The Poetry Foundation has been busy. They conducted a study revealing that “the vast majority (90 percent) of American readers highly value poetry and believe it enriches the lives of those who read it.” Does that mean these people actively read poetry? Um, no. “Apart from brief, incidental encounters with poetry in public places, a relatively small percentage of Americans actively seek it out or consistently return to it. ” Evidently, reading poetry is a lot like eating your spinach. The study has some moderately interesting findings, nonetheless.  (I have to admit, I only read the above linked press release and the key findings. There’s only so much time in the day.)

In other news, my favorite novel of all time, the one on which I wrote three (yes, three) undergraduate papers while referencing it in a half dozen others, just got named by The New York Times as the best American novel of the past 25 years. Of course, there were 125 judges, and only 15 of them picked it.  But, yay, 15 really smart people agree with me! (There’s no chance that one of them would be Harold Bloom or else I’d have to pick a new favorite novel. I’ve always hated him, but I’ve been on an absolute war path since he published this article. Don’t confuse me, I’m no fan of Stephen King or J. K. Rowling–though no enemy either–but the last paragraph, among other choice bits, is Bloom at his absolute insidious worst. Hardly a surprise that they’re all aging white men. But he certainly has no issue with stamping his name on dozens of Bloom’s Guides for books that evidently aren’t even “worthy of praise.” The man’s obviously on the devil’s speed dial. Obviously.)

<p>While we’re here on our musical sojourn . . .</p>

<p>As I think I’ve made clear, I’m not one for treacle.&nbsp; I think music and poetry have much larger roles to fulfill than just supplying &quot;pretty.&quot;&nbsp; Verse, whether read or sung, allows the transmission of giant, important truths of existence, whether they’re nice or not.&nbsp; Terrible things need expression too.</p>

<p>I have my buttons, and one of the biggest, shiniest buttons says &quot;some fathers are terrible, and we’re allowed to say that&quot; on it.&nbsp; Of course I don’t think all fathers are bad.&nbsp; I lucked into a good Step-father, my big brother is an amazing father, and I’m surrounded by friends who have turned out to be wonderful fathers.&nbsp; I celebrate them.&nbsp; I do.&nbsp; </p>

<p>But the button is still there.&nbsp; Sylvia Plath found the button with &quot;<a href=”http://judithpordon.tripod.com/poetry/id302.html”>Daddy</a>,&quot; and I will love her forever for voicing something for me when I was simply too young to be able to express it.&nbsp; I can’t even think to count the number of wrongs that have been done to women I know by their fathers (I’m obviously including myself here–no weak attempts at cloaking necessary).&nbsp; And, as if having a crap father isn’t bad enough, we’re generally taught we’re not allowed to tell people when our fathers are jackasses.&nbsp; Well screw that.&nbsp; People who are nasty to their family members deserve to feel shame, particularly if they’re nasty to children or pregnant women.&nbsp; </p>

<p>Not that I have a strong opinion on the matter, or anything.&nbsp; Or that my opinion is bolstered when, every few years in spring, I have to fill out the security paperwork we contractors know so well, and then have to explain to some stranger that, no, I don’t have a phone number for my illustrious father and, no, I won’t seek one out but you’re welcome to, thankyouverymuch.&nbsp; </p>

<p>I’m coming to a point.&nbsp; Listening closely to <a href=”http://www.marthawainwright.com/”>Martha Wainwright</a> has been on my to-do list for a while.&nbsp; I’m a big fan of her brother, <a href=”http://rufuswainwright.com/”>Rufus Wainwright</a>, and I’ve always been curious about their family dynamic. </p>

<p>I’d heard <a href=”http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/marthawainwright/bloodymotherfuckingasshole.html”>Bloody MF A-hole</a> (I can’t believe I just censored that . . . it’s like I think there are kids in the room) before, but not listened that closely.&nbsp; So I didn’t know until five seconds ago it’s about her father, Loudoun &quot;I abandoned my kids but still use them as fodder for my songs&quot; Wainwright.&nbsp; &nbsp;She is lashing back at him for being so cruel to her in his songs for so long.&nbsp; </p>

