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Quick edition that had to run today... much more in the works...
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FIRST UP, here's today's LIVE MUSIC FEATURE (plus a link to catch-up later), THEN our title feature story follows...
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Ned Luberecki On "Deering Live" Today
Award-winning banjo player, Sirius XM radio host on "The Bluegrass Junction," and highly respected banjo teacher Ned Luberecki is one of the best in bluegrass.
"Deering Live" is a live stream video series presented by Deering Banjos. (It also archives so you can hop in the time machine and see all that has come before!)
Award-winning banjo player, Sirius XM radio host on "The Bluegrass Junction," and highly respected banjo teacher Ned Luberecki is one of the best in bluegrass.
"Deering Live" is a live stream video series presented by Deering Banjos. (It also archives so you can hop in the time machine and see all that has come before!)
This wonderful series features interviews with all your favorite banjo players, as well as Deering Tech sessions and other great content.
TUNE-IN TO ASK NED YOUR QUESTIONS IN THE LIVE CHATROOM
Live on YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zVUAv9ybXQ4&feature=emb_imp_woyt
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zVUAv9ybXQ4&feature=emb_imp_woyt
CAN'T CATCH IT LIVE?
We gotcha covered! Catch up on ALL the episodes of "Deering Live," right here:
https://www.deeringbanjos.com/pages/deering-live
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Today's feature story...
April 15th: day of disorientation — repeatedly.
The Soothsayer famously told Caesar to beware the ides of March, not April. But he was just talking to ol' Julius. Had he been talking to the rest of us, trust me, he'd have said April. You're skeptical. Or you just didn't realize that the ides of every month are the 15th. (Except February. Then it's the 14th.)
But why the dread? After all, it isn't tax day after what could only charitably be described as a disorienting year. And about that "repeatedly" part: Hollywood reserved that for Groundhog Day.
But...
For a generation of our forebears, today brought news of the first assassination of an American President. Having brought the suffering nation through four years of a war filled with unprecedented blood, death, maiming, burning, ruination of cities, towns and farmlands, and leaving legions of men with shattered limbs excruciatingly amputated to save their lives, it was all nearly over.
And so the President gave-in to the pleas of the First Lady for them to be seen out-and-about, well-dressed in a dignified, but relaxing celebration of victory. It was the final night of an acclaimed comedic stage play, "Our American Cousin," and Miss Laura Keen, its star, joined the rest of the cast in applause when the Presidential party took their seats in the flag-bedecked box above stage left.
But one actor, famous though the least regarded among his family's acting dynasty, was also there. Frustrated by failure of his earlier plot — to kidnap and hold the President hostage and force the government's capitulation — he now had another intent.
For a generation of our forebears, today brought news of the first assassination of an American President. Having brought the suffering nation through four years of a war filled with unprecedented blood, death, maiming, burning, ruination of cities, towns and farmlands, and leaving legions of men with shattered limbs excruciatingly amputated to save their lives, it was all nearly over.
And so the President gave-in to the pleas of the First Lady for them to be seen out-and-about, well-dressed in a dignified, but relaxing celebration of victory. It was the final night of an acclaimed comedic stage play, "Our American Cousin," and Miss Laura Keen, its star, joined the rest of the cast in applause when the Presidential party took their seats in the flag-bedecked box above stage left.
But one actor, famous though the least regarded among his family's acting dynasty, was also there. Frustrated by failure of his earlier plot — to kidnap and hold the President hostage and force the government's capitulation — he now had another intent.
That afternoon, the actor had broken the door lock to the Presidential box. He met with his conspirators, organizing them to decapitate the leadership (of the government they all hated) in a full insurrection. Then he arranged for the military guard, an alcoholic sergeant, to leave the door of the Presidential box, lured away to drink in a neighboring bar.
Thus he waited in shadow in the back of the box for the play's biggest laugh-line. When it came, he aimed his derringer, a tiny single-shot handgun that fired a half-inch lead ball. John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head the night of April 14, 1865. Lincoln would die early in the morning after suffering but never regaining consciousness. Telegraph wires conveyed the shocking news across the continent and via transatlantic cable beneath the seas to Europe. Special editions of every newspaper informed the world — on April 15th.
Shock and uncertainty reigned across America, even in the defeated Southern states that had been the breakaway Confederacy. Would Lincoln's words of reconciliation prevail, for combatants reunited as countrymen? Would promised freedom and full rights of citizenship be honored for those who had been held as slaves? One-hundred-sixty-one years later, America's problems of equity, opportunity, and simply being true to our creed, remain partially fulfilled legacies sabotaged by insurrection and assassination.
