Ponderings

There has been much to ponder the past several weeks, but to start the conversation, we have a home computer again!!  It was long in coming, very much needed, and I can get much more accomplished regarding class projects and writing these articles.  It is so good to be back!

Let's see - this is an informal conversation, so let's talk some about what is on my mind.  We had our second trip to Pinecraft, the Amish community in Sarasota, this past Saturday and we also got to eat at what was once called Troyer's,  a very good Amish-style buffet on Bahia Vista, just up the road a couple of blocks from the more famous Yoder's.  Be watching my food blog for a review on that later.  One thing I picked up while down there is a very large but easy-to-read Amish newspaper called The Budget, which I believe is published out of Ohio if memory serves me correctly.  The bulk of the paper is made up of brief submissions by writers in various communities across the US who tell of events happening in their neighborhoods, and it is fairly innocuous stuff that you would not see on CNN but probably should be, as we need more news like that.  News items are varied - Mose Hostetler got a glass eye, and you can hardly notice it's glass because it matches his other one, and other such news items.   I love reading stuff like that, as it makes me a little homesick, and thanks be to God for the small towns that still dot the "highways and byways" of our great nation.  If you live in Florida (or are just visiting), make a point to visit Pinecraft, eat some good food at Yoder's or Troyer's (or whatever they call it - good food regardless!), and be sure to pick up one of those papers, which are readily available for less than a couple of bucks. 

The Der Dutchman Amish Restaurant and Buffet in Sarasota, formerly Troyer's

It is also getting to be springtime, although my dear friends and family haven't gotten the bulletin yet being another winter storm - this one they are calling Virgil - slammed most everything north of Florida pretty hard.  The last one, Ukko (Al Roker on the Weather Channel couldn't get that quite right and was calling it "Urkel"; that's OK Al - we forgive you buddy, as you are still fun to watch!) hasn't even melted yet!  However, the temperature is slowly rising in Florida, which has led me to start contemplating gardening this year.  In my big planter in front of the house, where I grew tomatoes last year, I plan on planting live herbs - at least two parsley plants, rosemary, basil (of course!), oregano, thyme, sage, and maybe some catnip for the furkids.   Nothing enhances the flavor of food like live herbs (not to steal thunder from my food blog!) and I love growing them.  Let's just pray my green thumb doesn't turn black this year!  I also want to plant a few Roma tomatoes, as I plan on doing a whole batch of my homemade sauce at some point this summer between scanning 403b files at work and conjugating Greek verbs in grad school, and Romas make the best sauce, as any Italian worth his pesto will tell you.   Anyway, pictures of all that to follow on my food blog too, as I plan on doing a growing technique thing with the herbs on there.

Let's now talk some music.  I haven't been getting a whole lot of new stuff the previous year, although that has changed recently.  I am really gaining quite an affinity, for instance, for "Dutch Hop" polkas, and love the sound - something about that hammered dulcimer makes those type of polkas sound so pretty.  "Dutch Hop" originated with Volga Germans who settled primarily in Colorado after immigrating here from Russia early last century, and they have a unique culture that is distinctive from other German communities you find around the US.  Volga Germans are practically as much Russian in many ways as they are German, and their cuisine and music reflect that quite clearly.  The hammered dulcimer is not unique to "Dutch Hop" though, as it also is featured on many klezmer recordings too as well as in Ukrainian folk bands - it is called a tsimbl in those cultures, but is still the same trapezoidal-shape instrument you'd find in bands like the Polka Nuts or John Fritzler's.  I managed to get a good CD of vintage Dutch Hop music by two of its early pioneers, Adolf Lesser and Paul Weingardt, and the older stuff is a little more livelier than that played by contemporary groups such as the Polka Nuts, but it is still good music.  Although Lesser has been making recordings since the 1920's, many of the ones on the disc are from the 1950's.  Another much-anticipated addition to the music collection I finally found is the vintage commercial recordings of Johnny Green's orchestra, including his 1935 arrangement of one of my favorite tunes of his "Mile a Minute."  The first I had heard this was on a Vitaphone short from 1935 I have on DVD, and I fell in love with it. Of course, Green's was a phenomenal orchestra, and the maestro himself a tremendous talent (he directed the MGM orchestra for years, and his is the work you will hear on the original West Side Story soundtrack), as well as a prolific composer ("Body and Soul," now a classic jazz standard, was his composition). 
the phenomenonal Johnny Green!

