Maggie's Music

I just posted this to my blog on LiveIreland.com.

For the past couple of weeks I've been pretty busy developing a series of 16 Squidoo lenses for Maggie's Music, an independent label started over 20 years ago by hammered dulcimer player Maggie Sansone. The label specializes in what has been termed "chamber folk." While there are many solo recordings on the label, the artists often get together on each others' recordings as well. The music draws on Celtic traditions of Ireland, Scotland and other areas, with a good dash of American influence thrown in since all the performers are from the States. The music I've heard, which includes samples from CD Baby that are up to two minutes per track in some cases, is both lively and beautiful.

Back in November I started a Christmas music lens on Squidoo and came across several CDs from Maggie's Music, which I included. Maggie Sansone, the founder of Maggie's Music, spotted the lens and emailed me asking if Squidoo might be an appropriate place for a small label to put up some information. She offered me some promo copies.

Things developed over the next few weeks with me creating some lens ideas and proposing to do a lens for each of the twelve artists on the Maggie's Music label. It's a busy time of year for a musician who's also managing a record label, but once Maggie approved the idea, I got started making lenses. It turned out to be sixteen of them:

Maggie's Music
Maggie's Music: Karen Ashbrook
Maggie's Music: Robin Bullock
Maggie's Music: Ceoltoiri
Maggie's Music: Ensemble Galilei
Maggie's Music: Hesperus
Maggie's Music: Ken Kolodner
Maggie's Music: Jody Marshall
Maggie's Music: Al Petteway & Amy White
Maggie's Music: City of Washington Pipe Band
Maggie's Music: Bonnie Rideout
Maggie's Music: Sue Richards
Maggie's Music: Maggie Sansone
Maggie's Music: Celtic Collections (this is where you'll find the Celtic Tapestry 2-CD set)
Maggie's Music: Christmas
Maggie's Music: Lenses

The first one presents a sampling of CDs from the artists, and the last one is what Squidoo calls a "lensography," a lens that basically links to the other lenses. The lenses themselves have links to the Maggie's Music website along with information from the website, although there's much more info at the website itself.

Maggie and I worked out a trade - she has sent off a whole bunch of CDs via UPS which ordinarily might've gotten here by last Wednesday or Friday, but of course right after the package left their office in Maryland, the weather here in the Northwest turned bad, with more snow in Portland than I've seen since my last one in New England in 1999-2000. I'm hoping the package will arrive later today (it's around 7:30 a.m. Monday as I write this, and I know the package got to UPS in Portland yesterday). It's a good deal - she gets the lenses made for whatever the cost of producing and shipping the CDs is, and I get CDs that would've otherwise cost me around $16 each. I don't know how many CDs are in a package that UPS says weighs seven pounds, but even allowing for a couple of pounds for packaging and UPS rounding up a bit, five pounds of CDs has to be a fair amount. It'll be like a slightly delayed Christmas, and I'll be listening to lots of music for quite a while. In addition to LiveIreland.com, of course!

The 12 Mondegreens of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
a cartridge in a bare tree.

On the second day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
two purple gloves,
and a cartridge in a bare tree.

On the third day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
three henchmen,
two purple gloves,
and a cartridge in a bare tree.

On the fourth day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
four scalded bards,
three henchmen,
two purple gloves,
and a cartridge in a bare tree.

On the fifth day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
five rolling things!
four scalded bards,
three henchmen,
two purple gloves,
and a cartridge in a bare tree.

On the sixth day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
six geezers slaying,
five rolling things!
four scalded bards,
three henchmen,
two purple gloves,
and a cartridge in a bare tree.

On the seventh day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
seven Swansea women,
six geezers slaying,
five rolling things!
four scalded bards,
three henchmen,
two purple gloves,
and a cartridge in a bare tree.

On the eighth day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
eight mayors a-filking,
seven Swansea women,
six geezers slaying,
five rolling things!
four scalded bards,
three henchmen,
two purple gloves,
and a cartridge in a bare tree.

On the ninth day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
nine lazy dentists,
eight mayors a-filking,
seven Swansea women,
six geezers slaying,
five rolling things!
four scalded bards,
three henchmen,
two purple gloves,
and a cartridge in a bare tree.

On the tenth day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
ten louts a-sleeping,
nine lazy dentists,
eight mayors a-filking,
seven Swansea women,
six geezers slaying,
five rolling things!
four scalded bards,
three henchmen,
two purple gloves,
and a cartridge in a bare tree.

On the eleventh day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
eleven sneakers sniping,
ten louts a-sleeping,
nine lazy dentists,
eight mayors a-filking,
seven Swansea women,
six geezers slaying,
five rolling things!
four scalded bards,
three henchmen,
two purple gloves,
and a cartridge in a bare tree.

