Songs Our Teachers Taught Us

[davidh]

A Nostalgic Look At The Music We Sang in School

http://www.parlorsongs.com/issues/2004-9/thismonth/feature.asp

[Judy G. Russell]

That's terrific. In addition to the songs I learned in school were the songs I learned from my mother's family, sitting out under the trees at my grandparents' farm in Virginia, with everyone singing in parts and a couple of my uncles (and, later, my cousins) playing guitar. A lot of gospel stuff ("The Garden," "Little Brown Church in the Vale"), a lot of southern and western stuff ("The Eyes of Texas") and so much more.

Sigh...

I really miss those days.

[Lindsey]

That's terrific. In addition to the songs I learned in school were the songs I learned from my mother's family, sitting out under the trees at my grandparents' farm in Virginia, with everyone singing in parts and a couple of my uncles (and, later, my cousins) playing guitar. A lot of gospel stuff ("The Garden," "Little Brown Church in the Vale"), a lot of southern and western stuff ("The Eyes of Texas") and so much more.
Most of the folk songs I know were learned not in school (where much of what I learned was eminently forgettable), but from a set of sing-along LPs that my parents had bought, as well as a "Sing Along with Mitch" LP that had some old songs on it. I used to play those all the time. My parents had scads of records that they never ever played -- I was the only one who ever listened to them.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

My parents were more into classical, so I ended up developing my own collection of sing-along stuff. I was (and am) very fond of the 60s folk music.

[davidh]

That's terrific. In addition to the songs I learned in school were the songs I learned from my mother's family, sitting out under the trees at my grandparents' farm in Virginia, with everyone singing in parts and a couple of my uncles (and, later, my cousins) playing guitar. A lot of gospel stuff ("The Garden," "Little Brown Church in the Vale"), a lot of southern and western stuff ("The Eyes of Texas") and so much more.

Sigh...

I really miss those days. Well, you could have a virtual singalong Tapfest.

Paltalk.com software offers free Windows audio and text conferencing which will work fine over dial up. Addition of video to audio conferencing is free in limited demo form. Regular video conferencing capability is $3.33/mo. If you want other people to see you on your web cam it's free, but if you want to see other people in continuous viewing you need to subscribe.

You can put the karoke words on your computer screen (using free software such as Vanbasco karaoke or Scorch browser plugin from Sibelius software) and aim your web cam at the screen, or you can get additional free software to feed lyrics verses into text chat. Each person in the virtual conference room can take turns with his/her microphone, singing one verse of the song or reciting one verse of a poem.

If you want to have over 200 people in a room, you need to subsribe to the service but otherwise it's free.

Maybe somebody could contact Fernando and have him do a spanish cooking show or visit his pet pythons and camels at the zoo? Or go visit the dragon in the dungeon?

Or if that's too complicated, we could take turns singing each verse of "99 bottles of beer on the wall".

Skype (now owned by eBay, I think) allows free audio conferencing for up to 100 people at once, but I don't know if they have video too?

There's another company that has a service that competes with Paltalk, but I only used it once sometime last year, so don't remember much about it.

Other cool activities on paltalk:

1. Recite Rosary in English, Spanish, Latin, French, etc.

2. Learn how to recite the Quran (also available in "ladies only" conference room)

3. Recite the Bodhisattva Kannon chapter of the Buddhist Sadharmapundarika Sutra in Han Viet (Sino Vietnamese)

4. Aussie Country Music

5. Pick up a date

6. Debate theology and politics til kingdom come

The only thing is I'd have to make up a new online ID to use with this Taproom crowd since there are so many people of unreliable political pedigree here. I don't want you all eavesdropping on my other subversive online activites.

David H.

[Judy G. Russell]

Well, you could have a virtual singalong Tapfest.The very thought sends shivers up my spine. Bad enough I sing in the house in front of my congenitally deaf cats. The idea of doing it in front of other witnesses... er, no.

[davidh]

The very thought sends shivers up my spine. Bad enough I sing in the house in front of my congenitally deaf cats. The idea of doing it in front of other witnesses... er, no. For $30 you can get software to disguise your voice.

Or you could cue up a recording of Kate Smith or Dinah Shore singing a particular stanza, etc.

