Tumbling Toward The New Year

~ shoreacres ~ 69 Comments
Things roll differently in the desert

Captivating. Humorous. In the end, unexpectedly inspirational. Is the story true? That’s for you to decide, but the words of William Faulkner come to mind:

In my opinion, truth don’t have very much relation to facts. Some thing you imagine or you hear, you know is true. Maybe it ain’t so, but it should be so. That to me is truth.”

This story of a unique tumbleweed may not be entirely factual, but in various ways it seems true: at least, in the Faulknerian way. I found the seven-minute film online years ago; it was available for a time, and then disappeared. While discussing tumbleweeds with commenters on my previous post, I remembered the tale and went looking. To my surprise, I found it had been uploaded again, and I’ve already watched it multiple times, with great delight.

The story seems somehow suited to the coming of a new year. Perhaps you’ll enjoy it as well.

 

Comments always are welcome.
For better viewing, click the “Watch on YouTube” link in the video

O, Texasbaum

~ shoreacres ~ 69 Comments
An oilfield tree

If you don’t find words like toolpusher, roughneck, monkeyboard, or mud man familiar, it’s likely you’d never identify this aging bit of oilfield equipment as a Christmas tree. Obviously, it has little to do with the fragrant pines and firs some still bring into their homes for the holidays, but the array of valves, spools, and fittings designed to control the flow of fluids from an oil well reminded workers in the fields of old-fashioned, decorated Christmas trees, so the name took hold.

Whether Charles Follen would have seen a connection between the improbable oilfield ‘tree’ and the more traditional tannenbaum he introduced to New England is impossible to say. Raised in Germany, Follen immigrated to America and became Harvard’s first German instructor in 1825. By 1832, living in Cambridge with his wife and two-year-old son, he decided to recreate the German Christmas customs of his childhood and youth. In the woods near his home, he cut a small fir, decorated its branches with dolls and candy-filled cornucopias, and illuminated it with candles.

Harriet Martineau, an English journalist visiting Boston at the time, described the unveiling of the tree at the Follens’ Christmas party:

It really looked beautiful; the room seemed in a blaze, and the ornaments were so well hung on that no accident happened, except that one doll’s petticoat caught fire. There was a sponge tied to the end of a stick to put out any supernumerary blaze, and no harm ensued.
I mounted the steps behind the tree to see the effect of opening the doors. It was delightful. The children poured in, but in a moment every voice was hushed. Their faces were upturned to the blaze, all eyes wide open, all lips parted, all steps arrested.

Over time, trees like the one introduced by Follen changed. Candles gave way to electric lights, imported glass baubles replaced paper chains, and peppermint canes supplanted candy-filled cornucopias. Nonetheless, pine, fir, and spruce remained the Christmas trees of choice, primarily because of their conical shapes, even branches, and straight trunks.

Finding such perfect trees was possible in New England. In Texas it was more difficult, particularly in the days before Christmas tree farms and modern transportation.

For early settlers, the native Ashe juniper, sometimes called Texas cedar or mountain cedar, became a more-than-adequate substitute. Even today, hill country families harvest nicely-shaped cedars from their land for Christmas, keeping with long Texas tradition.

O Christmas Bush ~ a decorated cedar at Lyndon B. Johnson’s boyhood home, 2014

Farther west and south, where even cedar grows sparse, ever-inventive Texans harvest stalks of the agave, or century plant, for drying and decoration. An impressive plant, its stalk can grow to a height of thirty feet, making it especially appropriate for large spaces.

A decorated agave at Mission Espíritu Santo,
Goliad, Texas

If cedars are in short supply and there’s no agave handy, residents in places like the Panhandle always can turn to the tumbleweed. Sometimes tumbleweeds are lighted and hung from trees as yard ornaments, or used to build ‘snowmen,’  but tumbleweed Christmas trees aren’t exactly rare.

Red Steagall, well-known story-teller and cowboy poet, tells one of the best tumbleweed Christmas tree stories, and he tells it in song. There are Christmas trees in Notrees, Texas, and not all of them are in the oil patch.

