Friday, October 10, 2008

Deep South

We are in the Deep South.
Our annual visit to our guitar player friend Brent Sibley in the mountains of mid-Alabama north of Birmingham. Brent has a house surrounded by woods, some of which he has planted himself over the last few years. He is quite isolated from the world and his place is a quiet refuge from the world which is currently obsessed with financial crises. At least it is if you listen to the radio and watch the TV.
We had a showing of our new film, "Etched in Stone: Scotland to Provence," in Huntsville, Alabama, on Tuesday, and the night before that in Crossville, Tennessee, (Fairfield Glade Lions Club). The Crossville gig is at a little old renovated movie theater with comfy new seats. They have a loyal following and a very active Lions Club. In Huntsville, the Kiwanis is equally active and so they get a pretty good crowd, too, and now that they have introduced their own screen, we are not forced to show a dark product on two screens inside the church hall. Huntsville is quite a cosmopolitan place because of the infusion of rocket scientists, I guess.
Wednesday there was a lot of rain. We stayed over in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Huntsville and drove to Brent's place Wednesday afternoon. I spoke to Carl Lowe, and old musician friend from New York who now lives in Arab (pronounced A-Rab.) We'll try to see him on our way up to North Carolina to see Lolita and play a Sunday matinee in Hendersonville, NC.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday will take us from North Carolina, to Tennessee, to North Carolina, and finally to McLean, Virginia, which is on the edge of Washington, DC. Maybe we'll be able to offer some advice to the government. Oh yeah.
Til next time when, hopefully, all will be well.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Summer in Provence






Marsha and Dany in Charleval, Provence.

Cezanne's Mt. St. Victoire at Aix.

Gaugin: Arles cafe.

Cave discovered by Henri Cosquer beneath a calanque near Marseille. 19,000 year old cave paintings on the walls.

We went back to Provence last summer. It was our first visit for five years, and we should go every year. It was difficult to contend with the death of our great friend and fellow musician, Claude Goldfinger, because he was one of those people who not only has great talent, but is also happy to collaborate. We loved him and lost him, but we have Dany, his widow, who is also a musical talent and a real friend. Claude's music has been in three of our films. Dany is in our latest film, "Etched in Stone: Scotland to Provence." She could be an actress or model.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Filming in England & Scotland


At left: on the Isle of Inchmahome, Lake of Menteith, the ruins of an Augustinian Priory which once played host to the young (5 year old) Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary stayed a few weeks while the English came dangerously close to Stirling in hopes of capturing Mary and marrying her off to her cousin Edward, son of Henry VIII. Instead, Mary went to France and married the future French king.

It is the summer of 2008 and the dollar has sunk to new lows aginst the euro and the pound. Petrol (gasoline,) is at an all time high and various workers in both England and France are contemplating strikes against the oil companies to protest the exorbitant rise in the price of diesel fuel. Not the best time, perhaps, to be shooting new film in Great Britain and France, but we have a project to finish: “Etched in Stone: Scotland to Provence.”

Marsha is still in Louisiana taking care of some business, but she will join me in London next week and we will go to the south of France together. I have already done some filming in London. Quite by chance I got close to the first rehearsal of the annual “Trooping of the Colour.” The rehearsals are just like the show except the Queen isn’t there. Exiting the parade ground at St. James’s Palace, they follow the Mall to Buckingham Palace. Horse Guards and Cavalry in silver, black and gold. Coldstream and Grenadier Guards strutting their stuff in bright redcoats and bearskins riffling in the breeze.

When I arrived in London at the end of May, the weather was “typically English:” rain and cloud and complaining from every side. Summer had apparently taken place sometime back in April. However, the day I left for Scotland, the weather improved and by the time I reached the Lake District, summer was on its way.

I borrowed a tent, a sleeping bag and an air mattress from my hosts in the south and the first day I drove my rented Peugeot about 350 miles to the Lake District. This was nearly all motorway driving so there was none of that roundabout, stop and go feeling of the lesser British highways. By the time I reached Burns Farm campground it was about 7 p.m. I managed to catch some evening light — it remains light until about 10 p.m. — at the nearby Castlerigg Stone Circle.

