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This afternoon, I came across Mrs.O, a website that follows the fashion of our first lady, Michelle Obama. This is not your average fashion site. The wonderfully simple logo made me want more, so I looked through the site and discovered that it not only tells what and who Mrs. Obama is wearing in particular photos, but also provides detailed coverage of the photographed news event. Bravo.
Image courtesy of The Washington Post.
I still have my copy of his book From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans that I got as a teenager and cannot imagine ever parting with it.
His work truly helped shape my life.
He died yesterday of congestive heart failure in a hospital in Durham, N.C. He was 94. The Washington Post wonderful tribute to Franklin on their website.
For some reason last week I woke up with Nirvana's take on the American folk song "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" When I first heard the song back in 1993 during their performance on MTV's Unplugged after Kurt Cobain's death, I was taken by both the haunting lyrics and Cobain's delivery. I was also at the height of my angst-ridden teen years. Angst or not, it's an incredibly emotional cover.
It wasn't until much later that I that listened to blues musician Lead Belly's (Huddie Ledbetter) 1944 eerie take on the song on YouTube. Masterful, to say the least. Below are the lyrics:
My girl, my girl, don't lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I would shiver the whole night through
My girl, my girl, where will you go
I'm going where the cold wind blows
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I would shiver the whole night through
Her husband, was a hard working man
Just about a mile from here
His head was found in a driving wheel
But his body never was found
My girl, my girl, don't lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I would shiver the whole night through
My girl, my girl, where will you go
I'm going where the cold wind blows,
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I would shiver the whole night through
My girl, my girl, don't lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I would shiver the whole night through
My girl, my girl, where will you go
I'm going where the cold wind blows
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I would shiver the whole night through
After listening to this, curiosity got the best of me and I did some research. The song was written sometime in the 1870s and is thought to be from Southern Appalachia, passed on as an oral tradition. It was first published in 1917 by Cecil Sharp. The number covers seem to be too many to count and often include slightly different lyrics and song titles including "In the Pines" and "Black Girl". Performed in many musical styles, the long list of artists who have taken the song on are Pete Seeger, Mark Lanegan, Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, Odetta, Dolly Parton, Hole, Robert Plant, Joan Baez, Nicole Atkins and one of my favorite artists Susheela Raman. There is also a Hit By a Rock remix of Raman's "In the Pines".
A 1994 New York Times article by Eric Weisbard discusses the the songs structure:
The basic elements of the song remain similar from version to version, but the context can be altered with a few words. It may be a husband, a wife or even a parent whose head is "found in the driver's wheel" and whose "body has never been found." Men, women and sometimes confused adolescents flee into the sordid pines, which serve as a metaphor for everything from sex to loneliness and death. The "longest" train can kill or give one's love the means to run away or leave an itinerant worker stranded far from his home.
To learn more about Lead Belly and hear some of his music, visit the Lead Belly Foundation website.
At 12am this morning I received many wonderful birthday gifts from my boyfriend and one of them was the genealogy program Reunion 9. Yes!
I downloaded the demo about a month ago after doing some research into several other genealogy programs such as Ancestry.com's Family Tree Maker and Mac Family Tree. I was initially leaning toward Family Tree Maker until I learned that it is not Mac friendly and my Powerbook is too small to support Virtual PC. (Sadness.)
Once I started using Reunion, I fell in love with it. The software is simple to use and organizes all of your information extremely well. I no longer have to dig through endless documents looking for information. You can create several types of family history charts, attach photos and other files to your ancestor person sheets and create your own categories within each person sheet. What I love most right now is the ability to suppress or add what categories you would like to be visible when printing. This lets you tailor your files so you can see what you need, making it easier for you to sort your data. There is even a new iPhone application to let users take the information with them.
I'm still in the early stages of the program, so I will post additional information as I learn.
My boyfriend and I have seem to have mastered the art of the quick vacation. On Valentine's Day we flew to Boston from NYC for a daytrip, and it was a lot easier than we thought it would be. Though we missed the Shepard Fairey exhibit at Institute of Contemporary Art, one of our main reason's for taking the trip, we were able cover a lot of ground. Here's how you, too, can tour Boston in 12 hours.
Above: Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge
Below: Strata Center, MIT
54th Massachucetts Regiment Memorial.
Exhibit at the Museum of African American History in Beacon Hill.
The museum is housed at the Abiel Smith School which is the first
publicly-funded school for educating African-American children.
The African Meeting House was closed for renovations.
Above: George Washington statue at Boston Common
Below: Massachusetts State House
