Acallam na Senorach or Tales of the Elders of Ireland, translated by Ann Dooley and Harry Roe. 

For someone who goes out of her way to read and translate Irish and Welsh mythology, well, it took me forever to get to this.  Now I remember why.  This material–not the translation, mind you, but the material itself–makes me want to shake people really really hard.  The text was transcribed in either the 12th or 13th century, which is part of the problem.  Because, you know, this version was recorded so much further from the historical source material, and thus pretty terribly corrupted. 

Also, in the spirit of full disclosure:  I’m a pretty radical feminist and a dirt-worshipping heathen, so St. Patrick doesn’t much appeal to me.  Most of the Saints whose prime focus was destroying native religions and cultures don’t get invited to my birthday parties.  The whole "driving the snakes out  of Ireland" routine is a thinly-veiled reference to Christian missionaries stamping out or subsuming native Irish religious practices.  And I hate green beer too.

Dooley and Roe did a great job translating this.  I don’t know how they made it through.  I would have lost my mind.  It’s easy to forget what kind of shape some of the mythology is in, having been transcribed by monks who were not generally fluent in the languages they were transcribing and who were also encouraged to "clean up" any texts that seemed blasphemous, idolatrous, sexual, or otherwise un-Christian by medieval standards. 

So, you know, priceless pieces of oral history were whitewashed and stripped of sex, humor, tidbits of ancient religious practice and belief–just thinking about what we’ve lost is making me itch.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not anti-Christian.  I’m anti-censorship.  And I particularly resent the roles left for women in some of the works that were transcribed later.  That may not make sense to folks who aren’t well-versed in Irish myth, but if you compare the women in The Tain Bo Cuailnge to the women in this text and it doesn’t make you itch even just a little bit, um, go listen to some P.J. Harvey please.  Now.  It’s an emergency.

Acallam na Senorach is set up as a major frame story which holds hundreds of little stories about Irish mythology.  In the book, St. Patrick is trying to learn about Ireland and its heroes, primarily Fionn Mac Cumhaill, from the surviving Fianna.  The Fianna were, according to the myths, groups of men who didn’t yet hold land or political position who wandered around sort of keeping order and having adventures.  I say "sort of keeping order" because they were frequently involved in huge skirmishes that didn’t seem to do anything to keep the peace or maintain justice.  Fionn’s Fianna had many run-ins with the Tuatha de Danaan, the Divine Tribes of the Goddess Danu.  The main narrator in Acallam na Senorach is Cailte, Finn’s right-hand man and an all-around badass. 

Should be a great book of stories, right?  For many people, it probably is.  For me, well, I hate parts of it like poison.  Largely because over and over again, for no clear reason, members of the Irish pantheon suddenly cowtow to Patrick and forswear their own divinity.

Seriously.  Who would do that?  The Dagda would not do that.  Aengus Og would not do that.  The Morrigan would certainly not do that.  And I shudder to think how any of them would react if their siblings or kids–even just the demi-Gods–did it.    Makes no sense.  Destroys all connection to character established in the earlier mythology.  The Tuatha De Danaan were badasses in the myths.  And suddenly they’re worshiping some new God they just heard about?  I know this form of revision is common in many Christianized cultures, but it drives me nuts.  Nuts, I say. 

When I could set aside my burning anger and remember that I was reading a historically-significant text that two really talented translators had made available to me for crap pay and too little recognition, I really was able to enjoy the stories, particularly the dindsenchas (stories that explain how a place got its name–a very important type of Irish myth). 

But then one of the Tuatha De Danaan would lay his or head into Patrick’s lap and beg to be baptised and offer to dig up the grave of one of their relatives or lovers so that Patrick could have more wealth, and I would start cursing again. 

And in case anyone is wondering, if I die and am buried with a horde of my cool stuff and any of you dig me up to steal my grave goods to fund some evangelist, my peeps will boil you alive. In the nicest way possible of course, but with the same results. 

The Book of Fred by Abby Bardi.  I bought this book either because, well, there is a fish and the fish is connected to the name Fred, and that all ties into one of the oldest inside jokes in my brain.  And because the author has "Bard" in her name.  Or maybe it was a present.  Again with the goofy book choices.  This is another in the accidental local-author series.  It’s a teen novel, essentially, and a nice little snack. 

The main character, a girl named Mary Fred, is taken from her parents and placed in a foster home because her folks have gotten wrapped up in a doomsday cult and charged with neglect for allowing their kids to go without medical treatment.  Fred ends up helping her foster family overcome some of their own problems and begins to understand the world she has been so sheltered from. 

