Backgrounds for Zoom, via The Public Domain Review

I've begun tinkering with this blog, as I ponder Learning To Share all over again.
It appears that currently I have the time.
Finding that many of the old sidebar links have 'gone to seed', some pruning,
some re-arranging and updating has yielded some fun new discoveries.
For example:

'Public Domain Backgrounds for Zoom', a free offering from The Public Domain Review
(which I found via the martin klasch blog).

(Find more backgrounds at the Public Domain Review blog page.)

This is a time when many people are learning more about video conferencing.
I know I've been doing a lot of compare and contrast 'test-drives'.
Playing with virtual backgrounds can be a fun thing to monkey with, especially if you have either the right blank space or a green screen available behind you when you appear on your webcam.

You can go to Zoom's virtual backgrounds support page to learn more about system requirements, set-up, trouble-shooting, and also how to make your own virtual backgrounds.

(That's where I discovered that my operating system is not up-to-date enough to support virtual backgrounds. Setting up actual, non-virtual 'backdrops' for my video calls has been fun, too.
I can recommend playing with that as you figure out how to best present yourself.)

John Prine Is In His Heaven

John Prine hit the road yesterday.

During the news of his hospitalization, there was a moment when he stabilized. I know I felt like maybe he could recover and one day resume his career, as he had heroically done a few times in the past, after bouts with cancer. But he succumbed to complications from COVID-19 and passed on April 7th, in Nashville. He was 73.

(Links to:)

- An obituary at Rolling Stone.

- A John Prine tribute at Esquire.com

So now we can wish him bon voyage, and stop worrying about his health. 

Prine himself worked to set our minds at ease on that score. 

Having had ample opportunity to face his own mortality, that wily John Prine had already crafted his plan. He shared it with us in his song 'When I Get To Heaven'...

➚ Via YouTube, John Prine performing 'When I Get To Heaven', from an episode of Austin City Limits that premiered  in October of 2018.

The studio version of the song was released on his final album, 'The Tree of Forgiveness' in April of 2018.

Thanks for sharing, John!
Thanks for all the music and light.
I know I'll miss knowing you're around, but I'm happy to know that you're out there enjoying yourself.






All of us are given the opportunity to build our own versions of heaven.
Whatever heaven each of us chooses.
We don't have to wait until our deaths to start enjoying it.
Have you started building yours? Look again.
Maybe you have and didn't realize - -?

"When I Get To Heaven"

When I get to heaven, I'm gonna shake God's hand

Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand

Then I'm gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band

Check into a swell hotel, ain't the afterlife grand?

And then I'm gonna get a cocktail: vodka and ginger ale

Yeah, I'm gonna smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long

I'm gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl

'Cause this old man is goin' to town

Then as God as my witness, I'm gettin' back into show business

I'm gonna open up a nightclub called "The Tree of Forgiveness"

And forgive everybody ever done me any harm

Well, I might even invite a few choice critics, those syph'litic parasitics

Buy 'em a pint of Smithwick's and smother 'em with my charm

'Cause then I'm gonna get a cocktail: vodka and ginger ale

Yeah I'm gonna smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long

I'm gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl

Yeah this old man is goin' to town

Yeah when I get to heaven, I'm gonna take that wristwatch off my arm

What are you gonna do with time after you've bought the farm?

And then I'm gonna go find my mom and dad, and good old brother Doug

Well I bet him and cousin Jackie are still cuttin' up a rug

I wanna see all my mama's sisters, 'cause that's where all the love starts

I miss 'em all like crazy, bless their little hearts

And I always will remember these words my daddy said

He said, "Buddy, when you're dead, you're a dead pecker-head"

I hope to prove him wrong... that is, when I get to heaven

'Cause I'm gonna have a cocktail: vodka and ginger ale

Yeah I'm gonna smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long

I'm gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl

Yeah this old man is goin' to town

Yeah this old man is goin' to town

Source: AZLyrics
Songwriters: John E. Prine
When I Get to Heaven lyrics © Downtown Music Publishing

Meanwhile, in just another neighborhood...

From details about the 'Lockdown' in Ahmedabad, in yesterday's Times of India.

One Joey Ramone

A friend sent this to me, apparently it appeared on Twitter a couple of days ago.

⬅

Social Distancing sucks. 

(That's right! I said it!)

However, I do love the idea of being able to say to someone: 'Hey, I'm gonna need you to put One Joey Ramone between us' - - and having that be a 'thing'.

At least Joey will be spared having to hear us say it.