A sheet music cover of Adolph Lesser, Dutch Hop pioneer.

 

 

I am also expecting from my friends at Polkamart.com a collection of early polka pioneer Lawrence Duchow, who led a polka dance band in Wisconsin from the 1920's.  However, Polkamart, although they have good music selections, takes forever to ship your orders!  I am already 3 weeks into waiting on it, and am getting anxious.  Anyway, polka as you know is an integral part of my vintage dance band collection, and to be honest you cannot really appreciate big bands without appreciating polka and its development, as it has contributed so much.   My CD collection, which will now be at 1120 once the missing Duchows find their way here, is a historical documentary.   It chronicles the development and growth of a phenomenal genre of music - big bands - that is an integral part of Americana as well.  People who hear "big band" often associate it with cheesy swing tunes with over-exaggerated brass (to me, those "big band sound" attempts really stink!), and they really don't know what this musical genre is all about.  It is my hope one day to find some way to appropriate my collection to life experience and use it to educate others, as a glorious heritage is contained within those wax-stacks many people today don't even know about.  And, that is a good lead-up to my next subject of conversation.

One thing being deprived of a computer has compelled me to do the past few months is to write more journal entries, and as I began to get back into doing that regularly, I began to ponder my own past - why I like the music I like, why I cherish the CNC's (central narrative convictions, as Dr. Archer, one of my professors, devotes a lot of writing about) I have, and most intriguing, I have pondered the question as to if there was a purpose to why God allowed me to grow up as I did and if so, what it has done to define my personal faith, etc.  I of course have written a ton of this in my memoirs, and it also comes out in my family tree research too, but this is the one aspect I feel I need to explore more.  As I began to do so, I realized that in my person I am practically the ultimate paradox - I have the blood of Charlemagne and Constantine in my veins, yet I grew up in such abject poverty that it is almost incomprehensible to many my age (we Gen-Xer's in general are not big on first-hand knowledge of wood stoves and  outhouses, yet I grew up with both - go figure!) .  Also, here I am, a person of the '80's generation, yet while my classmates in high school were listening to Madonna and Michael Jackson, I was listening to Guy Lombardo and Freddy Martin!  Also, I grew up in small-town Appalachia - both the town of Parsons, WV, where I grew up as well as the towns of Kirby, WV (where I spent a lot of my formative years) and Terra Alta, WV (where I went to high school) are all tiny hamlets, insignificant on the world stage, yet here I am!  I grew up in those remote mountain hamlets, yet today I am working on a graduate degree, speak three languages, and have a professional resume that many would envy.  Ironically, one of my professors asked me before class tonight why I didn't have a doctorate yet - a flattering but good question!  Again, all of this is the paradox (or series of paradoxes) that constitutes my life.  My answer to why all this came together is simple - only God!  I mean, here I am - I grew up in a community where practically everyone was on some sort of government assistance, yet today I am friends with archbishops, leaders of polka bands, Southern Gospel artists, scholars and academics, and other such people - yet another paradox!  On, and on, and on I could go with all this.  All I can say ultimately is thanks be to God for his goodness and mercy, simple as that.  

I suppose I have rambled enough for one night, so I will wrap it up for now.  I want you all to stay tuned though, because speaking of music, I have a good article I want to share in a couple of weeks entitled "Those Fiddlin' Kids!" about some phenomenal young talent I have gotten the privelege of hearing.  As I promote these talented young people, I would encourage you to check out their recordings and other work and support their art, because they are truly phenomenal, but you will read about that at another time.  God bless until next time, and glad you could visit with me again.