50 Year Argument Blues: Wednesday, March 18th!

Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback. -John Updike, writer (18 Mar 1932-2009)

"Not just a celebration of the New York Review of Books (though it is certainly that), Martin Scorsese and David Tedescho's documentary chronicles many of the historical, political and cultural landmarks of the past half century, through the prism of that august publication's intellectual insight and rigour. Along the way, they interview (or unearth archival footage of) some of the finest minds of the period, including Joan Didion, Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky, Stephen Jay Gould, Andrei Sakharov, Vaclev Havel, Oliver Sacks and James Baldwin. As you might expect, the film sparkles with wit and wisdom, erudition and elucidation. At the end you may wonder if this particular literary forum wasn't a high watermark for our civilization."

Hi Wild Bill and David! Thanks for the wonderful party David! All the best and hope to see you in the Okanagan in the not too, too distant future! Thanks for the shot of David and "the serious drinker", William. Trust rest of your Saturday evening went well. Thanks for name of winery. Cora Lee tasted there last July and liked wines. Cheers, Patrizzio! Pics: More Marquis!

Hi Former Barriere Brenda!Glad you have managed to "rescue" Dana and Kian!
Do hope you'll be able to visit as Wally will be able to provide local knowledge! Fondestos from Cora Lee, bogged down with reports to Presbytery. Think she plans to limit, and severely so, her involvement in church politics, at any congregation in Penticton she decides to join! Cheers, Patrizzio!

Hi Ruthless and Gander Man! Thanks for the new sobriquet! Adore it! Do hope you'll be able to visit as I'll need you both to help organize my malt cabinet and our wine cellar once we have moved, given your obvious sense of all things related to hootch!  Fondestos from Cora Lee to you both. Cheers, Patrizzio! 

Hi Maggie! Can never have too many girlfriends! Or bottles of wine, for that matter! Do hope you'll be able to visit as I'll be great to host you two for a change!  Cheers, Patrizzio!

Hi Ski and Funny Bone Man! Glad you managed to spot out of place bottle! Cheers, Patrizzio!

Hi Colin and Hop-Along! Thanks for St Patrick's Day greetings and the explication of the "Y" Chromosome! Cheers, Patrizzio!

Hi Ragin'! Sorry to hear that there is now an inter-species war raging in Upper Kits, your house the front lines! Cheers, Il Conduttore! 

Decided, given the fact that I was planning to take in screening of The 50 Year Argument that I would try to squeeze in a ride afterwards. Suited up around 12:15 pm and rode over Burrard Bridge to VanCity. Bumped into Liora and Lawrence in lobby and we had a chance to chat for a bit, there, before we found our seats. Told tham about our coming move and details surrounding sale of the Islay Inn and purchase of Burns Street property.

The film was simply fascinating and more than stimulating, given the authors interviewed or presented through archival footage: "W.H. Auden, James Baldwin, Mary Beard, Irving Berlin, Ian Buruma, Michael Chabon, Noam Chomsky, Mark Danner, Joan Didion, Hugh Eakin, Yasmine El Rashidi, Jason Epstein, Timothy Garton Ash, Stephen Jay Gould, Michael Greenberg, Elizabeth Hardwick, Vaclav Havel, Rea Hederman, Zoe Heller, Jennifer Homans, Robert Lowell, Norman Mailer, Avishai Margalit, Mary McCarthy, Daniel Mendelsohn, Darryl Pinckney, John Rhyle, Oliver Sacks, Andrei Sakharov, Robert Silvers, Susan Sontag, Keith Thomas, Colm Toibin, Gore Vidal, Derek Walcott. Voices: Michael Stuhlbarg, Patricia Clarkson, Richard Easton."

