Photo / Sheila Lennon
Phil Edmonds and fellow musician Joyce Katzberg last night at the Irish wake for Phil's mom.

Providence musician Phil Edmonds' mom died From Maura Edmonds obituary,

EDMONDS, MAURA M. (LARKIN), 88, passed away Monday at the Elmhurst Extended Care Facility. She was the wife of the late Edward J. Edmonds.

Born in Killaloe, County Clare, Ireland, a daughter of the late Patrick and Helena (Loughnane) Larkin. She was a resident of Providence for forty years.

Maura worked as a nurses' aide at the Jewish Home for the Aged where she was known for providing great care to the residents of the home and was an active member of the 1199 New England SEIU Healthcare Union for 12 years before retiring in 1989. She volunteered at RI Hospital Children's Ward for several years after retiring. As a teenager in Ireland, she was a Munster Champion of Irish Step Dancing. She trained as a nurse in Dublin and in London during WW II...

After Maura Edmonds' wake at Gallogly Funeral Home, an Irish wake followed at Patrick's Pub on Smith Street.

Photo / Sheila Lennon

The Gnomes -- one of several bands Phil makes music with -- played, joined by other musicians. That's Peter Breen and Cathy Clasper-Torch under the Guinness sign at Patrick's.

A bit about Phil, from bandmate Otis Read's site:

PHIL EDMONDS As a native of Killaloe, Co. Clare, Ireland, Phil learned to play the tin whistle in a place where he says, "The backyard was the fields." When he was 14 years old, Phil, along with his family, emigrated to America and settled in South Providence, where he still lives. Phil presently plays whistles and button accordion in several Rhode Island ensembles including: The Lucky Band, The Katz' Meow, Killaloe, and The Providence Wholebellies. He also performs with Triple-Decker which is a narrative by Marc Levitt accompanied by musicians from six different countries. Phil is listed as a traditional folk artist with the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. To children he is known as "The Leprechaun".

Phil Edmonds and Otis Read play at the Providence Athenaeum, on YouTube.

Once upon a time,not very long ago, our mothers (sisters, aunts, cousins and ourselves) brought forth on this continent, a new notion, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that when it comes to earning a paycheck, all women were created equal to men...

...Okay, so maybe there have been some glitches along the way in pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. Or not. Either way, we want to hear about it. Tell us what it’s like to be a woman working in America this election year, and we’ll pass what you have to say along to the people who claim they are the ones who can make it better.

The idea is great. I'd like to report my experience.

This may be a hitch for you, or may not:

P.S. If you are not one already, by taking this survey you become a member of Working America, a powerful voice for working people. As a member, you will receive updates and information about how you can make a difference for working families.

This is sponsored by Working America & AFL-CIO. (I think, as a member of The Newspaper Guild, I'm already on an AFL-CIO list.)

So the choice is yours.

I live on iced coffee year-round, so this is a public service announcement.

Robert Rauschenberg: Man at work. A goat story -- a stuffed angora goat story.

The artist discusses his 1959 work Monogram as video of its installation rolls:

White elephants online: I imagine two guys with a warehouse full of Job Lot stuff, wondering how to get rid of it. The lightbulb goes on over one's head:

SomethingStore is a fun new website that operates simply: We will send you something, an item selected randomly among many things from our inventory, for $10 (free shipping) and you will find out what your something is when you receive it. What will yours be?

Duct-tape wallet, red sand hourglass, Norelco shaver...

Your something will most likely be brand new, though it may also be refurbished or antique.

These will not be your something: "Adult goods and services, Alcohol, Body parts... "

Think it will fly?

IN THE END, it was the hair that snagged them.

Jocelyn Kirsch's greedy pursuit of flowing auburn extensions is what finally led to the arrest of both her and her 25-year-old lover, Edward Anderton, thus ending the couple's intricately executed identity-theft scam, federal authorities said yesterday.

