Book Board Chat

@kathleen Thanks. That was easy . Sale is created for my clothing category. Thanks again, Helen

Good morning everybody. Looks like we have a hot sunny day in store for us here in Indy.
@kathleen --- Thank you . That was very helpful. I have it all now in a email to myself.

@kathleen Yes , I will be studying the maps and trying to associate each area with the areas to which you are referring in your discussion.
We had a bit of wind blow through with some light rain following that a couple of hours ago. Now the sun is trying to come through. As one reporter said this is episodic weather. And indeed it is. I had never heard or seen that word but I like it . So from now on y'all can expect me to e episodic .

@kathleen Great report on your trip to NYC. I have only been to NYC air ports. So I find the details about the city very interesting.
A little story about power outages. A small rural electric company in Southern Indiana had their crews out in full force in an effort to restore electricity to its patrons when via a telephone call to the manager one patron complained that their house plants which were on an enclosed porch were freezing and the food in the freezer was thawing. The manager suggested that they put their plants in the freezer and their freezer contents on the porch.

@kathleen Ludwig, Thanks . i am pleased to hear that they are well.

@grano9 Thanks for the update on casino . I had been trying to reach her by email.

@kathleen Great article on Woody Guthrie. I'll never forget the first time I heard This Land is Your Land. My nephew , as Music Critic for the Los Angeles Times, wrote this article::
By Randy Lewis
July 10, 2012

LA Times

A long-held tenet of the Woody Guthrie story is that America's greatest folk singer and songwriter turned pointedly political in his music after he moved to New York in 1940 and fell in with the left-leaning East Coast folk community.

But several recently discovered recordings by the man widely regarded as the father of folk protest music, made while he was knocking around Los Angeles in the mid- to late 1930s -- well before he got to New York -- are helping to shift that view. The songs have surfaced for the first time on "Woody at 100," a new career-spanning three-CD box set that was released Tuesday by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

The four tracks, among the highlights of a new set that includes 57 Guthrie tracks, 21 of which had never previously been issued, constitute "The Los Angeles Recordings," only rediscovered in the last decade. They predate his famous 1940 sessions at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., made at the behest of Moses Asch, a New York folk music enthusiast and record label owner.

Beyond altering the timeline of Guthrie's known recording history, they open up new perspectives on the evolution of his writing.

"The four songs give us a glimpse into Woody as a songwriter during a period in which he was making a dramatic shift," Peter LaChapelle writes in one of the essays in the accompanying 150-page book.

That book also includes dozens of Guthrie's sketches, photographs, typed and hand-written lyrics, correspondence and articles about him by "Woody at 100" set producers and annotators Robert Santelli, executive director of the Grammy Museum, and Jeff Place, archivist for the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

LaChapelle, author of "Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California," writes: "I contend in my book that Los Angeles, not New York, appears to be the place which drew Guthrie into politics."

LaChapelle details his discovery of these tracks on two 78 rpm discs residing in obscurity in the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research in South Central L.A. They'd been donated long ago to the library along with other old records by longtime L.A./Hollywood political activist Harry Hay, who met Guthrie through their mutual friend, actor Will Geer.

Two of those songs are "Skid Row Serenade," which Guthrie wrote after spending time among the homeless along Hollywood's skid row, and "Them Big City Ways," in which he sings about how people become corrupted in moving from agrarian to metropolitan surroundings. The latter can be heard here.

"Guthrie was well-versed on conditions on Hollywood Boulevard," LaChappelle writes, "having published columns in the Hollywood Tribune describing skid rows on both Fifth Street [downtown] and Hollywood Boulevard in 1939."

The other two, "Do Re Mi" and "I Ain't Got No Home (In This World Anymore)," became two of his best-known songs about inequities between society's haves and have-nots, an injustice he returned to repeatedly in his music.

"Woody at 100," which celebrates the centennial of his birth on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Okla., opens with Guthrie's best-known composition, "This Land Is Your Land," and encompasses most of his cornerstone songs -- "Pastures of Plenty," "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Hobo's Lullaby," "Hard Travelin'," "The Sinking of the Reuben James," "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You" -- along with less frequently recorded numbers such as "A Dollar Down and a Dollar a Week," "The Ranger's Command" and "Farmer-Labor Train."
The third disc contains several radio broadcasts from stations in New York and the BBC in London that feature snippets of Guthrie introducing songs or otherwise discussing his music in illuminating ways.

A copy of the second page of his "Tom Joad" lyrics includes this explanatory note: "I wrote this song one night in New York. It was the night that I saw the moving picture, 'The Grapes of Wrath,' by John Steinbeck. If I could only think of the name of the friend that lived in that apartment, I would sure like to say thank you. You are friendly and wine is good."

During performances, Guthrie's son, Arlo, has been sharing the story of the letter his father got from Steinbeck after the author heard "Tom Joad."