"Martin Scorsese's movies have affectionately presented New York as a city of hoodlums and hustlers, after-hours neon and billowing steam vents. Now the Queens-born director is giving his hometown's intellectual life its share of screen time."The 50 Year Argument" looks at the literary/political magazine The New York Review of Books, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, a milestone for any print publication in the age of the Internet."

profiles the provocative and influential publication The New York Review of Books and its charismatic and indefatigable founding editor, Robert Silvers, who, along with his co-editor, Barbara Epstein (who passed away in 2006), has guided the Review since its launch over a half-century ago. - See more at: http://blueicedocs.com/film/9/the-50-year-argument/#sthash.OKkjemqW.dpuf

"Robert Silvers, charismatic and indefatigable founding editor, along with his co-editor, Barbara Epstein (who passed away in 2006), has guided the provocative and influential publication since its launch over a half-century ago," and the stunning documentary weaves back and forth in time with him as the self-effacing lynchpin. All of us were mesmerized by the film and the sparkling intellectual depth brought to bear on the social and political issues dealt with in its pages over the course of its publication life.

Said goodbye to L/L around 3:00 pm. Will probably see them tomorrow, same place, same time as we all want to see Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem. An Israeli woman (Ronit Elkabetz) seeking to finalize a divorce (gett) from her estranged husband finds herself effectively put on trial by her country's religious marriage laws. Next stop Costco to pick up a prescription I'd dropped off last Friday. Was promised for Tuesday but no phone call so decided I'd pop by to see if it was ready. Turned out it wasn't but young woman at he counter was quite embarrassed and said if I could wait for half an hour she would see that medication would be prepared.

Not much else I could do so I agreed and went in search of a book to read. Found Jo Nesbø's latest, The Son, in the book section and took it back to sit on one of the seats near the pharmacy. Managed to read a few chapters so my time wasn't wasted. Unfortunately it was close to 4:00 pm by the time I left Costco so decided not to ride anywhere but home. Pleased to find that although it was just a very short errando and transportation outing, I was able to confirm the calibration on the odometer I use on my Brodie. It tallied exactly with my Garmin GPS, (in the pocket of my jacket), as both registered precisely the same distance when I arrived at Costco. Stats for ride:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/723342054#.VQoY8NINDMI.email

Cora Lee was home busy working away on numerous reports so after I showered and changed I made a salad and we heated up some of the very tasty Irish stew fro St Patrick's Day feast and we watched the final three episodes of The Killing, ["Based partly on a popular Danish TV series, it is a moody, character-driven detective procedural that weaves a murder mystery through a full season or more. The stories unfold through the eyes of Sarah Linden, a detective with the Seattle Police Department and who, at first, must mentor Detective Stephen Holder, a former narcotics cop. While their backgrounds produce investigative styles that clash -- she's by-the-book, he's freewheeling -- they manage to pull together for the case."]discovering, at last, who committed Rosie's murder. 

Quite an unexpected couple of wrenching twists, suspect wise, so a difficult but satisfying resolution to the harrowing case. On to Season Three now: "This season takes place one year after the conclusion of the Rosie Larsen case (the events of the first two seasons). Sarah Linden is brought back into her detective work when the investigation into a runaway girl leads Stephen Holder to discover a string of murders, which connect to a previous murder case Linden worked on."

• Mireille Enos as Sarah Linden, the lead homicide detective.
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• Joel Kinnaman as Stephen Holder, a homicide detective.

• "The Killing (Danish: Forbrydelsen "The Crime") is a Danish police procedural three-season long television drama series set in the Copenhagen main police department and revolves around Detective Inspector Sarah Lund (played by Sofie Gråbøl) and her team, with each season series following a different murder case day-by-day and a one-hour episode covering twenty-four hours of the investigation. The series is noted for its plot twists, season-long storylines, dark tone and for giving equal emphasis to the stories of the murdered victim's family and the effect in political circles alongside the police investigation. It has also been singled out for the photography of its Danish setting, and for the acting ability of its cast."
  
  
  

Hi All, Since my initial announcement about “The Strange Case of the Compost and the Nuts", there have been some positive and I must add, devastating consequences. On the plus side, Bernie was cooperating pretty well about staying out of m compost, as long as there were nuts available on the railing. He even invited a friend, a smaller black squirrel, to participate in the spoils. Hmmm … maybe “invite” is the wrong word.

