A LITTLE BIT OF SEEGER

Today would have been Pete Seeger's 95th birthday.  Ways to celebrate:

• Sing something.  Doesn't matter what and it doesn't matter if your singing voice (like mine) frightens the cows).  Music connects every one of us.
• Fight pollution and be a champion for the environment.  Seeger devoted much of his later life to cleaning up the Hudson River and educating children on the importance of clean rivers.  I live near the Chesapeake and one of the very small things I do is to NOT use fertilizers and chemicals that would seep through the ground and harm the Bay.
• Exhibit kindness and recognize individual worth in everyone.  The Donald Sterlings and the Cliven Bundys of the world are on the wrong side of history.  Place yourself firmly on the right side.
• Speak up.  Speak out.  Speak sense.  Confound the politicians.  Follow Davy Crockett's advise:  Be sure you're right and then go ahead.
• Embrace the younger generation.  They have a lot to teach us and we have a lot to teach them.
• Support fair trade and free markets.  Do not support corporate greed and the ever-growing income equality.  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  Who says it has to be that way?
• Enjoy all the wonderful things that life has to offer.
• Did I mention sing something?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4nKrFLQiE0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvYAoAiPN80

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlDGHEk68XI&list=PLDF9E8AB2F92C959D&index=2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxXzD0eQQBg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u90qRE2F7CM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZU-9TBP2NY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgzl1Sai4Y0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HOIyqXIc8Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhxjqM4y5f4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajdJqM35rII

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK_eVaLeiQ0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUAvqMRbxiU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhnPVP23rzo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE4H0k8TDgw

"Being generous of spirit is a wonderful way to live." - Pete Seeger

TEXAS TORNADO BLUES

Big Bill Broonzy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMFDe4ASNvk

IT'S FREE COMIC BOOKS DAY!

In doing my part to celebrate, here's the comic book adaptation of George Pal's 1950 movie
Destination Moon (based, of course, on a Robert A. Heinlein story).  The comic book was scripted by another old SF hand, Otto Binder.

Enjoy.

(And don't forget to drop in at your local comic book store!)

http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=16288

WHEN I WAS A COWBOY

Supposedly the only Leadbelly song he owned the copyright for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4sQeo8sUyE

FORGOTTEN BOOK: PULPTIME

Pulptime:  Being a Singular Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, H. P. Lovecraft, and the Kalem Club, as if Narrated by Frank Belknap Long, Jr. by Peter H. Cannon (1984)

The plot of this little exercise is simple.  It's 1925 and Lovecraft has taken a small apartment in New York after his wife Sonia has left for work in the Midwest.  One of the upstairs apartment has been taken by an old bearded man calling himself Mr. Altamont.  Altamont, of course, is Holmes, coming out of retirement for one last case.  On the recommendation of a mutual acquaintance, Harry Houdini, Holmes was seeking out Lovecraft to help him regain some stolen documents that are of vital importance to his unnamed British client.

Along for the ride is our narrator and Lovecraft's good friend and protégé, Frank Belknap Long.  the documents are in the hands of the secret crime boss Jan Martese.  Martese's girlfriend is the lovely Cordelia Garrison, a psychic to New York's social elite.  Holmes and Lovecraft soon enlist the help of Lovecraft's "gang," the Kalem Club -- a "literary" group of men who meet every other week for general discussion, called the Kalem Club because all original members had last names that began with K, L, or M.

There's atmosphere aplenty, and some thrills, but the main attraction of Pulptime is Cannon's portrayal of the characters taken from real life.  Lovecraft's quirks and affectations are one full display, as of those of Long, and, to a lesser extent, Houdini, poet Hart Crane, and the Kalem Club -- Samuel Loveman, Rheinhart Kleiner, Everett McNeil, George Kirk, Wheeler Dryden, and James Morton.  Holmes, although faculties appear remain sharp, is shown as someone who's mind drifts a bit and who is begin to fail physically. (I really liked the scene where teetotal Lovecraft has to visit a speakeasy and runs into a drunken Hart Crane.)

Cannon, a Sherlockian and a Lovecraftian, has a fine old time crafting the story.  (I really liked the scene where a teetotal Lovecraft has to visit a speakeasy.)  The novella was first published by W. Paul Ganley's Weirdbook Press and more lately in Cannon's collection The Lovecraft Papers (which also contains the stories from Scream for Jeeves, a Bertie Wooster/Cthulu mash-up --also recommended).

Long himself contributes the foreword in which he explains his mother's over-solicitous behavior to her son (Long was recovering from a major heart attack in 1925 and his mother was concerned about his health; never fear, though, Long lived to be 92 and died in 1994).  Robert Bloch's afterward explained about Harry Houdini's public persona and his private life; it was the public persona Cannon portrayed in the story.

I had a great time with this book, although I suspect those with no interest in Lovecraft would not be as appreciative.  But then, those persons wouldn't have picked up the book anyway.

ABDUL THE RELUCTANT MARTYR

Rob Carlson & Benefit Street.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3b0uNhO7dQ

HAPPY MAY!

Let's have a Morris Dance!  (And sorry about the darkness of the video, but it was at night, you know.)

The Thaxted Horn Dance:

https://archive.org/details/ThaxtedHornDance

Or, perhaps a Morris dance in a school gym?

The Bristol Morris Men with "Pepper in the Brandy":

https://archive.org/details/JohnMaherBristolMorrisMendancingPepperintheBrandy

Or, we can dance around the Maypole as these people did at the Weoley Castle Roundabout May Day Celebrations in 2012:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7cH4eXyDQw

Or, you could just sit back and enjoy The Lusty Month of May"

Fiona Fullerton:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5saciJzz5kc