[Judy G. Russell]

I wouldn't mind sounding like Kate Smith or Dinah Shore. But with my luck I'd end up sounding like Everett Dirksen.

[Lindsey]

My parents were more into classical, so I ended up developing my own collection of sing-along stuff. I was (and am) very fond of the 60s folk music.
Oh yes, my parents had classical recordings, too. I didn't listen to those as much (they were mostly opera, and I've never been much into opera), but I remember being bowled over, as a teenager, by two of them:

(1) The Immortal Works of Albert Ketèlbey (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/papr:@filreq(@field(NUMBER+@band(edrs+50812r))+@fi eld(COLLID+edison))) (I listen to that music now and am more inclined to smile than to be wowed; Ketèlbey composed music for silent movies, and his compositions tend to be just as melodramatic as the movies of that era. But they're a lot of fun to listen to.)

(2) a 78 with the male duet from Bizet's "The Pearl Fishers". That one still bowls me over.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

The ones that have stayed with me most powerfully over the years are:

1. Stravinsky, Petroushka.

2. Strauss, Also Sprach Zarathustra.

3. Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherezade.

and 4. A set of old 78s of Russian Army music from around 1930.

[davidh]

The ones that have stayed with me most powerfully over the years are:

1. Stravinsky, Petroushka.

2. Strauss, Also Sprach Zarathustra.

3. Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherezade.

and 4. A set of old 78s of Russian Army music from around 1930. Too much Russian. The eyes of NSA are upon you.

Reminds me back in the 60's when I was in the Army Security Agency (and also at NSA in 1964) and one of the other enlisted men was subscribing to a mail order catalog or something like that from Moscow, Idaho [IIRC] and apparently "got called on it" by one of the enlisted administrative ('NON-INTELLIGENCE') clerks. ;)

David H.

[davidh]

Too much Russian. The eyes of NSA are upon you.

Reminds me back in the 60's when I was in the Army Security Agency (and also at NSA in 1964) and one of the other enlisted men was subscribing to a mail order catalog or something like that from Moscow, Idaho [IIRC] and apparently "got called on it" by one of the enlisted administrative ('NON-INTELLIGENCE') clerks. ;)

David H. Pardon me if my adopted Catholicism is getting thru to me. Mea culpa. San Antonio Maria Claret pray for me. I hope this is not excess levity.

ON MODESTY AND MORTIFICATION
Taken from the Autobiography of St. Anthony Mary Claret

http://olrl.org/virtues/mort.shtml

[Lindsey]

The ones that have stayed with me most powerfully over the years . . .
With me, in high school and college, it was the complete opposite direction: I was partial to music of the Renaissance and the Baroque eras. I bought those records when everybody else my age was buying the Beatles and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Russian music (except for Tchaikovsky, of course) was something I really didn't even encounter until much later, when I took a Music Lit class my senior year in college. (And my favorite Rimsky-Korsakov is the Russian Easter Overture.)

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Too much Russian. The eyes of NSA are upon you.As Ralph keeps reminding me, it's too late for me to be worried about that!

Reminds me back in the 60's when I was in the Army Security Agency (and also at NSA in 1964) and one of the other enlisted men was subscribing to a mail order catalog or something like that from Moscow, Idaho [IIRC] and apparently "got called on it" by one of the enlisted administrative ('NON-INTELLIGENCE') clerks. ;)ROFL!!! Oh for pete's sake... that's like university admissions people who send foreign student info to applicants from New Mexico...

[Judy G. Russell]

That's funny, since I didn't really encounter the Renaissance and Baroque stuff until I was much older!

[Lindsey]

That's funny, since I didn't really encounter the Renaissance and Baroque stuff until I was much older!
Might have been partly because I was a member of a chamber group in high school that sang a lot of madrigals. But it was more than that; I collected albums of the music of Teleman and Pachelbel and Vivaldi; I had a multi-record set of lute, mandolin, and guitar music that was mostly from the Renaissance era; and one of the albums I played all the time in college was entitled "Go For Baroque".

Lucky for me, I guess, that my roommate was a music major!

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Lucky for me, I guess, that my roommate was a music major!Beats the heck out of having, say, a Phys.Ed. major for a roommate!