Sadly, there is now competition. An evil crow, doubtless the leader of a crow mafia, clued into the offerings and proceeded to help himself. Needless to say, his lieutenants followed suit almost immediately. Due to their military superiority - flight, sharp eyes and better intelligence (they are probably smarter than squirrels), they soon began to get the better of the situation. I have yet to get photographic evidence of their vile deeds, but will pass it on as soon as I do.
 

However, I know something the crow mob don’t know. I have a .177 caliber semi-automatic pellet gun, which I am loathe to use due my “let nature have its course" attitude, so I am trying the following strategy. Instead of on the railing, I now leave the nuts on the deck, right next to the railing, where while it makes Bernie & Co. more skittish, the crows are loathe to go as it severely interferes with an escape flight portal. The ferocious flight patrol is now retaliating by organizing bombing squadrons and pooping on my BMW. It’s like the Hydra, … ya fix one problem … Cheers//bjp enc. Bernie on the high wire. 

 Samuel Charters, whose books and field research helped detonate the blues and folk music revival of the 1960s and ’70s, died on Wednesday at his home in Arsta, Sweden. He was 85.

When Mr. Charters’s first book, “The Country Blues,” was published at the tail end of the 1950s, the rural Southern blues of the pre-World War II period was a largely ignored genre. But the book caused a sensation among college students and aspiring folk performers, like Bob Dylan, and it created a tradition of blues scholarship to which Mr. Charters would continue to contribute with books like “The Roots of the Blues” and “The Legacy of the Blues.”

“We can mark the publication of ‘The Country Blues’ in the fall of 1959 as a signal event in the history of the music,” the music historian Ted Gioia wrote in his book “The Delta Blues” (2008). As “the first extended history of traditional blues music,” he said, it was “a moment of recognition and legitimation, but even more of proselytization, introducing a whole generation to the neglected riches of an art form.”

Released in tandem with “The Country Blues,” which remains in print, was an album of the same name containing 14 songs, little known and almost impossible to find at the time, recorded in the 1920s and ’30s by artists like Robert Johnson, Sleepy John Estes, Blind Willie McTell and Bukka White.

Mr. Dylan’s first album, recorded in 1961, included a version of Mr. White’s “Fixin’ to Die,” and within a decade other songs by the singers and guitarists whom Mr. Charters had highlighted were staples in the repertoires of blues and rock bands like the Allman Brothers, Canned Heat, Cream and the Rolling Stones.

Equally important, the aura of mystery Mr. Charters created around his subjects — where had they disappeared to? were they even alive? — encouraged readers to go out into the field themselves. John Fahey, Alan Wilson, Henry Vestine, Dick Waterman and other disciples tracked down vanished performers like Mr. White, Mr. Estes, Skip James and Son House, and their careers were revived. Their song catalogs were soon injected into folk and pop music.

 

“I always had the feeling that there were so few of us, and the work so vast,” Mr. Charters told Matthew Ismail, the author of the 2011 book “Blues Discovery.” “That’s why I wrote the books as I did, to romanticize the glamour of looking for old blues singers. I was saying: ‘Help! This job is really big, and I really need lots of help!’ I really exaggerated this, but it worked. My God, I came back from a year in Europe and I found kids doing research in the South.”

Mr. Charters had himself succumbed to the lure of field work. In 1958 he went to the Bahamas to record the guitarist Joseph Spence (who would influence the Grateful Dead, Taj Mahal and others), and a year later he helped revive the career of the Texas guitarist Lightnin’ Hopkins. He pursued overlooked music and artists on four continents for the next 50 years.

Throughout the 1960s, as the audience for the blues expanded exponentially, Mr. Charters continued to write about the music and to produce blues-based records for Folkways, Prestige, Vanguard and other labels. “The Poetry of the Blues,” with photographs by his wife, Ann Charters, was published in 1963, and “The Bluesmen” appeared in 1967; during that period he also wrote “Jazz New Orleans” and, with Leonard Kunstadt, “Jazz: A History of the New York Scene.”

