Definatly a record for me - I debuted 2 new songs this week, both songs that I wrote. "White Crosses" I mentioned previously, but yesterday at the Martin Van Buren Mansion Harvest Festival I sang a song I wrote just this week! It was inspired by a C&W themed dinner I was at this past Thursday.
Yodeling has never been my strong suite. It's kind of like stepping off a cliff - it's one of these things that you just have to take a deep breath, close your eyes and do it.

And I Wonder if You’re Watching the Moon Too

Each night I hope and pray your love won’t go away
I’m waiting out here for you dear
Out in the open sky, don’t cha hear the coyotes cry
And I wonder if you’re watching the moon too
Yodel----------------------------------

The stars dance around, we’re stuck here on the ground
It’s lonesome here beneath the prairie moon
To even feel your touch, would warm me, oh so much
And I wonder if you’re watching the moon too
Yodel----------------------------------

The moon is riding high, up in the sky
And I don’t believe we’ll get to sleep tonight
Let the moonlight shine, on your home and mine,
And I wonder if you’re watching the moon too
Yodel----------------------------------

And I wonder if you’re watching the moon too
And I love you and I love you and I love you

Veteran's for Peace

Read at a poetry reading last night for the first time in 30 years.  I did one poem and one song.  Of course being me, even the poem had some "OMing" in it.  I sang a new song for the first time there.

White Crosses on the Hillside
Words:Bob Lusk     tune "Little Boxes"  Malvina Reynolds
Inspired by an article in the NY Times that spoke about the new opening of lot 60 for the returning personel killed in Iraq. I sang this for the first time at a Veteran's for Peace Poetry reading in Woodstock 9-17-07. Jay Wenk, WWII vet told me afterwards that he had know Malvina and that "She would be proud".

Chorus
White crosses on the hillside
White crosses in the cemetery
White crosses, white crosses
White crosses all the same

And there's soldiers, and there's sailors
Marines and Air corpsman
And they all have white crosses
White crosses all the same

1
And each one had a body bag
It was draped with an American flag
And we didn't get to see it
They snuck them in the back door

And they're all buried in the graveyard
At Arlington National Cemetery
in lot Six-ty
They make their final rest

Chorus

2
Each one was an individual
Who had their own personality
They lived and loved and laughed
And each one had a name

And most of them had families
And people who loved them
People who voted to
Send them to war

Chorus

Some of my poetry is included in the book
POST TRAUMATIC PRESS 2007
poems by veterans, Dayl Wise, Editor

All proceeds go to Veterans for Peace…and its tax deductible. To order your copy, send $12 plus $3 shipping to:
Post Traumatic Press
Dayl Wise, Editor
104 Orchard Lane North, Woodstock, NY 12498
dswbike@aol.com
Make checks payable to:
VFP Catskill Mountain Chapter 058
Write "PTP 2007" in memo line

My Instruments

Rather than being responsible today, I created a web site of my instruments. It is at http://bobluskinstruments.blogspot.com/. There are more photos to be added, but it's a start.

Weekend Report

A great musical weekend. Started off playing my new mandolin on Friday evening in a wonderful music session up in the Irish Catskills (or should I say the Irish-Italian Catskills?) On Saturday it was several protests. Reading the names of the dead at King's Mall and then singing some peace songs at Academy Green. Then down to the Riverfront Festival in Poughkeepsie playing hindustani slide guitar with Anjali Nandakars class. A bit of a shock when the power went out and I was the only thing to be heard, with my battery powered mouse amp. Wasn't quite prepared for a solo.
Sunday Jim Donnelly and I played as part of the Heritage Music Foundation Concert Series at Alternative Books in Kingston. A great time doing historic Irish music of the area in a living room atmosphere.
Tonight it's off to Kirtan at Namaste yoga in Woodstock, where I will probably accompany whoever is leading with my violin. After that (8:00) I'll be singing some anitwar songs and reading poetry with Veteran's for Peace at the Colony Cafe in Woodstock.
Phew!

