By Jace, a Trail Mix Contributor
A beautiful work that harkens back to the American shape note tradition. The singing is too lovely not to share.
Enjoy the music but most of all enjoy your day. ?
More Posts by Jace
User-Supported News Commentary Hosted by Craig Crawford
By Jace, a Trail Mix Contributor
A beautiful work that harkens back to the American shape note tradition. The singing is too lovely not to share.
Enjoy the music but most of all enjoy your day. ?
More Posts by Jace
What are the Shapes and Why?
by Keith Willard
first published in Prairie Harmony, Volume 2, #1, January 1991used by permission of author
The singing of syllables (solmization) to teach students scales & intervals is usually credited to Guido d’ Arezzo (11th century, a six syllable system ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la). In England, by Elizabethan times, this system became simplified to four syllables fa, sol, la, and mi.
A singer would be taught to associate the singing of a given syllable with a particular scale degree. For example the major scale would be sung (while singing the syllables) fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la, mi, fa. This technique was transplanted from Great Britain to colonial America long before any change occurred in the conventional roundhead music notation.
The four shape note system used in the Sacred Harp came into being during a whirlwind of American invention. Nothing and no institution was above diddling. This particular shape system was but part of an endless tinkering with music notation that 18th and 19th century Americans indulged in. Little and Smith with the Easy Instructor invented and patented of the four shape note system, but it was but the latest in a long line of experimental music notations . [sidebar on why experiment]
This notation reform which combined music notation with solmization practice ignited the oblong shaped note tunebook golden era (1801 – Civil War). Books such as Repository of Sacred Music, Kentucky Harmony, Southern Harmony, Sacred Harp, Hesperian Harp, and Social Harp were just some of the dozens produced during this era.
Then came the ominous cloud of the “Better Music Movement.” With this movement came the do re mi fa sol la ti do solmization system which had long replaced the simpler fasola system in Europe among the musically literate. In the urban north the victory of Mason and his ilk was complete with the eradication from the churches and communities of such scourges as the “patent” notes and the “crude music” of composers such as William Billings.
[….continues….]
jace, thank you.
this site by Smithsonian is a good one for those interested in trying out shape note singing:
Shape Note Singing Lesson
the guardian: New York Daily News executives deal blow to journalism
[…]
This week, some of the colour and a lot of the scrutiny was lost from the New York journalism scene as Tronc, new owners of the Daily News, abruptly fired half of the editorial staff after a meeting lasting one minute. The move came little over a year after Tronc bought the tabloid for $1, assuming responsibility for all of its operational and pension liabilities.
A city which once had nine daily titles is now down to Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, what is left of the Daily News and the upmarket New York Times and Wall Street Journal, which have both cut back significantly on reporting their own city in favour of greater analysis, national and international stories. The Village Voice has closed its print edition and lost most of its staff, while the news website DNAinfo has gone extinct and Gothamist was closed then re-opened by WNYC in a much-reduced form.
The Daily News has been on a roll, winning its 11th Pulitzer Prize in 2017, and it has been clearly galvanised by Trump – it was even inspired by his excesses to reprise the most famous headline in its 99-year history.
[…]
For a city of 8.6 million people, concerted local coverage is at a low point in a place where brash, pungent tabloids have long reflected New York’s manic pace and stark inequalities.
The label “yellow journalism” was coined as a shorthand for New York’s early tabloid rivalry during the 19th century battle between the press barons Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. A much-loved cartoonist, whose key character Yellow Kid was seen as a circulation booster, was poached by Hearst to help sales of his New York Journal. The term soon became synonymous with its sensationalist style as they whipped up anti-Spanish sentiment to sell papers and help create conditions for the Spanish-American war.
[….]
Whatever the industry’s perceived seedy glamour, the great strength of the Daily News came from its beat reporters – and the fact that the powerful dared not ignore it. Once the biggest circulation newspaper in America, selling 2.4m copies per day at its peak, it is down to around 200,000 today, but the power of the Daily News has survived.
