with creaking guitar strings,
tinkling piano, Spanish-style guitar and syncopated brushed snare,
and it builds to a rocking chorus. 'Last Pariah' evokes the Cowboy
Junkies, with a wall-of-sound arrangement that includes electric
piano and organ and backing vocals
and 'Blackbird Pie' is
clattering Waitsian rocker with banjo scrape, organ wail, steel
drum stabs and distorted electric guitar
' An' there's more
where that came from. Gary also writes about one of ole SPike's
fave topics, three chicks! No, its the name of annuver group
(get yer minds outa the gutter!) Hes talkin about Tres Chicas
an their new CD Sweetwater.
' These three chicas (that's Spanish for girls) have all
made varying marks on the alt-country scene, and have been getting
together for a while to sing and play. Finally this year they
were able to spend some time in the studio to record their act
for posterity, and it's a sweet document indeed.' You should all
check it out, I know I will.
Then Gary switches up an' looks at
'im describe it to ya 'imself! 'Pink Martini, the eclectic
jazz-classical-Latin-pop combo based in Portland, Oregon, had
a surprise worldwide hit with its debut disc, Sympathique,
in the late 1990s. Since then, they've had some major lineup changes
(one of the lead vocalists, Pepe Raphael, left to front Pepe and
the Bottle Blondes), played clubs, festivals and high-class concert
halls around the world, and tried to find time in the studio for
a sophomore disc. Hang
On Little Tomato is a worthy successor to the standards
set by Sympathique.' Un@#$%in'-believeable!! 'jazz-classical-Latin-pop?'
Finally Gary listened to annuver 'Pink'
CD, this time Pink Nasty (sister to Black Nasty, if ya must know!)
an'her new album Mule
School. About it Gary says, 'Attitude she has in
The opening track, 'Sssnake,' is jangly
cowpunk about a woman living up to a bad reputation. The hard-driving
'Mordecai' is a portrait of an abused 7-year-old, told
entirely in snippets of his foul-mouthed mother's self-pitying
' an' thass-only 2 songs!
An' as fer yers
truly, I spent the last li'l while diggin' the Twinemen!
'The Twinemen (an' I don't believe they 'ave a 'the' in front
of their name but it looks good on paper) are not yer average
blues band. Sideshow
is a cacophonic delight! It's a sideshow man. You pays yer money
an' you takes yer chances. Sometimes you get the pants scared
offa ya, but it's bloody invigoratin' when it's all done! An'
then...you wanna go again!' An' that's the truth, innit!?!
Time fer ole Spike to go, an' check the icebox fer annuver cold
one. Bye now!
Maria Nutick
here. Before I head off to the party, we've heard about another
film that may not be made, but hopefully will be! Go over and
look at Chelsea Spear's Web
site; she's currently making Lift My Sorrowed Heart,
a film based on the ever popular Tam Lin!
17th of October, 2004
'Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean
blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.'
-- Mary Oliver, 'Wild Geese'
Nutick here. The fat brown bear that lives
down in Oberon's Wood has been stuffing himself
twice as much these past few weeks; he's even been
snuffling around the back door to the kitchens,
hoping for leftovers from some of the harvest
feasting we've been doing here at Green Man.
It shouldn't be too many more days before he
disappears into the cave on the other side of the
lake to spend the winter curled up, dreaming of
spring berries and honey and whatever else bears
dream about. Hamish the hedgehog has been looking
rather sleepy himself. Did you know that hedgehogs
hibernate? Well, they do. Of course Hamish doesn't
have to burrow into the damp ground like common
hedgehogs. He has a nice little blue velvet bed in
a quiet corner of the Library, where Eithne, our
new Archivist, can keep an eye on him over the
Can you keep a secret? I'm a hibernator too, and
I've found the best spot. Even in my office with
the door closed and the 'Do Not Disturb' sign up,
there are interruptions -- someone wants me to
approve a book for review, Cat bounces in from the
mailroom to show me the latest publisher catalogs,
even the brownies trying their best to be
unobtrusive while cleaning. Sometimes I just want
to get away from it all with a book and a mug of
Earl Grey (two lumps and cream, please.)
Now, nobody's looking...step back here. Everyone thinks this is
a broom closet. Well, it is a broom closet, but look, there's
another door in here, and on the other side: privacy. Blessed privacy.
I'm not sure what this room was originally, but I suspect some long
ago handyman used it. No, you can't come in, I've got it just the
way I like it. There isn't any room for an extra person, anyway.
Just one overstuffed comfy chair, a small table, and an old fashioned
reading lamp. Sometimes I can hear the kitchen staff bickering through
the air vents, but for the most part my little nook is quiet and
peaceful. If you don't mind, I'm going to curl up with my review
copy of Gary Braunbeck's Graveyard People: The Collected Cedar
Hill Stories, Volume 1. Why don't you head back and read the
new crop of reviews? I'll join you a bit later.
'ere! The featured review this week is a new box
set from the company wot does box sets better than
any uvver company wotever done a box set, an' that
is Free Reed. An' the group in question is prob'ly
the one favourite group of all the @#$%in' groups
wot we EVER review in Green Man Review! That
is Fairport Convention. Already endowed wif a Dave
Swarbrick box, an' a Fairport box, an' a couple a
uvver boxes wif heavy Fairport content...this one
celebrates the big booze up in the field...see me
over by the 6X tent! That's it, the Cropredy
Festival now 'as its very own box set. An' it's a
beaut! It's called Cropredy
Capers an' it includes all sorts of special
guests, an' a cutout model of the Festival so's ya
can set it up on yer dinin' room table an' pretend
you wuz there! Our new reviewer Paul
Brandon sums it up like this...'One thing's
for sure, if you're any sort of admirer of Fairport
Convention, then you really ought to have this. It
submerges you in something truly special, and makes
you look at your savings, wondering if you can
somehow afford to spend an August weekend in
Oxfordshire.' Order it early an' it comes
autographed by the band! But read the review
'For reasons I can't begin to explain,' says
Donna Bird,
'of late several publishers have been releasing
translations of relatively obscure nineteenth
century French fiction. In the last few months,
I've reviewed a couple of these for Green
Man: Balzac's The Wrong Side of Paris
and Robida's The Twentieth Century. I've got
George Sand's The Black City in my review
queue and have seen Emile Zola's The Kill in
a fresh new edition on the shelves at Borders. So I
wasn't at all surprised to discover The
Bohemians of the Latin Quarter in the
University of Pennsylvania Press catalog last
summer. . .Murger isn't nearly as well-known as his
contemporaries Balzac, Sand, Stendhal and Zola.
