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.
no subject
Can I come aboard on the ark of the Lord
Cause it's raining awful hard and I'm getting awful cold
Brother Noah, Brother Noah
No, you can't, sir! No, you can't, sir!
You can't come aboard on the ark of the Lord
Cause you smoke cigarettes and you never pay your board,
No, you can't, sir! No, you can't, sir!
I think he had a version of the verse about "You can just go to hell with your damned old scow, cause it ain't gonna rain very long anyhow," but I can't remember the specifics and I think he cleaned up the swearing when he was singing to little kids. But no one else seems to have the bit about "you smoke cigarettes and you never pay your board," which seems the best line to me.
no subject
My father sings that also! He got his version from Dave Van Ronk.
I think he had a version of the verse about "You can just go to hell with your damned old scow, cause it ain't gonna rain very long anyhow," but I can't remember the specifics and I think he cleaned up the swearing when he was singing to little kids.
"You can go to the Devil" is how I know it, which I guess is mildly less profane.
But no one else seems to have the bit about "you smoke cigarettes and you never pay your board," which seems the best line to me.
If your father invented it, more power to him.