It was a rough year for roughnecks’ children,
hard times and harder livin’,
we moved when the rent come due
and it come due once a week.
That year in late December
found us in an old house trailer,
west of Odessa, near a town they call Notrees.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Notrees, Texas
Too poor to pay attention,
Daddy lived on good intentions;
he intended Christmas to be just what we believed.
Drove to town in the company pickup;
when he didn’t have a sawbuck
for the price of a Christmas tree —
he brought back a tumbleweed.
My Kansas tumbleweed
Christmas eve in Notrees, Texas,
wind blowin’ through the cactus,
Santy Claus was a rich kid’s saint
and a poor kid’s dream.
I’d trade every fancy present
I ever had, or ever will get,
for the night of the tumbleweed Christmas tree.
Daddy set it on the dinette table,
Mama made a newsprint angel,
ornaments of tinfoil scraps and buttons on a string.
Took us all night to decorate it,
When we got done I’ll have to say that
it was the prettiest tumbleweed that I’d ever seen.
O Tumbleweed
Wind rocked the trailer like a cradle,
While we sang our Christmas carols,
settin’ on the sofa on the duct-taped Naugahyde.
Daddy looked proud as a big city banker,
Mama tried hard to be thankful —
Lookin’ at that tumbleweed,
she laughed until she cried.
Christmas eve in Notrees, Texas,
Wind blowin’ through the cactus,
Santy Claus was a rich kid’s saint
and a poor kid’s dream.
I’d trade every fancy present
I ever had or ever will get
for the night of the tumbleweed Christmas tree.
I was just six, goin’ on seven,
being poor is an education;
That night I learned a lot
about just what Christmas means.
It means love and it means lovin’,
It means money don’t mean nothin’,
and it means a tumbleweed can make a Christmas tree.
Christmas eve in Notrees, Texas,
Wind blowin’ through the cactus,
Santy Claus was a rich kid’s saint
and a poor kid’s dream.
I’d trade every fancy present
I ever had or ever will get
for the night of the tumbleweed Christmas tree.

And so it is. “Making do” isn’t the worst thing in the world, and sometimes it’s the best. Merry Christmas from Texas, and a happy New Year to y’all.

 

Comments always are welcome.

The Advent Tree, Revisited

~ shoreacres ~ 104 Comments
Cimarron National Grassland ~ Morton County, Kansas

 

Stripped
as bare
as late-shorn
fields, twisted
branches beckon birds
to decorate their lines.
  Emptied of all pretension
  they await the birds with patience ~
 bending low before frost-sharpened winds,
shimmering against falling silver light.

 

Comments always are welcome.
I’ve enjoyed writing Etherees for several years.  For more information on the syllabic poems that, in their basic form, contain ten lines and a total of fifty-five syllables, please click here.

Songs of La Cigarra

~ shoreacres ~ 84 Comments
Anahuac, Texas ~ named for the Nahuatl term meaning ‘place beside the waters’

With the rising of summer heat and humidity, a relative silence descends upon the land. Spring birdsong gives way to chips and calls of fledglings eager for food; the very embodiment of lassitude, squirrels take to shady limbs while humans murmur complaints. Only the cicadas carry on. The sound of their trilling — interminable, shrill, occasionally annoying — is impossible to ignore. 

Out on the docks, waves of sound wash up from surrounding oak trees: the buzzing loud enough to attract attention. On a neighboring boat, a worker looks up, looks to the trees, then catches my eye. “Es la cigarra,” he says, grinning. “The cicada.”

Hearing the Spanish term piqued my interest and served to remind that the noisy insects have played a role in cultures other than our own since antiquity. Aesop, the well-known fabulist believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE, wrote of the careless cicada (sometimes personified as a grasshopper) who spent the summer singing while the ant stored away food. With the coming of winter, the hapless cicada found herself without provisions; in George Fyler Townsend’s version of the fable, the ant tells the hungry cicada, “If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in winter.”

In 1668, French poet Jean de la Fontaine interpreted Aesop’s fable as “La Cigale et la Fourmi” (“The Cicada and the Ant”). In areas of France, the creature took on nearly mythical proportions, and often was interpreted in ways not intended by Aesop.

According to Provençal folklore, the cicada was sent by God to rouse peasants from their afternoon siestas on hot summer days and prevent them from becoming too lazy. The plan backfired. Instead of being disturbed by the cicada, the peasants found the sound of their buzzing relaxing, which in turn lulled them to sleep.
Today, there is a Provençal expression: “Il ne fait pas bon de travailler quand la cigale chante,” or, “It’s not good to work when the cicada is singing.”

Nearly 300 years after La Fontaine, Raymundo Pérez y Soto (1908-1991), a Mexican musician, composer, and singer with more than a hundred songs to his credit – including some some written in Nahuatl — romanticized the cicada as a creature that sings until it dies in a mariachi-style huapango titled “La Cigarra,” written and published in the mid-1950s.

The word huapango, derived from the Nahuatl word Huapantli or wooden board, dates back to the 17th century in the Huasteca region of northeastern Mexico. Huapango dance forms traditionally feature intricate footwork akin to tap dance; known as zapateado, their name is taken from zapato, a Spanish word for shoe; their performance on hollow platforms or stages emphasizes the dancers’ rhythmic stomping.

The typical huapango, known as Son huasteco, originated in northeastern Mexico and is accompanied by a trio of stringed instruments. The huapango norteño incorporates influences from northern Mexico, and typically is performed by larger groups featuring a mix of instruments that includes accordion, double bass, drums, and saxophone. 

In the 20th century, huapango was incorporated into the mariachi repertoire, with musicians accompanying singers or dancers with a number of vihuelas, trumpets, guitarróns, and violins. Mariachi versions also added elaborate violin entrances and interludes, elongated falsetto passages in vocals, and eliminated traditional huapango footwork.

