Finding Ulysses

… and I mean aftershock in a good way. The truth is that music in Trumansburg is a year round thing - witness yesterday’s CD release for Toivo. Still, when people think of Trumansburg and music, they think of Grassroots.

It’s maybe a good bit of marketing, then, for the Trumansburg Fair’s Music Night, on August 21, to be described as a post-Festival event. That’s fine, really, given that a lot of the same people who run Grassroots also organize the Music Night at the fair.

Here’s just some of the lineup: “Jeb Puryear, Tara Nevins, Sim Redmond, Hank Roberts, Crow Greenspun, Richie Stearns, Johnny Dowd, Kevin Kinsella, Mary Lorson, J-San, Trevor MacDonald, Rising Sun and E-Rich…”

Those of you who don’t need to put kids to bed before dark let me know how it goes.

I got my hands on a copy of Toivo’s new CD, Laughing Shoe, the other day and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it since. So have my kids. Whenever I play the CD, all three get up and started stomping and tapping in orbits around each other on the floor.

My children’s decision to dance isn’t a reflection of a deep understanding of music theory, but it is nonetheless a good sign of music that’s constructed well. They won’t dance to the wandering classical music that plays most of the time on WSKG, and even the hypersurrealist immature electronica of Yo Gabba Gabba fails to inspire them.

Toivo, on the other hand, combines solid folk traditions that have withstood the cultural selection of audiences for hundreds of years. It’s not trendy. It just works. The Laughing Shoe also celebrates our local landscape, with songs like Swamp College Schottische, the Podunk Two-Step and Waterburg Swing.

Tomorrow evening, at Felicia’s Atomic Lounge, there will be a CD Release Party for Laughing Shoe. Another CD release will be held on the 21st at the Pourhouse at 7:00 PM.

My admiration for Q. Cassetti increases every time I hop on over to look at her work online. She’s got a domain of her own now - QCassetti.com.

I particular, I suggest that you take a look over at her avian flu gallery, which is filled with stark images in Cassetti’s distinctive style, each one combining the concepts of death and fertility, as when a skull emerges from a cracked egg, or when death itself seems to be on the nest.

Beautiful is not the word I’d choose for this particular collection, though it is certainly of worth to behold.

As a small caveat, however, I wonder what Q would do with the concept of an ornithological angel of death delayed, never arriving. What with all the hype about H5N1 plague being only a matter of time, the bird flu has turned out to be a health crisis without much actual sickness.

As part of its speaker series, The Creative Muse: Our Local Artists and Artisans Speak Out, basketry artist Jonathan Kline will be speaking on his craft at the Ulysses Philomathic Library at 7:30 PM on October 18th. The library press release about the event states,

“Kline went into splint basket making because he wanted to use his hands to make something that would be both beautiful and useful. He apprenticed with 4th-generation New Hampshire basket weaver more than 25 years ago, and has been making both baskets and sculptural works ever since. He uses local black ash primarily, which splits easily along its annual layers, and which he harvests from local low-lying areas at the rate of about two trees a year. His work appears in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Santa Fe, and is displayed in private collections around the country.”

For more information about Kline’s work, visit his web site at BlackAshBaskets.com.

The talk is scheduled for Thursday, October 18th at 7:30 p.m. in the library’s Melvin Community Room. The library is located at 74 East Main Street in Trumansburg. There is no charge for the event, and as always, refreshments will be served.

I didn’t make it to the block dance last weekend — I was out of town, and the weather was kind of “iffy” anyway — and I was hoping that someone who’d been there would post a report on the blog. My home town used to hold block dances every week during the summer when I was in my early teens. It was great fun, a highlight of my week, a time to get together with my friends and listen to some good old rock ‘n’ roll and flirt with the boys. So I hope the Tburg dance was a success.
In case you didn’t get enough dancing last weekend, I thought I’d point out that the Trumansburg Conservatory of Fine Arts has hired a dance teacher this year, and she’s got an ambitious slate of offerings: ballroom dancing, creative movement for 4 and 5 year olds, ballet for ages 7 to 11, beginning tap dancing, and Irish ceili dancing. Not sure of what the latter was (I was picturing “Riverdance” where you have the stiff back and hands at sides and ballet-pointed toes) I googled it, and learned it’s more like contra dancing, or square dancing. It sounds like fun and great aerobic exercise to boot! Plus you get to dance to all that great Irish music. Dance lessons start next week and go for six weeks, and I heard that the ballroom dance class may be reaching its limit. Well, if you have an interest in learning how to cut a rug (or move gracefully across the dance floor), give the Conservatory a call at 387-5939.
TCFA director Calista Smith has also lined up quite a selection of new music teachers, making it possible to study all kinds of instruments with private teachers. Did you know that at TCFA you can take private lessons in cello, flute, guitar, autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, piano, violin and voice, as well as all band instruments?
Sometimes I think how cool it is that we have this resource for the arts in our community. How many communities our size can offer so many activities that feed the soul and spirit?