Within the same lifetime, April 15th — already a day of dread and mourning — struck forty-seven years later. The world awakened today in 1912 to newsboys calling out from sidewalk stacks of their newspapers that the world's largest, most luxurious ship had sank before dawn, taking most of those aboard to the bottom of the sea — including many of the world's celebrity elite. The vessel was, of course, RMS Titanic, which had struck an iceberg before midnight April 14th — and sank under the starlit, deathly still sky of the 15th.
There is something happier. Leonardo da Vinci was born on this day in 1452. One of history's rare authentic visionary geniuses, he was, as Garrison Keillor reminds us, "a perfectionist and procrastinator, having worked on the 'Mona Lisa' on and off for the last 15 years of his life. 'The Last Supper' was likely only finished because his patron threatened to cut off his money."
Known mostly for those two paintings, he produced less than 30 in his life, leaving most of them unfinished.
Keillor continues, "He spent much of his time drawing up plans for inventions like the submarine, the helicopter, the armored tank, and even the alarm clock, none of which came to fruition in his lifetime."
Not so fast. Da Vinci had avoided being imprisoned by the totalitarian Church, unlike Galileo, because he reined-in his ego and kept most of his revolutionary concepts to himself. Still, enough was out there that contact with him was often disorienting for those of his time.
"Remaining today are at least 6,000 pages of his drawings and notes on everything from astronomy to anatomy — mostly written backward, decipherable only in a mirror. When he died, he apologized 'to God and Man for leaving so much undone,'" Keillor concludes.
April 15th. Battered, bloody, broken and backward. But like every day, another chance not to leave things undone. Or maybe the day when it's just better if we do.
~ Larry Wines, editor
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On mobile devices, click "view web edition" to bring-up the left side bar with navigation tools. That gives you direct access to click your way to all recent editions. It's easy to bring-up month-by-month archives to everything last year, so far this year, and each previous year.
It's all there, since we first moved The Guide (with its former name) to Blogspot.
Does that mean you need to find Marty and Doc's DeLorean time machine?
Because, geez, THAT was back when Rin-Tin-Tin hadn't gotten his second "tin" from Tin Pan Alley
... and you watched TV on a big box that bombarded you with non-ionizing radiation if you sat close to it, instead of inescapable non-ionizing radiation from 5g
... and you watched movies on reels of film aimed at a screen that bounced-back the light projected onto it, instead of only-ever seeing everything in glowing postage-stamp mode on your phone
... and "the pandemic" meant 1918
... and Rudy Giuliani was "America's Mayor" instead of a babbling portable meltdown of brown ooze
... and "trump" was something that only happened in a card game, instead of being garishly emblazoned on buildings that go bankrupt (before it became a synonym for grifter college, grifter steaks, cultist wackos, deadly violent attempted coups at the Capitol, and banishment from polite society)
... and you can escape now, AND/OR go far enough back, to escape whatever the lunacy du jour and explore what we've published for your perusal and enjoyment.
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CONTACT US -- Post Comments / Send Questions / say Howdy at:
Tiedtothetracks (at) Hotmail (dot) com
OR USE THE COMMENTS FUNCTION on the Blogspot site.
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Entire contents copyright © 2021,
Lawrence Wines & Tied to the Tracks.
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♪ The ACOUSTIC AMERICANA MUSIC GUIDE endeavors to bring you NEWS – and views of interest to artists everywhere – more specifically to musicians and the creative community and music makers -- and fans of acoustic and Folk-Americana music. That includes both traditional and innovative forms. From the deepest roots to today’s acoustic renaissance, that’s our beat. We provide a wealth of resources, including a HUGE catalog of acoustic-friendly venues (now undergoing a major update), and inside info on FESTIVALS and select performances in Southern California in venues from the monumentally large to the intimately small and cozy. We cover workshops, conferences, and other events for artists and folks in the music industry, and all kinds o’ things in the world of acoustic and Americana and accessible classical music. From washtub bass to musical spoons to oboe to viola to banjo to squeezebox, from Djangostyle to new-fangled-old-time string band music, from sweet Cajun fiddle to bluegrass and pre-bluegrass Appalachian mountain music to all the swamp water roots of the blues and the bright lights of where the music is headed now.
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The Acoustic Americana Music Guide. Thanks for sittin' a spell. The cyber porch'll be here anytime you come back from a masked safari to fetch your groceries, or get a hankerin' for a virtual version of hittin' the road for the festival circuit or a concert tour.
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Til we catch ya again on the flip side
in this new world of the now somewhat lessened improbable unknown...
in this new world of the now somewhat lessened improbable unknown...
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