On the twelfth day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
twelve dumber dumplings,
eleven sneakers sniping,
ten louts a-sleeping,
nine lazy dentists,
eight mayors a-filking,
seven Swansea women,
six geezers slaying,
five rolling things!
four scalded bards,
three henchmen,
two purple gloves,
and a cartridge in a bare tree.

Back around the mid-'70s I was working at a bank and had taken on, with a friend, the job of putting out a monthly newsletter. For December, I made a simple drawing of a small Christmas tree with no needles. The only ornament was a bullet: a cartridge in a bare tree. If you search the term "cartridge in a bare tree" on Google, you'll find plenty of examples, but the Internet wasn't available back then. That's how humor works - many different people come up with the same thing independently at different times.

Last evening I saw a video of a men's a capella group parodying "The Twelve Days of Christmas." There were no lines in the video anything like what I've written, but it got me thinking. What if someone misheard every line of the song? The first thing I came up with after recalling the cartridge in a bare tree was "five rolling things."

A misheard lyric is called a Mondegreen, after a misheard line in the 17th century Scottish ballad "The_Bonnie_Earl O' Murray." It was misheard by American writer Sylvia Wright in her childhood. Here's what she heard:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray,
And Lady Mondegreen.

The last line was written as "And laid him on the green."

Wright did an article for Harper's Magazine in 1954, and since then there have been many examples of misheard lyrics. You can read more about Mondegreens in Wikipedia. One collector of them, Gavin Edwards, has published several books of Mondegreens, some illustrated. I have three: 'Scuse Me While I Kiss this Guy, He's Got the Whole World in his Pants and When a Man Loves a Walnut. He's even done one for Christmas: Deck the Halls with Buddy Holly, but I don't have it and have never read it, so if any of my lines resemble anything in that book, it's coincidence.

My re-writing of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" technically is not an example of Mondegreens. A true Mondegreen is a genuinely misheard lyric, such as a misheard line from Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising": "There's a bathroom on the right." Mine are all made up to resemble ways someone might mishear each line of the song.

I've been asked in the past after committing an act of punnery, "Do you stay up all night thinking of those things?" No, not usually, although last night I might've gotten to sleep a bit later than I would've otherwise.

More Maggie's Music Lenses & Snow

On Monday I created a lens in the Maggie's Music series, which are in a Squidoo account set up by Maggie Sansone, for Al Petteway and Amy White, a couple who now live in Asheville, NC. It took longer than I thought it would at first, but most of that was because I finalized some details of creating a module. I looked up a few things and applied them to the modules, such as changing the type from Squidoo's standard (Verdana, I think) to Times New Roman. I also added coding to make the CD titles and catalog numbers larger and in red type. Nothing fancy, just stuff I hadn't used before, so I had to fiddle a bit to make sure the code was right so I could set it up for copying and pasting.

Once Al & Amy's lens was done, I realized all the lenses I'd done so far had contained a lot of CDs - around a dozen each. Setting all those up takes a while, with a fair amount of the time just adding in the Amazon text links at the bottom of each module. Amazon.co.uk just recently started adding MP3 downloads, and they appear to have added most of their Maggie's Music offerings. So for most modules, there's the CD from Amazon.com, the MP3 from Amazon.com, the CD from Amazon.co.uk and the MP3 from Amazon.co.uk.

All the work fiddling with the code paid off yesterday. That came together with having done all the bigger lenses. What was left was mostly lenses for artists who have only released a few CDs. Yesterday I put together five lenses, probably the most lenses I've ever done in a single day. They included Karen Ashbrook, Robin Bullock, Ceoltoiri, Ensemble Galilei and Sue Richards. (No pictures for Ensemble Galilei and Sue Richards, although Sue is in the upper right of the photo of Ceoltoiri below.) Some of that was made easier by a few of the CDs being featured in lenses I'd already done, so all I had to do was cut and paste from the existing lens, then fiddle with coding if needed.

The lousy weather is continuing. After many days, the temperature did manage to poke above freezing for a few hours yesterday, but not by enough to cause any significant melting. It was also the first in many days where the temperature even came close to predicted highs. Throughout the cold spell, the predicted highs have never materialized and sometimes those predictions have been off by ten degrees or more. Some of that is no doubt due to cold winds coming from the East out of the Columbia River Gorge.

It's abundantly clear that the municipalities in this area really aren't equipped to deal with more than the merest dusting of snow. There's been some plowing, but I went out on Monday to take the MAX down to the Fred Meyer store at Gateway, and plowing has been minimal. The parking lot around Freddie's didn't look like any plowing had been done.