There's a very good reason for that -- he didn't
write as much as any of them did. The short stories
that became The
Bohemians of the Latin Quarter initially
appeared in an obscure Paris journal during the
late 1840s.' Donna receives an Excellence in
Writing Award for this fine review.
Clarke also adds an Excellence in
Writing Award to his shelf, for an omnibus
review of Sherlock Holmes related materials:
'Sherlock Holmes is a mythic figure, so ingrained
in the public consciousness that people have never
stopped wanting to revisit him in new adventures.
Pastiches abound, and some writers, like Nicholas
Meyer and Laurie R. King, have been able to base a
considerable portion of their careers on Holmes
novels. Even modern masters, whose paths you would
think would never cross Holmes', like Stephen King
and Neil Gaiman, have attempted it in the short
form. These offerings are generally divided into
two areas: the tribute and the discovery. A
tribute, ideally, puts a new spin on the characters
and this includes parody and crossover (Holmes
meets Jack the Ripper, Cthulhu, etc.). The
discovery merely purports to be a newly-found
addition to the canon, whether written by Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle or by John H. Watson, M.D.,
himself.' Craig reviews items in both areas and
across several mediums: Ted Riccardi's The
Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes and
Michael Moorcock's The
Mystery of the Texas Twister,
Firesign Theatre's album The
Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, and the
George C. Scott film They
Might Be Giants.
Eldridge has been industrious this week. He
says of his first book '. . . the good folks at
Time Warner Books sent along Murder
by Magic, a trade paper anthology of twenty
tales that blend -- some very well, some horribly
-- the twin genres of murder/detective tales with
the other popular genre loosely defined as the
supernatural.' And this Rosemary Edghill edited
anthology does sound like a fun bit of reading for
an autumn evening! Cat also looks at 'one of the
finest SF novels ever written' in it's 20th
anniversary edition -- William Gibson's Neuromancer.
And Cat receives an Excellence in Writing
Award for his astute look at Ron Goulart's
reference work: 'Any regular reader of this zine
will know that I covet reference material with a
passion approaching that of Gollum lusting after
his preciousssss. So when I saw a certain blog
writer mention his dislike for the Comic
Book Encyclopaedia, I asked the good folk
in publicity at HarperCollins to send along a copy
for review. (Thanks Julia!)'
'The Clash were never one of my favourite
groups. During the whole 'punk' thing I sat by the
wayside and continued to listen to the American
guitar rock and blues that were my genres of
choice. Melody and lyrical content were important
to me. I could give up one, but not both.' So what
did David
Kidney think of David Quantick's
biographical look at the group? Read his review of
Clash to find out.
Maria Tatar is a respected translator and
commentator on fairy tales and folklore.
Merry looks at her newest collection:
'Fireplace roaring? Yes. A hard, cold rain ratting
on the windows? Indeed it is. Overstuffed chair big
enough for both of us to curl up in? Of course!
Wool blanket to put over laps so we can snuggle
properly? Indeed. And are there feline companions
to curl up in with us? Of course. So what shall we
read, me love? Ahhh, how 'bout the just printed
Brothers Grimm? What could be more perfect
than these tales?'
Rose has three audiobooks for us, and
though they are from the same series they don't
meet the same standards of excellence: 'Though
there is a version of these audiobooks that covers
all seven Narnia texts, I was given a shorter
sample to review: three cassettes, covering
respectively Prince
Caspian, The
Voyage of the Dawn Treader and
Silver Chair. These recordings, originally
produced over two decades ago, are roughly an hour
long each. Which means, alas, that even for novels
as short as the Narnia books, they are severely
abridged. While I will never advocate an abridged
version if the complete text is available, two of
the three I listened to were well accomplished,
both in the vocal performance and in the choice of
material to include (and cut).'
Vail discusses a novel which attempts to
explain current issues in a fantasy friendly way:
'In the original version of E.T: The
Extraterrestrial, when a character remarks that
a child's Halloween costume makes him look like a
terrorist, it was taken as a mild joke. When it was
re-mastered for the modern audience, that simple
gag caused enough concern to make the director have
that line cut from the film. Let's face it folks:
North Americans are now officially and painfully
aware of what terrorism is. With this burden of
knowledge comes the task of explaining the concept
to our youth, and author Hilari Bell makes a game
attempt to do so in her simple, quick novel,
Goblin Wood.'
Winn is excited: 'Yay sequels! Loved faces
and familiar places! Well, okay, maybe not in the
Abarat. This gorgeous and meaty second book in
Clive Barker's four book series about the
adventures of Candy Quackenbush through the
Abarat's many things rich and strange is certainly
every bit as entertaining and mysterious as the
last, but in the Abarat, nothing is familiar, or
comfortable, or certain. At least not for Candy,
who resumes her tale (ominously subtitled Days
of Magic, Nights of War.... that can't bode
well...) as a happy sightseer through the islands
of Day and Night with her happy, orange, geshrat
pal Malingo, but is steadily sucked into a vortex
of mystery, calamity and violence despite her best
intentions. Clearly, Something is Going On.' We're
excited to give her an Excellence in Writing
Award for this review.
At Q & A sessions, Neil Gaiman has often said that no question
is too stupid. Our Live Events Editor, Liz
Milner, decided to rise to the challenge. Read her
with Neil and her account of his appearance at the National Book
Festival in Washington, D.C. and find out why Neil Gaiman believes
that, 'If I weren't a writer, I'd be like Cliff Clavin on Cheers,
a guy who hangs out at bars spouting endless useless information
that no one wants to listen to.'