Sarah Ryley, now writing about guns and policing at the Trace, landed that Pulitzer for the Daily News and ProPublica in 2017, with a series of articles about people being evicted from their homes based on secretive police reports which had never led to charges against them. Her reporting – which led to 13 new laws – was three years in the making, and started from information picked up during other investigations.
[….]
The national picture of newspapers in decline is no better – 40 of America’s 110 largest daily newspapers have suffered layoffs since January 2017, a new study from the Pew Research Center found this week. The senior researcher Michael Barthel said: “Over the past three years, there has been about a 15% fall in the overall number of newsroom employees, from about 46,000 to about 39,000.”
Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, said: “We’ve been wringing our hands about this problem now for years. I really see this as the death spiral phase. I think there is no sign of it levelling off; it’s getting worse. What’s scary is the worse it is, the harder the case is going to be to save some of these places.
“This is the dirty secret that nobody talks about – because a lot of these outlets have been so starved of resources for so long, a lot of them are frankly not that good. I’m not talking about the Daily News, but small local papers around the country. When I travel and I ask people, ‘Why aren’t you reading the local papers?,’ they say, ‘Have you seen the local paper?’”
[…continues….]
wonder if the fall of rome started like this…. not enough local newspapers. more likely caused by their leaders fiddling around while burning their bridges
Do, a deer, …
If it weren’t for AP our local paper would be nothing but local sports, drug busts and a handful of classified ads.
Jace, thanks for featuring this beautiful quartet!
I have delivery-subscriptions to Columbia’s State and the WSJ; they arrive by the same carrier. I have online subscriptions to the NYTimes and WaPo and I support Pat’s favorite British paper. When we lived in England we had the Times of London delivered.
Warren Buffett, to his great credit, has worked to rescue regional newspapers in isolated markets. Sometimes his efforts have been successful; but, people must want to have newspapers as part of their lives.
pogo, small town papers provide news important for the glue that keeps us a community…. basic stuff like new births, deaths, jobs, school and church and social doings, property rentals or sales besides who and why was arrested.
a lot of folks out there for whom the local rag is essential (even if only weekly) that neither tv nor big town news media deign to cover
(purple sage blooms)
A beautiful morning glory to the trail! How ya doing, Jace?
Big week for Mr. Mueller with the first of the manafort trials starting. Hubby and I noticed the ‘out-of-office altar’ was weeping yesterday…another good sign. I have a salt lamp at the altar and with the humidity from the monsoon? The salt rocks wept.
As for local newspapers? They are like local news, watched for weather, local crime, local celebrities and SPORTS. Humans need to know the score! The quality may not be there, but the quantity is known.
I hope the manafort trial puts the trumpence junta crimes front and center. Eventually, no one will believe — ‘Not one vote was changed’ during the effective ruskie election hacking.
In anticipation of the blue wave, I noticed socialism is getting a lot of play in the media. Preparing old timers for the new democratic party…gone is the middle class…now to be replaced by the working class. Seniors are pensioners even if they never worked a day in their lives. AND the elites? The 1%. I know where I fall in the new social order of the democratic party.
I say, bring it on. Go dems! The hardest thing to ‘give-up’ is the middle class. Truly just an income number, it has such a romantic pull on most older dems. The dream of voting and in return having the freedom to pay for your own education, housing, health care, retirement and food? Pretty much dissolving since the great recession.
Decoy donald uses the wall again to divert from his corrupt regime (another socialist word).
On Twitter, Trump wrote “I would be willing to ‘shut down’ government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country.”
the hill:
President Trump said early Sunday that he met with A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, to discuss media coverage of his administration, and the president’s belief that some members of the press have become the “enemy of the people.”
Trump said the two men met at the White House, and called their discussion “very good and interesting.”
