Luzula

Let us not to the progress of modern forestry
Admit impediments. Forestry is not forestry
Which falters, finding low fertility
Or bends, allowing species to live free.
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and still plants spruce;
It is the star to every finance shark
Whose worth's unknown, although he can profits produce
Forestry's not Time's fool, for birch and spruce and pine
Fall premature to harvester and saw
Their lives to pulp and factory consign'd
Instead of mulched by mold, by beetles gnaw'd.
I wish this would be error, and upon me prov'd,
But fear it ends with all true forest remov'd.

(Explanations: "Impediment" is a technical term in Swedish forestry, meaning forest where the timber growth is less than 1 cubic meter per hectare and year. Spruce plantations are especially sensitive to storms due to shallow root systems.)

Rest your hands from the mill, flour-women: sleep in, even if the cocks crow to announce dawn, for Demeter has assigned the labor of your hands to the nymphs, and they, tumbling down the very edge of the wheel, spin the axle, which with its curved cogs turn the Nisyrian millstones.

--Antipater of Thessalonica, first century BC

I wanted to share the Swedish folk song "Jag vet en dejlig rosa" with you guys, so I translated it to English! The first half of this is the Swedish song, so if you just want to listen to the English one, you can skip to the break in the middle. My voice is still a bit rusty from the cold I had, but whatever.



( Swedish lyrics )

( Lyrics in English translation )

( Notes on the song and the translation )

So jjhunter posted a poem that struck me with inspiration, and I set it to music. Here it is!

Ha, I'm actually doing this on a Wednesday for once. My reading brain is beginning to come back, but my audiobook/podfic-listening brain is not back yet.

( Short story anthology by Jorge Luis Borges, Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell )

Unrelatedly, I was asked if I wanted to participate in poetree's theme week around fragment 16 of Sappho's poetry. So I set it to music, and you can hear me singing it here. I really enjoyed that!

People's poetry posts are inspiring me, so here you go: this is one of my favorite poems. I'm writing it down from memory, so hopefully I haven't changed it in my head.

Stammersong, by Ursula K. Le Guin

I have a different way, I have a different will,
I have a different word to say
I am coming back by the road around the side, by the outside way,
from the other direction

There is a valley, it has no borders
There is a river, it has no banks
There are people, they have no bodies,
dancing by the river in the valley

I have drunk the water of that river
I am drunk my life long, my tongue is thick,
and when I dance I stumble and fall over
When I die I will come back by the outside road
and drink the water of that river and be sober

There is a valley, high hills around it
There is a river, willows on its shores
There are people, their feet are beautiful
dancing by the river in the valley

1) I was asked out of the blue to do a series of posts on the comm poetree on reading poetry out loud and listening to it (on the basis of a post I'd written about recording poetry for Librivox). I don't feel that this is something I know a lot about, but I was happy to talk enthusiastically about it! If you want to check out the posts, they're here.

2) Held the first lecture on a new course today, and it went well. A student came up to me afterwards and said it was great, and she felt like she understood everything even though she flunked the exam on the previous course! I wonder if students know how happy they make you when they say things like that. In tomorrow's lecture I will define the Riemann integral!

3) I have a new red pen for graaaading, and it almost makes me enjoy it. See, you can erase it even though it's a pen and not a pencil! It is so cool! *marvels at the advance of technology*

4) I heartily recommend the mushroom soup recipe that sage recently posted. Although being me, of course I couldn't actually follow the recipe but added whatever vegetables I had around (a squash and leftover boiled cabbage) as well as black beans. The leftover boiled cabbage was from making rice-and-ground-meat-wrapped-in-boiled-cabbage-leaves (I have no idea what this is called in English). There is a cringe-worthy dirty pun on the Swedish name of this dish, and my boyfriend gleefully makes that pun at least five times while he is cooking the dish.

5) Am very busy right now, what with teaching + graaaading + dSSS + Yuletide + environmental volunteer work. I'm also beginning to stress out about my dSSS and Yuletide stories, and I am worrying that my drafts suck. Augh. Right, I should go work on one of them right now.