In the bleak midwinter.

Responding to a request from Scribner's Monthly for a Christmas poem, Christina Rosetti wrote "In The Bleak Midwinter" before 1872. It was not published, however, until 1904 in her Poetic Works and it first appeared in The English Hymnal in 1906 with a famous musical setting by Gustav Holst.

Here's the first verse:

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
Snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.

Bleak for here in Starkville, but as I remember it pretty much an ordinary day in Cambridge, Mass. anytime between the middle of October and mid-March. The picture above mirrors one I took in November when leaves were changing and displayed here.





Yes, we are in a winter weather advisory with a chance for up 1/2" of freezing precipitation. At 3:15 pm, the icicles had started forming.

Baby, what's on your mind?

Here's the playlist for the Sunday January 27th BSB show: the Internet Request show co-presented with TNA. I will continually update the playlist as requests come in and time allows.

BSB intro
Baby What You Want Me to Do–Jimmy Reed Blues Masters: The Very Best of Jimmy Reed
Baby, Whats On Your Mind?–Jimmy Reed The Essential Boss Man (Disc 1)

Mic Break

Jimmy B's set
I Ain't Drunk Albert Collins & The Icebreakers Live 1992-1993
Am I Wrong? - Keb' Mo' Keb' Mo"
Smokestack Lightnin' Howlin' Wolf His Best: Chess 50th Anniversary Collection

Josh C's Set
Still A Fool–Muddy Waters Muddy Water's Best: 1947 To 1955
T.B. Sheets–John Lee Hooker The Cream
Same God-Sean Hayes Big Black Holes and the Little Baby Star (for Jenny I.)

Mic Break

If I Had My Way I'd Tear This Building Down–Blind Willie Johnson The Complete Blind Willie Johnson Recordings (for Josh C)
John The Revelator–Blind Willie Johnson Anthology Of American Folk Music, Vol. 2B: Social Music
Dark was the Night–Blind Willie Johnson (The Complete Blind Willie Johnson Recordings (for Kicker of Elves)
God Don't Never Change–Blind Willie Johnson The Complete Blind Willie Johnson Recordings (for Kicker of Elves)

Mic Break

Angel of Mercy–The Fieldstones Memphis Blues Today!
Shake Your Moneymaker–Elmore James Best of Elmore James (for Chapman)
Wrong Blues—Curtis Jones Eisenhowser Blues (for Ike)
Worry Blues-Willie Mabon Shake That Thing(for Ike)

Mic Break

C's Set
Shine On, Moon!–Lightnin' Hopkins Mojo Hand
Will The Circle Be Unbroken–The Staple Singers Oxford American - Southern Sampler 1998
Aberdeen Mississippi Blues–Bukka White Newport Folk Festival Best Of The Blues 1
Jesus Got His Arms Around Me–Delta Big Four Screamin' & Hollerin' The Blues: The Worlds Of Charley Patton [Disc 5]

Mic Break

Not P.C.'s set
St. Louis Blues-Bessie Smith Smithsonian Jazz Collection (Disc 1)
ST. Louis Blues-Louis Armstrong Ken Burns Jazz (Disc 2)
St. Louis Blues–Louis Armstrong Paris, 1934
Part IV (aka Come Sunday)–Mahalia Jackson w/Duke Ellington The Essential Mahalia Jackson (CD2)

Special Kiwi 2-fer-Organon
Roxette-Dr. Feelgood Down by the Jetty
Who Did All This To Me-Hammond Gamble Plugged in and Blue
My Mind is Trying To Leave Me-Albert Collins Don't Lose Your Cool

Mic Break

Little Red Rooster-Willie Dixon I Am The Blues
Washington D.C. Hospital Center Blues-Skip James Vanguard Visionaries
Help Me (A Tribute To Sonny Boy Williamson)-Junior Wells Vanguard Visionaries
Good Morning Little School Girl-Mississippi Fred McDowell Shake These Blues

Mic Break

My Soul's in Louisiana-Otis Taylor Shake These Blues
One Room Country Shack-Buddy Guy Shake These Blues
Call It Stormy Monday-T-Bone Walker Shake These Blues
Love in Vain-Robert Johnson Shake These Blues

3 days in: participation from Mississippi, Texas, Arizona, New Zealand, and England!

Baby what you want me to do.

The Jimmy Reed tune (it could also have been "Baby,What's On Your Mind?") is our theme for an experimental blog/net "all request" show. Tell me what artists and/or songs you'd like to hear. I'll play any and all of them that fit in a 2.5 hour show and that I can get a hold of by January 27, 2008. Go! . . . Oh and if you want the song dedicated to you or someone else mention that iny our comment, as well.

I will publish an actual playlist for the show in due time. This is an opportunity for all you European (Poland Denmark, UK, France, Germany, Holland) and worldwide (Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand ) lurkers (Thanks Sitemeter!) to influence a MS-based blues shows playlist. And you're welcome to do it anonymously. Just a reminder you can hear The Juke live On WMSVover the Net every Sunday from 6 pm to Midnight Central time which is currently UTC (formerly Greenwich Mean Time)- 6 hours.