“Spent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, ‘Enemy of the People.’ Sad!” Trump tweeted.
The New York Times said in a statement later Sunday morning that Sulzberger accepted an invitation from the White House and attended a meeting on July 20. The newspaper said the publisher has in the past met with presidents and other public figures concerned about coverage.
Sulzberger said in a statement that he urged Trump to reconsider his constant attacks on the media, which he has labeled “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” The publisher warned that Trump’s rhetoric is “dangerous and harmful to our country.”
“I told him that although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people,'” Sulzberger said.
“I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence,” he added.
“I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country’s greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press,” Sulzberger continued.
The Times said in a statement that the meeting was off the record, but issued its statement after Trump made it public knowledge on Sunday morning.
[…continues…]
Shape notes and purple sage … perfect for a day of Trump avoidance
You could have avoided him completely if you worked harder to make sure he wasn’t elected! Your folksy voice could have been valuable, to that end. Oh, well.
avenatti tweeting a bit feisty today:
All of these con men deserve one another. And I’m going to thoroughly enjoy dismantling this corrupt organization brick by brick.
#Basta#FightClubMore
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@RudyGiuliani – Are you denying that there were other hush payments made to as yet unnamed women in connection with the 2016 campaign? Asking for some friends… You better buckle up buttercup because Mr. Trump’s stupidity and disloyalty is about to catch up to him (and you).1,374 replies 8,331 retweets 31,896 likes
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Michael Avenatti Retweeted Rudy Giuliani
Rudy – you look desperate, bc you are. What are you & Mr. Trump so afraid of if he did nothing wrong as you claim? Releasing the info in no way damages Cohen’s credibility or usefulness as a witness. But it will severely damage Trump. And we are just getting started.
#FightClubMichael Avenatti added,
Bink, I think that was a low blow
vanity fair:
Rudy Giuliani Changes His Mind, Decides Michael Cohen Is Actually Horrible
Trump’s legal team can’t quite decide whether Cohen is honorable or a disgrace.
[….]
The Trump team’s turnabout on Cohen’s character may have justified Davis’s decision to release the audiotape. At the time of its release, the general legal consensus was that, if the strategy was to indicate to prosecutors investigating Cohen that the attorney was willing to cooperate against Trump, Cohen would have been better served by making such overtures in private. But forcing the issue into the public sphere has sent Giuliani and Trump into a flip-flopping frenzy, suggesting that the risky bet may have paid some dividends.
Jay Goldberg, another former member of Trump’s legal staff, told CNN that he felt from the start Giuliani would not be the appropriate choice for this job, and that he even told Trump not to hire him. “I didn’t think Giuliani knew how to handle a case from the defense perspective,” Goldberg said. “He was a long-time prosecutor and he didn’t know how to set a case up for the possible impeachment of a witness such as Cohen.”
“I knew as soon as Giuliani spoke, that he was damaging Trump’s case immeasurably,”
Goldberg said. “It ranks near 100, in terms of damage.”
[…]
Cohen, meanwhile, has performed a near perfect heel-turn since being released from Trump’s service, and sources close to Cohen claim he has teased a “treasure trove” of dirt on the president. “There’s a lot more to come,” one person familiar with Cohen told my colleague Emily Jane Fox. “There’s a lot. You’re with someone for 10 years, you don’t think there’s a lot? The Trump Organization is a big business, and nobody in that place made a decision without his knowledge.”
Davis told the Hive last week that he would have preferred to “not discuss any legal issues that might be a part of the investigation process,” but felt compelled to do something “because President Trump and Rudy Giuliani chose to lie and attack.”
“I am laying down a marker,” Davis said. Put another way, Cohen’s team put out some bait, and the White House couldn’t help itself.
Trump Administration: Team of Liars
The guy was the campaign chair for a nationally-recognized major-party (Democratic) Presidential candidate, Flatus, and if he had his way, he might be enjoying a cabinet-level position, right now!