Tragedy ensues, folks heal, Mary Fred breaks free of the cult.  La la la.  It’s a sweet read.  You end up rooting for pretty much everyone involved.  It’s not Tolstoy, mind you, but it isn’t supposed to be. 

Dogs of Babel by Caroline Parkhurst. 

I may have bought this book because the author shares a last name with a good friend of mine.   I tend to stock up on books whenever I feel flush.  Or walk within striking distance of a book seller.  Or a computer.  I have a lot of books, and I keep buying more, and the order in which I read them is a mystery to me.

Right, so, this fell into the accidental local-author streak.  This was my favorite of the bunch.  The novel is about a man whose wife dies under mysterious circumstances, with only their Rhodesian Ridgeback as a witness.  The bereft widower becomes obsessed with the idea that the pooch can somehow learn to speak or communicate in English, and thus tell him how his wife came to fall to her death from a tree in their backyard. 

Kooky, right?  Yeah, but so is grief.  And love.  And mental illness.  I fell in love with the dead woman, with her husband, and particularly with their dog.  Parkhurst knows dogs, and I love dogs, so this was a great read for me.  But I think it  would be a very difficult book to read for many animal lovers–the protagonist meets some really terrible people who do terrible things to dogs.  But in the end, the novel comes to a sense of peace.  It’s particularly impressive, considering it was Parkhurst’s first book.  I’m fer it, in other words.  And that’s that.

Now go hug your dogs–they deserve it.

I lay waiting
Between turf-face and demesne wall,
Between Heathery levels
And glass-toothed stone.

My body was Braille
For the creeping influences:
Dawn suns groped over my head
And cooled at my feet,

Through my fabrics and skins
The seeps of winter
Digested me,
The illiterate roots

Pondered and died
In the cavings
Of stomach and socket.
I lay waiting

On the gravel bottom,
My brain darkening,
A jar of spawn
Fermenting underground

Dreams of Baltic amber.
Bruised berries under my nails,
The vital hoard reducing
In the crock of the pelvis.

My diadem grew carious,
Gemstones dropped
In the peat floe
Like the bearings of history.

My sash was a black glacier
Wrinkling, dyed weaves
And phoenician stichwork
Retted on my breasts’

Soft moraines.
I knew winter cold
Like the nuzzle of fjords
At my thighs –

The soaked fledge, the heavy
Swaddle of hides.
my skull hibernated
in the wet nest of my hair.

Which they robbed.
I was barbered
And stripped
By a turfcutter’s spade

Who veiled me again
And packed coomb softly
Between the stone jambs
At my head and my feet.

Till a peer’s wife bribed him.
The plait of my hair,
A slimy birth-cord
Of bog had been cut

And I rose from the dark,
Hacked bone, skull-ware,
Frayed stitches, tufts,
Small gleams on the bank.

What can I say.  This is Heaney pandering to me, specifically.  Fiber-arts, a bit of gross, archeology, amber, gorgeous language.  He had me at the title, because of this nickname I have, but that’s another story. 

This poem is about a body that was unearthed from an Irish bog in the late 18th C. but was not preserved.  We have knowledge of this particular burial through the historical record.  For me, the fact that this find was not preserved is particularly galling, because she was apparently still fully clothed, bejeweled, and her hair was styled.  According to the surviving account, the local landowner demanded that the turf-cutter who found her deliver up the fabrics and jewels and braids to the manse.  All are lost now.  Grumble grumble. 

So what say you?  Liking my gross favorites, or turned off by it?

So, in the spirit of tricking people into reading poetry, particularly Irish poetry, and slyly encouraging people to want to participate in any form of social or folk dancing available to them . . . one of my favorites from Austin Clarke.  It’s compressed and lyrical.  It depicts one hell of a kitchen party, to my mind’s eye:

The Planter’s Daughter

When night stirred at sea,
And the fire brought a crowd in
They say that her beauty
Was music in mouth
And few in the candlelight
Thought her too proud,
For the house of the planter
Is known by the trees.

Men that had seen her
Drank deep and were silent,
The women were speaking
Wherever she went —
As a bell that is rung
Or a wonder told shyly
And O she was the Sunday
In every week.

The planter’s daughter is a dancer, you know.  If people are going to look at you anyway, they might as well look at you because you’re feet are battering out fantastic rhythms on the floor.  And if you have legs that are nine feet long (Aes), or enough attitude and, er womanly charms to light the sky on fire (Lonan), or in-born musicality and youth and vigor (Ulrich) then it’s your duty to dance.  Your duty, I say!  Also, percussive dancers are hott. 

