A Labor Day Gumdrop!



A break from Fraktur. The images above are screen captures from the most inspired little film I saw last night. It is Nina Paley's autobiographical "Sita Sings the Blues", an interwoven story with interwoven techniques and voices (many very cute and funny) about a woman's break up with her husband after he is sent to India to pursue his career...and the story of Sita and Rama with a thick overlay of this boop boop da doop love sing/songs from Annette Hanshaw. It is a must see for all of my illustration friends as it charms with color, wit and the clever use of cut paper, shadow puppets (as the narrators), stock art and of course the drawn media. It makes a very strong vote for the world of vector and how lovely it can be. Plus, this is a rich and inspiring slice for all of us. The under 20 set here went wild. It is an inspired gumdrop personal to Nina Paley, a real star and creative who is the writer, creator, animator of this singular gem...We should expect to see more from this thoughtful, fun, visual artists...and I hope soon. You all know how I feel about Indian art, and this was such a unexpected gift delivered to us in a mention from the tuned in Mr. David Lucas, designer and astute observer of the world. Thank you David for this wonder! We are all beneficiaries of your suggestion!

If you go a bit deeper into the copyright issues surrounding this work which I will allow Wikipedia to explain clearly:

In the 1920s Annette Hanshaw recorded the songs that director Paley used in the film. These recordings were protected by state commerce and business laws passed at the time in the absence of applicable Federal laws and were never truly "public domain".[12] In addition, the musical composition itself, including aspects such as the lyrics to the songs, the musical notation, and products derived from using those things, is still under copyright.[13] In the case of this film, the syncing of the recording with the movie is the infringing act.
Without a distributor, Nina Paley was unable to pay the approximately $220,000 that the copyright holders originally demanded. Eventually, a fee of $50,000 was negotiated. Paley took out a loan to license the music in early 2009.[1]

Unorthodox distribution
Due to terms of the music license, one limited DVD pressing of 4,999 copies will be printed. The film was released for free download starting in early March, 2009 "at all resolutions, including broadcast-quality, HD, and film-quality image sequences", licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-alike 3.0 Unported license.[14] The freely downloaded files will count as "promotional copies" and will thus be exempt from payments to the copyright holders of the songs.[1]


The full film can also be viewed in low-resolution streaming video on the web site for WNET, a PBS member station in New York City. WNET broadcast the film on March 7, 2009.
Nina Paley plans to make money through voluntary payments, ancillary products, sponsorships, voluntary payments from public screenings, the aforementioned limited DVD sales, and possibly other methods.[1]
A cornerstone of the distribution model is the "creator-endorsed" logo, developed by Nina Paley in cooperation with QuestionCopyright.org. Although anyone is free to distribute the film, distributors who do so while giving a part of the profits to the artist can get the artist's endorsement and use the "creator-endorsed" logo on their promotional materials.[15][16]

so you can download the film, watch it on YouTube
Not much labor for Labor Day. We are wrapping up the perishable foods and getting the wheels in motion for school. Rob is off to France, Amsterdam and Germany (a ten day trip) starting Wednesday. Alex is having a birthday "Sausage Fest" complete with tee shirts and games next Saturday. So, things are likely to be a bit more Tburg centric until R. comes back.

little bit of Spring


Got A off to his track meet early this a.m. Today seems to be an undeclared holiday here in Tburg. It is yard sale central--particularly on Seneca St. with everyone randomly parking and all sorts of buzz. The high school is having a chicken barbeque and car wash alongside the NYSSMA (New York State Music Association) event at the school. The Ulysses Historical Society is having a bake sale/white elephant from 11 to 2. So, its easy to part with your money. Our new store on Main Street, Gorges Kids, a gently worn children's clothing store, is open and is very cute and looks like worth the trip if you live in Ithaca. Worked a bit on my turkey, did some car errands (post office, hardware store, drug store)) getting stuff done and looking for a key chain to put my random keys together as the fear is mounting that I am going to lose my keys. No key rings--but the rose plants were knocked down pricewise--to $4.95--so 2 more are in a waiting pattern. The earlier ones are really coming on...with nice new leaves, big leaves and new shoots.

Here's A. He's back with a first place in the 400 to his delight. He is thrilled and detailing every step and every thought. Man, does he love this stuff.

Here's K. ready to go. Lets see...Cinemopolis is having a special matinee of a movie" Jodhaa Akbar"--a bollywood style historical movie which we thought would be regular time...a feel good, sing along, jump out of your seat and dance movie. After the Intermission at the 3 hr. mark...A had to leave. K and I were enchanted for another hour--and it still was not done. Warring elephants. Taming elephants, Great Headgear. PMS 123, Warm Red and Brown for days. And unimaginably amazing jewels. Love it. We stopped by Alphabet Soup with K and A and were delighted by browsing the children's books--Jan Brett, Betsy Lewin, Paul Zelinski, and many of our old favorites. This nostalgic time with the littles is alway amusing and quite heart warming too. We got some cool Faber Castell pencil sharpeners there--which is always something I love to do at the gourmet children's stores as the european art supplies for kids ae often great, more pigment than US stuff for kids...wonderful. We had wings at Wings Over Ithaca to A's pleasure...and now we are back to settle down and catch up. I am going to jump on the CD for Carol Elizabeth..as things are going to get focused pretty quickly.