<p><em>Poetry is no place for a heart that’s a whore.</em></p>

<p>Couldn’t have said it better myself, Martha.&nbsp; </p>

<p><em>I will not pretend<br />I will not put on a smile<br />I will not say I’m all right for you<br />For you, whoever you are<br />For you, whoever you are<br />For you, whoever you are</em></p>

<p>Martha, you’ve made my day.&nbsp; It’s anthemic.&nbsp; It’s a knee to that sanctimonious groin.&nbsp; It pushes the button down and holds it for just long enough.&nbsp; You’re a giant killer, and I love you for it.&nbsp; </p>

<p>Listen to <a href=”http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5325695″>Martha Wainwright</a> live at the 9:30 club (free legal download!).&nbsp; And then listen to the Neko Case show, available on the same page.&nbsp; It’s better for you than vitamins and roughage.&nbsp; </p>

So, I can’t begin to explain all of the fun I had two weekends ago because my brain still hasn’t cooled off from all of the fun I had last weekend.   Let’s pretend this is a photo-blog, shall we?

See how lovely our Anubh is?  And this is post-gymnastics-accident.  Anyone who can look that chipper after a fall is golden, I say. 

This is Casper.  He is my new favorite pony, in part because he didn’t stomp on my foot like Cocoa did.  Casper is some sort of Scandinavian pony.  I wouldn’t normally forget what kind of pony he is, but I’ve hatched a plan to register him as a white German Shepherd and move him to the suburbs with me, so it’s best that I don’t let facts that would scuttle the plan get in my way.  Who’s a good pony puppy?


Look at that mane.  Freaking gorgeous.

The problem with my plan? Macha seems to really like him.


So, er, let me know if the whole best-pony-in-the-world-is-mine-all-mine thing gets old, mmmkay Macha?

Noble isn’t exactly hard on the eyes either, and he was absolutely great about having so many people ride him.  Atta boy, Noble.

You know, I think all of this horse-exposure may be some mass plot to get me to start making tack.  Well, forget it.  Don’t look at me like that, Noble.  Sheesh.  Ask someone else to make you new tack.

Fine, snub me.  Whatever. 

So, I didn’t manage to take pictures of much that didn’t involve the horses.  There was a wonderful Maypole (you can see it over Noble’s neck, there in the distance) and some great music and song and poetry.  We did it like we do. 

And, finally, because every bonus feature on a DVD has something lame that only entertains the director .  .  .
watch.
I know, I know, but I think my own voice is hilarious whenever I hear a recording of it.  I walk around convinced that my accent isn’t there, and then, whoooo, there it sure is.  And, I know I’m no Scorsese, but look at Casper’s gait!  He can move, that pony puppy.

So Gentle Readers, you’ve now heard my voice on this here blog; and you’ve seen my face; you’ve had a peak into the activities of my Cultish Celtic living history activities; you’ve seen the things I make and the gifts I receive from my wonderful friends and family; you’ve had a virtual trip to the festival I help throw every summer; you’ve suffered the onslaught of my opinions on books and movies; and you’ve comforted me with grace and care when I’ve experienced tragedy.  Thank you so much for that.  I think I’ve been blogging for about a year and a half now, and I like having this record of Beltaine to Beltaine available to me and mine.  I like it a lot.

I know how many of you come here, and I’d like to hear your voices too, if it’s not an imposition.  I’ve met some truly wonderful people since I started this sillyness, and I think there are more of you who I haven’t met because you’re a bit quiet.  Pipe up.  No one else has your voice. 

Coming soon to a crazylaneas near you: Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, or how a girl spent a bajillion dollars in 17 minutes flat, and then wallowed in fun, with the help of her friends.

