“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”

A happy Banjo Friday, friends!

In keeping with the other banjo posts this month, we’re going “classical” again today—but with a twist. Pete Seeger requires no introduction, of course—a great man, & a great banjo player & ambassador for the banjo.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of looking into his fine publication How to Play the 5-string Banjo, you know that he sees the banjo as being able to play a diverse range of music—& you’ve also seen his banjo arrangement of Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” the 10th movement from the cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147 (“Heart & Mind & Deed & Life”). If you’ve ever heard Seeger’s 1954 recording Goofing Off Suite, you’ve heard him play this as part of a singular line-up of songs—from old-time standards like “Cindy” & “Sourwood Mountain” to Grieg’s “Anitra’s Dance”!

This wonderful performance is from a 1963 concert in Australia, at a time when Seeger was blacklisted in the U.S. One thing I will say: if a song has words, you know Pete Seeger is going to raise his voice to sing it!




Image of Pete Seeger is from Wikipedia; Library of Congress photo, public domain

The Marquam Bridge from a Distance

The Marquam Bridge in a zoom shot from the OHSU observation deck

It’s Wednesday, so it must be Rose City time! I’m here today with the penultimate installment in the Bridgetown series.

The bridge under consideration today is the Marquam, & it’s the bridge Portlanders love to hate.  Since we’re on foot (either literally or imaginatively) we can’t cross over the bridge: the Marquam carries Interstate 5, & so is closed to pedestrians.

But that’s not why Portlanders generally dislike the bridge; after all, the Fremont Bridge also carries an interstate highway & so also can’t accommodate pedestrians; & the Fremont Bridge is one of the city’s most beloved & iconic structures. The Fremont Bridge, however, is a striking & beautiful piece of architecture—while the Marquam is mostly a generic bridge that you might find along any interstate highway. In fact, dislike of the Marquam, which opened in 1966, had a direct effect on the design of the Fremont Bridge; the Fremont’s glorious, classic architecture was a direct & explicit response to the Marquam. 

The Marquam as seen from the Willamette Greenway

Facts & figures (thanks, Wikipedia): the Marquam is Oregon’s busiest bridge. In design it’s a double-decker steel-truss cantilever bridge; northbound traffic (headed almost due east across the river, then veering north after the crossing) travels on the upper level, while southbound traffic travels on the lower deck.  Again according to Wikipedia, the Marquam bridge carried 139,000 cars daily as of 2008.

There is some talk of doing away with the Marquam Bridge, tho given its importance as a transportation corridor, any replacement would need to be done very judiciously. Oregon House Bill 2032 from 2011 proposed that the Oregon Department of Transportation study how to replace the Marquam Bridge. One idea would be to construct a tunnel beneath the Willamette River, & route I-5 thru that.  This particular proposal is backed by Oregon State Representative Jules Bailey (D-Portland), tho apparently the idea has been kicked around for some time.

The Marquam Bridge from OMSI

The poor Marquam Bridge! It really gets no respect. Mayor Vera Katz in her 2001 State of the City address said, "It’s like having the Berlin Wall dividing east and west, with all the subtle charm of the Daytona 500 smack dab in the middle of our city."

Hope you enjoy the views of the bridge—the shots from the Willamette Greenway were taken during a very pleasant walk along the river this Tuesday—so I can’t say the Marquam has been all bad for me! I also learned from a display at the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, that the Marquam affords a nesting place for peregrine falcons, which is cool—tho it turns out that the peregrines much prefer the Fremont Bridge & nest there in much greater numbers.

Naturally!

Panoramic view of the Marquam & I-5 from OHSU

“My Hero”

[If you’ve followed Barbie Angell’s poetry here or elsewhere, you know that Shel Silverstein is indeed her poetic hero. I love this tribute Barbie wrote to him, & while she never illustrated it, we do have a photo of the man himself. If you’d like to read Barbie’s own thoughts about Shel, please visit her site & check out this post!]

My Hero

The sidewalk’s slowly cracking now.
The attic light has dimmed.
The giving tree gave
all the poems she saved.
The bearded man’s moaning a hymn.
The sun is going down again,
and the rain is coming in.
And we search the ground
for the perfect sound
and we wonder where we’ve been.

What common thought has captured us?
Who pulls the fraying thread?
And what can we say
of ourselves today,
when our bodies are finally dead?

And all of our eyelids are leaking.
And our ears softly beg for a rhyme.
‘Cause all that we need
is a moment to grieve,
in an endless allotment of time.

Where is our singing savior now?
Who took him away from our world?
His poems now rest
in his last precious breath,
in tears of the boys and the girls.

I’ve lived inside his shadow now,
for this lifetime that I’ve had.
And his words and art,
from my very start,
have distinguished the good from the bad.

I pray for a new man to follow,
to lead me the way of my dreams.
A genius of meter.
A brilliant new leader.
As my hopes start to break at the seams.

‘Cause Shel paved the sidewalk for writers,
and the gifts that he gave are unchanged.
And I can’t let it go,
since nobody knows,
how to mop up the tears in my brain.


Barbie Angell
© 2009-the present

 

Photo of Shelf Silverstein links to its source at famouspoetsandpoems.com

Any Womans Blues #23 – Gaye Adegbalola

Happy Monday, friends! It’s time for another installment in the Any Woman’s Blues series, & we sure have some fun music today.

The blues can be many things: mournful, certainly, as the name implies, but that’s far from the whole story. The blues can also be funny, sexy & even topical—this has been true from the days of the classic blues right thru until today, & one performer who exemplifies these aspects is Gaye Adegbalola.