And if you need dance shoes, you should get Stevens Stompers, and they should be black.  To learn, you should not wear taps.  Once you’re ready for taps, they should be buck taps.  Because, like I said before, Satan makes jingle taps.  Or maybe it was Nero, yeah, Nero invented the jingle tap.   Are you going to wear anything Nero invented?  Heck no.  That would be wrong.

And go to Glen Echo on Friday.  Or on Sunday.  Actually, you can go there and dance four nights a week.  Call me first, mmmkay?

Writing a blog, I am often frustrated by either my failure to take the pictures I should or my inability to transmit certain sensations to all y’all.  I want you to be able to smell what I’m baking or cooking, or the flowers in my garden, or even my wet dog when he comes in from the rain.  I want you to be able to taste the bridies I make, or the cannoli, or polpette.  And I want you to be able to feel the things I make out of leather or yarn or fabric.  And I want you to be able to see things in motion, hence the little movie of me knitting last week.  No matter how much I think we manage to connect in this little community we make in the ether, it’s not quite enough sometimes.

Mostly, I want your ears.

A while back, I wrote a little something called “I am Not Quiet.”  That title is one of the truest lines I’ve ever written. See, a major portion of my head-space is taken up by music and dance.  I love poetry as much as I do because it is music, and it’s the form of music I have the strongest hold on.  I’m better with words than I am with strings, particularly since my body started turning on me.  So I write, and I sing a lot, and I study the songs and poems available to me.  Sometimes I still play tunes, but not enough.

In just about everything I do, I’m trying to learn more about folk arts.  The music, the songs, the dance, the arts and crafts, the food–it’s all about preserving and disseminating culture for me.

Live dance and music are and should be intertwined. They form a wholly/holy communal pact when everything is right.  Musicians are playing for dancers, and dancers are dancing together, as a group, to thank each other and the musicians.  When I was dancing with the Hoorahs, most of the musicians who played for us were also dancers.  It was ideal.  It was so good, I’m tearing up just picturing the solo break in Flapjack.  Man, I wish I could show you all the little movie in my head.  Sheew dooggy.   I am one lucky lunatic.

My dancing is about sound as much as it is about movement, if not more.  Percussive dance is particularly important to me because, as an art form, it has been largely commodified and codified and crushed.  As it’s been commodified, it is stripped of history and style and myth.  It’s happened to Irish step dance–Sean Nos is losing ground.  It is happening to clogging and tap now.  Most dance students only hear recorded music and only learn steps that are identical to those learned 500 miles away.  I shudder to think what out grandkids will be left with, if none of them learn from regular folks in their community at community classes.  I have visions of automatons in jingle taps.  Satan is behind the freaky homogonization happening in percussive dance, I tell you, and Satan wants you to buy jingle taps.

If I never manage to get my poetry out to a wider audience, I think I’ll be ok.  But if I fail to transmit the steps I’ve learned from the generous dancers who have taught me what I know, then I’ll actually feel like a failure.  And I have to get teaching now, because my limbs are screwed up.  I’m not the dancer I was ten years ago.  I don’t want to lose any more ground before I share the knowledge that’s held in my feet.

All of which is why I was particularly happy to teach a bit of clogging to some of my nearest and dearest over the Fourth.  And why dance will hopefully take up more space here for a while.  I’ll gather up all of the notes from the classes I’ve taught and put them here for the folks I’m teaching.  If you want to start learning something about percussive dance, well, darn it, I’m your girl, and I’m your girl right now.  Not in five years.  Not when you finish that big project.  The sooner you hit me up for a lesson, the more I can show you.  I’m not looking for money–I’m looking to leave a sonic legacy.

Stomp shuffle-step shuffle-step, stomp stomp,  shuffle-step shuffle-step, stomp stomp, shuffle-step drag shuffle-step drag stomp, shuffle-step drag shuffle-step drag stomp

The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre and The Constant Gardener starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz.

It took me forever to read any Le Carre.  I wouldn’t read Le Carre because the last time I saw my illustrious father, he told me I would like Le Carre.  He then told some ridiculous story about trying to break into the Russian Embassy in the late 1960s while he was tripping, in an attempt to charm my friend Mikele Ann–I think Mikele and I were 21 at the time.  My father’s endorsement can serve as a lifetime bar for me.  But my Mom lifted the ban recently, explaining that I would actually like this novel in particular, and pointing out some silliness along the lines of "if you refuse to partake of things because your bone-headed pater familias enjoys them, you’re going to have to give up most of the literary Canon, read meat, dogs, cats, alcohol, sarcasm, blue and green eyes, European cars, jazz, rock, old-time, travel . . .  It will leave you with just me, my potato salad, your Step-Dad, and work." 