[Lindsey]

Beats the heck out of having, say, a Phys.Ed. major for a roommate!
Fortunately for me, R-M did not offer P.E. majors...

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Fortunately for me, R-M did not offer P.E. majors...That's good! Sigh... we went to my niece's graduation at Radford last weekend and snuck out of the main ceremony after she had "walked" (we all did go to the departmental ceremony). Just found out what we missed: the president of the senior class talking about, among other things, how occasionally she was so drunk she didn't know where she'd passed out. Can't you imagine how "proud" her parents felt to hear that?

[Lindsey]

Just found out what we missed: the president of the senior class talking about, among other things, how occasionally she was so drunk she didn't know where she'd passed out. Can't you imagine how "proud" her parents felt to hear that?
Oh, my word! That is pretty sad.

--Lindsey

[davidh]

Oh, my word! That is pretty sad.

--Lindsey When I was a Cornell undergrad I was not involved with any fraternities but I understand that drunkeness was not unheard of in them and elsewhere. However, since my graduation, I understand that social conventions have progressed a great deal in the direction of equality and universality. From what I've read, the annual tradition now is that there is a big outdoor celebration at the end of exams in May, in the open, on the "lib slope", in which the main goal is to get so drunk that you pass out. Sort of like playing mass "chicken" with suicide. The university has had to patrol the vast scene to avoid people dying (and getting sued).

Fortunately [?], the bus drivers went on strike sometime this academic year so they stopped ferrying people back and forth between the outlying university parking lots and the main campus, so they had to turn the beautiful lawn into a parking lot to solved the transportation problems. Whether the strike could have lasted long enough to save anybody from serious bodily harm this month, I have not kept up with the news, to hear.

I suppose we should thank the gods and goddesses of liberalism and feminism that young women have become so freed from oppression that they do not feel inhibited about getting stumbling drunk in public ?

I should apologize for the cynical tone. Actually it's more than sad.

David H.

[davidh]

I think I take back some of what I might have implied in the previous message.

I don't know enough history, philosopy, and sociology to be able to make any sustainable assertions. But I suspect that some of the strains of policy in the women's liberation movement were inspired by the philosophizing of "dirty-old-man professors". Wanting to skim the cream of the crop, but not wanting to pay the bills for sustaining the ecosystem, so to speak.

David H.

[Judy G. Russell]

I suppose we should thank the gods and goddesses of liberalism and feminism that young women have become so freed from oppression that they do not feel inhibited about getting stumbling drunk in public ?This sounds an awful lot (even with your apology) like the idea I hear from some of my more conservative and/or religious friends that if women just knew their place, everything that's wrong with the world would be righted all of a sudden.

And I have to tell you... I don't like it one bit.

[davidh]

This sounds an awful lot (even with your apology) like the idea I hear from some of my more conservative and/or religious friends that if women just knew their place, everything that's wrong with the world would be righted all of a sudden.

And I have to tell you... I don't like it one bit. Well, the other explanation I like is to blame it on the beer and wine manufacturers advertizing.

If that is a good explanation, then I wonder if restriction of tobacco advertizing is constitutional and alcohol not ?

OTOH cocaine doesn't get paid-for advertizing. (Except maybe in the form of jokes on late-nite TV talk shows.)

I wonder if college drunks are as popular in Latino countries or in Scandinavia? Maybe it's just American in-your-face machismo ?

Maybe it's the same phenomeno as putting more than one teen ager in a car with no adults and letting one of them drive ?

I don't think "feminism" can be fairly blamed as a cause of drunkeness, and I don't think I was really trying to make that claim. OTOH I think that a woman, young or not so young, who became crippled, pregnant unintentionlly, infected with AIDS, etc. as a side-effect of alcohol, would in retrospect wish she had been a prude about drinking excess alcohol, among other things. Or might have wished that the men-folk involved in the incident had been so disgustingly chivalrous and chauvinist as to insist that she be the designated driver because "boys will be boys" and it would be "unladylike" to get falling down drunk.

Maybe so-called "youthful rebellion" is nothing more than plain old egoism and "gang behavior" ?

So I'll give you only one "mea culpa" but not a "mea maxima culpa".

David H.