The tresses, valued at $2,274 at Center City hair salon Giovanni and Pileggi, were attached to Kirsch, 22, a former Drexel University senior, over 7 1/2 hours in late November. The duo also gave the hair stylist a $250 tip - and a bad check.

Before that, most of the crafty couple's fraud occurred over the Internet, where they purchased items by opening up credit cards, using personal information from friends, co-workers and neighbors in a condo development, the Belgravia, in Center City. But their in-person appearance at Giovanni and Pileggi showed they had become careless, federal authorities said.

"Captured by the hair, that's the joke. But it was the greed of the hair extensions," U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan said yesterday. "Once that check bounced, then there was an ability to go back, actually identify the victim and tie to that a name."

From there, Philadelphia police were able to get descriptions of the suspects and stake out the UPS store in West Philadelphia where one of the victims told cops the couple had opened a mailbox - in her name. One day later, on Nov. 30, the two were nabbed by University of Pennsylvania cops...

The ultimate ethical meal: a grey squirrel The Guardian (U.K.) coos,

It tastes sweet, like a cross between lamb and duck. And it's selling as fast as butchers can get it.

That's in England, where the North American Eastern grey squirrel is overrunning their beloved red squirrels. So it's almost patriotic to eat them to help cull the species, at about $6.82 per cleaned squirrel at the butcher shops.

I'm thinking depression-era protein, if things get bad here. Lord knows we have enough grey squirrels eating our tulip bulbs and all the pears from our tree every year.

Texas A&M offers instructions for harvesting acorns, squirrel, opossum and raccoon "(for traditional community coon suppers)", "dressing" and cooking them,:

Squirrel is one of the most tender of all wild game meats. The rosy pink to red flesh of young squirrel is tender and has a pleasing flavor. The flesh of older animals is darker red in color and may require marinating or long cooking for tenderness.

There are recipes for squirrel, although I wouldn't expect much meat from these scrawny city critters.

Here's a recipe for Braised acorn-fed grey squirrel with roasted loin and squirrel pie, garlic mash by Craig James, head chef, at Butlers Wharf Chop House, near Tower Bridge, London.

There's even a review of Butler's squirrel specials in the Evening Standard by restaurant blogger Charles Campion:

During May there is a “squirrel and rook” season. When I visited only the squirrel element had kicked in - and the menu listed “Grey squirrel and rabbit terrine with piccalilli” – the terrine had a good texture, the sweet close-textured squirrel meat ends up pretty much indistinguishable from the rabbit – this would be a great dish for nervous squirrel sensation seekers. On the main course list there is “braised Grey squirrel and Guinness stew with carrots and horseradish dumplings” – very rich and discernibly squirrel, the meat falling from the bones of those long back legs – the dumplings need work, they are a little solid (which need not be a bad quality in a dumpling but can be taken too far) and they also need a bit more of the promised horseradish bite.

UKTV Food offers a recipe for squirrel pancakes, pictured at right.

Other squirrel recipes.

There are reports of prion disease -- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease -- in five people from Kentucky who all ate the brains of diseased squirrels. (Hard to know how the squirrels might have acquired it on their diet of nuts and berries, though, so the link may be tentative.) Don't eat the brains if you're being fastidious. (Of course, if you're being fastidious you wouldn't be anywhere near a dead squirrel.) Rabies is rare among squirrels.

How to: Squirrel hunts are great ways to enjoy fall days and teach new hunters field skills. - Wisconson Natural Resources magazine

An exhibition of Bob Dylan's artwork, first seen in November. in Germany at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (museum), is to open at the Halcyon Gallery in London's Mayfair June 14.

"The Drawn Blank Series" is based on drawings and sketches made by Dylan while on the road from 1989 through 1992.

Corn-Syrup Price Bolsters Sugar

Without a Wall Street Journal paid subscription, this is all we can read:

Rapid increases in high-fructose corn syrup prices will encourage a return to sugar usage in U.S. soft drinks and foods -- a move that is already gathering steam among consumers -- sugar industry members predict.