Soto’s composition “La Cigarra,” one of the  most well-known mariachi huapangos, has been wonderfully performed by Natalia Jiménez and Lila Downs. Born in Madrid in 1981 to a Spanish father and Portuguese mother, Jiménez began her career as a fifteen-year-old playing on the streets of Madrid. In time, she became the winner of both Grammy and Latin Billboard awards. Ana Lila Downs Sánchez, born in Oaxaca, México in 1968, is a popular Mexican singer-songwriter and activist whose achievements include one Grammy and three Latin Grammy Awards.

When las cigarras begin to sing, whether you accept the sound as a reminder to provision for winter, take the Provençal approach and choose the French version of a siesta, or simply are annoyed, the Jiménez and Downs version of Soto’s song might be just what’s needed to put you back in a happy summertime frame of mind.

La Cigarra ~ Spanish and English lyrics below
Ya no me cantes cigarra
Que acabe tu sonsonete
Que tu canto aqui en el alma
Como un punal se me mete
Sabiendo que cuando cantas
Pregonado vas tu muerte
Marinero marinero
Dime si es verdad que sabas
Porque distinguir no puedo
Si en el fondo de los mares
Hay otro color mas negro
Que el color de mis pesares
Un palomito al volar
Que llevaba el pecho herido
Ya casi para llorar
Me dijo muy afligido
Ya me canso de buscar
Un amor correspondido
Bajo la sombra de un arbol
Y al compas de mi guitarra
Canto alegre este huapango
Porque la vida se acaba
Y quiero morir cantando
Como muere la cigarra
Don’t sing to me anymore, cicada
Let your singsong end
For your song, here in the soul
Stabs me like a dagger
Knowing that when you sing
You are proclaiming that you are going to your death
Sailor, sailor
Tell me if it is true that you know
Because I cannot distinguish
If in the depth of the seas
There is another color blacker
Than the color of my sorrows.
A little dove upon flying
Bearing a wounded breast
Was about to cry
And told me very afflicted
I’m tired of searching for
A mutual love.
Under the shade of a tree
And to the beat of my guitar
I sing this “huapango” happily
Because my life is ending
And I want to die singing
Like the cicada dies.

 

Comments always are welcome.

Tripping the Light? Fantastic!

~ shoreacres ~ 51 Comments
Come, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastick toe…
–John Milton, L’Allegro, (1645)

Friend and artist Gary Myers’s annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia opens this coming Friday, June 13. Titled Entanglement, the exhibit is his twenty-sixth at the gallery; I’ve found this year’s paintings as enticing as any I’ve viewed in the past.

According to Gary, this year’s show highlights the bands and tangles of energy that connect humans with each other and with the natural world. Often, he represents that energy by swirls and flows in the sky: “as twisting, knot-like ribbons without beginning or end…cacophonous bands that interweave over and under one another.”

In the painting above, colorful rhythmic spirals are employed as representations of energy. For Gary, the spiraling sky and undulating sea evoked a feeling of dance: hence the title, “Trip the Light Fantastic.”

After reading his post about this painting, I mentioned my own association with the title he’d chosen. During my childhood and youth, my favorite aunt lived in Lower Manhattan. During one of her trips back to Iowa, she taught me a song about New York City; she called it “East Side, West Side,” although it’s probably better known as “The Sidewalks of New York.”

Composed in 1894 by vaudeville actor and singer Charles B. Lawlor (1852-1925) with lyrics by James W. Blake (1862-1935), the words recall the men’s childhood neighborhoods and the friends they shared: Johnny Casey, Jimmy Crowe, Nellie Shannon who danced the waltz, and Mamie O’Rourke, who taught Blake how to “trip the light fantastic” — a somewhat old-fashioned phrase for dancing rooted in Milton’s poem. I still remember the words, and the tune.

East Side, West Side, all around the town
The tots sang “ring-around-rosie,” “London Bridge is falling down”
Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O’Rourke
Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York.

Decades later, a shortened version of the phrase “tripping the light fantastic” appeared in a quite different dance video. “Trip the Light,” composed by Garry Schyman and sung by Alicia Lemke, serves as accompaniment to Matt Harding’s somewhat odd but utterly charming commitment to dance his way around the world — with thousands of partners.

I became aware of his video when firemen from my own town danced on the stairs of their training building. I found it quirky, smile-producing, and inexplicably hopeful. Like Gary’s painting, it spills over with “bands and tangles of energy that connect humans with each other,” not to mention gentle reminders of truths too often forgotten in the chaos of our time.

Remember we’re lost together;
Remember we’re the same.
We hold the burning rhythm in our hearts
We hold the flame…
We’re gonna trip the light,
We’re gonna break the night,
And we’ll see with new eyes
When we trip the light.
In the morning light I’ll remember
As the sun will rise
We are all the glowing embers
Of a distant fire…
We’re gonna trip the light,
We’re gonna break the night,
And we’ll see with new eyes
When we trip the light.

 

Comments always are welcome.