By the mid-1960s, Mr. Charters had broadened his focus to include contemporary electric blues, producing a three-record anthology of new recordings called “Chicago: The Blues Today!” Songs from that collection, as well as from albums Mr. Charters produced for Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, James Cotton and Charlie Musselwhite, were covered by rock groups like Led Zeppelin and Steppenwolf and have remained rock standards.

Samuel Barclay Charters IV was born in Pittsburgh on Aug. 1, 1929, to Samuel Barclay Charters III and the former Lillian Kelley. When he was a teenager the family moved to Sacramento, Calif., where his father worked as a railroad switch engineer. In writings and interviews, he recalled a childhood immersed in jazz and classical music. He dated his interest in the blues to hearing Bessie Smith’s recording of “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” when he was about 8 years old.

After serving in the Army during the Korean War, he spent time in New Orleans, where he played clarinet, banjo and washboard in bands and studied with the jazz clarinetist George Lewis while also researching that city’s rich musical history. He earned a degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, before returning to the field.

After the initial impact of “The Country Blues,” which would be inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1991, Mr. Charters resumed performing music, more for the sheer fun of it than as a livelihood. He played with Dave Van Ronk in the Ragtime Jug Stompers and then formed a duo called the New Strangers with the guitarist Danny Kalb, later of the Blues Project.

Mr. Charters was also drawn to the psychedelic music emerging in the San Francisco area in the mid-’60s. He produced the first four albums by Country Joe & the Fish, including the satirical “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag,” one of the best-known protest songs of the Vietnam War era.

Mr. Charters had long been involved in the civil rights movement and left-wing causes, and the Vietnam War infuriated him. He moved to Sweden with his family in 1970 and acquired Swedish citizenship. For many years he shuttled between Arsta, a suburb of Stockholm, and Storrs, where his wife, who survives him, taught American literature at the University of Connecticut.

Mr. Charters published poetry collections, including “Things to Do Around Piccadilly” and “What Paths, What Journeys,” and novels, among them “Louisiana Black” and “Elvis Presley Calls His Mother After the Ed Sullivan Show.” He also translated works by Swedish authors, including the poet Tomas Transtromer, who in 2011 won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and wrote a book in Swedish, “Spelmannen,” about Swedish fiddlers.

In addition, Mr. Charters wrote two books with his wife, an expert on the literature of the Beat Generation as well as a pianist and photographer: a biography of the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and “Brother Souls: John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation.”

Mr. Charters wrote about jazz and blues until the end of his life. His book “A Language of Song: Journeys in the Musical World of the African Diaspora,” a series of essays on the evolution of music in places like the Caribbean, Brazil and the Georgia Sea Islands, was published in 2009. Two other books, “Songs of Sorrow,” a biography of Lucy McKim Garrison, who in the mid-19th century compiled the first book of American slave songs, and “The Harry Bright Dances,” a novel about roots music set in Oklahoma, are scheduled for publication next month.
 

Besides his wife and his daughter Mallay, a psychiatrist, Mr. Charters is survived by another daughter, Nora Charters, a photographer, and a son, Samuel V, a naval architect, from his marriage to Mary Louise Lange, which ended in divorce. Mr. and Mrs. Charters donated much of their vast collection of recordings, sheet music, books, photographs and other documents to the University of Connecticut.

“For me, the writing about black music was my way of fighting racism,” Mr. Charters said in his interview with Mr. Ismail. “That’s why my work is not academic, that is why it is absolutely nothing but popularization: I wanted people to hear black music.”

Samuel Charters, whose books and field research helped detonate the blues and folk music revival of the 1960s and ’70s, died on Wednesday at his home in Arsta, Sweden. He was 85. The cause was myelodysplastic syndrome, a type of bone marrow cancer, his daughter Mallay Occhiogrosso said.