Edited–Back again with a vengeance.  I just finished writing everything I had to write for the Potomac Celtic Festival Program, and that means I’m free to rave about how wonderful Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival was.  But I can’t really do that until I tie up at least a few of these loose ends.

So, Typepad has been giving me fits.  Naughty Typepad does not like pictures, and does not want to let this post go live despite the fact that I’ve been trying to post it for nearly a week.  So, truce.  I’ve decided to post it even though it’s not done, because I want to let off this writerly steam.  It’s either that or fix my computer with a hammer.

These, lovely lovely, are the Jaywalkers who don’t want to be:

Say goodbye kids.  The yarn is being harvested.  I get it, lovely yarn,  you don’t want the pattern to get the glory.  I can accept that.  Or maybe you just want to go to smaller feet.  That I cannot accept.  Elspeth and Lisa can both knit their own socks.  You are mine, yarn.  All mine.  You will be knit up, in vanilla fashion, once you’ve calmed down.  And learned your lesson.

But while you’re still here, serve my purposes and give the nice people a sense of scale.  When I got to John the Ferrier’s for Beltaine, our friend Brogan from NYC said he had a deal for me.  He’d give me a nice something, and maybe I’d make him some more clothes.  The nice something is above.  That lovely object is a leather needle case with cherry end-caps, all handmade by my pal, all for the want of some clothes from Crazy Lanea.  In Brogan’s defense, he doesn’t want me to show you this, because the leather got all tricksie and twisted on him.  He kept muttering about replacing this case with one that isn’t twisted, and even tried to convince me not to take this one and wait until its replacement is made.  Yeah, sure.   Here is the removable end-cap:

Hand done.  Did I mention?  It gets better . . .

Only I can’t show you how much better yet, because, well Typepad is being a brat.  The case is full of antique bone needles.  There are one or two strays, a full set of DPNs, and several pairs of straights.  I promise I’ll put the photo here very soon.  He also gave me a huge set of very nice old plastic needles with black ends (maybe they’re Boye’s?), and those want to go live with someone else.  Someone deserving.  Details and photos to come.

See how pretty!  Thanks Brogan.  Seriously, you rock.  And you’d better rubbing your plans for fashion-domination in the faces of all of those Tuatha de Bhrainn folks.

I’ll give you more of the goods once I get the electrons to behave.  And I’ll tell you about the Best Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival ever.  In the meantime, look how lovely our boys can be:

This is our friend James, though he prefers to be called Eggbeater.  He is riding Noble, who is the fine horse of our pal Macha.  Phalen, photographer extraordinaire leads Noble, and Jason is making sure his heir doesn’t perform the hero’s Salmon-leap* off his mount.    Needless to say, Beltaine was ginormous fun this year.

* CuChulainn, hero of the Red Branch, made famous the ích n-erred, or Salmon leap, wherein he would apparently leap from his normal riding position into a handstand on his horse’s back, and then throw his spear, the Gae Bolga, with his foot.  After performing the Salmon Leap, CuChulainn generally got laid by a smoking hottie.  So while we’re all sure the Mighty Eggbeater could totally pull off the leap and the spear-throw via his trotter, we don’t think he’s old enough to date seriously yet.  Is maith sin, you know, for CuChulainn, but the Eggbeater needs to wait a bit.

<p>I got a copy of <a href=”http://www.powells.com/biblio/0674018249″>this</a> the other day. I thought it might be nice to have a good collection of Emily Dickinson’s work, and you know, this was published by Harvard and all.&nbsp; It’s supposedly the authoritative one-volume edition of the extra super-duper authoritative multi-volume edition by the same scholar. Cool, right? </p>