Oy! 'Owzit goin' ev'ryone? Went ta see a blues
band this week called the Pork Belly Futures.
Fan-#$%&in-tastic. An' the thing of it wuz they
were so literate! Dave woulda liked 'em. They 'ad a
song called 'Michael Ondaatje' that went, 'Michael
Ondaatje stole my girl...' but the record company
made 'em change the title in case Michael got a bit
of a snit on! Too bad...keep up the good work
though PBF. Anyroad...as you likely guessed it's
wif today's CD reviews! Missed ya all last week but
today we're back.
O'course there's the Fairport Convention box,
that wuz our Feature Review...but there's a ton of
uvver stuff as well. Craig
Clarke starts in wif a look at a deluxe
reissue of Blind
Faith. He says, 'For collectors and rabid
fans of the artists, this deluxe edition is
probably worth the extra cash, given the expanded
and informative liner notes and the extra 90
minutes of music. It includes the cover art from
both releases of the album, though the
barely-pubescent girl with an airplane is featured
and, unlike the previous issue, unable to be hidden
from sight...But, in the end, the music that is
most important to the legacy of Blind Faith was
released in 1969 on that original album. Those six
songs, despite their flaws, will long outlast the
curiosities tacked on to this edition in order to
double the price tag.'
Not exackly sure why Craig complains about the
cover...I wuz barely pubescent when the record came
out an' I remember that airplane fondly! Craig gets
an Excellence in Writin' Award for this
Merry an' I 'ave tippled a few jars of 6X
an' the like, so it's not too s'prisin' that he dug
Neck's here's
mud in your eye. In fact that's sumthin'
Jack 'as said to me several times at the Pub. About
Neck, Jack says, 'They may not technically be the
best Irish band from London I've ever heard,
but they are certainly one of the loudest. Decibel
for decibel, they'd give both the Pogues and the
Popes a run for their Guinness!' That's a race I'm
entered in!
A bit of a change wif the review by Kelly
Sedinger of Music
for Two Pianos (Mozart & Schubert) by Murray Perahia
and Radu Lupu. Music by Mozart and Schubert. Not sure about Schubert
but wasn't Mozart that bloke wif the annoyin' @#$%in' giggle? Anyway...for
piano lovers this sound all right! 'Sometimes I find it hard to
struggle with GMR's required word-count for reviews, because
in a case like this CD, I could very easily sum up my reaction with
a simple 'Get this, or you're a good music-hating wanker!' and leave
the rest of this space for doodles. Simply put, this is one fine,
fine recording.' I gotta like it, cuz I'm no 'wanker' of any kind!
Chris White's
got a look at Jeanette Lindström's Walk.
Chris says, 'Jeanette Lindström's lovely Walk is an
intriguing example of the influence American culture has around
the world. Produced with financial assistance from the Swedish National
Council for Cultural Affairs with principally Swedish players, nevertheless
all of the material is sung in English. And, while I'm a dedicated
conscientious objector when it comes to affixing genre labels, Walk
would be best filed under 'Jazz' not 'World.''
Finally a coupla discs reviewed by bruvver Gary
Whitehouse. Then Gary listened to Rumba
Internationale by Las Rubias del Norte, 'The harmonies are
indeed lovely throughout, although the singing could be a little
less restrained. On the one hand, the performance is charmingly
intimate, rather than hidden behind a patina of professionalism;
on the other, the music doesn't always have the kind of forward
motion that's needed to compel the listener's participation. Still,
this disc is great fun, and it's hard to beat such sweet harmony.'
An' last but definitely not least Gary reviews The Living Road
by Lhasa. Gary was quite happy wif this one. He sums it up by sayin',
'Although the tone is sometimes somber and often dark, The
Living Road is a richly compelling album by a major talent.'
Bird says I have been using Tarot cards for
divination and personal insight for more years than
I care to admit. I have tried many variants on the
standard Tarot deck and have a few favorites that I
use regularly. I'd like to take some personal
credit, if you don't mind, for that lovely display
of Tarot cards over in the corner of our Green
Man store, under the little twinkling lights.
The Bruegel Tarot arrived in a shipment we
received last summer. I'd been thinking for a while
about a Tarot deck based on the paintings of the
sixteenth-century Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel
the Elder. In fact, an image looking suspiciously
like one of the cards in this deck appeared in the
opening credits of Carnivale, a VERY strange
HBO series we watched last fall and early winter.'
Go on, read her fascinating review of Guido Zibordi
Marchesi's Bruegel
And here I am again, as promised. Well, honestly
I only came out for another cup of tea and a
marionberry scone. I need to get some quiet time in
now, while I can. The next couple of weeks will be
hectic! Next weekend I'm going to see the touring
production of the Broadway revival of Little Shop
of Horrors -- I'll be singing 'Suddenly Seymour'
for weeks, I imagine. And on the 29th I'll be
attending the Goblin's
Ball here in Portland, the official
book release party for Brian Froud/Ari Berk's new
book Goblins. Of course I'll have a full
report on the festivities!
10th of October, 2004
' Restless in life and seeking
no end in death
For breath of the ages in the face of the air
Still ghosts to the vitality
Of our most early and unwritten forebears
Whose wizardry still makes a like of history
Who somehow reared and loosed an impossible
Enduring yet
Among the green islands of the grey North Sea
And I will not forget.'
Williamson -- Five
Denials on Merlin's
Paul Brandon chimed in about his Brisbane Celtic
band, Rambling
House: 'Well we've just got a new saucy
fiddler that loves the slightly darker stuff like
King of the Faeries, a hornpipe, Tam
Linn, a reel, The Dancing Master, a
jig, Morrisons and Julia Delaneys, a
reel -- dark the way we start it. But I guess you
might want a few rousing footstompers, just to keep
the shadows at bay!'
Each All Hallows Eve Dance is dedicated to
someone who has passed beyond the Border. The
person this year, at the suggestion of many
staffers here, is Roger Zelazny. Is there anyone
who hasn't read a novel or short story by him? Yes?
