Politics – Page 6 – Ellis Hollow

Sunday music: John McCutcheon

In addition to picking the tar out of any instrument you put in front of him (when we saw his one-man show circa 1980, he played guitar, piano, fiddle, banjo, dulcimer, hammered dulcimer, bodhran, juice harp, harmonica, and his entire body in a jawbonin’ solo), John McCutcheon is the master of the sanity amidst the madness ballad. (See Christmas in the Trenches, for example.)

Streets of Sarajevo is in a similar vein.

McCutheon plays in Ithaca Saturday, 3/28, Visit Cornell Folk Song Society for details.

‘You can’t spell smart without art’

On the NYTimes Measure for Measure blog, Suzanne Vega explains Whatâ€™s a Melody For? I won’t say she buried the lede, but the post ends with Tom Chapin singing his testimony in Albany to protest cuts in state funding for the arts:

Vega concludes:

The right combination of words and, yes, melody at the right moment can have a powerful effect. The latest news is that $50 million has been allocated to the N.E.A. as part of the recovery package, in part because of the organized lobbying efforts of arts advocates across the country.

Just think of a world without art, without song â€” how would we celebrate? What would we dream of? What would set our imaginations free? How could we express our emotions for our husbands and wives and children? Celebrate a birthday? A melody is for expressing emotions: delight, passion, sadness. It reminds us of what we have felt and experienced before, in our own personal code of emotion and history. Priceless!

Friday videos

Keith Obermann last night on Countdown defended his degree from Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. We’ve spent months pulling together these videos to get prospective students to come study Plant Sciences at Cornell. But Keith makes the case much more succinctly — and energetically.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The best pranks are ones where the ‘victim’ is completely drawn in, thousands of people are in on the prank, and no one is hurt. Add a basketball theme and you’ve got the best prank ever.

Watch Prank War 7: The Half Million Dollar Shot on CollegeHumor

And of course there’s the sleepwalking dog from the FailBlog.

Verlyn Klinkenborg lauds increase in Iowa farms

It’s a short read. Iowa has gained 4,000 farms since 2002, reversing a decades-long trend.

Most are small, and the farmers are younger.

Nationwide, there are some 300,000 new farms since 2002. And the farmers? More diverse than ever, including a higher number of women. This is a genuine source of hope for American agriculture

Hallelujah

The Inauguration at Last, an illustrated essay by Maria Kalman in her And the Pursuit of Happiness blog at the New York Times. Lots of fine floral imagery.