Jim stopped by to show me the new Choker's package. Looks good--but I prefer the first version in it's simplicity and its environmental quality. However, Jim says that the record stores are beyond delighted with the new presentation. Tonight, the Highwoods String Band, the granddaddy of the local oldtimers here in Tburg are playing at the Rongovian Embassy. You can listen or buy cuts here>> Per the historical piece on Old Time music in the New Yorker, here is a snippet on the context and what the Highwood String Band represented in it's time and to this area (from Amazon):
Any time the word "revival" pops up in connection with a given style of music, it often seems to be the case that a certain tension develops between those who take an academic, preservationist approach, with recital-style performances, and those who seek to recapture the original spirit of the music as something that was done for the sheer joy of it. In the case of the resurgence of interest in the old-time string band music of the Appalachians that took place in the '70s, it would be unfair to say that even the most serious and academic of the folklorists and collectors weren't also having a good time playing the music, but when it came to making sure everyone was having a good time, there was nothing quite like seeing the Highwoods String Band. As banjo player Mac Benford liked to say, it was, "all about fun -- fun for us and fun for our audiences."

Any discussion of the music scene in San Francisco during the late '60s certainly brings to mind images of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, and many others, but a vibrant mix of many varieties of street music was also an integral part of that era in the Bay Area. Among the bands that eked out a living busking on the streets were All-Skate, a band that performed on stilts and that included fiddler Bob Potts; Dr. Humbead's New Tranquility String Band, whose banjo player was New Jersey native Benford; and the Busted Toe Mudthumpers, featuring fiddle and banjo ace Walt Koken, a New York native. When their respective bands dissolved at about the same time, the three of them came together as Fat City, specializing in driving fiddle-and-banjo tunes from the repertoires of such early country recording artists as the Skillet Lickers and the Georgia Yellow Hammers. Having two fiddles in the band was unusual enough, but the ability of Potts and Koken to play differing yet complementary styles made Fat City one of the more distinctive outfits in the Bay Area, and all three of them had wry, wisecracking stage personas that added much to the entertainment quotient.

Their profile outside California began to grow when they appeared at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival in Washington, D.C., in 1971. When Koken returned to his Ithaca, NY, stomping grounds in 1972, Potts and Benford followed a short time later. The metamorphosis from Fat City to Highwoods String Band took place when they added a driving rhythm section to the band in the persons of guitarist Doug Dorschug and bassist Jenny Cleland. The guitar as rhythm backup had been a part of old-time music for decades, but as John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers would later note, Dorschug's playing often contained an element of ragtime that lent even more character to an already potent musical sound. Cleland's pulsing bass, on the other hand, was an almost radical departure from tradition after all. Bass fiddles weren't exactly something every Appalachian family regarded as a necessary part of their household décor. It all added up to a mix of attitude, showmanship, musicianship, and entertainment bang-for-the-buck that appealed strongly to the remnants of the '60s counterculture who had become jaded with rock and heavy metal.

As festivals like the Brandywine Mountain Music Convention began to spring up around the country, the Highwoods String Band became the marquee act for these events (or, they would have been if these events were the type that had marquees) for most of the '70s until road weariness and family responsibilities caused them to disband at the end of that decade. Benford formed the Backwoods Band and cut an album for Rounder Records before that band broke up in 1981. After heading up Mac Benford's Old Time Band for a few years, he formed the Woodshed All-Stars in 1990 and toured with them for most of the '90s. Walt Koken released a couple of solo banjo albums on Rounder in the early '90s before forming Mudthumper Music with Benford and releasing another solo album, Finger Lakes Ramble, in 1998. As of 1999, all five members of the Highwoods were still living in the Ithaca region and still playing together occasionally on an informal basis. Their legacy is that, more than any other band of their time, they were responsible for drawing a legion of new, young fans into old-time music by the force of their musicianship and the fact that they were having such a damn good time at it. Looking back at their '70s heyday, Walt Koken summed it up by saying, "Ironically, the more well-known we became, the less necessary we were to the growing old-time music scene, since one of the messages is to do it yourself -- unplug it, and take it home!" ~ John Lupton, All Music Guide

More later>>

a bit of the seventies in California.


Just got loaded up with a pile of pictures. Am busy moving the piles of stuff around the office with one or two of them getting moved onto other desks and offices, finally. Moving and moving. Whirling like a dervish--correcting typos, changing colors, moving pictures, changing ideas, switching programs, yaking on the phone and around and around again.

Saw a few great movies after dinner for the last two nights. I recommend these highly:
Dogtown and Z-Boys


Dogtown is a terrific documentary about the birth of skateboarding in Southern California around 1975. It dives into the Zephyr (Z) team, their style and drive, their pursuit and love of the sport and how this group of kids created an industry. Essentially, if these guys couldn't surf all the time, they would surf on the land. In swimming pools (they borrowed), in the cement byways and streets of LA. They fused as a team and essentially a family under the leadership of Jeff Ho,Skip Engblom and Craig Stecyk . It really painted a great picture of the time, the sheer innovation and energy of these people--which begins to set up and explain the traditions we see in skating today. A perfect California day during this frosty winter eve.

Riding Giants is in the same mode--but all about surfing. Whoa. It is paralyzingly scary but at the same time very dynamic, athletic and surprisingly very spiritual in the way the surfers regard their sport and their waves.

Take a look.