My, are you in for a treat this year as we'll
reading in a round robin fashion A
Night in the Lonesome October before
the dance ! Why Roger, you ask? Simple -- Roger's
one of the major inspirations here at Green
Man as his myths are very much part of our
motif. He was just the sort of teller of tales that
any master storyteller would have been proud to
listen to on a cold winter's night, huddled by the
fireplace to keep warm. Roger told wildly
imaginative tales involving characters who often
seemed like they came out of some dark European
myth. Who better to commemorate at this time of
So remember to come back and join our merry
dance this All Hallows Eve, have some mulled cider,
feast on the pig roasting in the fire place, listen
-- and dance lively to -- the tunes being played by
Danse Macabre. And remember that we too like the
turning year are now a year older. . .
Please note that there's no CD reviews this
outing as the whole $#@! musical staff decided that
they should be involved in planning the upcoming
All Hallows Eve celebration. Though the laughter
and clinking of tankards from the Snug off the main
Pub room suggests that they already started
partying! Certainly the two kegs of Ryhope Wood
Hard Cider they've drained is strongly suggestive
of that being what's going on. . .
Our feature this week comes from Chief Cat
Eldridge, who sat down in the Pub with one
of his favorites, author James Hetley, for a fun
and enlightening interview.
Cat says: 'James Hetley has just seen his second
novel, the brilliant Winter
Oak, sequel to The
Summer Country, published by Ace. I sat
down with him in the Green Man Pub on a cold
early Fall day over a couple of pints of Guinness
to discuss that book, his use of Celtic folklore,
and other matters with him. What follows is my
written transcription of the notes from that
discussion. Given that we consumed several pints
and a rather delicious meal of a Gaelic steak pie
cooked with Jameson, and light soda bread, any
inaccuracies are solely my fault!'
Nutick here. The music staff has gone off
to work on party planning so I'm here in my dual
capacity as Book Editor and Treasure Trove Editor,
and then I'm going in to join the crew and make
sure that they aren't serious about some of the
decorations they've suggested. . .
Right then, let's do this. Our first review
comes from April
Gutierrez. Cat mentioned our fondness for
Zelazny here at Green Man, so it's
appropriate that April discusses Theodore Krulik's
Complete Amber Sourcebook. In her
Excellence in Writing Award winning review,
April says '[T]he guide's subtitle states
that it is the 'indispensable guide' to Zelazny's
universe. A lofty claim, indeed, but a true one. At
494 pages, the Sourcebook is a weighty tome,
even in paperback. It opens with a brief preface
from a scribe of the One True City (Amber), an
amusing touch, and an even briefer introduction
that lays out Krulik's desire to be both scholarly
and informal in the pages that follow, a goal at
which he largely succeeds.'
Hess explains 'I know Peter Dickinson
mainly as a writer of brilliant, thought-provoking
stories of alternate worlds, imagined futures, and
philosophical questions -- such as the
Changes Trilogy, Eva, and The Blue
Hawk. His new novel for young readers,
Inside Grandad, was therefore something of a
surprise to me. Set in Stonehaven, a quiet seaside
village in Scotland, it concerns no outer drama or
conflict; the 'Grandad' of the title has a stroke
in the first few pages and most of the story takes
place by his hospital bed.' Sounds interesting. .
.read her review of Inside
Grandad to find out what she thought of
this novel.
Paige has two reviews this week. Of the
first she says 'In The Blues Ain't Nothin':
Tales of the Lonesome Blues Pub setting is an
all important element since the novel is,
essentially, a love letter to the blues.' Did she
like Tina Jens' book? Well, she does say that
'[A]lthough flawed, overall there's
something to recommend about The
Blues Ain't Nothin''. Jessica also receives
an Excellence in Writing Award for her
astute look at Tracy Lynn's Snow: 'In the
past few decades a visible trend, of which Angela
Carter's opulent retellings and Gregory Maguire's
perspective-shifting retellings are prime examples,
has been at work. Fairytales are being reclaimed
for older readers. Often, this means excavating a
fairy tale's original edge, and in Tracy Lynn's
young adult novel Snow,
the edge certainly shows.'
Maria (published as Black Maria in
Britain and Canada) is about the smothering effect
of some relationships, about the battle of the
sexes taken too far, about happy endings colliding
headlong with reality, and no doubt about several
other things that would only come clear in
subsequent readings. As ever, all that dry-sounding
stuff is wrapped up in a quick moving and
unpredictable plot, with vivid off-kilter
characters.' Find out more about this Diana Wynne
Jones' novel in Lenora
Rose's very enjoyable review.
is the omnibus collection of Storm Constantine's
first trilogy, The Enchantments of Flesh and
Spirit, The Bewitchments of Love and
Hate, and The Fulfillments of Fate and
Desire. It is the story of the beautiful
peasant boy, Pellaz, lured away from his stable if
uninspiring existence on a rural farm; Calanthe,
the magnetic stranger who asks hospitality for a
night; and the mysterious Thiede, a being who
inspires awe and more than a little fear, the
mastermind behind a new civilization.' Robert
Tilendis reviews this omnibus brilliantly,
and made me want to read it! He also looks at the
first issue of a new scholarly journal devoted to
fantasy: 'Studies
in Fantasy Literature is a new journal
devoted simply to what its title describes:
critical and scholarly studies in the area of
fantasy, with an all-inclusive purview. As editor
Benjamin Szumskyj puts it in his first editorial,
the journal 'is dedicated to and honoring the works
of any author who has ever written a story in the
genre of fantasy.''
Finally, in a burst of that odd synchronicity we
so often enjoy here at GMR, Sara
Sutterfield Winn has a second review this
week of a series of novels and short stories taking
place in a bar. Patrick Thomas sets his Murphy's
Lore fantasies in Bulfinche's Pub. Tales
From Bulfinche's Pub, Fool's Day,
Through the Drinking Glass, and Shadow of
the Wolf comprise the Murphy's Lore
series, and Sara says: 'Yep, there are indeed some
good times to be had at Bulfinche's. There's beer!
There's vampyres (with a 'y'!)! There's sock humor!