<p>Pop quiz: What is the first thing you think of when you think of Emily Dickinson’s work? If you&nbsp; said her puctuation, in particular her liberal use of the dash, then you get a gold star. And I don’t mean some little old en dashes here and there, I mean big, bad em dashes, emmmmmm-dashes, even. If you’ve ever seen handwritten copies of her work, you can see that the dashes are physical, active parts of her work. Some of the dashes are up to an inch long.&nbsp; In my opinion, Emily Dickinson poems without those bold em dashes lose their urgency, they lose their physicality.&nbsp; In case any of you are unclear on the difference between an em dash and an en dash, I will illustrate. These are em dashes:</p>

<p style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 1in”>Because I could not stop for Death—</p>

<p style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 1in”><span face=”Times New Roman”>He kindly stopped for me—</span></p>

<p style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 1in”><span face=”Times New Roman”>The Carriage held but just Ourselves—</span></p>

<p style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 1in”><span face=”Times New Roman”>And Immortality. </span></p>

<p style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 1in”></p>

<p>These are en dashes:</p>

<p style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 1in”>Because I could not stop for Death – </p>

<p style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 1in”><span face=”Times New Roman”>He kindly stopped for me – </span></p>

<p style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 1in”><span face=”Times New Roman”>The Carriage held but just Ourselves – </span></p>

<p style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 1in”><span face=”Times New Roman”>And Immortality. </span></p>

<div><p>In non-professionally type-set work, you generally find an em-dash written as a double hypen (–) and an en dash written as a space, hypen, space ( – ).&nbsp; They get their names because an en dash is the width of an ‘n’ and an em dash is–you got it–the width of an ‘m.'</p>

<p>Anyway, of course an authoritative edition of Dickinson’s work would keep those em dashes intact, right? Wrong. En dashes, every single blasted one of them.&nbsp; At first I thought maybe some editor or slap-happy typesetter got their hands on them and changed them to fit the press’ particular style. There is, afterall, contemporary disagreement on this issue. Here’s a <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash”>Wikipedia article</a> on the stylistic issues regarding em dash vs. en dash use:</p><blockquote dir=”ltr”><p>Traditionally an em dash—like so—or spaced em dash — like so — has been used for a “dash” in running text. Newer guides, including the <em>Elements of Typographic Style</em>, now recommend the more-concise spaced en dash – like so – and argue that the length and visual magnitude of an em dash caters to grandiose Victorian era taste. However, longstanding typographical guidelines such as the <em>Chicago Manual of Style</em> still recommend unspaced em dashes for this purpose. Furthermore, it is also argued that using an en dash here can lead to confusion, since the primary semantic role of an en dash is to represent a number range.</p></blockquote><p>But it wasn’t a stylistic issue. The introduction? Chock full of em dashes.</p>

<p>Plus, note, I said there is <em>contemporary </em>disagreement on the matter. Can we agree, please, that Emily Dickinson is not contemporary? </p>

<p>Thank you. </p>

<p>Heck, she <em>is</em> Victorian, at least chronologically speaking, and certainly grandiose. So let her have her freakin’ em dashes, okay? </p>

<p>Thank you.</p>

<p>P.S. Lanea, I thought you might be interested to know that Paul Muldoon was the editor on the most recent <a href=”http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-0743257588-1″>Best American Poetry</a> volume.</p></div>

You may know him as Will Oldham. You may know him as Palace, Palace Brothers or Palace Music. You may know him most recently under the wackiest of all pseudonyms, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. You may even know him from his cameos in funny little independent movies like Junebug. But truth be told, you’ve probably never heard of him at all. Don’t let that stop you. He’s genius. He’s pure curl-up-in-a-fetal-position-and-suck-your-thumb-because-you-can’t-believe-how-wonderful-his-is Genius. According to the Guardian, he’s the greatest American songwriter of the decade. I’d agree with that. You’ll want your liner notes, too, because his lyrics might make your brain explode they’re that good. I’ve been an obsessive fan of his for years now, and I still don’t have all of his albums yet– he’s both that prolific, and they’re so good that you really need some time to fully sink your teeth into them. It always gives you something to look forward to, though. If you want a good place to fall in love with him, start how I started back with Ease Down the Road. I listened to almost nothing else for about 3 months, because there just wasn’t any other album that could measure up. So, yeah, you’ll want to pencil in some time on your calendar.

