No.934: A Summer Integrated Humanities Program // Week Six

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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?