Auggie Wren's Christmas Story

I came across author Paul Auster's story Auggie Wren's Christmas Story last year and then found that it was incorporated into the film Smoke. I use his The Story of My Typewriter as a mousepad - it's an illustrated edition of Sam Messer's typewriter paintings which got me to thinking about Auster again, hence the look at his website. I found there another film of his, Lulu On The Bridge, about a saxophone player.

Blues Lessons

Begin by reading "What is the Blues?" and the life of Muddy Waters at Muddy Waters: Can't Be Satisfied by Robert Gordon. Read Poetry: Blues Style. Look at "Understanding the 12 Bar Blues." - write your own blues lyric following the example by Elmore James. Then read Chicago and "The Great Migration" and How the Blues Affected Race Relations in the United States.

Blues Series Discography

Blues lyrics by Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. Coversproject.com lists covers of songs by Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. Cleveland's Robert Lockwood, Jr. sings Wednesdays at Fat Fish Blue. Here's a link to Lockwood's biography at the River of Song. More Robert Johnson lyrics here.

The NYTimes piece Blues Musicians Get Help Overcoming Hard Times is about the Music Maker Music Relief Foundation - Tim and Denise Duffy's non-profit project to promote and preserve old blues musicians. Listen to an inteview with Duffy on NPR.

When Moby sampled Vera Hall for "Natural Blues" he used field recordings from the The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip archived at the Library of Congress American Collection. Vera's songs are here. Read more about Alan Lomax here and here.

More sources:
Alphabetical list of Blues Artists, The Year of the Blues, Sweet Home Chicago, The Official Muddy Waters Web Site and explore Blues Road Trip, Blues in the Classroom, The Blues Viewing Guide, The Blues Radio Series, and sample Blues riffs at Fender's Players Club.

How to Write the Blues

How to Write and Sing the Blues

Blues in the Classroom

What Jazz Owes the Blues

Theme for English B

Langston Hughes - "The Weary Blues"

Blues Questions

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Trivia from O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Whitman's Drumtaps and Civil War Photography

Walt Whitman and the Civil War

Frederick Douglass (American Memory, Library of Congress)

Frederick Douglass - American Memory, Library of Congress

Songs as Historical Artifacts - U.S. Library of Congress

Songs as Historical Artifacts

Tiny Houses

Tiny Houses and Modular Dwellings

Staples Reinvents the Stapler

Staples reinvents the stapler

Kevin Kelley's Cool Tools

John Lennon 12-8-1980

Imagine if John Lennon was 65
The Independent Online Edition
October 9, 2005
BBC NEWS: Lennon's 65th birthday
John Lennon Museum
John Lennon's Acoustic reviewed on NPR
A Conversation With John Lennon
Lennon Lives Forever


Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
living for today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It isnt hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...

Imagine no possesions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say Im a dreamer,
but Im not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.

On Thoreau

Found this on a chair at Hershey's barber shop in the Medina Gazette.



Here's a couple more:

Sunday Times - December 4, 2005

"The Stuyvesant Test"
Review of 'Teacher Man: A Memoir,' by Frank McCourt
By BEN YAGODA

Literary Map of Manhattan

100 Notable Books of the Year

Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia

Goodbye, Moon

John Hartford

Mississippi River pilot and musician John Hartford
See also JohnHartford.com

3rd Honors English 11

12-01-05
Originally uploaded by dlackey.