Category Archives: joy

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Songs to raise girls: Billy Barlow

I knew the song “Billy Barlow” as “Let’s go hunting”. It was one of the silly songs that we recorded. I adored this song when I was little for two reasons. One was that it was funny. The other was that I interpreted it as a song that could be changed and sung about more than one animal. I can remember when I realized that no, the adults sang it the same way each time and they would not change the animal. I was disappointed but I still loved the song. And I could change the animal on my own.

It’s a good song to raise girls: an illustration of a group of guys….

Let’s go hunting, says Risky Rob
Let’s go hunting, says Robin to Bob
Let’s go hunting, says Dan’l and Joe
Let’s go hunting, says Billy Barlow

When my son was a teen, another parent commented that the IQ dropped in half for each teen added to a group. Two boys cut the IQ in half, three had it to one quarter and four was trouble.

What’ll we hunt for, says Risky Rob
What’ll we hunt for,
What’ll we hunt for,
Let’s hunt rats, says Billy Barlow

How’ll we catch them,
How’ll we catch them,
How’ll we catch them,
Let’s borrow a shotgun, says Billy Barlow

How’ll we divide them,
How’ll we divide them,
How’ll we divide them,
How’ll we divide them, says Billy Barlow

I also loved this song because the last line changed. Sometimes Billy Barlow said the same thing and sometimes he said something different. When I was very small and still learning the song, that was part of the joy of it, to see what Billy Barlow would do. And clearly he was wicked, like Coyote or Pan or Loki and going to lead the group to trouble if he could….

I’ll take shoulders,
I’ll take sides,
I’ll take hams
Tailbone mine, says Billy Barlow

How’ll we cook them,
How’ll we cook them,
How’ll we cook them,
How’ll we cook them,

I’ll fry shoulders,
I’ll boil sides
I’ll bake hams,
Tailbone raw, says Billy Barlow

Oh, delicious ickiness, raw rat tailbone… It would give my sister and me shivers….

Let’s go hunting, says Risky Rob
Let’s go hunting, says Robin to Bob
Let’s go hunting, says Dan’l and Joe
Let’s stay home, says Billy Barlow

And relief. Billy was messing with them all the time and he doesn’t want to go and he never did, which is why he suggested a shotgun to hunt rats…. I like this Billy.

When I search on Billy Barlow, here is an entirely different song, a civil war marching song for Company B from New York City that marched into Maryland in 1863 and had a 63% loss. My sister had a civil war marching band play at her rehearsal dinner and we ended up marching in pea gravel for a couple hours. It turns out that my oldest cousin had ambitions to be a marching band drum leader. The band thought we were so funny that they offered to return. But the civil war fighters on both sides had marching bands with them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1ZlfsP7dZA

And here is Pete Seeger with our song, in a slightly different style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrgTOPufru4

And here is another site that says the song is a version of “The Cutty Wren” or “The Hunting of the Wren”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_oAPCVkMP0

The picture is my daughter. She was playing alone and was having a wonderful time with her imagination. I am not sure who took this picture…..

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Songs to raise girls: Down by the Salley Gardens

In 2009 my sister came to visit for spring break and our birthdays. We were born in March, five days and three years apart. I said that her birthday present was arranged: a recording session with me, her and my father, to record some of the family songs that we had been singing since birth.

My family had music parties in the 1960s on the east coast and when they were in college at the University of Tennessee. My mother had quit Cornell and my father had quit Princeton and they got married and went to the U of TN and I was born 9 months later. They were very poor. My mother said that she wanted to buy me a three dollar teddy bear but that they just couldn’t afford it.

They did not have a television. They were beatniks and admired On the Road. My father’s family all played instruments and sang. My mother had a much less trained voice but she had a prodigious memory and knew the fourth, fifth, sixth and all the verses of the folk songs. My father also sang classical music and had already sung at Carnegie Hall in his prep school chorus, Williston Prep School. He hated prep school. He had a full scholarship there and to Princeton because he scored perfectly on the early SAT test.

My parents refused to get a television until I was nine and my sister was six. So we sang.

