Daoine · Sidh(e)

... but so rarely do we see what it truly looks like to gaze down upon our beautiful Earth.

This gorgeous film is a sequence of time lapse "photographs taken by Ron Garan and the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011". They were edited and compiled into this video by Michael König, whose Vimeo site contains more details as to how this was all put together. Much thanks to both parties for creating something so beautiful for our enjoyment!





I was enchanted by the patches of beautiful darkness amongst the networks of incandescent and florescent light, the flashes of what I can only guess must be lightening in the clouds, and the glowing ribbons of aurorae flickering here and there in the thermosphere. And through it all, I found myself wondering if this is what the ancients imagined, when they described their gods looking down upon humanity ... how absolutely wonderful is this world of ours!!

This morning I read about the sad fate of the Western Black Rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis longipes) - beautiful animals that once roamed the west-central African savanna, and which after decades of being slaughtered for their horns, have now been officially declared extinct ...



An Afrique Equitorial Française 10c stamp, featuring the Western Black Rhinoceros - image courtesy of stamps.livingat.org


As I pored over the various news articles that outlined this tragedy, the sense of melancholy and grief that washed over me was extreme. And, as is often the case when I am struggling with such feelings, I reached for a book of verse to help me find the words to express myself. This time it was a portable compendium of Yeats' works, which I had just checked out from the library yesterday - and here is the second poem that I turned to in my search ...


Fallen Majesty

Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,
And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone,
Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping-place
Babbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone.

The lineaments, a heart that laughter has made sweet,
These, these remain, but I record what's gone. A crowd
Will gather, and not know it walks the very street
Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.


If he were here, I suppose that Yeats might have suggested that the Sidhe had something to do with this choice of poem. And I would have agreed, because there was something uncanny and magical about how quickly I found a few lines of verse that so perfectly expressed what I am feeling about the loss of these majestic creatures ...



Western Black Rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis longipes) - image courtesy of wikipedia.org


I do not claim to know much about science and all the factors that lead to species extinction - but I do know enough to understand that this particular tragedy was preventable, if only humanity had bothered to quell all the insane greed that was behind the wholesale slaughter of these beautiful animals. Time to wake up, my fellow humans, and realize that it is high time we threw out our tyrannical ways and embraced the role of stewards to the environment in which we live. The fauna and flora with whom we share this planet deserve no less than our greatest respect - and without careful attention to balance in all things, we face a very bleak existence on this planet.

Time to wake up ...

This is a short musical missive, featuring my paterfamilias, Jackie (Jack) William Brown.

Pops was born in 1933, smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression - an era of hardship that was famous for its moonshiners, gangsters and good decent hardworking folks - and an era of extraordinary cultural richesse, including the amazing sounds of Harlem jazz, Appalachian bluegrass and Nashville country tunes, as any good fan of Bertie Wooster will know. And so, it should come as no surprise that my Dad, whose childhood memories travel from the 1930s into those big band sounds of World War II, and who was blessed with a clever brain, not to mention a very flexible set of fingers, at the age of six picked up a guitar and discovered the true love of his life ... La Musique.

I think that it was probably also around that time that he first discovered the one and only Sweet Georgia Brown, in the guise of the version his parents got to know in their youth ...



Ben Bernie and his Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra, performing their hit song Sweet Georgia Brown in 1925 ... Bernie and his colleague Maceo Pinkard composed the music for this wonderful tune, and lyrics were later added by Kenneth Casey


... and she's been on his mind ever since!

Four of his five children have been blessed with Jack's amazing musical talents, including the author of this missive - as a baby, I hummed tunes before I spoke words, and can thank Dad for those genes that gave me the analytical/creative mind, adept hands and tuned in ears that are the basic requirements for being a musician. Of course it should be mentioned that Dad's musical talents were in turn inherited from his father, Oren Earl Brown. And it is likely that Grandpa Brown inherited his skills from the nameless ancestors who made their way east from Ireland to Scotland at some unknown point in our history ... then west to the United States, perhaps landing for a time in the wilds of Appalachia before moving on to the Dakota territories ... but this is Dad's missive, so we will leave all of that for another entry. What is important to point out, however, for the story at hand, is that Dad and Grandpa were part of a very large group of American musicians during the first half of the twentieth century, whose talents were never meant to wow the audiences at those big New York or Nashville venues, but were instead used to entertain their family and friends on the back porches of yesteryear.