"He wrote, 'You little bastard, how could you say in a few verses what it took me an entire novel to say?' "

Steinbeck returned the favor in a piece he wrote later describing Guthrie's astonishing output from the late 1930s to the early '50s, before Huntington's disease largely robbed him of his artistic gifts. Guthrie wrote some 3,000 songs, the autobiographical novel "Bound for Glory," newspaper columns, essays and poems, along with a voluminous number of sketches, paintings, drawings and other visual art works.

"Woody is just Woody," Steinbeck once wrote. "Thousands of people do not know he has any other name. He is just a voice and a guitar. He sings the songs of a people and I suspect that he is, in a way, that people. Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of a people to endure and fight against oppression. I think we call this the American spirit."

@kathleen Of course, you are welcome any time! Bring Swifty and DH too. Yes, it's very shady here, in fact we should have some trees taken down...but one of the downsides of owning two places is trying to find time and money for upkeep on both!

@kathleen (lludwig) Try here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1496772948031.64866.1495338184&type=3&l=ba5d03bc57

Sam, come for a visit!

Hi E'body, I don't have a clue how to post here. Hope I do this right.

@Meanjeannie*cs*com: Hi, No problem. It was hard for me to read.

@carol (bookdelle): Thanks bunches. I spent over 24 hours working on it and then had to just give up reaching for perfection and let it go because time was catching me.
It's something I've wanted to do for years. If not the tenth anniversary, when? I was afraid it would be never. Yes, some posts are missing and I so regret that. The publishing tool limit is 50 images. Made me ill when I realized that would not be enough to include all of the posts. - What I thought was essential to capture though, was the fact that we all thought it was an ordinary, but gorgeous fall day ... Dear God, I doubt any of us will ever forget. Thank you again.

@Kathleen(lludwig): Thank you so much, and especially for letting me know about the little binding problem I have. 🙂 I was so upset that I couldn't just swoop it all up and publish it; and then afterwards, realized I had condensed it to fifty pages plus a cover. Because the slideshow will only handle fifty pages total, I had to pull a whole page. If I can pin this down, maybe I can still include that page.It would thrill me. It was so difficult to leave a'thing out, I wish the slideshow had allowed a hundred pages. It was for "us" that I did this, and working on it brought it all back with crystal clarity.

I had forgotten so many little details. But they were all there...

We were strong then. I loved us then and I love us still. I'm looking at your photos/avatars and smiling. Y'all are looking gooooooood!

Again, thank you. Hugs to all.

@Kathleen(lludwig) - thank you for the article on camus. i rushed right off to amazon and got the plague put on my kindle. i have so little control when it comes to books.

one of my favorite books this year is the lacuna by barbara kingsolver which deals with stalin, lenin, trotsky, rivera, kahlo and the communist movement in mexico as well as some dark marks in american history, macarthy and the treatment of the bonus army.

good morning.
@Kathleen(lludwig) i remember this one from my childhood, which was probably not the time to read maugham.

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ATTENTION GREEN ALERT

We are encountering small breaks in the space time continuum!

Within all the recent posts there are occassional words/phrases that have come from the FUTURE!

Note my use of the term 'First Lines'. Check your posts the changes are very, very very minor.

BUT

WE can still use this to our advantage!!!! Quickly everyone [except for @kathleen Lluwig who is in charge of calculating when she is going to start using FIRST LINE quizes] Check the prices of your favorite stocks, precious metals, currancies. Make a post with that information. It doesn't matter if we duplicate each other. Because we don't know when the small insertions/ breaks in the space-time continuum will occur. Then we check the quotes with what is 'really' happening now. Any discrepancies and we have ALL 8^) hit the mother lode! And lludwig's calculation will determine from what part of the future the information is coming from.

@Kathleen - when i took your last line book quiz this morning, i knew i needed to reacquaint myself with willie stark.

@kathleen ...I have an idea for posting recipes that I can implement rather quickly...maybe even tonight. I'd do it now except that I have two trellises that need to be painted because the roses can't wait for them much longer.

@kathleen Just saw your middle ages help desk video...it was hilarious!

oh, one other note...
We can definitely add permanent pages in the sidebar for things like the LIttle Yellow Post (@kathleen), recipes (@mingomom), or pages for significant accomplishments by our own members. For example, I'd be thrilled to have a page promoting @bookleaves new book (though I understand she would be too modest to ask for something like that).
I can add a link to the little yellow post tomorrow. I need to think about the best approach for recipes though I think it's a great idea, especially if there are some good rhubarb recipies.
If you have any more ideas for permanent pages, please let me know.

@Kathleen I had not noticed the blue delete button in my header previous to my doing the process that I described to you, then it seem to show up. Perhaps it was there before that but I had not noticed it. Anyway, I'm trying to figure this new site out. Also trying to figure out the voice recognition on my cellphone also. I'm very much appreciative of this site that's been designed for us. It's fantastic!

@kathleen see my post below