My sister’s response to the birthday present: “Best Birthday Gift Ever.”

She had cancer and my father had emphysema. My mother had died in 2000. I was trying to capture their voices.

We recorded for two two hour sessions in a local in home studio. We made a list of songs and lost it on the way there. So we just took turns naming songs. Both my sister and my father play guitar. I brought kazoos, which we used on a round. We recorded each song once and in two days we recorded 36 songs.

I bought two more recording sessions at silent auctions, but we did not get to record again. And now they are both gone.

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My mother and father would sing “Down by the Salley Gardens” as a duet. He was a baritone and low bass. She was an alto. My sister and I sang her part in the recording.

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears

by William Butler Yeats in 1889

Listening to it, I miss my mother, my father, my sister. I miss singing with them. It was a love duet for my parents, and full of longing.

The photo is my parents, in about 1960.

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butt in a sling

….a lot more fun than the original meaning….zip line at a graduation party this past weekend…..

http://kearth101.cbslocal.com/2013/01/30/the-meaning-behind-butt-in-a-sling-other-strange-age-old-phrases/

this seems more likely as the meaning: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/butt%20sling

and it still gets used https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ass_in_a_sling#English

We started way up the ladder….

roseparty 081

….and wondering will the brakes work?

roseparty 095

these photos on my camera by the graduate: Congratulations Rose!

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On the nature of love

love is not one love is longing for one love is two
love is the other longing for the other longing for union longing for one longing for the Beloved seen in the face of the other
do not forget nor lose nor submerse yourself in the other remember there are two not one you are longing to be one that is the longing for the Beloved you must be two and remember both while longing for union while longing to be one
you can love and yet not accept abuse yet not accept ill treatment yet not accept being walked on in the name of love
you can love even one who is behaving badly and treats you ill yet you should not accept ill treatment you are to remember that there are two and you are longing for the Beloved seen in the face of the other longing for union but that does not require that the other long for the Beloved nor see the Beloved in your face
you can love even one who does not want union with you yet they long for union with the Beloved
you can love even one who is behaving badly and treats you ill you should not accept ill treatment and there may be a time when you still love and walk away still loving and longing

for there are two
not one

I took this picture of my sister and our neighbor and friend in the late 1970s, probably playing pong…

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Think fresh

For Ronovan writes weekly haiku prompt: the words are think and fresh.

think fresh: oranges, tea
think of lettuce, roses, peas
think boys, fresh words, glee

The photograph is of one of my mother’s watercolors: Helen Burling Ottaway. We have another Mother Daughter Art Show going up for the month of June and July. I am cleaning, framing, pricing and getting ready….

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Hurt and healing

H is for healing and hurt in the Blogging from A to Z. I mentioned dreaming of monsters in my Gift post, and this is the poem about that dream. It is hard work to heal.

Advice to Micheal

Neverland
Is such an ironic name
Can’t they hear?
Can’t they think?
The land where boys never grew up
The Lost Boys

And you
Are not molesting
Boys
You are
Searching
When I heard
About your childhood
I knew
They were wrong
They’ve missed the boat

You sang
Like an angel
And the world
Stole your childhood

Hotel rooms
With older brothers
Sex
Drugs
Alcohol
Money
Chaos
And you must have been
So frightened
Lost
Pressure to sing
As the star

Locked your core self away
To keep it safe

My childhood
Was scary too

I started my search
With a dream
Of a dark hole
From which came the sound
Of monsters
Howling

I was scared

I went to the hole
anyway
scared
of the howling

The hole was dark
And roots stuck out of the side
Like reaching fingers

I got a flashlight
And looked

It wasn’t as deep
As I thought
And the roots worked as
A ladder

I climbed down
Into the hole

I found three monsters
Howling

Baby monsters

I put them in my pack
And carried them up
Into the light

They howled

I bathed them
And diapered them
And fed them
And rocked them

They howled
They didn’t know what to do
When taken care of

I named them
Fear
Grief
Shame

At last they stopped howling
And sat
Warm
Wrapped in blankets
Ugly
Sullen
Lower lips thrust out

