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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Our friends at Hallwalls in Buffalo tell me that May 21, 2008 is the deadline for the U.S. government to appeal Critical Art Ensemble's recent court victory.
How I spent my mini-vacation...these photos do not do the forest justice cause there ain't no audio. The bottom one is a picture of a nesting grouse (yes it is). I flushed it and it scared the shit out of us. Then we knew where its nest was so we scared it back a few times by trying to take its picture. Now we're gone so the poor little thing can get back to worrying about genuine predators. When we first got there we kept hearing a low kind of put-put-putting sound. VB said, "That's grouse." I said, "No, silly, that's a motor on a nearby farm." Then we played is-isn't for a couple of days, and came home to the bird book, which says this about ruffed grouse, "The drumming of the male might be overlooked as a distant motor starting up, or an outboard on some far-distant lake. The 'booming' starts off slowly, gaining speed until it ends in a whir: bup...bup...bup...bup..bup.bup. up. r-rrrrrrr. At a distance the muffled thumping is so hollow that sometimes it hardly registers as an exterior sound, but seems rather to be a disturbing series of vibrations within the ear itself."
the ball field
the orchard
the swamp
the grouse
Happy Victoria Day
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| James Clark - Count Lavender 1892 Oil on canvas | James Clark - The Thorney Prize Ox 1858 Oil on canvas |
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| James Clark - Herford Ox 1860 Oil on canvas | J. Loder - Shorthorn Bull 1845 Oil on canvas |
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| Thomas Weaver - Four Shear Ram 1837 Oil on canvas | R. Whitford - Leicester Ram 1859 Oil on canvas |
And don't forget to enjoy the industrial revolution.
Sacred Harp Music
N.E. Sacred Harp Convention
University of Georgia, Athens
29t Fairfield - Boston Connexion Sacred Harp singing
Dairy Queen Missionary Baptist Sacred Harp Convention
Sacred Harp Kitties (God of Darkness)
"Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp is the first feature documentary about Sacred Harp singing, a haunting form of a cappella, shape note hymn singing with deep roots in the American south. Shape note singing has survived over 200 years tucked away from notice in the rural deep south, where in old country churches, singers break open 'The Sacred Harp', a 160 year old shape note hymnal which has preserved these fiercely beautiful songs which are some of the oldest in America. The film offers a glimpse into the lives of this 'Lost Tonal Tribe' whose history is a story of both rebellion and tradition. The filmmakers, Matt and Erica Hinton spent 7 years documenting this yet largely unknown art form."
(the link above for the documentary's web site has the best sound recordings of this music that I've found since I first heard a Sacred Harp Convention on The Alan Lomax Collection. I fell in love with it because no matter how many bad notes were shrieked out, there were always singers in the chorus that somehow resolved them all)
Movie trailer for "Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp"
I've read that the sources for these weird harmonies are hymns from Restoration England. The BBC did a documentary that includes Sacred Harp called The History of White Gospel that gives a critical look at its roots and its current manifestation as the music of American Evangelical power.
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