(PS / ADDENDUM: Another friend just pointed out to me that as it's been 6½ years since my last post on this blog, that "...doin' the Rock-math conversion, it's also been One Joey Ramone in years."
Some long & lanky Kozmik Kismet in action there, maybe! Hmmm, something to ponder...)

Mac Harshberger illustrations from "Madrigal and Minstrelsy" (1927)

"Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead"

In her Author's Comment prefacing
"Madrigals and Minstrelsy" (published  in 1927)
Juliet Raphael states:

"In this book I have endeavored to translate the words of the poets into music...

"... The music has been done only as a setting for the words -- sung or chanted. To those who love poetry, and love to hear it read, chanted, or sung, this book is offered."

Illustrations accompanying the poems are by Frank Macoy "Mac" Harshberger

 (1900 – 1975).
Born in Tacoma, Washington, Harshberger studied art in Paris in 1921, settled in New York in the '20s where he taught for many years at the
Pratt Institute.

Though he worked in many styles and media in his career, some of his more striking images are his stylish black & white illustrations, sort of an American Art Deco equivalent to
Aubrey Beardsley. 

The cover image at right ▶

illustrates "Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Please click on images to enlarge, and click on any image caption titles to read that poem online.

frontispiece: "An Arab Love Song" by Francis Thompson

 "Laughing Song" by William Blake 

"Song" by Christina Rossetti

"The Fifteen Acres" by James Stephens

"A Woman's Last Word" by Robert Browning

"Music, When Soft Voices Die" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Matin Song" by Thomas Heywood

"Little Lamb" by William Blake

Sonnet XXIX by William Shakespeare

"The Song" by James Stephens

"The Fiddler of Dooney " by William Butler Yeats

"Night" by William Blake

"Give A Man A Horse" (a.k.a. "Gifts") by James Thomson

"Up-Hill" by Christina Rossetti

"Nurse's Song" by William Blake

"When You Are Old" by William Butler Yeats

◀At left, Mac Harshberger in 1926.
(image from Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie)

There's more to be found regarding
Mac Harshberger elsewhere around the net.
Here's a few places to start looking:

- a mini-biography at Victoria Chick.
- a portfolio and some background at Thomas Reynolds Gallery.
- some illustrations from Tristan and Isolde at Art Reference Blog.

If you have more information or images to share regarding Mac Harshberger, I'd love to hear from you!
Please feel free to leave comments.

Thanks to the following sites for the poetry links:

- Poetry Foundation
- Bartleby.com
- allpoetry
- Poetry Archive
- About.Com: Classic Lit
- EnglishVerse.com

Images from Barbara G. Walker's "Knitting From The Top", 1st edition, 1972

The reference guide "Knitting From The Top" instructs knitters to do just that. Somewhat counter to the traditional Western method, constructing garments starting from the top down can allow you to check the fit and length as you go.
Werner P. Brodde's photographs of these stunning and colorful creations were a part of the first edition published in 1972, but are not included in editions still in print. So feast your eyes!

◀ Barbara G. Walker has been an idol and guru to knitter's worldwide for decades, the first of her many comprehensive collections of knitting patterns appearing in 1968. But that's only part of her impressive list of achievements in a variety of fields.

Born in Philadelphia in 1930, she studied journalism at the University of Pennsylvania and later worked for the Washington Star in
Washington, D.C. It was there in the 1970s that she became interested in feminism, while working with a local hotline that helped battered women and pregnant teens.

After relocating to Morristown, New Jersey, she became a teacher of the Martha Graham dance technique.
The first of her many notable and respected books on feminism, spirituality and myth was published in the
mid-1980s, as was the Barbara Walker Tarot Deck, for which she supplied the illustrations.

Other books by Barbara G. Walker include:

-A Treasury of Knitting Patterns

-A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns

-A Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns

-The Book of Sacred Stones: Fact and Fallacy in the Crystal World

-The Secrets of the Tarot: Origins, History, and Symbolism

-Feminist Fairy Tales

-Barbara Walker's Learn-to-Knit Afghan Book

-The Craft of Cable-Stitch Knitting

-The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects

-The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

-The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power

-Restoring the Goddess: Equal Rites for Modern Women


Some further information about Barbara G. Walker can be found online at Wikipedia, Philosopedia.org, and NOW-NJ.

See also:
- The Walker Treasury Project - - A knitter's collaborative photo-blog "...gathering high-quality, color photos of all the patterns in all the Treasury books and putting them on the internet as a visual aide to this wonderful collection".
- "Barbara G. Walker, The Skeptical Feminist" , an interview from 2009 posted at Skepchick.org.