In light of recent developments, I can reveal this about tomorrow’s Apple hoopla: if it’s the iPhone, i’m iNterested. If it’s what it probably will be, a sub-gig iTunes phone with no embedded PDA or OS, I won’t even look at it. The only bright spot in the rumor mill to date have been the tales of ramped-up production on 2GB mindrives.
Thud
It has come to my attention that I have a blinding headache.
It has also come to my attention that KG, friend of my yoot, is now a Manhattanite, abiding deep in darkest Bleecker Street. Lucky bastidge.
The Map, etc
Josh has run a Seattle-specific disaster-simulation (Oh, okay, actually, he ‘shopped a couple maps together, okay?) and shares his results.
I wonder if Google will add a GIS-based damage reporting layer to the app eventually? 😉
Walking out of New Orleans
Bart has linked to his neighbor Michael Homan’s blog post about his experiences getting out of New Orleans over the past few days.
They promised they would take us to Baton Rouge, and from there it would be relatively easy for me to get a cab or bus and meet the family in Jackson.
But then everything went to hell. They instead locked up the truck and drove us to the refugee camp on I-10 and Causeway and dropped us off. Many refused to get out of the van but they were forced. The van drove away as quickly as it could, as the drivers appeared to be terrified, and we were suddenly in the middle of 20,000 people.
He goes on to detail how it is that he “escaped” this refugee collection point; his account implies that the people on the freeway were being guarded, just as in the 1927 flood.
Castle Rock
Last night I had the deep pleasure of reading Alice Munro’s recent New Yorker piece, The View from Castle Rock, to Viv aloud. Man, such fine writing! It’s so precise and finely crafted, pivoting from scene to scene with the grace of a dancing master. (My reading order for the mag got scrambled as I had picked up the more-recent food issue while on a trip out of town and just turned to the issue last night).
The story is a sketch of a Scots family’s passage from Edinburgh to Quebec in 1818, and there are no improbable crises or supernatural eruptions to color he tale, only the rolling passage of the ship over waves, echoed in Munro’s rythmic, stately prose. I found the story compelling formally. I was fascinated at the economy and mythic brevity with which Munro introduces and signals the role and character of each play on her pitching stage. Moreover, though, I found the tale moving, falling headfirst into the hoary bit of stage management – a jump cut to the present (seeTitanic and ST:TNG’s The Inner Light) and, friends, weeping like a baby as I read the last few paragraphs.
In the Irish, and other, emigrant songs I have learned over the past ten years, the stunning sadness and permanency of the nineteenth-century experience of that long, final boat journey is well-captured. But these songs are songs crafted to provide a broad audience with a formal, social mechanism to express the sense of loss and sadness, and a means for their descendants to touch that as well. As such, the songs are usually quite generalized and do not dwell on the images and experiences of the trip itself so much as the dramatic moment of boarding the ship or the last glimpse of the homeland.
Munro’s story includes these moments, but her novelistic skill has permitted her to stitch these revenants from the cloth of history and with a puff of her breath send them dancing into our minds, inviting us to complete the act of resurrection and, for a few moments, bring these dead Scots to life one more.
Not Dead Yet
A few folks have corresponded with me via email about this, but I feel like I should address it here as well.
This was originally posted to Siffblog; I try to crosspost here as well.
Tablet has announced that the current issue, #103, will be the final edition of the magazine. While Siffblog has been affiliated with Tablet, I have used only my own resources to create and host the blog; therefore, I see no reason that Siffblog should cease operations.
However, I have been thinking about what the best route forward for the blog is. An informal relationship with one or more paper-based local publications would be mutually beneficial to all parties, I believe, publishers, publicists, film freaks, and film writers included.
I also would like to strengthen or formalize this blog’s ties to existing local film arts organizations. In an ideal world, this site would publish updated schedules and times for all of these organizations at no cost to them in order to expand online information resources about small-audience film.
In short, I have some thinking to do, which will produce some work for me. Sometime in the next month, I probably will do a site redesign – as simple as possible, mind you, as we’re currently househunting and that is really time consuming. After that, I will probably have a decent plan in place for the blog. For now, though, dear contributors, please do not fret: the Siffblog abides, man, the Siffblog abides.
Please continue doing what you’ve done to the place. It really helps to pull it all together.
P. S. Perhaps now it’s time to have a Siffblog party – slash – wake for Tablet?
One down?
Who knows if this will pan out, but NOLA.com is reporting that the 17th St. Canal breach is closed. Earlier today I flashed on how to get a satellite view of Editor B’s house, post flood, and, as expected, it’s clearly in a flood zone.
Amusingly, I also found Detroit-bound Mike Hurtt quoted in this pre-storm AP / CNN piece about Dr. John.
Finally, poking around that old BKB songlist site, I noticed that we at least took a running stab at The Lakes of the Ponchartrain, although we did a weird, downstream cowboy version that eroded the melodic charm of the original.
Happily, I found this decent Irish version with some liner notes to check out. Unsurprisingly, it also touches on themes that will have a bit of resonance in the coming days.
Independence
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
–That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
— The Declaration of Independence, 1776.
You know what? I’m pissed. I mean, really! Not like insurrectionist-type pissed, but the situation on the Gulf Coast can’t possibly be seen as anything less than a failure to meet the responsibilities assigned above under the very most basic covenants of our country.
Wash day
Taking a break from doing laundry, I noticed that one P. J. Murhpy of Wexford, Ireland had posted his chord transcription for Lousiana, 1927. I can finally scratch an itch I have had for several days.
I wonder if Mr. Murphy is any relation to celebrated Father Murphy of song and story?
At New Orleans as the storm was passing
Oe’r drying streets of an emptied town
Fed’ral neglect sent the waters crashing
and brought the choppers from far and nearThen Mayor Nagin of the Old Ninth Ward
Broke down in tears with a warning cry
“Goddamn I’m pissed” came the raging curses
And stunned the nation from shore to shore.
Huh, that was too damn easy. I suppose I should point out that the link above is to Boulavogue, a song which celebrates the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and that the doggerel immediately preceding this paragraph is, I suppose, a filk version. Here are some lines from the traditional version that are of interest:
Look out for hirelings, King George of England,
Search ev’ry kingdom where breathes a slave,
For Father Murphy of the County Wexford
Sweeps o’er the land like a mighty wave.…
Ah, Father Murphy, had aid come over
The green flag floated from shore to shore!
I’ve played Boulavogue for six or seven years, and to my embarrassment have never really looked into the history of the events recounted. Reading through the Wikipedia link, I note with interest that the heart of the rebellion’s threat to the Crown was the “unprecedented ‘unholy union'” of Irish Presbyterians and Catholics, common cause across cultural and class barriers to resist and roll back the power of King George. Of further interest is the record of two landings in Ireland by French forces. In the United States, the primary locale where French and Irish culture have rubbed up against one another for generations is clearly New Orleans.
It's a twofer!
Rhenquist dead.