Total Eclipse of the Heart

A friend of mine found this doozy on YouTube; a total lyrical rendition and play by play of Bonnie Taylor's Total Eclipse of the Heart. Sunday morning seems like a good day to begin with quirky parody and spoof.

I'm down with J.C.B., Yeah you know me!

Because it's been a great week and we're happy for the Barnwell crew.

E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."

Students at the J. Graham Brown School, class of 2009, graduated last night. These are students I did not teach, but who I knew from the way they moved through hallways and high school (except Jordan Smith - he was in my pre-school Nature camp at the Louisville Nature Center when he was three years old. We knew each other before we knew Brown). I am thinking about the seniors today, especially after reading President Obama's speech to the Muslim world where he quotes, "E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."

That is the America and the Brown School way. Plurality. It made me recall Alice's photograph from this year's senior trip to Florida and my comment, 'Whether they know it or not, this is symbolic. Very Brown." It was the cover of their graduation program and stands as a testimony that their shadows, though united for a brief period of time, are facing new waters in the great unknown. On this quirky Friday, I congratulate the class of 2009 (and President Obama) for the hopeful efforts of trying to make in the 21st Century a stronger place on the globe. Perhaps it's a coincidence, 2009, but when I came home yesterday afternoon there was one flower blooming in my garden: a giant white daisy. For years, Alice and I gave every graduating senior a white daisy in honor of Harold & Maude. Today, I give all the graduates at the J. Graham Brown School a cyberspace daisy in honor of their achievement and my sadness I didn't get a chance to teach them.

Another Nature Post

Easter tent caterpillars are everywhere. As a kid, I used to pick up the fuzzy insects as they climbed along the outside of our house. As an adult, I strategically hop along the pavement trying to avoid the hundreds as they are moving from egg into chrysalis stage across pavement. I remember, once, when I saw them being burned out of a tree and I heard their screeching. As quirky as it is, I didn't have any recollection as to what butterfly they become. I mean, if they are everywhere in fuzzy form, what do they look like as adults? Well, this is what they look like as adults. Not the prettiest creature, but one of flight, nonetheless. So there.

Proper English

I've always been a huge fan of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. I am thinking of him today as I read Dalton Conley's Honky about a white boy growing up in the projects of New York City. As the only white boy in his diverse childhood, his memoir has me thinking about language construction and how "proper" comes to be, especially in a quirky, plural society like our own.

Here's a quote that got me thinking, "While adults might speak only Spanish, or talk with a heavy drawl if they came from down South, our way of talking was like a layered cake; it had many distinctly rich flavors, but in our mouths they all got mixed up together. When we "snapped" on each other, little did we know we were using the same ironic lilt and intonation once employed in the Jewish shtetls of Central Euorpe. This Yiddish-like English had mixed with influences from southern Italians, Irish, and other immigrant groups to form the basic New Yorkese of the mid-twentieth century. We spoke with open vowels and dropped our rs: quater was quartah, and water was watah. To this European stew we added the Southern tendency to cut off the endings of some words - runnin', skippin', jumpin' - a habit that came northward with many blacks during the Great Migration. We also turned our ts into ds, as in, "Lemme get fiddy cents."

My thinking on this is that there may have once been a conception of proper English that was aligned with aristocracy from European, English elites, but in America, language has been a mutlicultural, hodgepodge of dialect for many generations. Voice, then, becomes the ability one has in expressing in the language of their home culture, school learning and willingness to communicate. Proper is a blending of all the dialects.

Yep.

A June Addition

Yesterday, at 4 a.m., my sister Casey called me and said she was leaking.

Seventeen plus hours later, the latest addition to the Crandall/Barnwell posse arrived -- taking his sweet ol' time and chillin' at the keg party within.

Rumor is Casey finally laughed him out when something tickled her funny bone. (If we'd known that, we would have made her laugh a lot sooner).

Sean is now a big brother.  Although names have been tossed around, nothing has been decided yet.  More to come.

Bizarre Love Triangle

I thought I'd post this morning on a quirky song I listened to every morning on MTV before going to school in my senior year. It was a song by Midnight Oil, Beds are Burning, but it is blocked from being embedded. You can, however, listen to it on YouTube.  For some reason, MTV (when it used to play music) always had their video on right before I'd leave for school.

Not able to get their video, I thought about Frente's Bizarre Love Triangle and found that instead. I can't remember where I first heard it, but when it comes on my iPod, I think, okay, this is a decent song from my past.  Catchy, in fact.

I'm not sure how I jumped from Midnight Oil to Frente, but I did and the consequence for this quirky mind is a submission of the Bizarre Love Triangle video on this Monday. Enjoy.