Castlerigg dates back about 5000 years. There are three circles of similar size in the Lake District and they became quite popular with visitors in the early 19th Century when Wordsworth, the poet, lived nearby. A custodian informed me that Wordsworth regarded Castlerigg as a tourist trap: he took his visitors to see an alternative circle, Long Meg and Her Daughters.

The weather was in the process of changing that very evening; it delivered one last torrential gasp (luckily I hadn’t pitched my tent yet) and basically cleared up for the next few days. In the morning I arose with the sun and went up to Castlerigg, which was shrouded in an atmospheric morning fog. A mystical aura was created by the stones, and their guardian sheep, outlined in the mist.

The English Lake District is an area of extraordinary beauty, a National Park and a holiday destination for hikers, walkers, campers and poets. I visited the town of Keswick on Derwent Water, Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage, and Copt Howe, a recent (1999) discovery of stone age markings on giant boulders. It seems the markings had been obscured by moss for decades.

Onward to Scotland. I have cousin in Dumfries who offered to feed me and put me up in her guest room for the night while I went off to film in Galloway. Whithorn Priory has a special place in the spiritual history of Scotland, as it, not Iona, is where Christianity was introduced to the Picts and Scots of the 4th Century.

There are also a couple of very impressive ruins of Cistercian Abbeys in this part of the world. There’s the reddish stone of New Abbey, commonly called Sweetheart Abbey, and therein lies a tale. Formally it’s “New” because, although it was built in the 13th Century, there is the older
Dundrennan Abbey nearby.

Dundrennan is most famously known for housing Mary Queen of Scots during her last night in Scotland. She made the fateful decision of throwing herself on the mercy of her cousin Elizabeth I, and for Mary personally it turned out very badly. Of course these “piles of old stones” (in the words of my mother-in-law, bless her) must have a story to give them meaning and drama. Many of my Scottish stones comprise part of the Mary Queen of Scots story.

I have filmed something new, too. The Falkirk Wheel was designed to provide the missing link in the canal system that connects the North Sea to the Irish Sea from Edinburgh to Glasgow. Completed in 2002, the wheel is like a giant carnival ride that takes the place of several locks by swinging barges between the Union and the Firth and Clyde canals.

I had a week on the road, connecting with family and making new acquaintances along the way. I got the car back without scraping into any stone walls with my off-side doors. And if you can overcome the expense, well Europe just seems to get more interesting all the time. And British food is — well, it’s brilliant!

Eric is confused

*I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight*...        
If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're  "exotic, different."Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers,  a quintessential  American  story.        
If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim. Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.        
Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.        
Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well  grounded.        
If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years  as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator  representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of  the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs  Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.        
If your total resume is: local weather girl,  4 years on the city  council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000  people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people,  then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking  executive.        
If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while  raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're  not a real Christian.  
If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your  disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a  Christian.        
If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including  the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.        
If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no  other option in sex education in your state's school system while your  unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.        
If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city  community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values  don't represent America's.        
If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude",  with at least one DWI  conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.  
OK, much clearer now. 

The Children's Tour

The Children’s Tour

The last week in September is time for the annual Children’s Tour in Natchitoches, Louisiana. The Association for the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches (APHN) sponsors the program which is offered to all third grade classes throughout the Parish. This past September (‘08) there were about 30 participating classes.

They arrive on their buses from all points: Cloutierville, Fairview-Alpha, Marthaville, Provencal, and many schools in the city of Natchitoches itself. There are private schools as well as public. Each class has a list of places to visit, and the schedule has been overseen by Martha Wynn for many years. It was a labor of love for Martha, but she's finally letting it go and leaving it to other APHN ladies.

The classes may start at the Prudhomme-Rouquier House, a big white mansion built of bousillage in the late 18th century; or they may start at the Court House Museum, where last year the creator of the Blue Dog, George Rodrigue, was having an exhibit. This year it was a Cane River Creole exhibit.

They may start with us, down on the stage by the river: we’ll sing them songs of old Louisiana and end with a rousing version of the state song, “You Are My Sunshine.” The program starts at about 8:30 am, Monday to Friday, and runs til about noon when they climb on their buses and head back to their little towns and schools. All a great deal wiser.