Press Release from the Ulysses Philomathic Library:
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Next in its 2007 speaker series, “The Creative Muse: Our Local Artists and Artisans Speak Out,” the Ulysses Philomathic Library welcomes world-renowned artist/blacksmith Durand Van Doren, proprietor of Durand’s Forge, offering a slide presentation on beautiful pieces of iron work. Van Doren’s award-winning art and utilitarian pieces are displayed in homes and galleries here and abroad, and adorn the gates of the Globe Theatre, outside of London.

Van Doren began his career in what he calls “a hippie commune in a small town near Cooperstown,” working for Silent Steam Iron Works, crafting wrought iron plant hooks; hanging plants had just become the darlings of home décor. He studied with master smith Frank Turley at his forge in New Mexico, and the day he returned to the Finger Lakes he established Durand’s Forge in a cowshed in Speedsville. He also worked for several years building George Rhoads’ kinetic sculptures, and has completed many commissions of his own, among them a large frog contemplating a shiny orb, centerpiece of a garden at Cayuga Medical Center, as well as a roomful of chandeliers at Cornell’s Willard Straight Hall. In addition to his work as an artist, Van Doren conducts several one-day workshops each year on the basics of blacksmithing at his Trumansburg forge.

He has donated to the Ulysses Philomathic Library, as a fund-raiser, a fanciful set of dragon-headed fire tools, whose retail value is $1,200. Prospective owners can purchase raffle tickets for $5 each, at the library.

The talk is scheduled for Thursday, September 20 at 7:30 p.m. in the library’s Melvin Community Room. The library is located at 74 East Main Street in Trumansburg. There is no charge for the event, and as always, refreshments will be served.

News from the library: Next in its 2007 speaker series, “The Creative Muse: Our Local Artists and Artisans Speak Out,” the Ulysses Philomathic Library welcomes dancer and teacher Durga Bor to talk about and demonstrate the art she has pursued for many years Eastern India’s colorful and mystical Odissi dance.

Bor studied Indian dance in California and Colorado before traveling to India to study with Odissi masters Kelucharn Mohapatra and Gangadhar Pradhan. She has taught dance at Cornell and at Hobart and William Smith College, and has produced many concerts of the work of visiting Indian dancers, as well as performing her own interpretations of classical Indian works.

The talk is scheduled for Thursday, August 16th at 7:30 p.m. in the library’s Melvin Community Room. The library is located at 74 East Main Street in Trumansburg. There is no charge for the event, and as always, refreshments will be served.

I saw the first new lamppost for Main Street Trumansburg earlier this week, walking down to Gimme Coffee for a cookie with my son.

Its look strikes my eye as a combination of past and future, having the firm structure and dark solidity of a traditional street light, but the simple roundness at its head is contemporary in its style. It’s like a bowler hat UFO.

It illuminates the pavement without obscuring the Milky Way with light pollution. This is a lamppost that can be appreciated even more by a pedestrian than by someone driving through town, cold metal with flowers at its feet. Its appearance encourages me to linger.

Its distinctive design puts a mark on Trumansburg, signaling that this is a village set apart from other villages.

I look forward to seeing more.

In the North of Ulysses, here in Trumansburg, we have a blog of art created by Q. Cassetti, who declares herself a citizen of Rongovia. The embassy to Rongovia is right across from the bank on Main Street, but where is Rongovia itself? The map of Rongovia in the embassy, beautiful as it is, seems a deliberate trap for the literal minded.

Now I see that we must deal with another nascent nation within the borders of Ulysses. The state of Robinia has been declared as a kind of tribal land by Krys Cail, who lives just inside the southern border of Ulysses, totemically devoted to the black locust growing there.

I believe that the two are offering dual citizenship.

(Post script: For those who wonder, Robinia has not literally been declared a nascent nation or a tribal land, as you will see quite clearly when you visit her blog.)

If you have not yet been down to see it, this weekend is your last chance to view the Ink Shop’s show at the Houghton Gallery in Corning.  This show is wonderful, and includes the work of Ulysses residents Barbara Page and Judy Barringer, as well as almost-in-Ulysses artist Kathy Frederick (apologies to any other Ulysses artists in the show I missed ‘cuz I didn’t know where you lived!).  There is a “Gallery Talk” scheduled for 1-2 PM on Sunday, and all is free.

For more info, check the gallery web site at www.171cedararts.com or call them at 607-936-4647.  We went to the opening and thought it was wonderful– beautiful gallery space, nice refreshments, interesting folks (including many of the artists)…. and Corning has a new Indian restaurant that is better than anything available in that ethnic cuisine in all of Tompkins and contiguous counties,  IMHO.  Mud season is for  jaunts and outings.