Shelley and Byron will be on their way begging for my postal code
For everyone whom I may have scarred with the last installment of Bradford pears, please enjoy some flowering trees from this evening's walk that can be safely, for individual values of pollen, inhaled.
The lilacs are emerging at the top of our street.
I wished these tulips well in their quest to be birds of paradise.
A raft of dogwood holding up the sky.
I miss the brick of our old neighborhood, so I like the one outcropping we have here.
This dogwood cut so beautifully across its house.
This one formed a screen.
Elegantly insectile.
I also miss the poppies of our old neighborhood, so this tulip doing its best impression pleased me.
Haven't a clue what this stuff is except brilliantly colored.
The ornamental cherry went full Maxfield Parrish in the sunset.
I got sick of pastorals.
Thanks to a stray line that got it stuck in my head last night, I became weirdly obsessed with trying to figure out my family's chain of transmission for the folk song variously known as "Army Life" or "Gee, Ma, I Want to Go Home." My grandfather famously got nowhere near the armed forces in World War II on account of being what![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie once succinctly described as blind as half a bat. (He worked the duration of the war in the mill room of the California Ink Company and I wrote a poem about it.) I know it got out into the wild and was recorded by Lead Belly and Pete Seeger and even musicians I didn't grow up listening to, I've just never heard one of those versions that sounded like a direct vector for the three verses I learned from my grandparents in the 1980's. Based on available snippets, it's looking oddly as though the closest thing might be the version incorporated into Moss Hart's Winged Victory (1943). I have ordered the playscript through the library and wish I could find an original cast recording. I am unfamiliar with the 1944 film beyond the fact that it preserved most of the original stage cast who also toured nationally. Or maybe there's just a popular recording I haven't heard. I learned Irving Berlin's "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" from these same grandparents and no one had to go through World War I for it.
The lilacs are emerging at the top of our street.
I wished these tulips well in their quest to be birds of paradise.
A raft of dogwood holding up the sky.
I miss the brick of our old neighborhood, so I like the one outcropping we have here.
This dogwood cut so beautifully across its house.
This one formed a screen.
Elegantly insectile.
I also miss the poppies of our old neighborhood, so this tulip doing its best impression pleased me.
Haven't a clue what this stuff is except brilliantly colored.
The ornamental cherry went full Maxfield Parrish in the sunset.
I got sick of pastorals.
Thanks to a stray line that got it stuck in my head last night, I became weirdly obsessed with trying to figure out my family's chain of transmission for the folk song variously known as "Army Life" or "Gee, Ma, I Want to Go Home." My grandfather famously got nowhere near the armed forces in World War II on account of being what
selkie once succinctly described as blind as half a bat. (He worked the duration of the war in the mill room of the California Ink Company and I wrote a poem about it.) I know it got out into the wild and was recorded by Lead Belly and Pete Seeger and even musicians I didn't grow up listening to, I've just never heard one of those versions that sounded like a direct vector for the three verses I learned from my grandparents in the 1980's. Based on available snippets, it's looking oddly as though the closest thing might be the version incorporated into Moss Hart's Winged Victory (1943). I have ordered the playscript through the library and wish I could find an original cast recording. I am unfamiliar with the 1944 film beyond the fact that it preserved most of the original stage cast who also toured nationally. Or maybe there's just a popular recording I haven't heard. I learned Irving Berlin's "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" from these same grandparents and no one had to go through World War I for it.
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I learnt it at Girl Guide Camp, where they probably learnt it from Pete Seeger, as none of us, so far as I know, had ever been to war.
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How did your version run?
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https://youtu.be/cWWd2Y9S_Rc?si=QIT4wzRJ9nWEisIm
the one that I know is very much the same, with a few words different. We sang "in the Army" when he is singing "they give you," "Gee ma," rather than "gee but" and we didn't have the verse about the women in the PX.
Quite a few of the campfire songs would have been modified (or not) folk songs. The counselors were college student age and there was definitely a fondness for things one could sing while one of them was strumming a guitar or ukelele. Kingston Trio stuff? That ilk. I'm not surprised about a Pete Seeger song, anyway.
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eta — the first time I can recall hearing anyone sing “We’re Here Because We’re Here” it was my mother, but she was driving me to Girl Guide camp so she may also consider it a camping song.
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That's so neat. I've never heard that one outside of contexts of World War I.
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His version also differs a little melodically from the one I learned from my grandparents and I can't tell if it's my grandparents or Seeger. It's part of the reason I wish I could hear the version from Winged Victory. It looks like there was a recording at the time, but only selections which did not include this song.
Kingston Trio stuff? That ilk. I'm not surprised about a Pete Seeger song, anyway.
My elementary school ran a lot of its music off the American (and British) folk revival, although so did my parents' record collection.
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That does scan!