Schedule

So many things going on!   Check my schedule anytime at http://blschedule.blogspot.com/
Upcoming, tomorrow is protest at Kings Mall at noon, then Academy Green Rally at 1:00; Hindu music concert at 4:00 in Poughkeepsie, Sunday Irish concert at Alternative Books in Kingston, Monday night reading anti war poetry with Veteran's for Peace at colony Cafe in Woodstock,  9/22 is Lindenwald Harvest Festival in Kinderhook.  Phew!
I'm also making plans to start teaching some music classes in my house.

Global Mala Project

In cooperation with the United Nations International Day of Peace and the Global Mala Project, Namaste will host an evening of 108 minutes of chanting the Sanskrit names of the divine on September 22.  Invocation will begin at 5:30 followed by chanting.  With this project we join our energies with yoga practitioners and studios all over the world in an effort to expand peace worldwide.  Visit www.globalmala.org or see the Global Mala attachment.  You will need to open this attachment with a Word Works Word Processor program.  

Namaste Yoga Center
Gretchen Hein
2568 Route 212, Woodstock, NY
845-679-7532

Jackie Alper passes

From the Sing Out list-

Jackie Alper, 86, social activist and long running host of Mostly Folk on
WRPI 91.1, Troy, NY died last Thursday, September 6, 2007.

She will be missed.

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=620972

Good Times

I think any musician, performer, actor, poet realizes that the best music, performances, theater or poetry doesn't happen in formal settings but in impromtu affairs when the juice just cooks, everthing is magical and alive and what you are doing feels in total harmony with the universe.  
Well that happened last night at good friend Jim Donnelly's.  A serious rehearsal turned into a music party when his friend Marshall dropped by.  We all had a wonderful time.  Jim's place is a civil war era house in the wilds of Stanfordville.   We were doing historic catskill music mixed in with rock n roll.  My hands were sore this morning from playing so much.   I wound up sleeping there and getting home at 8 this morning just in time to go to work.   Driving home I just kept thinking - "I can't do this too often, I con't do this too often - but boy was it fun!"

Broadside Magazine

Broadside Magazine is being revived online.  I was on their board briefly in the 80's.  
Check out: http://www.broadsidemagazine.com   This is a great song resource.

Peace Path

A nice time on the 3rd annual PEACE PATH 9/11 at Fireman's Park near the Kingston bus station. Paula, Connie, Roberta and several others whose names I don't know were there standing with positive signs about peace to honor those who perished on 9/11. I could only be there for a short while. I had my banjo and sang a few songs. There was a great reaction from people driving home from work. Some roll their windows up, some roll them down. Lots fo people honking in support.

The big demonstration was going on at the County Office building to try and get the Legislature to sign on for impeachment. I didn't know about it until later.

Seeing others blogs about 9/11 has raised some of my memories. The morning of 9/11 I saw it on the news as the second plane hit. My wife decided she was going to work that day anyway. She also had a dentist appointment to go to. I was driving when I heard about the Pentagon being hit and decided I needed to take my son out of school. Apparently I wasn't the only parent feeling that way. I felt it was a time of emergency and the family needed to be together. My son was 10 years old but thankfully pretty oblivious to what was happening.
I had some close friends who lived in lower Manhattan, a niece, brother in law who worked there. I had worked on Wall St for many years, my sister had worked in the towers. Everyone woulnd up being allright - but everyone had a story to tell.

I had to play at an Elderhostel that evening at the Holiday Inn in Kingston. People from all over the country, now unable to leave since the airports were shut. My program is usually historic music of the area, including songs about battles with a fair amount of violent references. I had to change the program around, keep it lite and just entertain. Certainly one of the harder gigs I've ever done.

I hope the Peace Path idea grows. Next year I would like to see people on Washington Avenue from 32 all the way to the traffic circle!