Even before demand for ethanol lifted corn prices recently, the nation's smaller soda and food makers began to reject the syrup in favor of sugar as consumers shied away from heavily processed snacks and ingredients.

Dalton Yancey, executive vice president of the Florida Sugar Cane League, said more soda makers are shifting to sugar, with the move based on a trend toward perceived-natural products. Escalating ...

Maybe Coke will taste like it used to again, like kosher or Mexican Coke, made with sugar.

Donnie Darko sequel S. Darko starts shooting May 18, according to ScreenDaily.

Lessing: Nobel win a 'disaster' BBC. Doris Lessing, 88, describes her life since winning the Nobel Prize for literature in October:

"All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed."

Speaking about her writing, she said: "It has stopped, I don't have any energy any more.

"This is why I keep telling anyone younger than me, don't imagine you'll have it forever.

"Use it while you've got it because it'll go, it's sliding away like water down a plughole."

Slashdot | Have You Changed Your Opinion On eBook Readers?

Carpet of stone: medieval mosaic pavement revealed. The Guardian.

A Simple Curve

A Simple Curve has gorgeous scenery of the Kootenay Mountains of British Columbia and a good story. An American woodworker who went to Canada rather than be drafted remains a dogged perfectionist. But it's really the story of his son and business partner Caleb, raised on carob and late to rebel.

The arrival of an ecotourism entrepreneur who once vied with Caleb's father for his late mother's affections, and Caleb's own budding love life, change all that.

Great scenery, a tale of generations, and one answer to the question, "What ever happened to those earnest young men in exile since the '70s?"

The Mantis Parable

The second is the eight-minute, beautifully animated The Mantis Parable, winner of 17 festival awards, including Best Children's Film at the Rhode Island Film Festival. It's stunning on the Free Zone big screen, or you can watch all eight minutes of it below.

Created by veteran computer game designer Josh Staub (the Myst series), now a Disney artist, in his spare time, it's a totally charming and visually beautiful story of a a caterpillar and a praying mantis in a bug collector's home.

Background: 2003 Interview With Josh Staub and 2005 story about him.

On safari in South Africa's Kruger National Park in 2004, tourist David Budzinski captures eight minutes of lions and an alligator attacking a baby cape buffalo, and its rescue by its tribe. A fellow traveler asks for a copy, urging him to sell it. Animal TV won't buy tourist video. David had never heard of YouTube until fellow traveler shared the video there, eventually with 30 million people.

Last summer, National Geographic Channel relents, buys the video and prepares a one-hour documentary about it. A version professionally processed for TV ends "Caught on Safari: Battle at Kruger" (Sunday night, 9 p.m.), which includes taking the Texas tourist back to the scene where his wife's Canon ZR50MC video camera seized the moment.

The link goes to "Battle at Kruger" on YouTube -- the original low-rez, fuzzy version, a high-quality one uploaded three days ago, a trailer for the show, remixes, and all sorts of video responses.

Bottom up, its momentum built by buzz.

Background:
NYT, You’ve Seen the YouTube Video; Now Try the Documentary.

Canon Mini DV Camcorder Review ZR50MC at Videomaker, 2002.

Not for traditionalists.

But there's a card for the Mom who shows up at 2 a.m. at Twin River or Newport Grand this weekend for the start of 24-hour gambling:

Each Grain of Sand a Tiny Work of Art: A photo gallery at Discover Magazine of beach sand from various parts of the world. Artist/scientist Gary Greenberg examined sand under a microscope. The images are from his book A Grain of Sand.

Gritty ghost story: Beyond Rape: A Survivor's Journey From Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Susan Goldberg's preface:

We'll never know for certain how many women were raped in 1984, but one of them was Plain Dealer reporter Joanna Connors, who was then our theater critic. She was attacked on a deserted stage at Eldred Theater, on the campus of Case Western Reserve University.

Today, Joanna will tell you a story she kept quiet about for more than 20 years: her chance encounter with a dangerous felon on parole; the nightmare of the trial; her subsequent years of coping and denial; and, finally, her search to find the man who raped her so she could try, at last, to move on from an incident that changed and scarred her life.