There are a lot of wretched puns! But be warned,
there simply isn't a whole lot more. If a truly
satisfying draught of fine writing is what you're
thirsty for, I'm afraid Bulfinche's tap is dry.'
Still, she does have some nice things to say about
Eldridge says: 'You know already that we
collect very cool things here at Green Man
and the Fiddler
puppet from Folkmanis that's looking down upon me
from the a bookshelf is no exception.' Indeed, the
Fiddler is so very cool that Cat gets an
Excellence in Writing Award for writing him
As Cat says 'Folkmanis produces some of the
finest puppets I've ever seen.' I love them; as I
say in my review 'I never liked puppets or dolls as
a child; there were no Folkmanis when I was a
child. I think there's a direct connection there.
When I first saw the Folkmanis line in the stores,
I fell in love with the realistic animal puppets.
When we began our Treasure Trove section, we were
happy to receive Folkmanis puppets for review.
Their fantasy puppets are some of the loveliest
toys a child -- or an adult -- could ask for.' See
my review of Mouse
in Shoe and Genie
in Lamp for more.
speaking. For me, the Winter season starts sometime
in November when the weather here in Portland,
Maine turns cold and windy, and that in turn means
thinking of what seasonal delights I shall see this
year! Will it be the Nutcracker at Merrill
Auditorium this year? Or perhaps Dickens The
Christmas Carol at Portland Stage Company which
is definitely a must see? Hmmmm -- there's always
the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas show at
the Civic Center. Ahhh, but the best show in
Portland this Winter season will the third annual
On another note, I continue my evening reading
of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr.
Norrell: A Novel. Though I'm not sure I agree
with Neil Gaiman's widely quoted blurb of it being
'the finest English novel of the fantastic written
in the last seventy years', it has the great
potential to be a truly great novel with even the
footnotes adding to its charm. Where both Philip
Pullman and J.K. Rowling bored me to no end when I
attempted to read their works, Clarke is a skilled
writer with an appropriately dry sense of humor. It
is not the next Harry Potter, as it is far
better than any book in that series -- an
intelligently written novel with magical realism in
it that adults will find quite worth reading! I'll
see you next week; I'm off to read another
3rd of October, 2004
'When people told themselves
their past with stories, explained their present
with stories, foretold the future with stories, the
best place by the fire was kept for the
storyteller.' -- Jim Henson's The
Come in -- the staff's doin' its annual cleaning
of the Fireplace in the Pub. And a bugger of a job
'tis given the massive size of it! Of course, it
could only be done after the workers from the
Honourable and Ancient Chimney Sweepers Guild has
cleaned all of our myriad chimneys. Yes, that does
explain the bloody mess in the
courtyard. . . . The late fall
cleaning of 'em is very much needed as we heat this
old monster mostly with coal, except for the
fireplaces. Yes, I agree, 'tis rather nasty stuff,
but it works rather well with our century and a
half old hot water radiators. As the Sweepers sing,
'From the bottom to the top / Swepe chimney swepe /
Then shall no soote / Fall in your poridge pot. / A
good sausage, a good, / And it be
roasted. . . .'
The best winter's entertainment here in the
Green Man building has for centuries been
found in the Pub. Now, most of you will think first
of the music provided by the Neverending Session
musicians, but there's 'nother equally ear-catching
group of entertainers -- the storytellers who you
can find here just about anytime of the day or
night, particularly when it's colder and nastier
than a mountain troll's breath outside. As we've
told many a fine storyteller down the centuries,
settle into the comfortable chair by the fireplace,
pour yourself a mug of mulled wine, help yourself
to the smoked salmon and biscuits, and we'll listen
avidly to what tale you're telling this
evening. . . .
But I'm here to tell you 'nother story tonight
-- the story of that fireplace and that chair which
has an honoured place beside it. Yes, you heard
right. I'll bet you never thought of the history of
that fireplace as I've noticed that when you are
here you pay rather close attention to the comely
lasses in their low-cut blouses and tight skirts
talking over by the Bar. Forget them, lad -- You
can't afford what they want in exchange for their
company. Even the Jacks here found that out! So get
your mind out of the gutter for a
while. . . .
Back when this building was built, the resident
theatre troupe slept here -- the rest of the
building was unheated and winters in this city get
bloody cold and damp to boot. It wouldn't be for a
few more centuries that the heating system and the
present kitchen were added, so both keeping warm
and cooking were done here where the Fireplace is.
See the spit that spans most of it? There's a
sketch in our Library of a forty stone boar being
roasted, with a plump goose inside the boar, slowly
on the spit, and I've heard tales told of a deer or
two from the Queen's Wood being poached and roasted
there. Now look carefully in the upper left hand
corner -- see where a lead musket ball took out a
decent bit o' brick? That was the shot fired by an
under-sheriff in anger at one of the thespians who
he said owed him money. We paid him off, as we do
every time that the law gets heavy-handed -- what
choice do we have?
We usually have but a small fire burnin' in it
as it's far too costly to keep a large blaze goin',
but 'morrow eventide we'll be hosting the annual
party for the Sweepers Guild -- part of our payment
for their work -- so they will be providing huge
well-seasoned logs of oak, ash, and, for an
aromatic smell, cedar. We will be providing the
boar that will be roasted for a full day startin'
this eventide. And there'll be a very large
cauldron of mulled cider warming off to the right
hand side of the fireplace! So join us 'morrow
eventide for a memorable feast! Now why don't you
go read some reviews, and then pop back before you
go and I'll tell you the rest o' the
tale. . . .
'Come in -- sit by the Fireplace here in the
Green Man Pub and we'll discuss
one of the best series ever made. We'll speak of
storytellers, shaggy dogs who speak, trolls, comely
maidens, ugly hags, and a whole lot more. So grab a
mug of Ryhope Wood Hard Cider and we'll get
started. . . .' That's Cat
Eldridge in our featured review, talking
about one of our favorites here at Green
Man. Jim Henson could do no wrong, could he? At
least he certainly didn't with The
Storyteller and The
Storyteller: Greek Myths, which Cat review
for us in this Excellence in Writing Award
winning piece.