Riverfront Festival Poughkeepsie 9/15

9/15/07 Last minute addition! Hudson River Arts Festival - At 4:10PM I’ll be singing and playing slide guitar veena with Anjali Nandedkar’ Hindustani music class. (I am one of her students.). The festival runs from 2pm to 10pm at Waryas Park, in Poughkeepsie where Main Street meets the Hudson River. We’ll be on the “Bluegrass Stage”. Also performing that day is David Bromberg and his Quartet, plus the Angel Band and singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega. RAIN OR SHINE - FREE ADMISSION

I think there are some peace demonstrations earlier in the day in Kingston. 1:00 pm at Academy Green is the rumor.

Peace Path on Tuesday 9/11

Tired of Sept 11th being exploited to promote fear, war, hatred and more fear?   Then join us for the 3rd annual PEACE PATH 9/11 on Tuesday, September 11 from 4:30-6 p.m. at Fireman's Park on Washington Ave. near the Kingston bus station.  We stand with positive signs about peace to honor those who perished on 9/11.   Bring a sign and a chair, if needed. For more information, call Paula at 679-2821.

Fw: Bob Dylan Hits the Classroom

From Mark Rausher

Another side of Bob Dylan

This lifelong iconoclast will appreciate the irony of his lyrics bring taught in British schools

Mike Marqusee
Saturday September 8, 2007
The Guardian

He used to tease critics by claiming he was only "a song and dance man" but, whether he likes it or not, Bob Dylan has entered the canon. To mark next month's National Poetry Day a "Dylan Education Pack" will be issued and pupils in key stages three and four will be invited to study a selection of the master's songs and to compose a Dylan-inspired ballad on the theme of dreams.

In a sense, there's nothing new about secondary school kids burrowing into Dylan. When I was a teenager in the 60s, I was doing just what Britain's current crop of teenagers are being officially encouraged to do - trying to make sense of his lyrics. But I came to Dylan outside school, through a network of contemporaries, an experience linked to a major theme of Dylan's: the need to speak the truth (however inchoate) to power, regardless of expert opinion.

Dylan has been ubiquitous in recent years: films, CDs, books, exhibitions of his drawings, his extraordinary radio show. Indeed, the suspicion will be that curriculum managers are making a cheap bid for popularity. But some of the works students will be reading were written 45 years ago, and a more plausible concession to adolescent fashion (or in some eyes dumbing down) would have been to study Dizzee Rascal.

But Dylan should be in the curriculum on merit. Whether or not his lyrics work as poetry on the printed page, he remains a great writer. His range puts most modern poets to shame: from minimalist eloquence to delirious verbal and sensuous richness, from the comic to the tender via petty resentments and transcendental longings, often within the compass of a single song. One of the songs British students will be looking at next month is a A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall, which contains the wonderfully concise, ominous, arresting line: "The executioner's face is always well hidden". Most of us could spend a lifetime writing and not come up with a gem as bold as this (written when Dylan was 21), invoking some of the ghastlier truths of our age: the ease with which great and lethal powers destroy human life from a safe distance, the need to see through the masks of power, the absence of accountability. You could fill a classroom session just drawing out the implications of that one sentence.

Or look at the insertion of the epithet "hard" before "rain". It's usually claimed that Dylan wrote the song in response to the Cuban missile crisis. In fact, he debuted it some weeks before the Soviet build-up was known to the public. None the less, the song was instantly recognised as a reflection on the crisis of the nuclear age. Today it reads like a prophecy of environmental catastrophe: "I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests, / I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans". The song is a case study in how art can be located in its moment of origin and at the same time outlive that moment.

It is sometimes forgotten that Dylan coupled his populist turn to electric rock'n'roll with demanding lyrics, unfamiliar to his audience in vocabulary, structure and tone. From the beginning, he was waging a battle against boundaries, musically and lyrically. In particular he championed the claims of popular against high culture: "Ezra Pound and TS Eliot / Fighting in the captain's tower / While calypso singers laugh at them / And fishermen hold flowers." His work is full of warnings against overinterpretation ("I ain't lookin' to ... Analyze you, categorize you, finalize you") and institutional "lifelessness". So, yes, it is ironic that he has entered the canon, that students are prescribed what they once had to seek for themselves; but it's an irony to which Dylan's work long ago alerted us. Mike Marqusee is the author of Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan and the 1960s
Mikemarqusee.com