Jackie William Brown, Basic Airman, USAF (1951) ... this photo is from my Dad's collection of memories

Tonight I am utterly ashamed of my country.

What happened in the state of Georgia is horrific - but I feel that it is also important to take this moment to point out that Georgia is not the only state that practices capital punishment - all one has to do is a quick search on Google to see how truly barbaric we are as a country.

For once and for all, it is time for us to join the rest of the civilized world, and abolish this cruel and torturous practice. As Camus stated, in his long essay "Reflections on the Guillotine, Resistance, Rebellion & Death" (1966):

"An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death a rule, a public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."

Of course in the case of Troy Anthony Davis, with seven out of the nine original witnesses recanting or contradicting their testimonies, and no solid physical evidence connecting him to the murder of Officer MacPhail, it would appear that the state of Georgia, under the sanction of the highest court in the land, just murdered an innocent man tonight - a premeditated murder that has been tortuously drawn out over two decades.

Tonight I am utterly ashamed of my country.




"The Mercy Seat" ... performed by Johnny Cash ... music and lyrics by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

I was quite touched the other day when my LJ friend bardcat wrote to say that he hoped I would "share some of the insights ... gained over the months" of my absence. Well, as a start, some of my most delightful moments of contemplation were spent memorizing a handful of sonnets by John Keats. "How many bards gild the lapses of time! ...", "Oh Solitude! If I must with thee dwell ...", and a few others took me along a path that was filled with daydreams of the most blissful variety. Dear, dear Keats - my old battered copy of his works got a few more dings and scratches during those wonderful spring days ...



The frontispiece and title page from my copy of The Poetical Works of John Keats

Just so you all know that I have not completely disappeared from off the Livejournal radar, here is something brilliant and beautiful and perfect, which I discovered on The Guardian website today ...

Astonish Me ... a short film in celebration of the World Wildlife Fund, starring Bill Nighy, Gemma Arteton and Christian McKay

Here's to the wonderful and splendid and amazing planet we live on ... and many thanks to the World Wildlife Fund for their fifty years worth of efforts to keep it that way!!

And now ... I promise to be back with more as soon as I have completely emerged from the past few months of dreams and contemplation. Many thanks to those of you who sent me messages during that time - I feel a bit silly that it has taken me this long to follow up on all those "I'll post something in the next day or so" proclamations - but I know it goes without saying that each of you understand the need, from time to often extended time, to walk away from one's computer and smell the roses outside!



Emerging from the Dreamlands ... photograph by daoinesidh, 2011


That said, I have missed each and everyone of you, and look forward to a slow return to this wonderful place!

Cheers!

Excerpts of the 'Song' from A Masque ... by Francis Beaumont

Shake off your heavy trance,
And leap into a dance,
Such as no mortals use to tread,
    Fit only for Apollo
To play to, for the Moon to lead,
    And all the stars to follow! ...



Vaslav Nijinsky in Scheherazade, c. 1910 - digital image courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org

My brother-n-law was unexpectedly hospitalized a week ago, and I have been emailing my sister YouTube videos to give her a distraction from all the stress, and to have on hand for cheering him up when he regained consciousness. He was just taken off the respirator (YAY!!) and moved out of the ICU (DOUBLE YAY!!) yesterday, and so, having a rather twisted sense of humor, I decided to send him a video/audio comedy clip related to sore throats ... something that would amuse him as he downed his Jello and sherbet today. The first thing that came to mind was Bill Cosby's wonderful skit "Tonsils", off the album Wonderfulness (1966), which I used to listen to frequently as a child (my family owned most of Cosby's records from the 1960s). I remember laughing so hard each time I heard this story, that the tears would stream down my face and my sides would end up aching. In fact, it had such an impact on me, that to this day if I have a sore throat, I inevitably remember his sublime chant for "ICE-cream!"

Well, much to my chagrin, I could not find an audio file of "Tonsils" on YouTube ... HOWEVER!, I found the next best (or perhaps THE BEST) thing - a two-part presentation of "Chicken Heart" (also on Wonderfulness, and so another side-splitting memory from my youth), which involves some creative Jello smearing to keep the Bogeyman at bay. Since hospitals are full of all sorts of things that go bump (and bling, creak, beep!!) in the night, I figured that my brother-n-law could use this story as inspiration for what to do with his bowl full of Jello, should the need arise.

Here are both parts of "Chicken Heart" ... as well as "Go carts", another classic story from Wonderfulness ... get your bowls of Jello and you baby coach wheels ready, and prepare to laugh! :)



All these audio clips are courtesy of YouTube user Prue126

She walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
   Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
   Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
   Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
   Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress, ...