So, Mom gave me her copy of the book and a solid rave.  Mom was right.  I really liked the book, despite its flaws.  I researched Africa, health-care, and African health care a fair amount in my old sovereignty policy  job, and I was in the thick of that study when this story broke: The Body Hunters: Washington Post.  Suffice it to say, I’m permanently appalled by the state of health care in Africa, the feeble response of the richest nations in the world, and the avaricious, unethical actions of the pharmaceutical industry’s outposts in Africa.

The novel follows a British diplomat and gardener and his well-educated, gorgeous, younger, activist wife.  The pair are living in Kenya, and the wife begins to investigate a TB drug that seems to have deadly side-effects.  Chaos ensues, people die, and pharmaceutical companies and diplomats alike end up looking like monsters.

Parts are overwrought.  Some of the plot twists are pretty ludicrous.  I forgive it all, because I’m just so glad that someone with as much reach into the popular market as Le Carre has planted a seed in so many people’s minds. 

The film, as per usual, was a bit of a disappointment after the novel.  Some things changed, some things had to be cut.  But, as movies made from books go, it was pretty darn good.  Fiennes and Weisz both gave good performances, but I’m pretty sure that Fiennes is too young, too handsome, and too charming to fit the part he was supposed to be playing.  Everyone in the story is supposed to be shocked that Justin Quayle managed to catch and keep such an amazing young woman.  I don’t think the average viewer is shocked by the idea of Ralph Fiennes marrying a brilliant, beautiful younger woman.  But Hollywood is never going to cast films as I wish they would, so I should just get used to it. 

So, yeah, liked both book and movie.

I could tell you about the growing log cabin blanket; or about my attempts at re-training my hands;  or about the big fun we had over the long weekend (wherein Aes, Ulrich, and Aislin got a clogging lesson, and the porch band was freaking awesome, and a lot of people got soaked, and a lot of explosives, well, exploded, and we ate pie and brownies as if we had no manners).  But no.  Before I can do those things, I need to do my homework. 

I’ve been reading more and knitting less over the last couple of months, what with the metro ride and the hole in my finger and the crazy festival stress.  But I haven’t been reviewing the books I’ve read, which I need to do.  Because if I don’t, well, I’ll feel like those expensive bits of vellum and the work it took to get them were wasted.

And because of my need to be able to scan these entries, I’m going to play with time a little bit.  Just in the local, blog-world sense.  Not in the cosmic, "Where did that month go?" sense.  Just don’t mind me while I dust a bit.

Floating in My Mother’s Palm by Ursula Heigi. 

This is the second novel of Heigi’s I’ve read, and I’m developing a serious writer-crush.  This novel and Stones from the River are both set in the same fictional small town in Germany, and both feature some of the same characters.  The main character in this book is a girl named Hanna.  Trudi Montag, the focus of Stones from the River, figures again in this novel, but simply as the town gossip and a kind of mentor to Hanna. 

But, as is generally the case with books I love, it’s not the plot that matters here.  It’s Heigi’s use of language and symbol.  The title itself and the image it evokes floors me.  Swimming is very important this time around, particularly Hanna’s swimming outings with her mother.  And of course, I’m busily worrying that attempting to explain the importance of swimming and water in this novel will break its spell.  Suffice it to say that water has played a huge role in my life, and not always a passive, safe role.  I’m sure that’s true for many of you.  Heigi’s depiction of the river, both as a source of solace and pleasure and a danger, rings so very true to me. 

I love this book.  I’m sure I’ll read it again. 

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. 

This book fits right into my two most recent reading habits–accidentally picking up books written by locals and/or relating to water.  Good old Dash was a local–he was born in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, which is one of my favorite places in the world.  St. Mary’s lies between the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay there on the DelMarVa peninsula.  Within St. Mary’s lie Turtle Hill, the best banjo shop, well, ever anywhere; some of the best food made with two ingredients I can think of;  Point Lookout, where the girls and I go every year; all sorts of great historic sites, and many other things I love but can’t think of right now.  That little county produces a lot of things I love, lemme tell you.  So I favor it a bit.  It’s on my short list.

Where was I?

I studied Film Noir a bit way back in the way back, and Film Noir could never have happened if it weren’t for Hammett and Raymond Chandler.   This book is a classic, and it birthed a classic film.  I’m sure not everyone has a taste for hard-boiled characters, but I love them. 

Really, this is good old plot driven fiction, so I won’t say much.  Hammett uses some phrases and idioms that ring strangely these days, but as a writer, that’s reason enough for me to read his work.  Pairing that with a pile of interesting plot twists makes for good summer reading.  The book was a delicious little snack.