The downside -- one of the downsides, I guess -- to not blogging for a while is that you end up with a half-dozen or so posts coming down the pike, and you wonder, should I post them one-by-one or all at once?! And of course you forget things, or end up with a photo that you can't remember why you took, &c. &c. &c. All of the above.
Here is the "Pink Sparrow" sampler by Brenda Gervais of With Thy Needle & Thread. Unlike "Philadelphia Vine," which sang to me joyfully at once, metaphorically speaking, the "Pink Sparrow" whispered softly, and I thought about it a number of times as I kept coming across it on various journeys around the interwebs, and eventually succumbed to its quiet charms. Started, I admit, the same day that I finished "Philadelphia Vine" ...
This has been on my to-be-read list for quite some time -- since it was new, I guess. I couldn't find the book I wanted to start, which was Stalky & Co., and so for a complete non sequitur -- no, not really, it was just nearby on the shelf where Stalky should have been -- I started this. It's very dense, and I'm afraid that Greek names still puzzle me more than a little, so that it's hard to keep everything straight. My only quibble with the book from an editorial perspective is the maps -- there are many, but they are pretty clearly cropped down from some antique map so that often there is a great deal of extraneous detail, when one is hoping to focus on the particular episode at hand -- the Peleponnesian War was ten years long, so a very great deal happened -- but worse, there is no highlighting of what we are supposed to be looking at. If a map is called "The Corcyrean Revolution," say, and it has just a vaguely topographic map with Corcyrea in one corner, I still have no idea what is going on! But Lendon writes wonderfully, and sometimes he slips into Homeric mode and we get sentences like this, on the very first page: "A few days later unfolded the thousands-strong procession from Athens to holy Eleusis, when the initiates carried branches of myrtle tied with wool and bellowed as they marched the sacred roar Iaccho! Iacche!" That is certainly not a stuffy-academic sentence! I can almost forgive him the grating ones that start with "For," when he gives me sentences like that.
I came across Brendon Chase after reading about the "Swallows and Amazons" series -- I don't remember now quite why it piqued my interest, but I managed to get hold of a second-hand copy, and began reading it a week or so ago, as a bit of light relief from the Peleponnesian War. I suppose I can see the connection to Ransome's books, in that it centers around children off on their own in the countryside for weeks on end, but certainly the Walkers are doing so with the full permission and approval (because the children are seasoned sailors and campers, mind you) of their parents, whereas the three brothers in Brendon Chase have run away from what is called somewhat sneeringly, about a third of the way along the story, "petticoat government." Perhaps it is because I am now a parent, but it seems to me that the boys -- whose parents are in India, so they are staying with a spinster aunt, apparently somewhat elderly -- don't have a particularly onerous life with their aunt (certainly not an Oliver-Twist existence), but just have a thing for Thoreau and Tom Sawyer and Robin Hood, and I can't help feeling quite a lot of sympathy for Aunt Ellen, who naturally is worried about them and very cross indeed.
I must have been crazy to agree, as there are a ton of rehearsals and at a considerable distance, but my choir was asked for volunteers to join up with another for a grand-scale production of "Carmina Burana," and I was one of the dozen or so who said yes. It's a weird piece, and challenging, and loud, but wow, is it ever fun to sing! I spent a whole semester on it in college, and then have done it at least twice since then, so luckily for me I know it pretty well, and got to jump right in. I still have some post-pandemic creepies about singing and therefore wear a mask, which is a bit of a downer, but there it is (I am in the minority in the very large group) -- it's not so much about me as about the possibility of my passing something all unknowingly along to someone else. Well, on the lighter subject -- after years of venturing to suggest to my director that I be freed from the first-soprano section after a decade, back to my beloved first-alto, it was at last agreed that I may do so, and I am happily back where I feel most at home. The soprano section is a nice place to visit, but, no, I don't want to live there! And in the "Carmina" theme, here is a clip of one of my favorite bits -- I've chosen one of the more spirited versions on YouTube! --
