Some Light Reading

 One of the last things I did on the recent trip to the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan was to hop in the car with my sis and pop down the road that runs up and down the peninsula (small p) that she and her husband live on.

At the end of the road, which has already forsaken pavement and a second lane, we find the old Stonington Point lighthouse, now preserved as a tower you can walk up, if the skinny spiral stairs don't put you off. The day we went, it was windy, and starting to lean toward getting dark soon. Kathryn stayed by the car, having seen this all before and not having a fondness for those steps, while I dashed along the old sidewalks that remained around the keeper's house's former location, before it all burned down.

I headed up the steps, thankful they weren't wet, and got more and more cautious as I came to the top. I tried to keep to the wall, where the pie-slice steps were their widest: none too wide. I made liberal use of the handrail. It was only three stories tall, but I took them all very seriously, particularly with the insistent wind whipping at me. 

There were nice window views along the way. No glass in the windows, so they were immersive views that engaged all the senses. 

There's my view from the top. Kathryn's in the car at that moment, trying to get a picture of me up at the top, but I didn't hold still for very long. There's the sidewalk. Going off to the right a ways must have been the outhouse or garbage dump or something. 

They bought their place on that peninsula in the 1970s. It was in the last couple of years that they learned a bit of family lore that had escaped them somehow--for a year or two (and I don't remember if it was late 19th or early 20th century, but maybe the former), the lighthouse was manned by an ancestor of my brother-in-law, Steve. He'd been lighthouse keeper up in the Copper Country, and we had known for some time that he'd held that prestigious position. What we didn't know was that he'd been summoned to come and man this one. And it turns out to have been a very isolated spot, far from any other people--an unpleasant contrast to his earlier posting, where he was a community leader. The Stonington location was only reachable by boat then, and his family didn't like the isolation either. I'll bet the road we were on wasn't there then, not to mention the Stonington community, small as it is (well, it's been bigger).

I paused for a rather successful selfie (if I do say so), which shows how much the wind had to have been blowing, because otherwise I'd have to be a real slob to let my hair get that frazzed. Darn wind. Next morning, I hit the road again, driving from rest stop to rest stop, tiptoeing from state to state to evade the ever-present virus that was out to get me. 

I think I made it.

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 About 1983, I recorded accompaniments to a couple Spanish hymns, and became fond of one of them. I hadn't copied it out of the hymnal when I returned it, and in the decades since, I've looked for it. I found it last year. "Yo solo espero ese dia." It's as nice as I remembered.

I found a YouTube of a congregation singing and playing it with accordions, guitars, and more intricate rhythms than the score suggests. It was an ear-opener, though I may still play it as before, with sweet intent.


The weird thing, though, is that while I was watching that, I suddenly clicked on the beat-for-beat similarity between this hymn and a French song "The River Seine," which I first heard happily murdered by Jonathan and Darlene Edwards (Jo Stafford and Paul Weston).

So sorry I can't give you Darlene ("video not available"--I got that close), but here's an instrumental version on a sweeeet 1950s-looking portable wind-up phonograph (similar to the one I first heard "Carmen Boogie" by The Crew-Cuts on):

Copyright? The version of the hymn I found has an earliest (c) of 1954 on it, but that's for an arrangement. No telling how old the anonymous melody there is. The song was first recorded in 1948, in French. I can't tell who swiped from who, but SOMEBODY SWIPED FROM SOMEBODY.

That's all. No resolution from me at this time, but if I ever find out, you can just bet I'll tell you about it.

 

originally a series of tweets. still is.

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