The Mongoose That Played Sitar

Ulric plays an original composition on the guitar that is heavily inspired by "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."* In the song, a mongoose** travels throughout India carrying a sitar. He encounters different animals (a tiger, a jackal, etc.) who want to eat him. The mongoose challenges each animal to a sitar-playing contest. If the other animal wins the contest, that animal gets to eat the mongoose, but if the mongoose wins, he gets to continue on his journey. Fortunately, the mongoose is a virtuoso sitar-player and escapes each time with his life. As far as I know, there is no golden sitar for the grand prize. Ulric prefers to keep the story realistic, after all.

Addendum: Ulric says, "The Mongoose also pulls out other instruments (fiddle, Ud, ukulele, Japanese stringed instrument, etc), but those are kind of random."

By the way, here is a clip of Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello playing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" with bassoons. (Fuse#8 and Goddess of Clarity should be pleased.) The sound quality is low, and I recommend you use headphones in order to appreciate the nuances of Colbert's and Dinello's bassoon performances. Urgh.

Notes:
*This is a McSweeny's link. Cheers to Nonny!
**The plural of mongoose is "mongooses," not mongeese, in case you were curious. I was.

Letters from Father Christmas

Letters from Father Christmas is my favorite book by J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien wrote and illustrated these stories in the form of letters for his children from Father Christmas almost every year from the early 1920's into the 1940's. The North Polar Bear, Father Christmas's assistant, is the most compelling character of the letters, as he inevitably sets off chain-reactions due to his clumsiness. While Polar Bear is more bumbling than mischievous, he is definitely a prototype for Brad the Gorilla.

My mother intended to follow Tolkien's example by writing St. Nicholas letters for us, but due to time and energy constraints, wrote only three letters over the course of our childhood. The one I remember best was around the time Ulric wanted a fire-hat with a siren akin to the one his best friend had. St. Nicholas had full intentions of delivering one, but when one of the elves tried it on, Polar Bear thought there was a real fire and turned on all the sprinklers and hoses. After Polar Bear found out it was a false alarm, he felt bad, as many of the presents were ruined. Somehow, the firehat got so water-logged that the siren stopped working. Ulric was a bit disappointed that his plastic red fire-hat was of the quiet sort, but he made up for it by supplying siren noises of his own.

This post has been updated since its original publication.

A blurb about Brad the Gorilla

Galatea, I can't think of a single story that would involve a monkey. Ulric, I'm drawing a blank on anything remotely clever involving your "that's not cricket" phrase. Some days are like that. I submit this blurb for both of you simply to fulfill the requirements. I need to move on. Don't give up on me, just give me another word.

Respectfully yours,
Alkelda


Brad the gorilla has been in our family for a long time. Currently, he lives in the basement with my brother, Ulric. Brad is as vulgar as Ulric is courteous. He spills cornflakes on the floor in the kitchen and eats the leftover vegetable korma that I was saving for my lunch. Brad drives our car without permission and brings it back with dents and dings. (“At least he brings it back,” Bede says.) Brad sheds hairs in my bread bowls, chases the kitties, and teaches Lucia rude words like “mongoose” and “turnip.”

I suppose it’s “not cricket” to complain. After all, Brad makes incredible bananas foster and gives Lucia free guitar lessons. What monkey do you know who could do the same?

Frances of Rome rides shotgun

I got my driver's license the day before I left college. I barely used it until a few months after I got married, when my job required me to have a car. Bede, however, did not have a license at all, but I said that I would not give birth until he passed his driving test. Bede got his license three weeks before Lucia was born.

In a bizarre twist-of-fate involving a cross-country trip followed by transmission trouble, Ulric, my younger brother, now often relies on Bede and me for rides. As a toddler, Ulric would sit on Aunt Brigid's lap and steer the wheel. (This happened in the days before car-seats were popular. Grown-ups put their babies in cardboard boxes to keep them from sliding all over the car-seats, and would stick out their arms to block their children from hurtling forward during sudden stops.) By the time I was in grad school, Ulric was giving me rides because I was too chicken to drive on the Beltway, or anywhere else for that matter.

Now, in addition to everyone else, Bede and I are probably indebted to Frances of Rome, the patron saint of motorists. France of Rome had a guardian angel who would light her path at night to keep her safe. Frances of Rome wasn't driving a car, but if she had been, she probably would have had a glow-in-the-dark Mary statue on the dashboard. I have no such icon, but you can only imagine how enraged I was when vandals broke into the car last December and stole my matchbox travel shrine. I have since replaced it. Inside the box is a little scrap of paper with this prayer:

"Our Lady of the Highway, be with us on our journey, for all your ways are beautiful and all your paths are peace. O God who with unspeakable providence does rule and govern the world, grant unto us, your servants, through the intercession of our watchful mother Mary, to be protected from all danger and brought safely to the end of our journey. Amen."


Street shrines often provided the only light for roads at night in the eras before electricity.