This special version of "One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer" will run January 28, 2008 from 8:30 PM-11:00 PM CST or 1/29/08 UTC 2:30 AM-5:00 AM. The deadline for comment submissions is Wednesday January 23rd.

The power of the pontchartrain.

For the first BSB show of 2008 tomorrow night, we look back at the best of ought seven.

BSB Intro
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss-"Through The Morning, Through The Night" Raising Sand
Phantom Blues Band-"Yield Not to Temptation" Out of the Shadows
ZZ Hill Jr.-"Down Home Giorl (Goin' to Mississippi" Goin' To Mississippi
Tab Benoit-"One Foot in the Bayou" Power of the Pontchartrain

Mic Break

Phantom Blues Band-"Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?" Out of the Shadows
Tail Dragger-"Prison Blues" My Head Is Bald - Live at Vern's Friendly Lounge, Chicago

Mic Break

Tinsley Ellis-"I Take What I Want" Moment of Truth
Mannish Boys-"Carpet Bagger Blues" Big Plans
Phantom Blues Band-"Big Boy Pete" Out of the Shadows
Tab Benoit-"Midnight and Lonseome" Power of the Pontchartrain

Mic Break

Phantom Blues Bad-"Baby Doll" Out of the Shadows
Burnside Exploration-"Poor Man's Blues" The Record
Gov't Mule-"Soulshine" The Deep End, Vol. 1

Mic Break

Big Joe Shelton-"In Mississippi" Black Prairie Blues
Homemade Jamz Bluseband-"Cadillac Assembly Line" Tupeloms
The Cate Brothers-"Back To Memphis" Play By The Rules

Mic Break

Mannish Boys Featuring Finis Tasby-"Lonesome Bedroom" House Rockin' And Blues Shoutin'!
Jimbo Mathus-"Peaches" Old Scool Hot Wings
Tinsley Ellis-"Shadow Of Doubt" Moment Of Truth

Mic Break

Lester Chambers-"Every Day I Have The Blues" Tell Us The Truth
Little Walter-"Juke" His Best
Ensemble (Chambers/Bragg/Earle/Morello)-"Time Has Come Today" Tell Us The Truth

Mic Break

Elmore James-"Madison Blues" The Sky is Crying: The History of Elmore James
Jimmy Reed-"HGonest I Do" The Essential Boss Man Disc Two
Robert Lockwood Jr.-"C. C. Rider" House Rockin' And Blues Shoutin'!
Fabulous Thunderbirds-"Horsin' Around" House Rockin' And Blues Shoutin'!

Mic BNreak

Jimbo Mathus-"Torture Blues" old scool hot wings
Mavis Staples-"At The End of the Day" Have A Little Faith
Mahalia Jackson-"In The Upper Room" The Essential Mahalia Jackson

Mic Break

Lightnin' Hopkins-"Awful Dream" Mojo Hand
John Lee Hooker-"Teachin' The Blues" The Ultimate Collectrion Disc 1

Rattled by the rush.

Well Stormy Day 2008 has gotten off to a dud-ly start so far. We've been in Tornado watches and warnings virtually all day; they even cancelled classes at Mississippi State. The storm siren across the street has sounded its loud Klaxxon on three distinct occasions and so far we had 45 minutes of hard rain around 1:15 or so and some wind. There's another line of storms due within fifteen minutes or so and then the watches cease at 4:00 PM CST.

5:05 postscript: storms blown through and clearing now. Poker (Texas Hold'Em) por moi at 7:30. If you've never done this, you should try it once in your life when next you're in Memphis.

6:07 pm Our thoughts and prayers with the good people of Caledonia, MS.

Laissez les bon temps roulez.

More or less instant reactions to the college football season just ended.

A fitting end to the craziest football season I've seen in my 43 years. Don't buy the hype about how this is the new paradigm; this year was exceptional in the purest sense of that word (not great necessarily, but merely very different from the norm), an outlier, unreal, even insane at times if a season can be to said to have something akin to consciousness.

Yes, I know that the game has changed (longer kickoffs, no tearaway jerseys blah blah blah), and scholarship reductions are bringing about some semblance of parity. But c'mon a D I-AA (excusez moi NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision and doesn't THAT phrase just mellifluously roll of the tongue) team goes to the Big House and lays smack down in a pre-conference=schedule "fluff" game; o.k., Appalachian State WERE 2-time defending national champions at their level and, after a mid-season blip, became thrice national football championship subdivision champs.

Speaking of famous I-AA defeats of their higher brethren in football (Maine over Mississippi State par example), I do remember the FAMU Rattlers knocking off the Miami Hurricanes the year they won the inaugural Division I-AA championship behind the brilliant Tallahassee Godby High Product, Albert Chester, Sr, winning the first football national championship for the state. Yes folks the 1970s were something of a football wasteland in the Sunshine State. It's really Miami's first win in 1983 that sets the table for the ersthwile big three: UF, FSU, Miami to dominate until at least the 2000 Sugar Bowl and BCS Championship for FSU. But in 1978 Miami was mediocre at best, although their 6-5 record was only their second winning record in over a decade. You get the picture: Definitely Not the Cane's of 4 national titles in a legendary nine-year-run (1983-1991).