Nutick here. Just a few books to write up,
and then I'll get back to my glass of Fraoch
Heather Ale and an episode of Sliders, which
just arrived in the mail from Netflix. Sure I'm a
book junkie, but I have to have my DVD fix too!
Eldridge has a couple of reviews for us
this week, one a look at a new volume, and the
second a new look at an older work. First up is a
look at a reference book from science fiction
author Brian Stableford: 'It won't surprise many of
you that I have a degree of avarice quite
unparalleled when it comes to reference material of
most any kind. My office here at Green Man
is filled with thousands of volumes that I use when
I need to know something quirky, e.g., what's the
tartan for the Fraser clan? That would require
using Collins Scottish Clans & Family
Encyclopedia. . . . How about
the works of Larry Niven? Well, for material up to
the early 90s, I could consult John Clute and Peter
Nicholls' The Encyclopedia of Science
Fiction (published 1993) as that is the best
printed reference work on the subject to date, but
until the publication of Historical
Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature,
there was only the Internet for more recent
citations on science fiction literature.'
Once in a while we replace an old review with a
new look at a worthy book. Perhaps we've re-read a
volume and found new insight, or maybe it has just
been rereleased. Cat discusses Jane Yolen from the
former perspective -- 'There are certain works of
literature that I re-read every year, usually even
at the same time of the year as that is when they
should be read. Some of them are James Goldman's
The Lion in Winter, a tale set at Christmas
time in a Royal Court that never was quite that
way, and Jennifer's Steven's Solstice
chapbook, a story of a dance party quite unlike
anything a mortal has seen, both of which I read
around the Winter Solstice. Another work that I
bring down from the Library when the days grow
short and winter is hard at hand is Jane Yolen's
The Wild
Hunt, a slender volume that tells the tale
of Jerold and Gerund, two boys living in similar
houses that appear to be in intertwined
Universes. . . . This is truly great
reading -- truly mythopoeic in nature, and quite
entertaining to boot!'
O'Regan got his hands on a pretty nifty set
of books and CDs: 'Since 1998 Maurice O'Keefe of
Tralee has traveled the highways and byways of the
south and west of Ireland, gathering and preserving
the unique oral tradition of the counties of Kerry,
Cork, Clare, Limerick, and Galway. 330 individual
recordings of hour long duration, in CD format,
have now been produced featuring the folklorists,
storytellers, musicians, local historians, and
archaeologists of the counties. There are stories
of matchmaking and dancing, of storytelling around
firesides, of musicians and their wondrous music,
of spirituality and old faith, of wakes and
funerals, of schooldays and farming traditions, of
laughter and gaiety, of sorrow and great grieving.
The recordings, made in the undirected format of
people sitting and recalling bygone days in their
own home places, bring one back to an Ireland which
we will not see again, an Ireland rich in a unique
oral tradition, now preserved here for
generations.' Go read John's review of The
Irish Life and Lore Collection, Volume 1 and
2, The
Ancient Barony of Duhallow -- Living
Voices, and CDs featuring Julia
Mary Murphy, and The
Quinn Sisters and Chris Droney.
John is honest in the opening of his review of a
work edited by Allison Thompson. He says 'This book
is at once fascinating and difficult to review. The
fascination lies in the idea of combining the music
of Turlough O'Carolan with modern English country
dances. The difficulty lies in my own lack of
experience in the world of choreography, which
renders me unable to offer objective criticism or
judgment to this project. Having said that, the
work is an interesting collection in its own
right.' It does seem that he liked the book, as you
can see in his review of The
Blind Harper Dances: Modern English Country Dances
set to airs by Turlough O'Carolan.
An Excellence in Writing Award goes to
Vail, who unfortunately didn't find too
much to praise in a book by Catherine Fisher.
Elizabeth explains that 'A few months before I
wrote this review, I typed up a negative opinion of
Mercedes Lackey's Egypt-themed Joust. The
reason for my displeasure had been that I believed
that the author had spent too much time
constructing a detailed, realistic, and original
setting, and not enough time fleshing out the
storyline. Well, my friends, if Joust is at
one end of the spectrum, than The
Oracle Betrayed is an example of how a
novel can fail if it strays too far to the other
side of the spectrum. If Mercedes Lackey offered us
too much information, then Catherine Fisher doesn't
offer us enough.'
What's that? Oh, it seems that Cat has a
confession to make. No, it's not that he's
admitting he has a serious jones for all things
literary. No, it's about a work of fiction he
thought would be a struggle. . . .
In his review of Jane Yolen's The Wild Hunt
this edition, he said '. . . .go
pick Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr.
Norrell: A Novel which at eight hundred pages
will keep you reading for quite some time. Yes, I
have a review copy of it here. It looks, errr,
really long. Is it good? That is another question
altogether. Ask me in a few months, say at
Candlemas . . .' He thought that it
would take him a while to work up his enthusiasm
for tackling such a long work of fiction. He was
wrong. In the Robert Graves Reading Room just now,
I saw him reading it while having a cup of mulled
cider, so I ask him what changed his mind.
'Simple,' he said, 'I made the mistake of reading
the first page several hours later I'd read over a
hundred pages. It's that good.' He promised
me that the review would be on my desk by the first
of November!
Master Reviewer David
Kidney seems to have enjoyed viewing
Scaggs: Greatest Hits Live. In David's
own words, 'The video is beautiful. Shot in high
definition, it looks great on my regular TV screen.
The colours are bright and crisp, the focus
precise. The sound is stunning, and the performance
is, well, the performance is really good. I kept
watching; it just sounded and looked so —
Letters editor Craig
Clarke here, filtering through what's been
a rather slim cache of correspondence over the last
month to deliver you the latest in epistolary
In my position as the editor of the Letters page
here at the Green Man Review, I look for
mail that I think would be interesting to read.
Most of what we get runs along the 'thanks for the
positive review' lines (like Naim
Amor's letter to thank Gary
Whitehouse for his review of Soundtracks
Vol 2). And there's nothing wrong with
those; in fact, they are terrific, but just like
anything else, read a few dozen of them and you
yearn for something with a little more substance --
bite, even. Sometimes I think I'd even prefer to
get a nasty letter from someone telling me just how
much they hated what I wrote.
Well, I guess I should be careful what I wish
for because I got one; aimed smack dab at me.
Rick Savage --
I don't think he's the guitarist from Def Leppard,
but you never can tell -- wrote in to really let me
have it. And, faithful reader, does he have a mouth
on him! Surprisingly, hate mail isn't all that
common around the offices -- given our reviewers'
tendencies to let their opinions fly free -- so I
couldn't wait to post it up here.
Another of my favorite kinds of letters is the
nostalgia piece (I'm a real softie at heart,
despite what you may have heard), and I was
delighted that my review of the I, Claudius
documentary The
Epic That Never Was reminded Derek
Banks of the time he spent working on its
crew and hanging out with its stars.
We can always be assured that David
Kidney will get a few interesting letters.
This time around, he heard from Taylor
Mathis, a musician who wanted to know if
the Muleskinner
song 'Rain and Snow' was in the public domain, and
Bill Stephens,
who shared his love of the soundtrack
to A Mighty Wind.
Plus, in a continuation of a previous letter by
Spencer, Peter
Florence would also like to know where to
find a copy of the film version of T.S. Eliot's
in the Cathedral. We've got it all -- love,
acrimony, mystery, nostalgia -- right here on the
GMR letters page.
Every September, lovers of Scandanavian roots
music make a beeline for Minneapolis, Minnesota to
hear performers such as Swåp, Väsen and
singers such as Mari Boine, who blends traditional
Sami tribal music with electronic arrangements.
Gianelli reports on why the Nordic
Roots Festival is well worth a visit: 'The
Nordic Roots Festival has managed to survive a
series of logistical and financial difficulties,
and the reason is clear to anybody who has ever
attended it. All the effort and hardship required
to assemble the musicians from across Scandinavia
for a weekend in Minneapolis are easily vindicated
by one great performance after another in front of
an eagerly receptive audience, many of whom have
traveled a great distance and will happily do it
Top o' the @#$%in' mornin' to each an' ev'ry one
a ya! SPike
'ere, diggin' this crazy new blues CD that came in
from Northern Blues this week. It's called
Villanelle by Paul
Reddick . . . an' it @#$%in' ROCKS!
But more about that next time . . .
now to the job at hand. Hey! By the way! When's
that special Clash issue comin'? Must be
soon . . . an' I hope you're all as
excited as I am about it! But no Clash this week,
even though the new edition of London
Calling wif a DVD an' bonus tracks an' pictures
an' ev'rythin' came out. . . . No,
this week we 'ave anuvver very E-clectic collection
of music reviewed by some of our very best
reviewers (not that we 'ave any BAD ones!)
Staff writer John
D. Benninghouse gets it rollin' wif his
look at the Cowboy Junkies, In
the Time Before Llamas. Now,
personally, I find that Margo Timmins to be pretty
@#$%in' hot! And John says
'. . . the band are in fine form
technically. The starts and stops of Bob Dylan's
'If You Gotta Go, Go Now' are pulled off
flawlessly. The slow, sad shuffle of 'To Love Is To
Bury' suits Timmins' hushed voice well -- but too
much of the album is made with that formula , and
with too little deviation. And five plus minutes of
the dull 'Blue Moon Revisited (A Song For Elvis)'
is positively somniferous. When they did move away
from the formulaic, I was left scratching my head.
Robert Johnson's 'Me and the Devil' is
transmogrified into sterile bit of minimalism a la
Brian Eno. It's not until the penultimate track,
'Murder, Tonight in the Trailer Park,' that
anything really interesting happens. Michael
Timmins and Ken Myhr do some
psychedelic . . . ' If you aren't
intrigued about what John concludes in his
review . . . well, you're not very
inquisitive, are ya! Check it out!
Mr. Benninghouse, also reviews a couple of CDs by
the Magnolia Sisters. He states that 'Prends
Courage and Chers
Amis compliment one another quite well.
Each album is a bit of a history lesson into Cajun
music. They put traditional Cajun music on display
and demonstrate how diverse the genre is by showing
the various influences the music and musicians have
had over the years. But the Magnolia Sisters also
do what folk musicians have always done: they make
the songs of others their own by mixing up
instruments and altering lyrics to suit their needs
and the demands of the present.' Fascinatin'!
Massey is a Senior Writer 'ere at
GMR, an' he takes a somewhat different
approach today by reviewin' a handful of albums
that jus' . . .
well . . . listen to Peter's
explanation: 'Green Man Review receives
literally hundreds of CDs and books every month to
be reviewed. It's inevitable that as the reviewers
on the staff pick their way through them, some may
or may not for various reasons get chosen to be
reviewed. With CDs, this may be because the artist
or band is not known to any of the writers and they
don't feel they are qualified to make a judgement
or comment on what they hear. In the mailroom, they
are known as orphans. With this in mind, and the
fool that I am, for this review I decided to pick,
purely at random, just four CDs from the orphans
pile and see what they have to offer, or maybe why
they have been rejected by the staff. None of these
artists are known to me, so with a virgin ear and a
blank canvas, I set out.' The discs in question are
Lucie Idlout's E5-770,
My Mother's Name, Liza Garelik's Liza
Garelik and The Wonderwheels, Benjammin's
From Inside an' By
the Way from Dave Rowe.
Next, my dear mate Jack
Merry (anuvver Senior Writer) wif a pair of
reviews. 'How does one earn the designation 'Senior
Writer?' you ask. It's got somethin' to do wif the
amount of Guinness they can consume an' still
compose understandable sentences! Any
road . . . Jack listened to
by Cass Meurig an' 'is review is littered wif Welsh
words . . . let me say, they sound
lovely read aloud! What did Jack think about it? He
had this to say: 'So how does it sound? Rather
lovely in a medieval-ish sort of way. Not a stuffy,
'this is Church music' sort of way, but something
quite a bit more paganish. . . .
this is not Classical music as it's normally
thought of.' That's a relief innit? Means I might
give it a spin!