With comments, sidebars and photos, including the mug shop of her rapist, who was arrested the next day, this one is headed for prize committees.

Late on a late jazzman: Jimmy Giuffre, Jazz Musician, Is Dead at 86, wrote the Times on April 25:

Jimmy Giuffre, the adventurous clarinetist, composer and arranger whose 50-year journey through jazz led him from writing the Woody Herman anthem “Four Brothers” through minimalist, drummerless trios to striking experimental orchestral works, died on Thursday in Pittsfield, Mass. He was 86 and lived in West Stockbridge, Mass.

Blogger Darcy James Argue offers an elegy (Emphasis), links to other bloggers' appreciations and a sweet tune I'm listening to as I type this: "In The Mornings Out There," Jimmy Giuffre (mp3).

Jimmy Giuffre: Cry Freedom at All About Jazz, 2003.
Jimmy Giuffre at Wikipedia.

At the Blackstone River Theatre in Cumberland Saturday night, the usually hard-rocking R&B ensemble that is Ken Lyon & Tombstone plan two acoustic sets, including one of all-new material.

Here are some tunes recorded live at Chan's in Woonsocket last fall, part of an acoustic set devised to keep down the volume for the neighbors:

Mp3s: Sugarbones | Baby I Love You So

The long-playing Tombstone Blues Band, formed in 1967, owns a special niche in Rhode Island rock and roll history

I blogged a long piece about Ken Lyon and the band in April 2007, in advance of their retrospective concert at the Stadium Theater in Woonsocket.

The Unplugged show starts at 8 p.m. at 549 Broad Street, Cumberland. Tickets: www.riverfolk.org; $12 in advance, $15 on Saturday.

$1000 house. How to build yourself one. Lots more photos at that link, as well as the budget:

$175 Home made tools (compass, stands, pounders, etc.)
$150 Plywood arch forms (reusable)
$120 Chicken wire
$150 Professional backhoe excavation (2ft. deep x 16ft. diam.)
$135 Straw for plaster/cob (20 bales)
$190 4-point barbed wire (2 rolls)
$150 40 tons reject sand (delivered)
$250 1000 bags (delivered)

TOTAL $920

Background:

In June 1997, more than one hundred natural building apostles and acolytes — professional builders, architects, academicians, and budding owner-builders — gathered at the Black Range Lodge in the tiny New Mexican hamlet of Kingston for the third annual "Natural Building Colloquium - Southwest." For one intense week, they traded ideas, learned new skills and fueled a nascent natural building movement.

Links on the left include other projects -- this one is the Honey House. If this interests you, you might start under "The Art" with An Overview of Natural Building Techniques;

This site feels like a part of the Whole Earth Catalog distributed to the Web -- that more informative subtitle was "Access to Tools. "

The Honey House looks like a nice place in which to live simply.

Although the story mentions options for a variety of climates, they might not include a New England winter in the range.

You might have to move to someplace warm and beautiful.

In a 1927 interview with the magazine Nation’s Business, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis provided some numbers to illustrate a problem that the New York Times called “need saturation.” Davis noted that “the textile mills of this country can produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year” and that 14 percent of the American shoe factories could produce a year’s supply of footwear. The magazine went on to suggest, “It may be that the world’s needs ultimately will be produced by three days’ work a week.”

Business leaders were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of a society no longer centered on the production of goods. For them, the new “labor-saving” machinery presented not a vision of liberation but a threat to their position at the center of power. John E. Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, typified their response when he declared: “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance. The emphasis should be put on work—more work and better work.” “Nothing,” he claimed, “breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure.”

By the late 1920s, America’s business and political elite had found a way to defuse the dual threat of stagnating economic growth and a radicalized working class in what one industrial consultant called “the gospel of consumption”—the notion that people could be convinced that however much they have, it isn’t enough.

