Robert Earl Keen, Merry Christmas From the Family. Because it’s just not Christmas without a can of fake snow.
music
With Boston Charlie
Patty Surbey & the Canadian V.I.P.s – (I Want) A Beatle For Christmas. Dammit, Santa, she said Ringo, not bingo.
Deck us all
Once again this goes out, with tidings of comfort and joy, to the Mickleblog.
Nyuck nyuck nyuck and ho ho ho.
Autumn
“Breeze blows leaves of a musty-coloured yellow…”
It’s National Acadian Day
Bonne fête nationale de l’Acadie!
Lennie Gallant, Ouvrez les aboiteaux
From Lennie and Patricia Richard’s YouTube channel:
This is a song Lennie wrote for the third World Acadian Congress held in Nova Scotia in 2004. The aboiteaux were series of dikes and drains that the first Acadians built using the powerful tides to claim many thousands of acres of land in order to survive. The aboiteaux design would allow the moon to pull the water out of the fields on low tide but not allow it to return on the high. Ironic that Acadians themselves were later also pulled from the land with the devastating deportations and not allowed to return. The Acadian Congress gatherings were the first in 250 years to assemble over 200,000 Acadians and their Cajun cousins of Louisiana since that infamous event. The French chorus says: “Open up the Aboiteaux…Let my heart return with the waters.”
Sirène et Matelot, Acadian Girl
June
It’s Accordion Awareness Month in the U.S. Celebrate the stomach Steinway.
Big brass
It’s International Tuba Day. How low can you go?
May
Welcome in the May O. (And celebrate International Workers’ Day.)
April in Paris (and elsewhere)
“One more once!”
Merry Christmas, everybody
The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, Fairytale of New York.
Christmas dreams, shattered and otherwise. Soaring music and grubby lyrics. But also tenderness and hope – which, after all, is what Christmas is all about.
Merry Christmas. And a tip of the tuque to Walt Kelly, who brought joyous nonsense to Christmas when I was a boy.