June 25th

Eight years ago today my mother passed away.  Curiously, it was my father's birthday.  (He had passed 28 years prior, also in June)  All of which gave me pause for thought.  

I was about to delve into their relationship but stopped myself.  Suffice to say, they each handled their own lives, and end of life processes, quite differently. Dad was fatalistic and passive.  Mom tried to live her best life to the very end.  

And yet, their bond was more significant than I had previously realized.  Call it coincidence, but my mother's passing on dad's birthday forced me to reassess the significance of their relationship.  I no longer see it in terms of my own experience of it but realized that, for them, it was truly a bond of the soul.

A few days ago I stumbled upon this old traditional sung by a trio of women who called themselves the Wailin' Jennys.  The song is called "Long Time Traveller."  It was apparently composed in 1856 by Edmund Dumas, using lyrics originally written in 1810.  It has that world-weary, vale of tears sensibility which I don't share, but there's something in the melody that appeals to me, so I'm posting it today in honor of both my mother's and father's passing.  

I Feel Fine

 Angela Lancieri and her twelve string adding something special to this timeless little pop classic by the Beatles.  Takes me waaayyyy back.

First Americans

Stefan Milo is a Youtuber who for years has been researching human origins and making interesting videos about that subject matter.  Here he's broaching the topic of early First Americans and the timing of their proposed entry into the Western United States.

There is evidence of human footprints in New Mexico and Southern California that vastly predate the time periods that Stefan is talking about, but nothing about the story of human incursion into the Americas is definite, firm, or yet proven.  Probably there have been multiple streams of human migrations onto this continent over the millennia, as weather and climatic conditions allowed. It wouldn't surprise me if the date of origin of human habitation on these land masses eventually ends up being much earlier than is presently hypothesized.

That being said, let's let Stefan make his own points.  Two things in particular interested me regarding this video.  First, it originates at a site along the Salmon River in Idaho, specifically Cooper's Ferry.  That's not far SE from my neck of the woods, so somewhat immediate to me.

Secondly, the Western Stemmed spearpoint, which apparently predates Clovis points in America by two or three thousand years, were being made quite similarly about the same time (roughly 16,000 years ago) on the northern, indigenous island of Hokkaido, now a part of Japan.  Hoddaido was populated by the Ainu people until about 500 years ago, when the Japanese made inroads onto the southern tip of the island.  It's a rough, mountainous (and volcanic), forested landscape much akin to the Pacific NW.  

The fact that the Ainu were making arrowheads almost exactly similar to the Western Stemmed points at about the same time, 16,000 years ago, suggests a point of cultural connection between these Asiatic peoples and the early settlers of Northwestern North America.

There is also some interesting and tantalizing oral history of the Nez Perce tribe that pertains and which Stefan thankfully includes in this video.  After all, these are the very people we are presumably speaking of in studies like these -- best to listen to what they have to say on the matter.  

Cold Rain and Snow

This is an old American folk song or ballad, first transcribed around 1911, taught to the gentleman in North Carolina by a woman who said it referred to a murder that happened when she was a child.  She was fifty at the time she was teaching him the song, so that would put the original back in the 1860s.  So this song is at least 150 years old.  Apparently the Grateful Dead used to play a live version.  

I'm quick becoming a Molly Tuttle fan.  She can sing the shit out of a song and at the same time pick the guitar just like ringing a bell.  This is a performance from just weeks ago in Dallas.