Saturd80's: Stan Rogers Edition

A terrific song writer, with a magnificent voice, I don't think I've ever featured Stan Rogers here before. This first one, "Fisherman's Wharf," laments the loss of the traditional fishing life of Canada's Maritime region, and some thirty years later, still gives me goosebumps.

Rodgers died tragically young, at age 33, in a fire on board an airliner, which makes his musical accomplishment all that much more stunning. Despite his relative youth, his knowledge of- and respect for-  Canada's laboring class never ceases to move me. "Rawdon Hills" is his ode to gold mining.

And "The Field Behind the Plow" has given me a whole new perspective on farming... you can hear their struggle to get it all done, in their short 16-hour days.

"Watch the field behind the plow turn to straight, dark rows
Feel the trickle in your clothes, blow the dust cake from your nose
Hear the tractor's steady roar, Oh you can't stop now
There's a quarter section more or less to go "

I think the highest praise I can offer Stan is that I can't think of a single one of his songs that I don't at least like, and the vast majority of them, I feel even more positively about.

"Put another season's promise in the ground." You did, Stan, you did.

This Is the Last Night of the World

I started listening to Sarah McLachlan during the summer of 1992, so her music doesn't technically fit the Saturd80's format. But she, like another of my female musical idols, Kate Bush, was one of those teen prodigies. McLachlan signed a contract with (I believe) Nettwork records when she was 16 or 17. I first came upon this song, originally from 1988, on her compilation album Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff (1996). As much as I like her solo work, I find the combination of her soaring vocals with the beat-heavy synth-electro-pop of Manufacture impossibly appealing. May not be your cup of tea, but it's sure my cup of coffee! And what with the raptor almost upon us, how can I resist? I can't.

I'm not convinced any of the slinky women in this clip are actually my dear Sarah- first, none of them really look like her (though to be sure, she was much younger then), and second, I'm not convinced she would ever act that undignified. But make up your own mind.

The thing that brought this to mind was another apocalyptic video I came across a few minutes ago. I don't like this song as well, but it's not bad...

...and the mix of movie clips is awesome.

Saturd80's: Figgy Duff Edition

Figgy Duff was a group formed in Newfoundland in the mid 1970's, and who came to my attention about 1981. I grew up with Irish and Celtic music, and it remains one of my favorite genres. Figgy Duff's unique take on a unique folk culture that preserved their own version of Celtic music is a sound for which I have held deep respect and appreciation for about 30 years now.

Woman of Labrador... so beautiful, so sad:

Henry Martin... Pirates were not what we have romanticized them to be:

Geese in the Bog... a very evocative instrumental piece:

Song For A Winter's Night

Sarah McLachlan's cover of Gordon Lightfoot's song. Oh, Canada, you torment me so.

Odd PNW Earthquake

Via OregonLive, I learned there was a minor earthquake this morning (17:15 UTC, 10:15 AM local) off of Vancouver Island. At magnitude 5.1, I doubt many people even noticed it, and I'm sure there was no damage. The article mentions that no tsunami was expected. It's interesting to note the location though; the zig-zag line from north to south is the Juan de Fuca spreading ridge, and the smoother line swinging to the SSE is the Cascadia subduction zone. The line extending to the NNW is the Queen Charlotte transform fault, making the point south of the comma-shaped Queen Charlotte Islands a triple junction. The epicenter was off the ridge axis, and away from the subduction zone. I'm not finding a beach-ball quake solution for this event, but I'd guess it was along a NW-SE transform fault. There are several possibilities, but that seems most likely to me. The USGS information is here.

In looking for information on this, the wikipage on the QC transform told me that in 1949, there was a magnitude 8.1 quake along that fault. Whoa. I knew the fault was there, and I knew it was active, but I had no idea it had produced such a large quake in modern times. There have been quite a number of smaller quakes as well, in the 5 to 7.4 range.

Today's Trivia

Apparently Canada is disappointed, maybe even ashamed, that they didn't do better in hockey. To Canadians I say, buck up. You have history on you side. Bet you whip ass next time.

In the first Olympic Winter Games, in 1924, the Canadian hockey team won all five of their games and outscored their opponents 110 to 3.

Via FactCheck.org.

