carbonel

So this is all a bit convoluted, but I wanted to get it down before I forget. If anyone else finds it interesting, so much the better.

Last night, I was watching the movie The Searchers (part of the 4-star movie project), and there's a bit where you see soldiers marching what appear to be Native American women and children to a fort, and the music playing during that was very familiar, but I couldn't remember the name.

I fired up SoundHound, which identified the song as "The Searchers, 'Crossing the Snowbank.'" Which, just like the old joke about the guy who's lost and figures out he's over Redmond, WA, because of the unhelpfulness of the answer, was both correct and useless.

So I went a-googling. The first thing I wanted to do was eliminate one possibility, but I couldn't remember the name. I just remembered that it was the tune associated with George Custer. I didn't think that was it, but I wanted to be sure. Google told me that that the George Custer tune was "Garryowen." I listened to it and compared, and realized, yes, that was exactly the tune in the movie. Which turned out to make sense, since it's the tune associated with the 7th Cavalry.

And then I remembered that it was at a long-ago Winnipeg Folk Festival where I'd first heard the tune "Garryowen," except that it was entirely different words put to the same tune, and it was about dying to that tune. It was sung, I thought, by Tom Russell.

Google was less helpful this time, but I eventually found a thread on Mudcat about an entirely different version of "Gary Owen." And buried deep in the comments, someone had posted lyrics to "Gary Owen's Lament," to be sung to the tune of the original "Garryowen."

I went over to YouTube and found one version the song under that title, and more under the title "Mick Ryan's Lament," about a pair of brothers who left Ireland. One died at Vicksburg, and the narrator died at Little Big Horn. It turns out that while Tom Russell may have sung the song, it was written by Robert Emmet Dunlap. Which is why searching on "Garryowen" and "Tom Russell" had availed me not in finding the song.

This is the complete version of "Mick Ryan's Lament" performed by Tim O'Brien. And here's a page with an excerpt of the song by Robert Emmet Dunlap. Apparently he's turned the song and (fictional) story into an entire performance. I'd love to be able to see it someday.

But in the meantime, I'm glad to have tracked down the answer to a question that's been niggling at me for years. Thus the rarely used xkcd icon on this post.

From 1966 to 1973, most years I went to YWCA Camp Newaygo (in Newaygo, MI; thus the name) during the month of August. It was an all-girls camp, not at all fancy, but I learned camping and swimming and a bit of horseback riding there. It also had its own traditions and songs, and I loved going there. For complicated reasons, I never worked there as a counselor, which is something I regret.

The camp went through some difficult years in the 1990s, and the YWCA almost sold the site to a land developer. The story goes that the bulldozers were in place as the reprieve occurred, but I don't know if a story improvement loan was invoked for that. In any case, a consortium bought the camp, and it's now part of a nonprofit called True North. There was recently another major land purchase, and the camp now owns a mile of waterfront, and is thriving.

There's an alumnae reunion every five years, which unfortunately always seems to conflict with Fourth Street. I was at the reunion in 2006, but missed the last one. This one I decided to attend, though I was sorry to miss Fourth Street.

I flew into the Muskegon airport, which I'd never known existed before this, but turned out to be more convenient than the Grand Rapids one, and got a ride to camp with one of the camp staff. I appreciated that, since otherwise I would have had to rent a car.

When I was there in 2006, there was the start of a major capital campaign to renovate and add on to the lodge. I wasn't there in 2009 for the grand opening of said lodge, so this was the first time I'd seen it. It used to just be a big assembly room and dining room, with some basement areas for storage and miscellaneous use. (I remember learning table tennis in that basement.) Now the basement is a ground floor -- the hill it was on was dug out -- and there are several dorms, plus bathroom and shower facilities.

The weekend was jam-packed with activities, starting of with a canoe/kayak/tubing trip on the Muskegon River (I canoed), lots of singing, zipping on the three new ziplines, a wetlands trail walk (built over a sphagnum bog; there's a portion where you can see the 50-foot pole emerging unoxidized from the muck), water sports, and a trip to see the new properties.

It was great to see some old friends the years I attended, and see that some old traditions remain and some new ones have been established. I noticed that some of the camp songs had been visited by the folk tradition. Some had new words, and a lot of them had actions to go with them that had never existed in my time.

And then, sadly, things ended after lunch on Sunday, and I got a ride back to the airport from someone driving in that direction. My plane didn't leave until 6:20, so there were several hours sitting around at the airport. There was one other person there, and I later saw him stretched out sleeping on the floor. I was tempted, but didn't follow suit. Muskegon to ORD was a short hop, then I had another hour and a half to wait at ORD. That flight was full, and I took a bump to the 10:30 flight in exchange for a travel voucher.

I finally got home shortly before 1 am. Morwen immediately showed up demanding food. I'd left food for her on Friday, but it was probably long gone by the time I got home. So I fed her, and brought the suitcase toward the bedroom to extract whatever was necessary so I could go to bed.

And here's where the icon for this post comes into play. Normally I use the kitten-with-mouse icon for life's minor annoyances. This time, I'm literalizing the metaphor. As I walked into my bedroom, I saw something on the floor. At a second look, it was a nice, plump mouse. I shrieked. I didn't mean to; it was totally involuntary. At a third look, it was also very dead. No marks, no blood, but also no movement. I went into the kitchen to get some paper towels, and told Morwen (who was still chomping away) that she was a mighty hunter, though of course I have only inferential evidence that she was responsible for the corpse. I gathered it up in the paper towels and took it outside to the garbage can.

In the 14 years I've been living in this house, I'd never seen a mouse until now. I guess a dead mouse is better than a live one, but I hope one dead mouse doesn't mean a colony of live ones I don't know about.