The Big White Farmhouse

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Welcome to Week 6 of the Big White Farmhouse’s Summer Integrated Humanities program!  Let’s return to some lighter themes this week.

Just jumping in?  You can find the links to the previous weeks here: Week 1 // Week 2 // Week 3 // Week 4 // Week 5

ARTIST OF THE WEEK: JOHN SINGER SARGENT

“John Singer Sargent was the most successful portrait painter of his era, as well as a gifted landscape painter and watercolorist.” (via)

Painting realistic portraits requires incredible skill!  His controversial painting of Madame X would make an interesting rabbit trail.

KINDNESS

“Edgar Guest was an English-born poet who spent much of his life in America (and is widely acknowledged as American). He’s often known as the ‘People’s Poet’ due to his highly relatable, optimistic poems on everyday life.” (via)  The poem below reflects on the far-reaching effects of a kind word or deed – inspiring!

Kindness
by Edgar Albert Guest

One never knows
How far a word of kindness goes;
One never sees
How far a smile of friendship flees.
Down, through the years,
The deed forgotten reappears.
One kindly word
The souls of many here has stirred.
Man goes his way
And tells with every passing day,
Until life’s end:
“Once unto me he played the friend.”
We cannot say
What lips are praising us to-day.
We cannot tell
Whose prayers ask God to guard us well.
But kindness lives
Beyond the memory of him who gives.

AN EXPLORATION INTO FOLK MUSIC

“…what is folk music? The most simple explanation is that it is rooted in what claims to be. Folk music is music that comes from the people—ordinary people experiencing the everyday joys and sorrows of life. Typically, folk music is performed with acoustic instruments (as opposed to electric instruments like the electric guitar or the keyboard). This keeps the musicians connected to the earthiness and realism that folk music organically proclaims. It is not music distorted by technology. It is music that has its roots in trees and rocks and minerals that expresses the materials of the human experience. In other words, folk music uses acoustic tonalities because they connect the musician to the natural world. This, in turn, allows the musician to contemplate and express raw human nature.” (via)

I am not knowledgeable in this area at all, so I found this list of 100 Most Essential Folk Songs to give us a head start.  Below are links to the top five songs or you can use the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the article above to play all 100:

• This Land is Your Land – Woody Guthrie
• Blowin’ in the Wind – Bob Dylan
• City of New Orleans – Steve Goodman
• If I Had a Hammer – Pete Seeger
• Where Have All The Flowers Gone – The Kingston Trio

FOR THE BIRDS…

The reason for studying any bird is to ascertain what it does; in order to accomplish this, it is necessary to know what the bird is, learning what it is being simply a step that leads to a knowledge of what it does.  But, to hear some of our bird devotees talk, one would think that to be able to identify a bird is all of bird study.  On the contrary, the identification of birds is simply the alphabet to the real study, the alphabet by means of which we may spell out the life habits of the bird.  To know these habits is the ambition of the true ornithologist, and should likewise be the ambition of the beginner…” – Handbook of Nature Study, p.27

Things to Do…

• Sit outside in silence and listen for bird calls.  Which can you identify?
• Invest in a feeder. (When we lived in the suburbs, we owned a suction cup window feeder and loved it!)
• Research ways you can create a bird-friendly yard with this post from Audubon.  Maybe you can do some planting in the fall?

MISCELLANEOUS RABBIT TRAILS…

+ Check your local offerings for the opportunity to attend a concert in the park.  They are most often free and there’s nothing like listening to music in community and outdoors!

+ Explore the Smithsonian Folkways catalog for tons of examples of American folk artists.

+ Get in that folk music spirit and pick up an instrument!  Folk music instruments vary widely depending on the region and culture, but popular and inexpensive choices are the ukelele and harmonica.  Maybe you have a guitar collecting dust in the closet?

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission of any sale made at no extra cost to you.

Welcome to Week 5 of the Big White Farmhouse’s Summer Integrated Humanities program!  Today we’re talking about power.

Just jumping in?  You can find the links to the previous weeks here: Week 1 // Week 2 // Week 3 // Week 4

ARTIST OF THE WEEK: BENJAMIN WEST

Benjamin West “was an American-born painter of historical, religious, and mythological subjects who had a profound influence on the development of historical painting in Britain.” (via)

I first learned about Benjamin West when reading the book, Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin, to my kids for school.  “Because Benjamin’s family didn’t approve of his art, he had to make his own painting supplies. The local Native Americans taught him how to mix paints from earth, clay, and plants. And his cat, Grimalkin, sacrificed hair from his tail for Ben’s brushes.”  Making paints from natural materials may make an interesting rabbit trail!

A LITTLE MORE SHAKESPEARE

Macbeth “is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, estimated to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the physically violent and damaging psychological effects of political ambitions and power.” (via)

You can read the play with the book or use it to follow along with this adaptation from the Folger Theatre and Two River Theater Company.

“OZYMANDIAS” BY PERCY SHELLEY

This poem is a metaphor about the fleeting nature of political power.  How transient this life is!  Very thought provoking.  Check out this poem guide for more thoughts.

Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

OBSERVING THE STARS ONE MORE TIME

This week, we’re going to search the skies for the Summer Triangle stars: Vega, Altair and Deneb.

The three stars of the Summer Triangle appear similar in brightness. Vega in the constellation Lyra the Lyre is the brightest of the trio and the 5th brightest of all stars. In Carl Sagan’s novel “Contact,” Vega is the source of the first message ever received from an alien civilization. The 1997 movie version features actress Jodie Foster’s quest for the senders of the Vega message. Back in the real world, we’ve yet to hear anything from the possible inhabitants of the Vega system, but researchers are listening to Vega and thousands of other stars every day, just in case.

Altair, in Aquila the Eagle, is another Hollywood star. In the 1956 film “Forbidden Planet,” the fourth planet in the Altair system (Altair IV) is home to the relics of an ancient alien civilization and to an eccentric Earth scientist and his beautiful daughter (Walter Pidgeon and Anne Francis). Altair is the 2nd brightest member of the Summer Triangle and the 13th brightest star. We don’t know if Altair is surrounded by any planets, so Altair IV may or may not exist.

Number three in the Summer Triangle and the 20th brightest star is Deneb, which marks the tail of Cygnus the Swan. Alas, Deneb has never starred in a major motion picture, but it has other claims to fame. Whereas Vega and Altair are relatively close to us in astronomical terms—25 and 17 light-years respectively—Deneb is much farther away, an estimated 2,600 light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year—a big, BIG number!

Read the rest of the article here.  (You can even print a sky map there too.)

MISCELLANEOUS RABBIT TRAILS…

+ The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli has a controversial take on power: the author contends that immoral acts are justifiable if they achieve political glory.  In his view, the end justifies the means.  Do you agree or disagree?

+ The Metamorphoses: Tales of Change audio story series “involve[s] some form of transformation and explore[s] many aspects of human nature: greed, curiosity, vanity, generosity, arrogance, creativity.”

+ Can you find Shakespearean themes in modern-day movies?  This article, 25 Best Movies You Didn’t Realize Are Based on Shakespeare Plays, can help!