Look, a stone exonose, just part of an exoskeleton.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: exoskeleton.
This is Malcolm K. Ottaway, my father, singing the Humpty Dumpty Blues in 2009.
He made them up when I was two. Here are the two stories that my mother would tell and that I finally linked.
In the early 1960s my parents married at age 21 and were both going to the University of Tennessee. They married in June and I was born the next March. In a tuberculosis sanatorium, because my mother started coughing blood at 8 months pregnant. She thought she was going to die. She didn’t die, but after I was born she did not hold me again until I was nine months old. I was suspicious of adults by then, because they kept giving me away.
My parents had music parties, where my father played guitar. My mother had a prodigious memory and would remember every verse, so she was the last one singing. My mother said, “At one party you wanted your father to play Humpty Dumpty. He wouldn’t. You were the only child there. You kept asking. Finally he made up the Humpty Dumpty Blues. You were so angry at him that you stomped your feet at him and everyone laughed.”
And the second story: “One morning after a party, your father picked up his guitar. It RATTLED. It had 17 beer bottle caps in it. We checked and not one person had seen you pick up a beer bottle cap or put it through the strings. It took your father hours to slide the bottle caps out from under the strings with a butter knife.”
Well, that will teach him to not sing a song for the two year old. At any rate, he sang the Humpty Dumpty Blues my whole life. I don’t remember the original party or sliding bottle caps through the strings. I must have done it after the party was over, right? Did I go during the party and pick up every cap I could find, or did I already have a hidden stash? Two year olds can be sneaky, apparently.
At any rate, I am very happy to have the recording now, even though the original made me stomp my feet.
The photograph is of me, in about 1963 or 64. I don’t know who took it, but it was taken at Lake Matinenda, in Ontario, Canada.
Is this a lantern? I don’t know.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: lantern.
I took a very long nap after pulmonary rehab yesterday, pushed myself on the treadmill. I was tired. So then at midnight I can’t sleep, feel sad and sappy, get up, write Sorrow.
Then my own brain starts making fun of me.
It plays a soundtrack:
Yeah, ok, so my OWN BRAIN is making fun of me feeling heartbroken. Ok, ok, I am over it for this night. Let’s move on, I think I will manifest this instead. Yeah. I need a skintight dress and some heavy makeup, so there.
The header photograph is from Centrum’s Blues Fest on Saturday. Fabulous and fun!
From the Centrum Voiceworks conference, Reverend Robert B Jones, Sr’s hands and guitar. Previous post about him here.
He was teaching blues history class in the morning and gospel in the afternoon, linked. One person asks about cultural appropriation. The Reverend says that he thinks songs and history are important. He asked if there are songs that he should not sing because they are “white” songs. He says there ARE songs that he WON’T sing because they are racist or sexist. But that if a white person does not sing a song because it’s “black”, he doesn’t think that makes any sense. And he traces history in his classes of how musicians of many races and genders influenced each other and continue to influence each other.
He and other instructors talk about musical skills and guitar and acoustic instrument skills and singing styles that are being forgotten and lost. We are blessed with recordings and he gave us a four page list of people to listen to…. I knew some, Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson, and others I’ve heard of and others I don’t know at all. Homework for the next year!
Blessings on this day for you and everyone, all the world.
Centrum Voiceworks last week. I did not get a wonderful photograph of the Reverend Robert B. Jones, Sr. He was moving and I did not want to use a flash! He did two classes a day, an am blues class and an afternoon gospel class. They wove together. He talked about how the pentatonic scale came with enslaved Africans and met the European music and produced spirituals, praise songs, the blues and gospel. He also spoke about how the early blues musicians were playing acoustic guitar in noisy places, so the guitar was rhythm, harmony and bass, all at once. He traced how the changes in circumstances is reflected in the changes in music in the United States and how musicians of all races and creeds influence each other. He talks about the history of music as healing.
I didn’t get a great photograph of him, but here is another student:
And here is the teacher, engaged:
Thank you, Reverend, for your amazing classes, singing, guitar playing and the final blues jam after the concert on Friday night!
Jump is the daily prompt today and that makes me think of JUMP BLUES!
I have been dancing jitterbug and swing and zydeco and salsa for more than 30 years. Met my kids’ father swing dancing. A friend made us a tape of Jump blues: It ain’t the meat by the Swallows is one of my favorites. GREAT song to dance too as well as being appreciative of all sizes and shapes of the opposite sex…Here is a more Jump blues: http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/jump-blues-ma0000002678
I took the photograph at Synchronized Swimming Nationals in 2012… speaking of jumping. This double lift is done by the other six swimmers under the water, never touching bottom.
i think therefore i write
Some of the creative paths that escaped from my brain!
Books, reading and more ... with an Australian focus ... written on Ngunnawal Country
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
spirituality / art / ethics
Coast-to-coast US bike tour
Climbing, Outdoors, Life!
Paula Light's Writing Site | The Classic Edition
Refugees welcome - Flüchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflüchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
En fotoblogg
Examining the Ordinary and Extraordinary
Books by author Diana Coombes
NEW FLOWERY JOURNEYS
in search of a better us
Personal Blog
Raku pottery, vases, and gifts
Rural doctor, mom, writes poems, dance, sing.
𝖠𝗇𝗈𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗋 𝖶𝗈𝗋𝖽𝖯𝗋𝖾𝗌𝗌.𝖼𝗈𝗆 𝗌𝗂𝗍𝖾.
Taking the camera for a walk!!!
A blog designed to remember the past and celebrate the present.
From the Existential to the Mundane - From Poetry to Prose
1 Man and His Bloody Dog
Homepage Engaging the World, Hearing the World and speaking for the World.
Anne M Bray's art blog, and then some.
The Home for All My Coding Projects
My Personal Rants, Ravings, & Ruminations
...out of a digital shoebox
You must be logged in to post a comment.