Gaye Adegbalola first made a name for herself on the music scene in the early 1980s as a member of the group Saffire—the Uppity Blues Women.  Saffire was a real phenomenon, as the group used the blues to tackle a number of feminist issues in their original numbers, many of which were penned by Adegbalola, & in doing so, was able to establish an audience beyond the parameters of the typical blues group. They were the first acoustic act signed by the electric blues Alligator label, & they released 10 albums before disbanding amicably in 2009.

Gaye Adegbalola began to perform & record as a soloist in the late 1990s—her first solo album. Bitter Sweet Blues, was released in 1999 on Alligator, & she has since released four additional albums on the Hot Toddy Music label, including this year’s Blues in All Flavors.

According to Adegbalola’s website, “she is a mother, a Blues Music Award winner and a former Virginia State Teacher of the Year. She now sees herself as a contemporary griot—keeping the history alive, delivering messages of empowerment, ministering to the heartbroken, and finding joy in the mundane.”

Gaye Adegbalola continues to deliver her message of empowerment via the blues—she is an activist for African American, Feminist & Gay issues, & a seeker of justice, who also happens to be a great songwriter, a wonderful singer & an accomplished guitarist, both in the fingerstyle & slide modes.

Enjoy!







 

Image links to the original on the Alligator Records site.

Photo of the Week 8/26/12

Blackberries

N. Albina Ave, Portland, Oregon

Tuesday 8/21/12

"north country"

north country

and i am something of a north country girl
tannin stained from southern sun
bled and bound by others than you
heading north again on this skyline
with someone other than you
who smells of musk and flowers

my divided heart is keening already
for the over saturating southern sun
warm beer on warm nights
the relentless lap of cursed waves
confederate jasmine and palmetto bugs

mourning the places i left i lose my tears to the virginia wind,
and grieving for the arms that held me
to the soft patchouli fabric of another lover's shirt

Mairi Graham-Shaw
© 2012


Image: Naomi entreating Ruth and Orpah to return to the land of Moab. By William Blake, 1795 (from Wiki Commons)

How to Find the Ross Island Bridge

The Ross Island Bridge seen from the Springwater Corridor - from an earlier outing!

OK, I get it—it’s not difficult at all to find the Ross Island Bridge; after all, it carries US 26, one of the main arteries thru Portland. It’s not difficult at all—assuming you’re in a motor vehicle.

But I wasn’t on Saturday—of course, these days I rarely am in a motor vehicle, not owning one—& my destination was indeed the Ross Island Bridge as part of the ongoing Bridgetown series. I’d decided to make a real adventure of it—after several days of intense heat, the weather was lovely on Saturday, & I made my way across the Willamette by a combination of riding the MAX light rail & walking, including a stroll across the Broadway Bridge.

That way!

No barrier between the walkway & the westbound lane

But once on W. Broadway, I discovered that the next #9 bus at the first stop wasn’t due for 30 minutes, so I walked on, eventually catching a Portland Streetcar to Portland State University, where I could catch the #9 at a more frequented stop. I’d ridden the #9 frequently last year when I was living in the Southeast & I knew that not only did it cross the Ross Island Bridge, but that one of its eastbound stops was named “Ross Island Bridge.” Obviously, this was my destination.

I digress: the Hooker Street overpass

Except, as I found out to my chagrin when I reached that stop, it wasn’t. One of those Old Vermonter joke punch lines: “You can’t get there from here.” As I was aware, the pedestrian walkway is only on the north side of the bridge, & the eastbound Ross Island Bridge bus stop is on the south side. What I didn’t know: there’s no way to cross Powell Boulevard thru four lanes of very busy traffic. No problem, I said: there has to be a way to backtrack around to the north side.

The Ross Island Cement Company, with Springwater Corridor to the right

Panoramic view north from the bridge: construction on the Carruthers light rail bridge, scheduled to open in 2015

& I’m sure there is—but after a long hike straight uphill in the shadow of the Portland Aerial Tram, I decided that my best bet was to head back to SW Hooker & Powell, where I could once again catch the #9 & head back across the Willamette so I could get onto the bridge on the correct side. This involved crossing the strangely forbidding Hooker Street overpass across Naito parkway, but I survived & eventually found myself on the east side, walking up the long slope that Powell follows to the bridge.

The Ross Island Bridge is not one of Portland’s scenic bridges. It’s functional: a commuter bridge, & also a bridge to carry folks west of the city. & while the walkway is ample, I can’t say it’s a fun or relaxing bridge to cross on foot—as Wikipedia notes: “There is a pedestrian walkway on the north side of the bridge, with no barrier between the sidewalk and the westbound right lane.” 

Portland Aerial Tram Cars passing

Portland Streetcar on SW Moody

No barrier indeed, & lots of traffic. Of course, there was no other pedestrian traffic crowding the walkway & I only passed one bicyclist. There are reasons for this, & it doesn’t simply have to do with finding a way on the bridge!

In terms of facts & figures: the Ross Island Bridge is named after the island that’s directly south of the bridge. It’s a cantilever truss bridge, & as such, the only bridge of its kind in the state of Oregon. The Ross Island Bridge originally opened in 1926.

Ross Island Bridge viewed from the west

The Bridgetown series is winding down. There are only two other public Willamette bridges, one of which is closed to pedestrian traffic (tho I will post about it as I did about the Fremont.) But I think you’ll be happy to know that I went on a scouting expedition yesterday & I believe I have the next series already in mind!

Have a nice Wednesday! May you find all your bridges on the first try!