AnimaMundi

Susan Cowsill "Crescent City Snow"

The Red And The White Of It

Calvin Trillin recently had a good article in The New Yorker about Texas BBQ and who got the number one rating in the great state this year. I like his writing style and sense of humor. He would be a very interesting dinner companion. When the magazine announced that he was taking questions from readers, I first thought of asking him something about Kenny Shopsin, since he was a regular at the notorious place when it was located in the West Village. Instead I asked him this: "Facing the gallows, what would you ask for your last meal? Wine?" He answered: "I would have such difficulty deciding that the execution might have to be postponed. The only easy decision would be the wine: I don’t care much about wine—I admitted that in a New Yorker piece about whether people in a blind taste test can tell red wine from white wine--and would probably order a beer. Or, better yet, some scotch." Trillin always manages to insert some humor into his answers as you can see from the rest of the questions.

He was married to Alice Trilling for many years. She died tragically on September 11, 2001 at the age of 63 from radiation damage to her heart. She, a non-smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1976.

Ancient Rites and Wine

Grist for a future post and nothing to do with the Sarah Plain turkey video:

"At Rome it appears certain that the deity was conceived to be "increased" or "strengthened" (mactus) by the wine or other offering. There was a tradition that originally the offering was not the animal but with grain with salt and wine or milk. Animal sacrifices there almost certainly were on occasion, and in the later period they are familiar; the god received not only the fat (omentum) but also the parts concerned in consciousness---heart, lungs, liverand gall---perhaps in connection with extispicium (prophecy by entrail examination). Grain with salt and wine were before the slaughter sprinkled over the victim, and there was a preliminary offering of incense (i.e. the exudations, sap of trees) and wine. Incense had apparently replaced native grain or aromatic leaves, as e.g. of the laurel with their gum and and oil, pinguis verbena, of which, as we have seen, the "heads of the gods" consisted. "Incense and wine" appear to have been the customary offering in a supplicatio, and we hear that they were applied by the state to private citizens for that purpose at the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. They were also what the dead received, not in vapour as to the gods but directly, as the grease and wine to the bones and the grease to the stones in Homer. Roman deities also received unguent directly. Thus the Arval Brothers "anointed the goddesses"; Lar was anointed; Terminus (the boundary stone) was anointed; upon Pales milk was poured etc."

Richard Onians "Origins of European Thought"

P.S. Onians is best read on the toilet. Keep it in or near the bathroom.

Sam Cooke

  "You Send Me"

   "Bring It On Home To Me'' with a young Lou Rawls

    "Good Times"

Sam Cooke had a special voice that could project far and wide in whatever genre of music he sang, be it gospel, soul, R&B, pop. These three tracks are taken from Portrait of A Legend with greatly improved sonics and good liner notes compared to previous compilations. Not much more one can say about Sam Cooke, other than he died much too young.

"Since I Fell For You"

  "Since I Fell For You" (1963) -- sung by Lenny Welch composed by Buddy Johnson in 1945. Torchy, not doo-wop, the song seemed made for Welch's voice. His voice still resounds of that tortured yearning for a loved one. It was a time when I was beginning to listen to and tapping what was coming out on the AM airwaves from WINS, WABC and WMCA in NYC. The Beatles' "She Loves You" had just broke stateside in the fall of that year. It was the time when I first heard Stan Getz. I was 16 and had just got my driving license. Life was just starting to open up to me. It was also a scary crazy time for the country's people who saw a president slain in that slow black motorcade in Dallas 45 years ago, the Zapruder loop complete with that horrific shattering frame, usually edited out, to be indelibly imprinted on our collective psyche.

In His Parents Livingroom

Rare interview with Rudy Van Gelder at WBGO.

New Orleans Biennial

Be it ever so small and poor, and despite catastrophic displacements, New Orleans can’t help but remain New Orleans, which is to other cities what a poem is to prose. The phantasmagoria of high and vernacular architecture, polyglot flavors, omnipresent music, exuberant cemeteries, and geographical unlikelihood, of a seaport largely below sea level, stokes continual wonderment. Desire isn’t only a street name there.

Then there Drago's, Casamento's...

Colin Powell and New Orleans

Harry Shearer, that champion of New Orleans, thinks Colin Powell could redeem himself by directing the recovery of New Orleans, 3 and one half years after it was flooded and still not right yet.

With A Song In My Heart...

I thought it might be a good idea to periodically post some songs that affected me during my wayward youth and further on down the road. Not strictly historical to mine ears. For each song I'll try to provide some background, how it came into my life and what I felt/feel about it, then and now. Or I just might post the song without a word. Sometimes the less said the better when it comes to songs that cut to the marrow.

Miriam Makeba RIP

A giant musical voice of South Africa, Miriam Makeba, dead at 76.