Mehitabel "Hitty" Cox Markoe, c. 1815, portrait by Jacob Eichholtz - digital image courtesy of The Library Company of Philadelphia


   ... Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
   How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
   So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
   But tell of days in goodness spent,
And mind at peace with all below,
   A heart whose love is innocent!


Mehitabel "Hitty" Cox Markoe is my GreatX3-Grandmother (on the maternal side), and I just found out about this portrait a couple of weeks ago, when my Uncle John sent me a digital copy. It is by the German-American painter Jacob Eichholtz, and is one of the few female portraits from this period in the collection at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Perhaps I am a bit biased, but I do think it is an absolutely charming picture, and I could not resist pairing it up with some of Byron's most famous lines of verse about a beautiful woman!

The funny thing is, my family grew up with a copy of another portrait of Gx3-Grams Hitty, painted by Thomas Sully in 1835, which terrified everyone. It had been given to my Great-Grandmother Annabel (Hitty's granddaughter - seen as a young girl in my icon above) by Senator George Wharton Pepper (who owned the original), and hung in the middle room of my Grandmother's mobile home in Lower Lake, California. Unfortunately I do not have a digital copy of this portrait to include with this entry, but suffice it to say that I remember being absolutely terrified of it when I was a kid. You see, Sully's version of Grams Hitty was much older and sterner looking then this sweet rosy cheeked lady by Eichholtz, and it was one of those paintings where the eyes followed you everywhere you went in the room where it was hung, and even continued to watch you as you went down the "long" dark hall that led to the living room. I remember having to go through the "Hitty" room to get to one of the bathrooms, and literally dashing through it as fast as I could to avoid the glaring eyes of that "mean old lady". One time I had to spend the night in that room, and I don't think I got much sleep because I was convinced she was going to walk out of that painting and haint me.

Well! if only we had grown up with the 1815 Jacob Eichholtz portrait of Gx3-Grams Hitty, in her Empire dress and lacy headband!! I certainly think we all would have felt much better about our ancient ancestor. When my Uncle John sent it to me a couple of weeks ago, I was immediately charmed by this sweet young motherly version of Hitty (she had eleven children!) - such a kind face and elegant demeanor - I am certain that I would never have run away from her, or thought that she was going to haint me in the middle of the night!!

Hitty was married to my Gx3-Gramps John Markoe, and they were part of the movers and shakers of high society (aka the rabble rousing party-goers) in Philadelphia during the early nineteenth century. They hired Benjamin Henry Latrobe to design their house on Chestnut Street, and in response to Hitty's compliments regarding his work on her home, Latrobe wrote: "Delightful as my profession is in most of its circumstances, it would be infinitely more so, did every architect receive as flattering a reward from his employers, as you have bestowed upon me ..." (from a letter to Mehitabel Cox Markoe, dated 19 February 1811 - included in Talbot Hamlin's Benjamin Henry Latrobe [Oxford University Press, 1955]).

Here is Eichholtz's portrait of Gx3-Gramps John, painted at the same time as the sweet young Hitty portrait ...



John Markoe, c. 1815, portrait by Jacob Eichholtz - digital image courtesy of The Library Company of Philadelphia


I think Gramps John must have been a hoot and a holler at the parties ... those ruddy cheeks and shiny nose reflect a rather happy lifestyle for this prominent Philadelphia "merchant". His father, Abraham Markoe, was the first captain of the Light Horse Troop of Philadelphia ... but that is a story for another time. For now, I would just like to bask in the loveliness of my GreatX3-Grams Mehitabel, c. 1815, in the hopes that it will banish the memory of that paralyzing childhood fear of Mr. Sully's "mean old lady", c. 1835!

Hello everyone! I am back after a completely unexpected break ... not really sure what it is with me and the month of August, but according to my year-old LJ almanac, it seems to be a month when I have the need to go AWOL from the Internet. Ah well, at any rate, and all that aside, I was blissfully tip-tapping around the house to this wonderful routine, and decided that it was a perfect way to tip-toe my way back in to my journal. Hope you all enjoy the graceful ease and playful banter of one of the most brilliant dance duos of all time!



Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Roberta (1935) / video courtesy of YouTube user edgefire125


More to come in the days ahead ... and I look forward to getting caught up on the latest happenings on my Friends Page ... but in the meantime, happy September to everyone!!