<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">L O W L A N D S - L - 28 December 2007 - Volume 03
</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Song Contest: <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/contest/">lowlands-l.net/contest/</a> (- 31 Dec. 2007)</span>
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">=========================================================================</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">
<a href="mailto:foga0301@stcloudstate.edu">foga0301@stcloudstate.edu</a></span></span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe">LL-L "Traditions" 2007.12.28 (02) [E]<br></span><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">
Dear Listers and lovers of place,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> Thanks for the song Ron. I'm trying to imagine that much
noise used as a way to avoid being followed by unwanted trespassers. The contradiction
between noisy defiance and strategic evasion is an intriguing way to rescue the
new from the old—to squeeze good out of a troubled, scary past. It matches
your "wren" story too. Seeking a similar song to share, I found this essay on "locating
culture":</span></p>
<p style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span>
<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: windowtext;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=khmWr0_fvrAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&dq=+%22Culture/Power/Place:+Explorations+in+Critical+Anthropology%22&ots=5R6SDSPdJI&sig=YlMM6cyLE24pCIW7KzdE50NvYmw" target="_blank">
<span style="color: windowtext;">Open Sp</span><span style="color: windowtext;">aces</span><span style="color: windowtext;">, Dwelling Places</span><span style="color: windowtext;">:
Being at Home on Hill Farms in the Scottish Borders</span></a></span></span><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> - </span><span style="font-size: 7pt;"><<</span><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=15377553645509500304" target="_blank">
<span style="color: windowtext;">all 7 versions including JSTOR</span><span style="font-size: 7pt; color: windowtext;">>></span></a>-<a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=15377553645509500304" target="_blank">
<span style="color: windowtext;">Cited by 20</span></a> –by <span>John Gray –
Chapter 10 in <i>The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture</i>,
2003 - books.google—</span><span><span style="color: windowtext;">Setha M. Low, Denise Lawrence-Zúñiga, (eds.) </span></span>Blackwell
Pub.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> Mr. Gray confesses here that he needed to write this essay in
order to salvage his soul after producing a dry academic account of these
people as exotic strangers. This new essay reverses the direction to center the
world around the lives of these shepherd "reivers." It seems in the past they
raided [reived] the larger, richer English farms across the border, then
escaped into the hills which they knew well enough to evade reprisals. This essay
reverses the bad and good to tell of how these people survived on marginal land
and could name every part of it as home. The names they gave to it contain
stories that transform this rugged space into a lovable, befriended homeland. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> It reminds me very much of my own home in Wyoming where one
can find placenames such as "freeze out mountains, crazy woman creek, muddy gap,
ten sleep, and crow heart…" and this one placename that phonetically sounds
like "whatsthematter" if you think of the time I walked there on foot from the midst
of the killpecker sanddunes where my old pickup truck broke down—citified boyfriend
in tow. There are only wild horses out there now, but in the past we had (were)
horse thieves in those parts. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"> I'm exposing more (and less) than I should of my past, perhaps.
But in stories from marginal lands, one finds this need to convey both a respectable
settled human identity and this enduring desire for independence linked to
sorted means and memories. Thus you get, perhaps this confusing contrast between
making noise and hiding in the hills. Not sure if any songs survived those
good old bad days; but the placenames have grown thick with meaning, despite it
being so recently humanized. Even the Native Americans needed horses before
they could settle those parts. They're the ones with drum songs, by the way;
but they do it very differently. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">Happy Old and New Year, Gael <br></span></p><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">
<br></span></p>