Love children’s books (like I do) but are wary of carrying them in public? Ward off the ridicule:
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Westi loves springtime blossoms and I do too. Even more than the sight of pinky white clouds of cherry and plum blossoms, I love their scent. It’s one of a few flower smells that I’d love to stick my face in and breathe all day.
There’s a Japanese folksong about them. I couldn’t find one with vocals, but here’s a nice instrumental. It would sound more traditional on the koto (Japanese lute) but ukulele will do. I think of it as a quiet song, but Jake rocks out on his version:
Japan has a springtime custom called hanami, which means flower party. You picnic under the sakura. Perhaps for some, the picnic is an excuse to enjoy the flowers, and for some, the flowers are an excuse to enjoy food and socializing.
I’ve adored renaissance music for many years and I’ve wished more of my friends would join me in appreciating its charms.
If you’re unfamiliar with Western music before the Baroque era, here is a pleasing, friendly introduction to some lovely tunes. Originally sung or plucked on lute strings, they translate well to the modern classical guitar. One Jon Sayles has played, recorded and kindly made them available.
Almost 250 free mp3 downloads are just waiting for you - little ditties like Weep You No More Sad Fountains, A Shepherd in a Shade, or Soy Contento.
Just to give you a taste, here’s a catchy little German dance:
The selection on the site consists mostly of very genteel tunes. If you find them too sweet and mild, don’t write off all renaissance music. There’s wilder, more dramatic music from that time, too.
By the way, I used to sing many of the English songs with a group of SCA geeks in college. I can still do an adequate refrain of hey nonny nonny!
Go thou and beg, borrow or steal Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander and enter into a world of entertaining adventure and moving friendships.
O’Brian’s hero, gregarious Jack Aubrey, and his geeky sidekick Stephen Maturin are such well-developed characters, I half expect to turn a corner and run into them someday—despite knowing they led wholly fictional lives during the Napoleonic wars.
O’Brian’s finely crafted prose is such an incredibly satisfying pleasure to read—right up there with Dickens and Austen on my reading-pleasure scale. And he jokes a lot. If you don’t mind potty humor, here’s a sample:
. . . a broad veranda with a number of domesticated creatures on it, marmosets of three different kinds, an old bald toucan, a row of sleepy parrots, something hairy in the background that might have been a sloth or an anteater or even a doormat but that it farted from time to time, looking round censoriously on each occasion, and a strikingly elegant small blue heron that walked in and out.
Our local library has the books. I have some decent audiobook versions, if you’d like to borrow from me.
Extras:
The series chronology. Best to read the 20 books in order.
Appreciation - not quite a full review - of the books.
Master and Commander, the movie inspired by the O’Brian books and starring Russell Crowe. Recommended.
This here fellow is Thomas Cochrane, a real-life inspiration for the naval adventure writers. Naval battles and trickery, pistol duels, eloping, inventing things, getting sentenced to the pillory, commanding the Chilean Navy, … he was one wild and crazy guy.
This series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on.
They do say a picture is worth many words. I guess it's worth a lot of numbers too.