[Judy G. Russell]

So I'll give you only one "mea culpa" but not a "mea maxima culpa".Pffffffft. And just what do you think of that whole "boys will be boys" notion? What's wrong with teaching our sons and our daughters to behave because it's a good thing for everyone, not just because they happen to be one gender or the other?

[Lindsey]

I suppose we should thank the gods and goddesses of liberalism and feminism that young women have become so freed from oppression that they do not feel inhibited about getting stumbling drunk in public ?
I think it has little to do with either libralism OR feminism; it has more to do, I think, with a social norm that says that the ultimate freedom is to overindulge in alcohol. That probably says more about American attitudes toward alcohol than anything else.

My alma mater was considered both pretty liberal and pretty feminist, and yes, there was some degree of partying after exams, but it would have been considered pretty crass to be falling-down drunk in public. Or even in private. And I can't imagine any student there, let alone the senior class president, boasting about it in a graduation speech. Unthinkable.

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

But I suspect that some of the strains of policy in the women's liberation movement were inspired by the philosophizing of "dirty-old-man professors". Wanting to skim the cream of the crop, but not wanting to pay the bills for sustaining the ecosystem, so to speak.
Huh?? Sorry, David, you're not even making sense.

--Lindsey

[Lindsey]

Well, the other explanation I like is to blame it on the beer and wine manufacturers advertizing.
Advertising is part of it, but it's not the whole story. So far as I am concerned, the larger issue boils down to responsible behavior, and binge drinking is simply not responsible behavior, by either women or men.

--Lindsey

[davidh]

it has more to do, I think, with a social norm that says that the ultimate freedom is to overindulge in alcohol. That probably says more about American attitudes toward alcohol than anything else.
I tend to agree, maybe it's more of an anglo thing. Maybe USA is still recoiling from Puritans and prohibition. (the Civil War is still not over for some people in USA, either)

David H.

[Lindsey]

No, I don't think it has anything to do with recoil from Prohibition, either. It has to do with seeing excessive use of alcohol as "cool" and some sort of rite of passage. Like the kid I remember seeing a story about on one of the TV news magazine programs, who went on the "traditional" binge drinking bout to celebrate his 21st birthday and died from alcohol poisoning. Stupid. Tragic and stupid.

Why is it kids think it is so great to drink until you puke your toenails up? I don't get it. What on earth is cool about that?

--Lindsey

[davidh]

No, I don't think it has anything to do with recoil from Prohibition, either. It has to do with seeing excessive use of alcohol as "cool" and some sort of rite of passage. Like the kid I remember seeing a story about on one of the TV news magazine programs, who went on the "traditional" binge drinking bout to celebrate his 21st birthday and died from alcohol poisoning. Stupid. Tragic and stupid.

Why is it kids think it is so great to drink until you puke your toenails up? I don't get it. What on earth is cool about that?

--Lindsey
There have been a couple stories recently, I think, about "iron man" bouts in which both men and women amateurs have climbed into the ring with semi-professionals and died from injuries. Sort of the same idea, I suppose.

David H.

[Lindsey]

There have been a couple stories recently, I think, about "iron man" bouts in which both men and women amateurs have climbed into the ring with semi-professionals and died from injuries. Sort of the same idea, I suppose.

I've never been a fan of boxing, either, but I can more easily see how someone might be tempted to try to go toe-to-toe with semi-professional boxers than I can see how somebody might think it a neat idea to drink themselves into a stupor time after time. Yeah, you might do it the first time because you don't realize how awful the aftermath can be, but to do it weekend after weekend, or after you have seen how wretched it has made other people of your acquaintance -- that's just pathetically idiotic.

--Lindsey

[davidh]

SING AND PLAY ABOUT THE USA Games, Songs and Activities!

By Michael and Jill Gallina
Your students will discover the fun inside these pages while learning about the USA! They will sing the songs, work the puzzles and enjoy the cool activities…before they realize it they will be USA experts! The enclosed sing-along CD is perfect for classroom enjoyment. Songs and activities are appropriate for grades K through 4. The reproducible pages and performance CD make it an ideal resource for teachers of many grade levels. Great for use by substitute music teachers as well! For ages 5-9 (Grades K-4).

http://www.shawneepress.com/productcode.asp?Code=SB1030 DH