So back to this peculiar college football season, where #1 teams seemed to lose weekly. A historical season and one like no other. If I was picking on merit at the end of the season, National Champion: LSU! The weirdness of this season surely deserves a legitimate 2-loss National Champion. 2nd best team: UGA Bulldogs—putting an exclamation point on the year that the SEC had. Sorry USC: you lost at home in the L.A. Coliseum to a frankly terrible Stanford Cardinal (my graduate alma mater my prerogative to call 'em out), and your schedule was generally weak. For an alpha and omega thing: how about my MSU Bulldogs winning 8 games including the Liberty Bowl after beginning the season with a crushing 45-0 home loss to those same LSU Tigers. Maybe it wasn't such a crazy year after all . . . Will you Big 10 apologists please just shut up!

P.S. My undergrad alma mater ultimately had a fine year too, says the proud 1982 inductee of the Harvard Varsity Club! Undefeated in the Ivy League, champs with a crushing and somewhat unexpected 37-6 away victory over the hated Eli—"Yale: They make locks, don't they?"

Carolina on my mind.

Christmas with the family at Lake Junaluska.









A bit more of our house:







HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!

Pump it up!

Went to the Haywood Health and Fitness center on the Haywood Medical Center grounds every day for 8 days minus Christmas day while in the mountains. A nice 54,00 square foot 2 floor facility.











Unlike a typical urban or University health club, this place does reek of young, pretty things. Especially give it's role in the rehabilitative services of HRMC.



I hit the treadmills hard for 40-45 minute sessions with 5 or 10 minutes of warm up and warm down time alternating between Calorie Burn and Aerobic workouts, including an imaginary walk up Cold Mountain switchbacks, illustrated here with the lower level 7% grade.

Room with a view.

The song by Mitch Easter and Chapel Hill's Let's Active not the Forster novel nor the Merchant Ivory movie.

In updating The Lightside, a 1940s home, my parents first finished the upstairs attic by adding two dormer windows and making a huge suite with bathroom. The two dormer extensions include one desk area, a built-in bookcase, and one sitting area. Indeed a room with a view!







The view out either dormer window is basically this:



The rest of the house is pretty homey too! Here's part of the downstairs master bedroom.



The living room/cum den is quite comfy.





Here we sit and read, watch TV, and make fires, sometimes the later two together as the third of this montage of Christmas 2007 fires makes clear!









Cheers and a Happy New Year to you and yours!

Cast iron

Went into downtown Waynesville on several occasions to browse, shop, and hit the library for Internet access. First place I hit was the famous outlet for Just Ducky to get some Baby and kiddie Christmas gifts, a fun store despite the ridiculous 30 dollar Gund infant T-shirts.





On another trip, I would have a fantastic lunch with my parents at The Sweet Onion Restaurant née Wildfire: sweet onion soup and a tomato and feta stack for me.








No trip to Waynesville is complete without stopping in two stores: Mast General and Home Tech: "The Kitchen Shop." I walked around The Sweet Onion and entered Mast from below and behind, fighting my way past the crowd checking out near the Candy shop on the lower level, als home to a great selection of kids toys and the cook shop where cast iron implements abound, formerly lodged on the second floor loggia.





Headed upstairs through the main floor of winter clothing and out to Main Street.




Headed upstairs through the main floor of winter clothing and out to Main Street.



I also had fun browsing in two book stores: Osondu Booksellers and Blue Ridge Books & News, where on a good day you can get that day's Financial Times.

Gone to carolina.

Thanks to Shooter Jennings for this entry title, one of Yes! Weekly's "10 Best songs about North Carolina." I left Starkville around 8 am on Tuesday, December 18th and arrived after dark at Lake Junaluska to a lit up Lightside.









The house sits literarrly in the shadow of Cold Mountain which is North of Waynesville in the Great Smoky Mountains. You wind up the Southern spine of Col Mountain to get to the Blue Ridge Parkway on your way to Mt. Pisgah and the Pisgah Inn, which serves fine fresh whole mountain trout in the summer season, a favorite day tri of mine then.



Here's the house in daylight.







The next morning after breakfast I walked around the lake. At the first bend met the horse of Canadian geese.



Soon we came to the first overly decorated Christmas house and two of the more dramatic hilltop homes on the lake.







Crossed the lake on the footbridge to get to the southern side and complete my loop.



Walked along the Rose Walk, by the Terrace hotel, past Long's Chapel, and up the hill by Lambuth Inn which we view from across the lake near my house shrouded in mist on a typically "smoky" day!





In fact the local mountains get their very name from this weather phenomenon; here's a series of shots of the same.