Even worse has been the non-response to the weather from the apartment complex management. Most cars in the parking lots I can see - from the window next to where I'm sitting and from my bedroom - have not moved since Friday because there has been no plowing. A few people have done some shoveling to get their cars out, while a few others have just been determined to spin their wheels and rock the cars back and forth until they got out. In the lot where my car is parked, some guys shoveled a couple of the first spaces near the road so they could park a pickup truck I hadn't seen before the storm, plus the car for the people downstairs next to the apartment under mine. They were only concerned about themselves, leaving a ridge of packed snow across the width of the lot which would make it difficult for anyone, including me, to get out without shoveling it away. So far nobody else had attempted it.

Considering I don't have chains, it's a good thing I haven't needed to drive. The MAX trip was a bit of an adventure. The ticket machines all seemed to be frozen. I tried to get a ticket at the 162nd Avenue stop, then got on anyway. I tried again at Gateway for the return trip and that machine didn't work either. A Tri-Met person said not to worry about it, they weren't checking fares. At least I tried. I had to walk in the road to get to and from the stops at 162nd, and fortunately the plowing had left enough space for people to walk carefully alongside the single lane of travel. Sidewalks shoveled? You've got to be kidding.

The public and private response to snow in Portland seems to consist largely of "Hey, it'll warm up sooner or later." Tri-Met at least has done their best to keep trains and buses running. Back in 2004 when we had ice and snow, the ice stopped the MAX for two days. This time, most of the Blue Line, which runs from Hillsboro in the West Hills to Gresham on the other end, has been open, and buses have filled in on the Red Line to the Airport (now open - the Red Line, that is, I don't know about the airport as I'm not flying anywhere and I haven't seen planes flying in and out due to clouds and snow) and the Yellow Line (still closed with buses filling in).

Temperatures are forecast to finally get back to normal by Saturday, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Often predictions tend toward normal the further out they go. Often in situations like this, that never happens. Oh well, I still have more lenses to make.

Portland - A good day to stay inside

Most Decembers in Portland, Oregon we get a lot of rain - usually around six inches or more. We haven't gotten anywhere near that much this year, plus for the past week the temperature has mostly been around freezing, mostly below that. We've had snow several times since Sunday morning (Dec. 14), although it warmed up at one point and most of that disappeared.

It was pretty cold earlier in the week, and today it's gotten just as cold and may get even colder. To top it all off, it began snowing steadily this morning. It's not those light, big fluffy flakes, either. It's those small ones that indicate a pretty serious storm. The temperature was just above freezing around dawn, but it's been falling since then. The first picture shows what my view is of the parking lot when there's not a gust of wind blowing snow around, while the second one shows what it's like with a gust. The wind is coming out of the Columbia Gorge, which usually means it's drawing on some really cold air from the other side of the Cascades.

The normal high temperature for today is 45F. As you can see from my thermometer, it's considerably colder than that. It's about as cold as I've seen it since I moved here. The temperature inside is pretty comfortable, and I don't even have my heat on. That's a good thing because it's electric. The apartment downstairs is vacant, and I think the manager turned up the heat in it so the pipes won't freeze. When I put my hand flat on the linoleum in the dining area I use as my computer space, the floor is not cold at all. Before this cold spell the temperature in this apartment, without the heat on, would get down close to 60F, and that was with outside temperatures in the 30s and 40s. If it warms up, maybe the manager will forget to dial back the heat downstairs. I certainly don't mind paying less for electricity.

Maggie's Music & Snowflakes

I added a couple of new lenses for Maggie's Music yesterday:

Maggie's Music: Bonnie Rideout is about the three-time U.S. Scottish Fiddle Champion.

Maggie's Music: Maggie Sansone is for the founder of Maggie's Music and features her CDs. She's recorded quite a few, some solo and many with other artists on her label.

I now have four lenses done and published in that series, including Maggie's Music and Maggie's Music: Christmas. More to come.

My lens on Wilson A. Bentley, the Jericho, VT farmer who took over 5,000 pictures of snowflakes, has been getting a fair number of visits, most from Google searchers. While looking at the stats page, I saw someone had found the lens by searching for "snowflake bentley video" and I was somewhat surprised to realize I hadn't included any YouTube videos in the lens. I recalled seeing a video from Boston's WBZ-TV meteorologist Mish Michaels last year when I made the lens, but I obviously didn't include it. I suppose, still being new at lensmaking, I didn't think I should use it. Now I wonder why I thought that.