Also too...
(TYWKIWDBI) ...and...
EpicPonyz

Fish Hunting

Nicely played.

I expected this to be just another "crazy people jumping into ice water," which is not new or even unusual. Canadians aren't crazy, they've just got a wicked sense of humor.

Happy Birthday, Mariah

My little sister has a birthday today... just imagine; in a year she'll be old enough to drink legally! Since she married a Canadian, and lives near Toronto, I think she'll enjoy this:From Criggo

Lighting and Economics

Couple of interesting stories in ALDaily today. Arts and Letters Daily puts up three selected links each day. Often they aren't of interest to me, but often enough I find some real gems amongst their choices. Their home page also has a slew of links to interesting and engaging stuff.

The first story is on lighting. I was just talking to a friend here at my favorite coffee shop about the forecast that we might get a thunderstorm tonight. In fact, the weather forecasters mention that just to cover their butts: maybe one time in 15 or 20 that they predict thunderstorms do we actually get any here on the valley floor. But the Coast Range and the Cascades do get much more violent weather than we do, so the butt-covering forecasts are not just teasing to people that live in more rugged terrain. Growing up in Ohio, summer thunderstorms were the one part of the season's weather I looked forward to. I miss them here- are summers are dry, dry, dry. We actually had a few minutes of drizzle in the early morning, about 6:00, late last week, and the sound and smell were delicious to me, even though there wasn't enough rain to more than dampen the pavement. So I miss lightning, and this article was a fun read for me. I would take issue with some of the author's science factoids, but they're minor in context. An aspect that I enjoyed is that much of the narrative takes place in the Georgian Bay/Parry Sound area of Ontario, Canada, an area in which I've spent a fair amount of time.

The second story is on "what we know for sure" in the discipline of economics. I took the intro year of econ as an undergrad, a decision I've never regretted. That series didn't leave me strongly knowledgeable about econ, but it left me with a strong enough background that I can understand journalism aimed at an educated layperson, and with a little effort, unravel the logic behind the conclusions that experts come to without explaining intermediate steps. The author here is clearly a follower of Friedman's free-market-is-god school of thinking. As I've noted before, I'm a strong supporter of free-market ideals, but in it's current incarnation (in my opinion), the main cause of free market failure is the fact that it's too easy, in fact accepted and promoted, to exclude and ignore real costs that don't have an immediate free market dollar cost, but that do impose real costs down the line. For example, cutting down a stand of trees interferes with the availability of clean water. But that cost is not figured into the cost of producing lumber. A coal fired power plant produces enormous amounts of carbon dioxide that is interfering with our ability to count on a consistent climate, but as things stand now, those costs are ignored.

With all that said, the article on economics was quite interesting to me, in that while I recognized I was inclined to disagree with the author on many points at a fairly fundamental level, I found myself for the most part agreeing with his basic conclusions- there were a couple that I have a hard time accepting, but again it gets back to what essentially amounts to philosophy as opposed to empiricism. I don't think on these points he's relying on empiricism as much as he thinks he is- there is less consistent agreement then he seems to be claiming amongst experts. Nevertheless, if you are interested in economics, and you should be, I recommend this article. I have purposely omitted the points I take issue with, but I would be interested in your take.

The War of 1812

From "Jesus' General," one of the great satirical sites out there.

My sister and her family live outside of Toronto, and my Mom spends a great deal of her time in a little town called Rosseau, about 3 hours north of Toronto. I'm very fond of Canada. We in the US have an amazing ignorance of our northern neighbor. I'm not going to claim I'm as well informed as I'd like to be, but there's some basic information everyone should know. For example, Canada is our biggest trading partner. I think a lot of people might guess China. Another stat, even more surprising: Canada is our largest foreign source of oil, 76 million barrels per month- nearly double 2nd place Saudi Arabia's 44 million barrels per month. Canada has so much to be proud of: natural beauty that's different from, but rivals, ours; wonderful, kind, intellegent people; a health care system that serves everyone, terrifically friendly cities and so on. So I got a kick out of this video. The fine print at the end says "No Americans were harmed in the filming of this video." If it gets your dander up, go rewatch "The South Park Movie," and pay particular attention to the song "Blame Canada." Consider this to be good-natured payback.