What does he sound like? Do you still really need to know that when I tell you he’ll change your life?

Okay, fine. He’s a lot folky, a little country (more so some days than others) and he has this high, crackling voice that will break your heart in a way that feels so good, you’ll beg for for him to break your heart some more.

(So, yeah, this is still a poetry blog. Really. We just thought since we both have so many other things constantly rolling around in our heads, we’d mix it up with other cultural pursuits on occasion. Okay? ‘kay.)

We’ll start talking about the big hard poems again soon, once our poor heads recover from work and such.  Until then, listen to William Elliott Whitmore.  I found out about the guy because he opened for the Pogues when we saw them a few months back.  He has the best-sounding banjo I’ve come across.  Banjos are all about their tone-rings, and his is perfect according to my ear–raspy and deep and percussive.  If he weren’t a thousand times more talented a picker than I am, I might roll him and steal his banjo.  Instead, I’ll just tell all y’all to give him your money.  Give him your money, dammit.  Give the boy your money.  He’s skinny, and he really needs a sammich.  And probably a clean glass of water, from the sound of him.

Oh, and this will only appeal to we precious few nutbags  .  . . he’s another crow person.

The bluebird can sing
But the crow’s got the soul

You’re damn right, Willie.

Even richer, Whitmore’s albums have photos of these art pieces he makes that are wooden boxes with bleached animal skulls inside, and some dead flowers.  Sometimes he brings the boxes on tour, sort of like Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and their antique box of musical accouterments, but so much, er, bonier.

If you hear he’s been kidnapped, don’t worry.  We’ll give him back once he promises to make regular appearances at our parties.  Pinky-swear.

. . . all work and no play make Crazy Lanea a something something.
. . . all work and no play make Crazy Lanea a something something.
. . . all work and no play make Crazy Lanea a something something.
. . . all work and no play make Crazy Lanea a something something.
. . . all work and no play make Crazy Lanea a something something.
. . . all work and no play make Crazy Lanea a something something.
. . . all work and no play make Crazy Lanea a something something.

Not dead, just crazed.

Ten hour days, followed by evenings filled with my volunteer job.

Must launch four brand-spanking-new federal websites in one week.

Must make giant festival happen in .  .  .  holy hell  .  .  . 50 days.  Anyone wanna volunteer?  Pretty please?  We need your help.  Seriously.  And we’d be happy to take some of your money too.

And, apparently, people still expect me to shower, wear clean clothes, and possibly iron occasionally.

I promise, I am making progress on a number of projects.  I finished an inkle-band, I made some socks, I un-dazzled a skirt, I got some gorgeous linen for a project for Skutai . . . and my camera needs batteries.  I would insert pictures of my garden, but, er, batteries.

Metro-knitting is boring to look at.  Imagine a picture of another sock.  Do not, however, imagine the gorgeous Jaywalker I was making, because it has betrayed me and must be destroyed.  It’s not the sock’s fault, honestly.  Metro-knitting plus metal needles equals gauge issues, which went unnoticed until the weekend, when I was knitting at home and able to try said Jaywalker on.  And then cry.  The sock is 80% done and doesn’t fit.  But I must rip it, because I must own this yarn forever.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, kittens are not conducive to sleep.  Yarrow does not respond to any form of veterinarian-approved kitty-discipline we can find.  And he drools when he’s happy.  And Speedwell thinks he is a necklace.  A nine pound necklace with nose-tickling fur and claws.

I’m trying to try to start the Print O’ the Wave Stole using the freaking gorgeous yarn that Juno sent me a while back.  No promises until the terrifying deadline passes.

Er, send help.  Or a maid.  And a landscaping crew.  And maybe some wine.