Today, however, I did add it to the lens, then looked around to see if there were any other videos. I found a couple and put them in as well. One is a trailer for a one-hour documentary about Bentley, the other part of a series of short videos by a woman from Madrid, Spain about "Masters of Photography." All three videos are quite different, but they're all very good and add a lot to the lens. Check it out!

Perhaps one reason I thought of checking out my Bentley lens was that it's been snowing lightly off and on today, and we got an inch or two yesterday. I know a good way to get it to stop: all I have to do is start gathering something dark to let snowflakes fall on, then figure out how to take the most closeup photos my camera is capable of taking.

It's already working! There were a few flakes falling as I started writing about snowflakes, and now the weather radar shows the nearest snow is about 50 miles west of here, out over the Coast Range, so it might not even make it here.

Maggie's Music and Me

When I did my Celtic Music: Christmas lens last month I included several CDs from the Maggie's Music label. It's a small label with a dozen artists including the founder, hammered dulcimer player Maggie Sansone. The next day, I published a lens featuring Bonnie Rideout, an American fiddler who plays in the Scottish style and who has recordings on the Maggie's Music label.

The next day I got an email from Maggie Sansone asking about doing lenses on Squidoo to promote Maggie's Music. Then she proposed a trade where I'd make lenses and she'd send me some CDs. I liked the idea for two reasons 1) my budget for buying CDs is non-existent these days and 2) I really like the music on her label. I've been listening to samples. Some of the samples available at CD Baby are two minutes per track.

It's a busy time of year for traditional musicians, so it's taken a little while to work things out, but we did, and now I've got a couple of lenses published under the account set up for Maggie's Music:

Maggie's Music
Maggie's Music: Christmas

The Christmas one was the first one I did, and it's a pretty basic lens using Amazon Spotlight modules, with text links to pages on the Maggie's Music website for each CD entered into the text space between the title and the CD cover. Time is very short, so I wanted to get something up and maybe catch a little of the late Christmas traffic. The neat thing about the CDs is they're available as digital downloads from iTunes via the website or from Amazon (some are even available from Amazon.co.uk, which is very new) if ordering off the lens.

The one for Maggie's Music just uses text modules with CD cover images and text from the website. It's got text links to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk but the CD cover and title are both links to the Maggie's Music website. It also has the text and graphics inside colored text boxes, which I think add a lot to the lens, making it different than your standard plain text-and-image lenses.

I just got email from Maggie. She likes the lenses, so now I can get the word out.

I'm happy to have a more direct connection through this arrangement that enables me to help out folk and traditional musicians. During my coffeehouse days I found that folk musicians are super nice people.

It's not too late to order some beautiful music on CD for delivery by Christmas. If you're the type who likes downloading, even Christmas day isn't too late!

My Celtic Music Lenses

Since April I've been building lenses (web pages, but Squidoo calls them lenses because they focus on a topic) about Celtic music on Squidoo. The pages have some info about the performers, links to their pages and other online resources, plus links, mostly to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, to available recordings.

Here's a list of Celtic Music Lens Links:

Celtic Music: Christmas Compilations
Celtic Music: Christmas
Celtic Music: What Is It?
Celtic Music: Brobdingnagian Bards
Celtic Music: Dougie MacLean
Celtic Music: Bonnie Rideout
Celtic Music: Julie Fowlis
Celtic Music: Liz Carroll
Celtic Music: Patrick Street
Celtic Music: Eileen Ivers
Celtic Music: Téada
Celtic Music: Alexander James Adams
Celtic Music: Golden Bough
Celtic Music: Dervish
Celtic Music: Danú
Celtic Music: The Chieftains
Celtic Music: Music at Matt Molloy's
Celtic Music: The Bothy Band
Celtic Music: Clannad
Celtic Music: De Dannan
Celtic Music: Gráda
Celtic Music: Loreena McKennitt
Celtic Music: Silly Wizard
Celtic Music: Enya
Celtic Music: The Poozies & Sileas
Celtic Music: Boys of the Lough
Celtic Music: Battlefield Band
Celtic Music: Capercaillie
Celtic Music: Tannahill Weavers
Celtic Music: Solas
Celtic Music: Lúnasa
Celtic Music: Alasdair Fraser
Celtic Music: liveIreland.com
Celtic Music: The Thistle & Shamrock
Celtic Music: Sean Nos Nua
Celtic Music: Flook
Celtic Music: Altan

And here's one lens to rule them all, one lens to find them, one lens to bring them all and in the music bind them*: Celtic Music: Lenses

The list is in reverse order of when the lenses were created. The two Christmas lenses would be the third and fourth on the list, but for the season I put them at the head.

*Apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien.