Author: Laura Conrad

Walk for Hunger, 2009


[walk for hunger 2009]

We had good weather for what we were doing. There were a
couple of raindrops at about noon, and a few more at 2:30, when
the other group was playing, but the clouds made it easier to
see the music, and it was close to t-shirt weather. (I had warm
underwear under mine; otherwise I would have been wearing a
sweater.)

We were worried about whether the pieces with just vocals would
carry to where the walkers could hear them, and they certainly
didn’t carry as well as the recorders or the brass or string
instruments, but I checked while Ishmael and Anne were playing a
duet, and you could certainly hear that it was happening, so you
could go closer if you wanted to hear better.

Of course, the ipod generation doesn’t believe it’s music if
you have to move to hear it. We’ve been asked several times
playing at picnics why we couldn’t just amplify what we were
doing so they didn’t have to move.

I’ve looked into amplification, and my impression is that even
when I was younger and stronger, anything light enough for me to
carry sounds pretty tinny. And of course, for this application,
we’d need something that ran on batteries, which increases the
weight.

The serpent was a big hit, as was Paul Ukleja’s trumpet
rendition of Stardust Memories.

We needed to ask Paul to play some solos to give us breaks in
the morning, because the only group we could find couldn’t start
playing until 1 PM. They had 6 recorder players and a violinist,
and played very well out of an anthology of Elizabethan
music.

For breaks from the singing, Paul, Ishmael, and I played
Country Dance music, and found a few things that really worked
pretty well with fiddle, recorder, and serpent.

I decided to do all the performing standing up, so the serpent
was resting on a 24 inch stool, which seems to allow it to
vibrate more freely than when it’s supported on my legs. I
think I’ll make a point of performing that way in the future.
But I think I’ve said that in the past, too.

Swine flu II

I posted the
previous installment when I needed a fast post, so I
didn’t do any research about what’s already been said about the subject.

Subsequent googling turns us this
article from
2000 about tuberculosis and Spanish influenza. This is much
later than my conversation with my friend, and includes an
argument for tuberculosis being a contributing factor that I
hadn’t remembered. Typical influenza deaths occur heavily in
infants and the elderly, but in 1918, there was also a spike in
20-30 year olds.

Very little of what I’ve read about the flu in Mexico addresses
this issue, but
this
piece from
the New York Times does point out that there were some deaths
among young adults, which was one of the factors that triggered the
concern on the part of the Mexican government.

Walk for Hunger Retrospective

This is usually my big performance of the year. I gave the
details in my Cantabile Band
post yesterday. For this one, I thought I’d dredge up
some pictures from previous Walks.

I’m certainly not going to have time to post tomorrow morning.
I may post to the spindle later today, or I may wait until I get
home with a picture and post that.

2008

This was last year. The real performance was when we played
for Bonnie in her hospital room. This one was dampened by both
rain and Bonnie dying; one performer had done dropin rehearsals,
and another performer had another event to go to and dropped in
for the first set but had left before this set. The rain actually
stopped by noon, but I don’t think most of us remember it that
way. We did a lot of trios, some of which we’re repeating this
year; I hope it’s more cheerful to sing about walking over hills
an dales and birds singing.

[walk08]

2007

The year before may have been a high point of some sort. We
did a performance of a lot of the same repertoire at the Boston Recorder
Society Play the Recorder Day, and really knew things pretty
well. People had learned some things about how to secure music
and stands from the wind the previous year.

[walk07]

2006

2006 was the year we played at the Jeremiah
Ingalls festival in Vermont, so we put a bunch of shape note
stuff on the program. I think it was an entertaining program if
you liked both listening to music and watching musicians run up
and down the riverbank chasing their music.

[walk06]

2005

2005 was another year it rained, although, again, it really
cleared up pretty well by the time we were playing. But the viol
player didn’t want to get her instrument out, and a less
experienced performer freaked out when I suggested switching some
parts so that I could play bass on the serpent. It wasn’t even
her part I wanted to switch — it was the person she was standing
next to. So now there’s language in the FAQ
about how in a dropin group you have to be prepared to be either
one-on-a-part or not one-on-a-part.

[walk05]

2004

2004 was the year of the best professional coperformers.
It was really hot and two very good recorder players came and
played duets and lots of people stopped to listen to them.

[walk04]

2003

This was a big band performance. I think I made everybody come
to at least one rehearsal, but not necessarily enough rehearsals
for them to have learned the music. And it was a big enough crowd
that it was hard to hear. I think it wasthe year we started having
other groups to help us out, but I got several groups, only some
of whom showed up when and where they were supposed to.

[walk03]

2002

This was a big band where not everybody came to a rehearsal,
and nobody could hear anything from the other end of the group.
It might have been the first year we had the whole day to cover,
and I pretended we could do it with solos, and people had the idea
they should be able to walk to the bathroom (a mile or so away)
between sets. I opened my big mouth at dinner afterwards about
how to run a recorder society, and
that’s how I got stuck doing it for a while.

[walk02]

Previous

2001 was the year I founded the Cantabile Renaissance Band.
For two or three years previous to that, I had a fairly good
recorder trio, and we just bought some of the books of recorder
arrangements we knew pretty well and played. I think we were only
covering two hours, and we met regularly anyway without random
people dropping in. The biggest problem I remember was that if
the wind came up and you were facing the wrong direction, the
sound didn’t come out of the tenor recorder. A recorder group
that meets regularly really makes more sense in this context than
the crazy stuff we do now, but I don’t have one of those, and I
don’t know many people who do.

Dried mushrooms

The last two company dishes I’ve made have been lots nicer
because I bought an 8-ounce package of dried trumpet mushrooms from Earthy
Delights.

It was recommended on the New York Times Bitten
Blog, with some very flowery language about the texture of
the mushrooms after reconstitution being very similar to fresh
mushrooms.

That isn’t my experience — they seem as slimy and rubbery in
texture as other dried mushrooms I’ve reconstituted. But if you
buy in bulk they are cheaper, and if you chop them up fine
enough you don’t mind the texture.

And you get the reconstituting liquid to cook with. These seem
to have less sand in them than some, although you still watch
the tail end of the liquid when you’re adding it to
anything.

My favorite thing to do with the liquid so far was to use it to
cook kasha. The kasha is already an earthy taste, and having
the mushroom soaking liquid makes it even better.

Come, join us

We’re going to be playing at the Walk for Hunger on Sunday, May
3, from 10:30 AM to 3 PM. We’ll be joined by Paul Ukleja and a
recorder group led by Sarah Cantor.

Our spot is on the banks of the Charles River, on the
Cambridge-Watertown line, across Greenough Boulevard from the
Cambridge Cemetary. If you’re walking, stop and say hi. If not,
just come hang out and enjoy the music. Here’s a sneak peak
at the program.

Schedule

On Tuesday, May 5, we resume our regular dropin meetings, at
7:45 PM at my
place.

These will continue on Tuesdays for the forseeable future,
except that we’ll probably skip Tuesday, June 9, during the Boston Early Music Festival.

Little Dorrit

I watched the last episode of the television adaptation on
Sunday, and finished rereading the book yesterday.

It’s a good adaptation, and the plot of the book is convoluted
enough that seeing the adaptation helps in reading the book, even
if you’re used to the
the convoluted plots of nineteenth century novels and soap
operas.

Of course, an eight hour TV show has to leave out a lot of
stuff from a 900 page book. I was especially sorry to lose the
impoverished music publisher. (He’s Mrs. Plornish’s father, who
at the beginning of the book is living in the Workhouse so as
not to take food out of the mouths of the Plornish
children.)

I think even the experienced adaptors who did this one chafed
at the restrictions, because the end seemed unusually
compressed, leaving us with no idea of what happens to several
characters who have been fairly carefully described (most
notably Minnie Meagles and her husband).

Of course, Dickens’ treatment of the business tycoon who steals
from one fund to pay off the investors in other funds and finally
loses money for all the main characters seems especially
contemporary.

The subplot where Miss Wade convinces Tattycorum (Harriet) to
leave her employment with the Meagles and live with her is a
little harder to translate to the twentyfirst century. One
reviewer suggested this was because of the hint of a lesbian
affair, but actually Dickens does hint at that. Mr. Meagles says
to Miss Wade:

‘If it should
happen that you are a woman, who, from whatever cause, has a perverted
delight in making a sister-woman as wretched as she is (I am old enough
to have heard of such), I warn her against you, and I warn you against
yourself.’

The problem is
that we are initially inclined to sympathize with Harriet for
feeling oppressed and ignored, where Dickens really believes she
should be grateful and submissive to such excellent people who are
being so kind to her.

Here are a few notes on things I picked up on on this reading
that you might not have noticed.

White Sand and Grey Sand
This is mentioned when Mr. Panks is hanging around the
Marshalsea while he’s researching Mr. Dorrit’s inheritance. He
explains to Amy and Mr. Clennam,

‘I am spending the evening with the rest of ’em,’ said Pancks. ‘I’ve
been singing. I’ve been taking a part in White sand and grey sand.
I don’t know anything about it. Never mind. I’ll take any part in
anything. It’s all the same, if you’re loud enough.’

It’s actually a round — the person who taught it to me thought
it was Ravenscroft, but I don’t find it there.
[music]

Prunes and Prisms
I first ran into this phrase in Little Women, where Jo says
to Laurie:

“Hold your tongue!” cried Jo, covering her ears. “‘Prunes
and prisms’ are my doom, and I may as well make up my mind to
it. I came here to moralize, not to hear things that make me
skip to think of.”

If I’d thought of it, I would have known it was a quotation, and would
have probably guessed it was Dickens, but I wouldn’t have
guessed anything as good as what Mrs. General tells Amy Dorrit
when explaining why it’s more genteel and feminine to say “Papa”
than “Father”.

‘Papa is a preferable mode of address,’ observed Mrs General. ‘Father is
rather vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to
the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism are all very
good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism. You will find it
serviceable, in the formation of a demeanour, if you sometimes say to
yourself in company–on entering a room, for instance–Papa, potatoes,
poultry, prunes and prism, prunes and prism.’

Plethoric
I also learned a new word. It means having a florid, ruddy
face. It occurs describing the customers at the inn in the
Swiss alps:

The third party, which had ascended from the valley
on the Italian side of the Pass, and had arrived first, were four in
number: a plethoric, hungry, and silent German tutor in spectacles, on
a tour with three young men, his pupils, all plethoric, hungry, and
silent, and all in spectacles.

The derivation is from plethora, implying that the face is red because
of a plethora of blood.

Swine flu

With the coverage of the swine flu, I’ve been thinking about an
arcane fact I was told once about the epidemic of 1918.

A friend I went to college with went on to study demography in
graduate school. At that time (early 1970’s), the way you got a PhD in
demography was to study the “demographic transition” (when people
get prosperous enough to consider children an expense instead of
an asset) somewhere. We lived in Rhode Island, so he studied it
in Rhode Island.

This meant that he looked at essentially all the death
certificates issued in the first few decades of the
twentieth century. And one of the things he and other
demographers noticed about the spike in deaths from Spanish
Influenza in 1918 was that it
led to a decline in deaths from tuberculosis over the next decade
or so.

So the theory at that point was that the people who died from
the flu tended to be people who already had low-grade
tuberculosis.

So if the current flu coming out of Mexico is anything like the
1918 flu, and if the theory based on death
certificates in the twentieth century has any validity, then we
might be in better shape than some people are worried about. I’d
be very surprised if the level of low-grade tuberculosis, at least in developed countries, isn’t a
lot lower now than in 1918.

Of
course, further research may well have invalidated the theory
about the 1918 deaths, and there may be very little resemblance
between the viruses in 2009 and the ones in 1918.

Following up

Garden

Yesterday I forgot to include a picture of the sedge, which doesn’t wither in the Winter, and this year is
blooming in the Spring.

<img src="http://www.laymusic.org/pictures/apr09/img_0234.jpg&quot; width=500
alt="[sedge]"

NEFFA

I took it easy this year — no trying to play fast dance music
I don’t know or to figure out how to fit serpent into music I
don’t know and the people who do know it don’t know the
serpent.

As I said on Sunday, I sang the Shape Note
singing, and then played serpent for the West Gallery
Quire.

Then I had lunch, and the Cantabile
Band members who are performing at the Walk for Hunger got
together outside and ran some of our stuff.

Then I caught the tail end of a singers’ workshop, taught by
Jerry Epstein. He really made a surprising amount of
difference to the performers he coached in only a few
minutes. He’s doing a two day version of it for the Folk Song Society
of New York in May.

Then I went and sang along on gospel songs and spirituals, and then had a nice conversation about the serpent with some shape note singers fom Minnesota and then I went home.

Garden

It’s too nice a day to spend all morning at the computer, so I took
the camera and the pruning shears out to the back yard, and I’ll
show you what’s going on:

The rhubarb is coming up nicely, but there’s something eating
it already.

[rhubarb]
[rhubarb leaf with insect holes]

There’s a pansy from the pot that someone brought to Bonnie’s room at the hospice last year about this time.

<img src="http://www.laymusic.org/pictures/apr09/img_0227.jpg&quot; width=500
alt="[Pansy]""

The woodruff is coming up nicely, and even has some buds.

[woodruff]

One of the two lavender bushes I transplanted from Bonnie’s
place has survived, although it’s a little scruffy. I pruned some
of the dead branches off it, and pulled up the dead one. It was
pretty dead even before I moved it, so I’m not surprised it didn’t
revive.

[lavender]

The Angelica plant I brought from Bonnie’s garden looks
healthy.

[angelica]

NEFFA

This will be a short one. If you’re anywhere near Mansfield,
Massachusetts, go to NEFFA
(The New England Folk Festival of the Arts).

That’s where I’ll be. I’m going to do the Sacred Harp Singing
at 10, and then at 11 I’ll be playing serpent in the West
Gallery Quire. This will be your best chance to sing with a
serpent for at least two weeks.

Normally, if I were taking off before 9 AM, I would leave a
normal post on the spindle, but I’ve had dinner guests the last
two days, and there just hasn’t been time.