Broadside - Kitchen Listening

The Best of Broadside 1962-1988: Anthems of the American Underground from the Pages of Broadside Magazine and released from the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. 

Today is No Kings Day and a great time to listen to the 5 disc compilation box set released in 2000. The album runs about five and a half hours of contemporary folk music of it's time with much of it very topical development of an American social consciousness in popular music.

This is a great collection of music and an awesome listening experience. Here is a breakdown of the album on Discogs and a little history of Broadside Magazine.

Cream of Chicken Soup

We had some left over chicken from the past couple of nights so Becky made some cream of chicken soup tonight. It was delicious especially with some smoked paprika liberally springled on it. We had some of that wonderful French peasant bread too.

A nice meal for those last cold days of the season.

Goldmund Quartet

This evening we went down to Kleinhans Music Hall for another chamber music concert. This is the second to last one of the season. The performance tonight was with the Goldmund Quartet, a Munich based German quartet. They have been touring recently with pianist Gloria Chien who performed with them for the second part of the concert.

It was a wonderful concert tonight and you could feel the Bavarian influence throughout the show. They started out with a piece by Franz Schubert who wrote it at the age of 16. Amazing. Then they performed a piece by Mieczyslaw Weinberg who is described as a Jewish Polish Russian. He had a very intense life between the Germans and the Soviets. His music was very intense.

After the break the quartet and the pianist performed an incredible piano quintet piece by Amy Beach an early 20th century modernist composer.

An interesting note to this performance was the substitution of the lead violinist. Apparently the regular violinist for the quartet had to leave the tour and a substitute was added. The violin player filling in is the husband of the guest pianist. The violinist was very good.

Chicken Tacos & Rice

Becky used some of the leftover chicken from last night and made very tasty Chicken Tacos and Rice for dinner tonight. We really enjoyed this wonderful meal.

Bruce Catton - The Authors List

Bruce Catton. On The Authors List with 8 books I've read. As an adolescent kid and early teenager I was obsessed with reading about the Civil War. I think it was all the TV shows, magazines, and books at that time documenting the 100 year anniversaries of the battles and events of the war that went on for several years from 1961 to 1965. In 1962 I first read Catton's overview of the war from 1960 book titled the American Heritage History of The Civil War and then over the next few years I read his Centennial History of the Civil War trilogy. Then 20 years later in 1984 to 1986 I read them again along with four other of his books on the war including another trilogy. 

Over the years according to my Goodreads app data categories I've read 35 books about the Civil War including novels. Most were from the mid 80's to the late 90's.

Bruce Catton books I've read:

• The American Heritage History of The Civil War, 1960 - Jun 1984
• This Hollowed Grown, 1956 - Nov 1984
• The Coming Fury, 1961 - Feb 1985
• Terrible Swift Sword, 1963 - May 1985
• Never Call Retreat, 1965 - Jul 1985
• Mr. Lincoln's Army, 1951 - Mar 1986
• Glory Road, 1952 - May 1986
• A Stillness at Appomattox, 1953 - Jun 1986

Nice Chicken & Rice

This evening we had a nice chicken and rice dinner with peas and carrots along with some of that wonderful French peasant bread. A very satisfying meal. 

Another nice thing about this dinner is the large amount of chicken that was cooked and not used tonight. We have plenty of chicken left over for some other meals... maybe some chicken soup. 

Backyard Woodpecker

Over the past couple of months we've had a red-bellied woodpecker hanging around our backyard. Every morning I've heard his pecking on our backyard trees. It's a regular sound of the start of the day and it continues all day too.

He has also learned how to get some seeds from our birdfeeder. For years now the red-bellied woodpecker in our yard has spent a lot of time on Mark's feeder next door but would occasionally come over to our feeder and stand around on the top like a lot of larger birds often do. However, this year and in particularly the past month or so he has learned how to cling to the bottom of our feeder and stretch his neck into the slot to grab some seeds with his long beak. It's actually very fun to watch.

Now he is a regular at our birdfeeder too. I did write about this woodpecker a few years ago and his frustration at our birdfeeder.

Octavia Butler - The Authors List

Octavia Butler. On my Authors List with 7 books read. The author here was an amazing science fiction horror novelist who wrote from a African-American and focused on stories of Afro-Futurism spiritualism.

I had been aware of her science fiction novels for a long time and she has been on my to read list for decades. Finally the first book I read in 2020 was the last she wrote before passing away in 2006. The Fledgling was a gripping science fiction horror novel about a vampire. I would go on and read five more of her books during that year. Then I read Parable of the Sower in 2024 and was planning to read the sequel last year but didn't get to it. I will read it this year.

Octavia Butler books I've read:

• Fledgling, 2005 - Apr 2020
• Bloodchild and Other Stories, 1995 - Jun 2020
• Dawn, 1987 - Jul 2020
• Adulthood Rites, 1988 - Sep 2020
• Imago, 1989 - Oct 2020
• Kindred, 1979 - Nov 2020
• Parable of the Sower, 1993 - Feb 2024

Martha Wells - The Authors List

Martha Wells. The Authors List with 7 books from a science fiction series... The Murderbot Diaries.

I enjoyed these books very much and the first five were particularly awesome. The series is told from the perspective of a cyborg security unit for a far future hyper-capitalist space faring society that hacked and disabled her corporate control system and goes rogue.

This author has written a lot of other books and many of them in the fantasy category such as the Raksura and Ille-Rien series.

Martha Wells books I've read:

• All Systems Red, 2017 - Aug 2018
• Artificial Condition, 2018 - Oct 2018
• Rogue Protocol, 2018 - Apr 2019
• Exit Strategy, 2018 - Aug 2019
• Network Effect, 2020 - May 2020
• Fugitive Telemetry, 2021 - Jun 2021
• System Collapse, 2023 - Apr 2024

Pirate Nests - A History

Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740 by Mark G. Hanna, 2015.

This was a very interesting history of piracy in the North American colonies, the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean and the impact on the development of the American colonies and British Empire.

There certainly was a lot in this book about the development of America I never learned about in school especially the special collaboration between the pirates and the ports of the early American colonies. There were some thought provoking descriptions of the relationships between the pirates and Cotton Mather, Puritanism and Quakers. And the pirate's ongoing changing struggles with the British authorities.

As a kid I was very interested in pirate movies such as Treasure Island, Long John Silver, Captain Kidd, Morgan The Pirate, Mysterious Island, Swiss Family Robinson, A High Wind in Jamaica, The Light at the End of the World, etc.