Jack also reviews two CDs by McDermott's 2 Hours vs
Levellers, World
Turned Upside Down and Disorder
an' I think he wuz well-pleased! 'Let me put this
as simply as possible -- every McDermott's 2 Hours
vs Levellers should be purchased by you. Now. I've
heard these two plus Claws and Wings. It
took me repeated listening over a week's period
before I finally had enough of 'em. They are that
Finally, brother Gary
Whitehouse (Master Reviewer) weighs in with
a selection of music from all over! Nels Andrews'
Shoes is described like this, 'Sunday
Shoes isn't easy country music, with rhyming
lyrics and soaring choruses and blazing electric
guitars. But it goes places and illuminates
emotions that that other type of song can never
touch. Andrews' characters evoke Cormac McCarthy's
emotionally gutshot men and women, and his spare,
poetic lyrics just might stand shoulder-to-shoulder
with the likes of Tom Waits and Townes Van
Zandt . . . time will tell.' Crikey,
literary references, an' mention of Tom
Waits . . . that's gotta be worth a
look! Next Gary assesses Mignonette
(izzat a tiny steak?) by The Avett Brothers:
'[Some] of the songs lean toward pretty
girls left behind, and the type of philosophizing
common in late-night coffee houses and dorm rooms
among twenty-somethings who are discovering the
world, love and life for the very first time.
Sometimes, as in the final track, 'Salvation Song,'
words are awkwardly shoehorned into the verse
structure, but all is forgiven when that lovely
three-part harmony kicks in,' Gary opines. Read the
whole review, it gets better.
Penultimately Gary visits with Robyn Hitchcock
whose new CD features Gillian Welch and 'er
guitar-playin' cohort David Rawlings. Spooked
was a surprise around the GMR offices.
Kidney, (whose absence today is explained
by a HUGE backlog of books he's tryin' to read
while listenin' to Raven's new Tommy Sands
Anthology! I can't figger that man out!) hasn't
heard this one yet . . . but I saw
'im salivate at the @#$%in' thought of it! Gary
explains, 'Here's one that nobody saw coming.
English psychedelic folkie Robyn Hitchcock's latest
album is a collaboration with American alt-oldtime
darlings Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
Hitchcock, who has been making his own
idiosyncratic brand of music since 1977, when he
founded the Soft Boys, met the much younger
American duo in 2004 while he was in the US for the
filming of the remake of The Manchurian
Candidate, in which he has a role. The three,
discovering a respect for each other's work, got
together for a jam session, followed by an intense
two weeks in Welch and Rawlings' Nashville studio
making this record.' I don't think Gary was
Last, but not least Gary reviews Zabe i Babe's
'Fans of Tim Eriksen -- and he has many more since
his vocals and shape-note songs played a prominent
part in the soundtrack of the Cold Mountain
film in 2003 -- will probably enjoy this project,
which shows one more side of his multi-faceted
talent. Cordelia's Dad fans likewise, and fans of
Balkan music should also check out this
American-Balkan collaboration.'
An' there you 'ave it. Annuver week's worth of
listenin', thinkin', writin', editin', postin',
drinkin', listenin' some more, an' 'angin' 'round
the pub. Annuver week of e-mails, and missives
about who got what CD, an' where the @#$%in'
inserts went, an' who ate my pizza, an' on an' on.
It's one bloody thing after annuver here in the
high pressure world of music journalism. See ya
next week!
Ahhh, the chair made of oak, leather, and a
foliate print fabric. We think it started life as
the chair that Sir
John Falstaff, the portly rascal of
Windsor, sat in at the Garter Inn. What? You
thought he only existed in Shakespeare's Henry
IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor?
Possibly he did, possibly he didn't. All I know is
that the chair is more than massive 'nough to hold
his reputed bulk. Now for all I know it could have
been the Throne of Bonnie Prince Charlie himself as
the story never stays the same twice. Some even
claim that Roger
Zelazny once sat there conversing with
Merlin himself. Certainly Paul
Brandon has told tales sitting in it as has
Sherman and Will
Shetterly. Perhaps even you have sat there,
or will sit there!
See the long gouge in the left arm? That was
from a sword swung a bit too wildly during an
impromptu staging of a scene from a Robin Hood
play, Robin Hood and the Maid Who Never Said
No, that the theatre company here was
rehearsing. The fabric on the chair is not original
to it -- it appears to have designed by William
Morris himself! Notice that chair is more than big
'nough that one could hide behind it as indeed one
lover did when the not very pleased husband of a
Summer Queen showed up -- when the lights are
turned down in here the shadows hide anyone back
there. (Reynard here -- it was Tom, the lad who
skipped out on a fey wedding later on, who was the
cowardly lover. . . . He never could
behave like a man. Couldn't stomach a sword fight,
the bastard!) The chair's sat at that angle to
the Fireplace so that person sitting in it is
mostly in shadows -- the storytellers prefer it
that way as they say the best stories are told when
the light is dim and the imagination unfettered by
mundane concerns.
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Some images courtesy of
Updated 24 October 2004, 17:15 04:15 (MN)


text:
The length of the summative assessment has not yet been decided. This fall, Governing States will be asked to review and approve the summative assessment design, which encompasses test length, reporting categories, and the test blueprint.
Test length is influenced by several factors, including the amount of content that the test assesses. The Common Core ELA/literacy standards cover writing and speaking and listening. This represents a much broader range of content than most statewide reading assessments cover today. Smarter Balanced will assess the depth and breadth of the Common Core to provide a richer picture of student achievement.
In addition, the summative assessment is made up of the computer adaptive test (CAT) and performance tasks that are delivered by computer but are not adaptive. Computer adaptive testing is more efficient than fixed-form tests, requiring fewer questions to produce a more accurate picture of a student's strengths and weaknesses. Performance tasks—which may require one to two class periods to complete—will be used to better measure capacities such as depth of understanding, research skills, and complex analysis, which cannot be adequately assessed with selected- or constructed-response items. The length of both of these components will determine the overall test length.
SBAC Weekly Q & A >


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