I appreciate your rebuke, sincerely, though- thank you. I plan on retiring from shaming this November, whatever the results… but not until!
We need, in my opinion, moderate and independent voices who either advocated for Trump or didn’t advocate for Clinton to explain why that was a mistake to low-information working-class voters, because the only voice that has their ears, lately, is FauxNews.
It’s OK, to err is human, but i don’t know if we have any mulligans left available- MAYBE one, in November.
Bink, if you have the time, take a look at this morning’s page-one piece by Amb McFaul in WaPo. That’s the type of article that will open the eyes of the cohort you are targeting. And take a look at the resulting letters to the editor.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/putin-wanted-to-interrogate-me-trump-called-it-an-incredible-offer-why/2018/07/26/7bb11552-90d2-11e8-b769-e3fff17f0689_story.html?utm_term=.a4e11a5f8784
Done and Done, Señor. There is the link, for anyone else interested.
I, personally, don’t know how i make the argument to right-leaning acquaintences, that they need to vote for Democrats in mid-term Congressional races, because entrenched Republican Congressional representatives aren’t holding Trump and his associates accountable for treasonous collusion to undermine our democratic process, and as a result, our nation, itself. It sounds imperative, enough, to me, but it’s very difficult to explain, beyond that, in a casual conversation, from my experience. If you even say the word “Democrat”, in most company with which i’m familiar, the conversation is over.
I certainly didn’t mean “folksy” as an insult- “folksy” is an attribute in contemporary political discourse; “folksy” is the only thing people listen to in this Culture of Y’All. Folksy is power.
“folksy” is the only thing people listen to in this Culture of Y’All. Folksy is power”
bink, at least we’ve learned the hard way that sneering at, looking down on, being condescending to, laughing at and not with, taking for granted historical bloc voters, ignoring real life mundane but vital daily problems, and otherwise being arrogant assholes doesn’t work.
the guardian: Trump blasts back after Times publisher decries ‘enemy of the people’ attacks
Hours after saying he had a “very good meeting” with the publisher of the New York Times about his labelling the press the “enemy of the people”, Donald Trump launched a blistering attack on what he called “anti-Trump haters in the dying newspaper industry”.
“The failing New York Times and the Amazon Washington Post do nothing but write bad stories even on very positive achievements,” Trump wrote on Sunday afternoon. “And they will never change!”
[….]
Sulzberger said he had raised “concerns about the president’s deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric” and “implored him to reconsider his broader attacks on journalism, which I believe are dangerous and harmful to our country”.
Sulzberger did not say how the president responded. Hours later, Trump obliged.
In a multi-tweet rant, he claimed news reports on “internal deliberations of our government … truly put the lives of many, not just journalists, at risk”. He added: “Freedom of the press also comes with a responsibility to report the news accurately.”
Claiming without offering evidence that “90% of media coverage of my administration is negative”, Trump said he would “not allow our great country to be sold out by anti-Trump haters in the dying newspaper industry”.
The president may have been referring to a study released last year by the politically conservative Media Research Center, which said 91% of mainstream press coverage of Trump was negative. In a study of Trump’s first 100 days in office, the Shorenstein Center, at Harvard University, reached a similar conclusion.
[….]
Knox, of Sirius XM, told the audience in Annapolis he divided “threats against journalists into two eras: before 17 February 2017 and after 17 February 2017. That’s because on 17 February 2017, the president of the United States, using his Twitter account, declared us enemies of the American people.”
That tweet named the “failing” New York Times, NBC News, ABC, CBS and CNN. The president’s use of the phrase has attracted criticism, including from within his own party……
[…continues…]
I’d say that was pretty good considering about 99.9% of what he does is negative
It ain’t the trump haters or newspapers selling out the country.
The dying trump hot air and bullshit industries are selling out the country. They are in a race to see if they can sell out before their industries crash like Su 27s into the lava plains of Syria.