It also explores a wonderful experiment at Kellogg in 1930 -- a six-hour workday:

Not only did Kellogg prosper, but journalists from magazines such as Forbes and BusinessWeek reported that the great majority of company employees embraced the shorter workday. One reporter described “a lot of gardening and community beautification, athletics and hobbies . . . libraries well patronized and the mental background of these fortunate workers . . . becoming richer.”

Dress rehearsal?

U2: Mountains And Deserts: Live at McNichols Arena, Denver, Colorado, November 7, 1987. High quality stereo MP3s from the soundboard of the entire concert the day before the one that was recorded as the soundtrack for Rattle And Hum

Food profiling: Zeer, which launched yesterday, is a review site for food -- the prepackaged products you buy in the grocery store.

Now it needs members to write reviews that will make it more than an inventory list. pf groceries available in the early 21st century. The toolbox is ready: Members can rate and review, love, hate or want a product.

Nearly every product I thought to search for is preloaded -- Nature's Promise Cookies, lemon pie fillings, Felix Wild Swedish Berries Lingonberries, The Baker Whole Grain Flax Bread., Old London Cheddar Waffle Snacks.. (I did stump it, though -- with Kenyon's Clam Chowder and Cheez Waffies, at right, a Wise version of the Cheddar Waffle Snacks that Old London used to sell in tubes, like Pringles, as "Cheezwiches.")

According to TechCrunch (Food Review Site Zeer Launches), it "is targeted at women between 20 and 32."

From an editorial viewpoint, that's weird. Wouldn't people who've been buying and eating longer be able to contribute more reviews?

Also from TC,

"...each member’s profile page shows what products she loves and hates the most."

I'm all for review sites, but that last part does seem a little silly. And would you think less of me if I admit I love Cheez Waffies? (I haven't had one in years, but still love them.)

(The photo is from she treads softly, usually a books blog. But one day last November, Cheez Waffies.)

Rainforest seeds revive lost paradise. A nice easy bit of good news for a Monday from the Guardian (U.K.)

Six years ago the area around Samboja in Borneo was like much of the world's tropical rainforest: denuded. The trees had been cut for timber, the land burnt, and in place of what should be some of the richest biodiversity on the planet were thousands of acres of grass.

But from this ruined landscape a fresh forest has been grown, teeming with insects, birds and animals, and cooled by the return of moist clouds and rain. It is a feat that has been hailed by scientists and offers hope for disappearing and ruined rainforests around the world.

The secret was to use more than 1,300 species of local tree and a fertiliser made with cow urine, says Dr Willie Smits, the Indonesian forestry expert who led the replanting. 'The place became the scene of an ecological miracle, a fairytale come true,' says Smits, who has written a book (Thinkers of the Jungle: The Orangutan Report) about the project....

...Planting finishes this year, but already Smits and his team from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation charity claim the forest is 'mature', with trees up to 35 metres high. Cloud cover has increased by 12 per cent, rainfall by a quarter, and temperatures have dropped 3-5C, helping people and wildlife to thrive, says Smits. Nine species of primate have also returned, including the threatened orangutans. 'If you walk there now, 116 bird species have found a place to live, there are more than 30 types of mammal, insects are there. The whole system is coming to life. I knew what I was trying to do, but the force of nature has totally surprised me.'

The goal is to re-introduce orangutans into the wild.

Jungle Diary: Herbert Ullmann’s research trip to Borneo for the orangutan project. The book's publisher visited Borneo to check it out.

Samboja Lestari : Creative reforestation has satellite views.

Eccentric Roadside is my colleague Gunnar Johnson's roadtrips blog:

One thing you notice after a lot of cross-country driving is how much there is out there that's mundane. We've grown to love the mundane in America — the beautifully melancholy, unnoticed, unloved landscapes across this great land of ours.

Gunnar has designed features section fronts for a couple of decades. His "attractions" are not commercial tourist traps. He has a fine eye for detail, and seems not to miss a single sign, shoe-shaped building or bit of local whimsy while tooling down the road:

This oasis is near Carhenge -- yup, what it sounds like -- in Alliance, Nebraska.