And I found a shrink
To talk about my dream
And to help heal the monsters
That I had rescued

We always have more
Work to do
But now I have a little girl
Inside me
Who came to greet me
When I had healed the monsters
Enough
She is beautiful

You won’t find
The Lost Boy
That you are looking for
Outside you
He is inside
He is innocent
And beautiful

You may have to face
The monsters
Of your childhood
To reach him
Yours was worse than mine
I’m sorry

You may have to face
How much people you loved
Hurt you
Even though they loved you
I’m sorry

Find help
And rescue
The Lost Boy
And joy

Good luck.

Poem written August 10, 2005. Previously published on everything2.com.

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Love in Ten Sentences

Janebasilblog nominated me for this challenge and I finally have done it. Now to tag ten MORE people…..

Details of the challenge: Write a 10 line poem with four words to each line, and each line must contain the word β€˜love’. Nominate 10 people to carry on the challenge.

love complicates my life
love and don’t like
behavior not deserving love
love pours forth anyhow
love feels deep hurt
love withdraws lick wounds
love heals ventures forth
less contact mean loves
behavior change brings love
complicated joy : love anyhow

I still need to nominate ten people to carry on and write the NEXT love in ten sentences. I will add that…

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Daughters and dinosaurs

D for daughter and dinosaur. Here is a poem I wrote quite a while ago, though it is about my son rather than my daughter.

Dinosaur Dreams

The problem
With Intelligent Design
Is those old bones
Those dinosaurs

Also that of 10,000 dreams of creation
One would be right
And the followers of all the others
Consigned to hell
If so, I go gladly, clutching
Dinosaur bones to my chest
And will enjoy the diversity
Not the narrow heaven with a narrow
Small-minded deity

But is evolution right?

Well, I think it’s on the right track

But wholly done and all correct?

After all, think how often
Medicine has been wrong
Think of tobacco and vioxx
Think of Galen, over 2000 years ago
Thinking that evil humors built up in the uterus
Causing hysteria
External pelvic massage was the cure
For over 2000 years
For old maids, widows and nuns
Who had no male to cleave unto
Massage was a treatment into the early 1900s
And now we wonder about prozac too

Evolution is an evolving science

I think of when my son was four
And he watched “Jurassic Park”
Against my wishes
Because I thought it was too violent
He studied it carefully many times

One day he asked me, anxiously,
“Mom, is DNA real?”
To check that it wasn’t another of those Santa stories
I was able to reassure him
Yes, I think DNA is real
He was pleased

A few days later he announced
That when he grows up
He wants to be a plant and animal scientist
Extract DNA from amber
And grow those dinosaurs

A laudable ambition
For any four year old

If God left the dinosaur bones
Around to fool us
And they never lived
She has a nasty sense of humor
And my son and I will not forgive

I believe in evolution
And dream of dinosaurs

first published on everything2.com in 2005

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Beloved

B for Beloved. Rumi and Hafiz, the Sufi poets, write about the Beloved.

The Beloved is God and God is the Beloved.

I like thinking of God as the Beloved. That makes sense to me. God should be Beloved, most Beloved of all.

But sometimes I feel abandoned and lost and stressed and grumpy and it feels as if I am longing hopelessly for a connection with the Beloved. Rumi says in his poems that it is the longing itself that is the connection to the Beloved. Then my inner devil gets annoyed and sarcastic and says, “That’s stupid. That’s a Catch-22. So why is the Beloved Beloved if suffering longing is the way to reach Her or Him?” My inner angel gets involved and is all serene and untroubled and says, “Of course longing is a doorway to the Beloved.” Then they both get out flaming swords and proceed to fight. They can’t kill each other though they try. And I sigh and say to the Beloved, “They don’t behave.” Then the angel and the devil both turn on me and say that I should love each one of them best. “No.” I say. “I love the Beloved best, but you are both part of the Beloved so if everything is loved, then you are both loved best.” Then the angel and devil point to each other and say how the other one is just horribly wrong….. they just go on.