Our spring ritual at WoMaMu last
weekend was the bunny hop but my knees refused to cooperate. Debbie
Fier led a Passover song to which she’d added a verse about Miriam. We
made prayer flags to go with the giant puppet of Synnøvei, the goddess that Judy Fjell and Cassandra Mitchell thought up and the campers made at Summersing. Here’s the one I did:
We have wi-fi at camp now (it’s at Bishop’s Ranch near Healdsburg) so I was able to find these photos of diamondback rattlesnakes online as models.
Judy
brought dye-sticks—which handle like crayons—and blank bandanas to camp
and my daughter helped and encouraged the flag-makers. We made
twenty-seven flags, I think. Here is Nancy Beth with hers in progress:
Now
it’s Sunday again. Claudia just left for church, but I’m staying home.
Here, also thanks to My Food Looks Funny, is The Passover of the Easter
Treats.
I went to a fine concert at La Peña Friday night, Jon Fromer and Lichi Fuentes performing not just on the same program but for the first time doing some songs together. They sang the bilingual version
of my mother’s “I Cannot Sleep,” and Lichi’s flautist added a wonderful
harmonica part to “My Feet Are Tired,” Jon’s song about Rosa Parks.
Then Lichi explained that she had learned “If I Had a Hammer” in English when Trini Lopez
popularized it throughout South America, but she had no idea it was a
political song until Victor Jara translated it into Spanish. Well, I
knew that Jara had translated “Little Boxes” into Spanish,* but I didn’t
know about “If I Had a Hammer.” We all sang along (in English) and that
was supposed to be the finale, but people were shouting Otra! Otra! So
they came back and did “De Colores” in Spanish. That’s a song I do know
in Spanish, and until last week’s WoMaMu had never sung it in English.
There it is, in the camp song book in both languages, but the English
sounded strange. At the concert, I sat next to Nancy Gendel, who is in
La Peña Chorus, which Lichi conducts. Turns out there were other chorus
members with her, so our row was a good one to sit in, they knew the
harmonies.
Yesterday dossier was the word of the day for the online limerick-writing group I’m in.
dossier . \DOSS-yay\
a file containing detailed records on a particular person or subject
Example Sentence:
The suspect's dossier listed two arrests for grand theft auto and several more for breaking and entering.
Did you know?
Gather
together various documents relating to the affairs of a certain
individual, sort them into separate folders, label the spine of each
folder, and arrange the folders in a box. "Dossier," the French word for
such a compendium of spine-labeled folders, was picked up by English
speakers in the late 19th century. It comes from "dos," the French word
for "back," which is in turn derived from "dorsum," Latin for "back."
Our word "dorsal" ("situated on the back"), as in the dorsal fin of a
whale, comes from the same Latin source.
In my mom's FBI dossier
She was commie big cheese, so they say.
The picnic committee
Was her special duty.
"Hoist baskets! and into the fray!"
--Nancy Schimmel
(true story)
_______________________________________________________________
* The
“Little Boxes” translation, “Casitas del Barrio Alto,” (Little Houses
in the Posh Suburbs) by Chilean singer-songwriter Victor Jara, changed
the mood of the song, in keeping with the dire conditions in his
country. Malvina, in a letter about it, said it had “the same seemingly
naive, almost childish presentation; but the accompaniment has been
turned deliberately a little bit sour. And [Jara’s] words move the song
up one great step in the indictment of a middle class that consents to
and participates in the oppression of the poor and the destruction of
the democracy.” Victor Jara was one of the thousands arrested after the
coup in which the democratically elected socialist president, Salvador
Allende, was killed and the dictator Pinochet installed. Jara was taken
to the coliseum in Santiago, where he started singing to the other
prisoners. From Malvina’s letter: “The police ordered him to stop, but
he would not. So they broke his wrists. Then they beat him on the head
and said ‘Now sing for us!’ That is police wit. Then they shot him. He
was 27.”
©2010 by Nancy Schimmel
Anonymous
Excellent limerick, Nancy!
Monday, April 5, 2010 - 04:52 PM
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Sunday, April 4, 2010
HAPPY WHATEVER YOU CELEBRATE
