Music for the day: Can't Help Falling in Love

I came to Bob Dylan late...but since last year, there have been multiple days when no other music seems to make sense and I crave for his raspy voice, which once upon a time I  did not pay enough attention to care for! I am glad my musical tastes they are a-continually-changing! ;-)

So, for today, forget Elvis's original or the enjoyable UB40 version that I was listening to just this past weekend (remembered I had bought the UB40 CD, Promises & Lies, in the 90s! Though I have not listened to it in a while, listening to the songs this past weekend my wife and I wondered why we didn't carry this in our car and listen to it more often over the years!). 

For now, listen to Bob Dylan sing this song in his own unique style! Love it! Love it! Love it! (Yes - I listened to it three times this morning and three times again this evening just now while posting about it!)

 

Can't Help Falling in Love
by Bob Dylan
from the album Dylan, released in 1973. (Out of print and tough to buy you if you want to, you can try your luck here.)

The Prophets of Oak Ridge

Long read for the day:

Have not read it yet but sounds like it will make for a fascinating read!

The Prophets of Oak Ridge
Last summer, in the dead of night, three peace activists penetrated the exterior of Y-12 in Tennessee, supposedly one of the most secure nuclear-weapons facilities in the United States. A drifter, an 82-year-old nun and a house painter. They face trial next week on charges that fall under the sabotage section of the U.S. criminal code. And if they had been terrorists armed with explosives, intent on mass destruction? That nightmare scenario underlies the government’s response to the intrusion. This is the story of two competing worldviews, of conscience vs. court, of fantasy vs. reality, of history vs. the future.

And here's Washington Post reporter Dan Zak on how he stumbled upon this story.

In every tree, an unseen nest where a mountain would be - Two poems by Tess Gallagher

National Poetry Month has ended but I hope to continue with blog posts about poetry every now and then. There is some material I have left over that I did not use last month and so will post a poetry related post every Friday this month.

Last month, while writing the post about Tess Gallagher, I found that she has a new book - Midnight Lantern - New and Collected Poems and so I got it from the public library. There I had re-read some of the poems from her previous book, Dear Ghosts, which I seem to have forgotten -- except remembering it was full of word weighed down in melancholy and cast as elegies: to Ray (of course), to her mother, and about recovering from cancer. Since I had forgotten some of the poems, you can say found them anew. So here then are two poems by Tess Gallagher that I thought I'd share today.

 ~*~

Little Match Box
by Tess Gallagher

And if there were two moons,
who would sleep when one
passed before the other
and took it in
on its dark side? Wouldn’t
some extra light ray out
around the sustaining one?
Wouldn’t you sense
the two in one, even if you’d
never seen them parted?

Sometimes a glory
is just that - a guessing-into
the seen, noticing
the fringe of presence
when it comes, trying to match
its fervency by something
as tangible, something
only you are equal to.

 ~*~

Choices

by Tess Gallagher

I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain. But when I look up,
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don’t cut that one.
I don’t cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,  
an unseen nest
where a mountain  
would be.

~*~*~

The State of the Cinema

Going ahead....  another recurring theme on this blog will be links to long-ish articles that I find online that I may read or send to my Kindle or bookmark for later reading. I -will, in most cases, provide it here with no further commentary - just the link and a short excerpt or two.

Long read for the today:

Steven Soderbergh: The State of the Cinema
The director confronts the economics of moviemaking, and whether there's hope for independent film:

"In 2003, 455 films were released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released. So you’re not imagining things, there are a lot of movies that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio films, and yet, 10 years ago: Studio market share 69%, last year 76%. You’ve got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and you’ve got twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie. That’s hard. That’s really hard."

Music for the day: Diz and Getz

Music for the day:

A playlist with all the tracks from an album by two Jazz greats - Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz.

Album: "Diz and Getz" (1955). (Buy it here.)

Personnel :
Dizzy Gillespie -- trumpet
Stan Getz - tenor saxophone
Herb Ellis - guitar
Oscar Peterson -- piano
Ray Brown -- double bass
Max Roach - drums

Music for the day: The Marriage of Figaro - Overture

Music for the day: 

The Mozart opera "The Marriage of Figaro" premiered in Vienna on this day in 1786. 

So, for today, here's the famous Overture from the opera, with John Eliot Gardiner conducting the English Baroque Soloists. Enjoy!

A sack resembling a human scrotum that can shift through the entire color spectrum!

Long read for the day:

Octopus: The Footed Void, at the New York Review of Books.

The closer you look at an octopus, the more you see. 

Consider its anatomy: the “head,” a sack resembling a human scrotum that can shift through the entire color spectrum; the three hearts pumping blood that contains copper rather than iron; the eyes so very like human ones and yet radically more elegant in design. In a celebrated poem Ogden Nash begs the octopus to tell him if its limbs are arms or legs. Textbooks have a no-nonsense answer: they are arms, not legs (and emphatically not tentacles). But super tongues would be at least as good. Each octopus arm is a muscular hydrostat, like a human tongue, and each of the tens or hundreds of suckers on it is lined with tens of thousands of chemoreceptors—taste buds to you and me—and a comparable number of nerve endings that provide an exquisite sense of touch.
Or consider its intelligence.

More at the article.

Related viewing: This video from some years back.