Small Streams

The Self-Basting Society

Imagine our waste turned into energy. A company called Changing World Technologies has created a plant in Missouri that converts turkey guts into petroleum. Boingboing posted this link that they learned from here. I posted the following on boingboing's QuickTopics:

Was looking at the math and thinking that they will probably only produce 240 barrels of oil, instead of 600 barrels. (I'm basing calculations on turkeys having approximately same chemical composition as people.) Maybe ConAgra will be importing turkey guts so they can run the converter at capacity.

Even at capacity -- 600 barrels -- they probably will only make a half a million dollars a year. Not a great return but probably better than most mutual funds.

Then again, if you otherwise had to pay to get rid of your turkey guts, this would be an improvement.

Noted with Pleasure

It gave me such pleasure to read the words of my wife, Elizabeth Perry, in her charming electronically-enabled journal.

New Lost City Ramblin'

My friend John lent me a copy of New Lost City Ramblers' Songbook, a compilation of old time, mostly Southern Appalachian songs. It has lyrics, chords, melodies, and old photos from recording company promotions or WPA-type photo projects. During the '50s, 60s, and beyond, the New Lost City Ramblers played and sang these songs and others, discovered and preserved a lot of great music, and -- as noted in John Cohen's foreword -- styles.

More than most others, the three original members (Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tom Paley) and later member Tracy Schwartz propagated country blues, bluegrass, cajun, and traditional music. They searched out old masters like Doc Boggs, Roscoe Holcomb and Carribean guitarist Joseph Spence. They also made definitive recordings, to me at least, of songs like "I Truly Understand," "Little Moses," and "When First unto This Country."

When they weren't being earnest purveyors of music and styles, much of their stage patter was vaudevillian, after the old vaudeville, and before the new vaudeville, and they weren't above self-parody. One of my favorite lines was the one about singing "Old Bell Cow" to an old, Appalachian farmer who took out his tape machine to record The New Lost City Ramblers. As the years went by, Mike Seeger sometimes also prefaced a song by saying "We learned this one off a New Lost City Ramblers record."