Mirrored from Canning | emanaton

We LOVE to can food at our house! It's a rare and wonderful treat to be able to pull items from our seasonal harvest off the shelf to find them tasting as fresh as the day they came off the vine. It fills us with pride and joy to give out Yule gifts of our berry and fruit jams or to serve guests sauce we put up over the summer using nothing but vegetables and spices grown in our own garden. Best of all, canning is easy to do and costs very little to get started!

All that being said, there is a dark side to canning. If you mess up, you can grow nasty, nasty things in your canning that have unpleasant effects. Botulism, for example, is a very powerful toxin - just one microgram is lethal to humans, blocking nerve function and leading to respiratory and musculoskeletal paralysis. So, on that cheery thought, let me stress that sanitation is key in successful canning...

Greetings Workshop Attendees and Friends,

Here is the bibliography for the Introduction to Celtic Languages workshop:

• Ball, M. J., & Müller, N. (2009). The Celtic languages. New York, NY: Routledge.
• O'Rahilly, T. F. (1936). The Goidels and their predecessors. The Sir John Rhys memorial lecture, British Academy, 1935. London: H. Milford.
• O'Rahilly, T. F. (1972). Irish dialects past and present.
• O'Rahilly, T. F. (1946). Early Irish history and mythology. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
• Russell, P. (1995). An introduction to the Celtic languages. Longman linguistics library. London: Longman.

In addition, here is a list of web site links to various articles of interest mentioned in the Introduction to Celtic Languages workshop. These will open in a new window.

Cymraeg:
• ...

Moving from Outlook to Evolution isn’t easy, and there is no single solution at present which will convert your .pst file (the file in which your Outlook information is stored) into a format Evolution can read. This is because the .pst format is proprietary to Micro$oft, and Micro$oft wants to keep your business.

However, I have successfully moved from Outlook to Evolution, so in the interest of contributing to the Open Source community, I am offering my recipe for this procedure here. In order to use this recipe effectively, you will need to already know how to do the following:

• Use your Window$ search function to locate files on your hard drive.
• Install programs in Window$
• Install programs in Ubuntu
• Find and use the import/export utilities in Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and Evolution
• Use a terminal window in Ubuntu to execute command line arguments

Preparation

Step One: Clean up your mail,...

Sunday morning, I'll be busking with my Irish music friends at the Eastern Market, and Sunday afternoon I'll be in Milford supporting the Crohn's Walk with my West African drumming friends. Come out and see us if you're local!

I've recently received word that the Graduate School at the University of Aberdeen doesn't plan to offer any funding for my Celtic research. Without funding assistance, even the Fulbright won't be able to bridge the gap between my pocketbook and international British fees for three years. So I've decided not to pursue this academic option any further.

In truth, I've been on the fence about this degree for some months now. I'd begun to have reservations about whether or not the Celtic department and I were a good fit for one another based on substantial differences in our communication styles, so this lack of funding came as much a relief to me as anything else. I hasten to write that I definitely think things are turning out for the best here.

Therefore, I have declined the university's offer of admission, and I am making solid plans in other directions. More news when I have it.

These are practice rolls and reel cadences recorded during my lessons with Pamela Meisel in 2007. They're provided here with her permission.

Here is the complete rhythm and song for Fume Fume as practiced by the Orion Community Drummers and taught by Kofi Ameyaw in 2010. Please be advised that these sound files are low-quality.

In order to make use of this article you should:

1.Know what a jig is
2.Be able to read drumming notation

The Hands: Embellishing the Music

I have created a page of exercises that employ the snare drum and straight eighths on the hi-hat symbols. The rhythms sound less like a bodhrán and more like a drum kit, which is to be expected, since they're different instruments. However, by emphasizing beats 1, 3 and/or 4 in a measure and by employing snare drum rim clicks where appropriate, it seems to me that a useful approximation of the bodhrán can happen for drummers in Celtic and Celtic fusion bands.

From here, drummers at the advanced beginner stage (i.e., someone who can keep time and accomplish simple drum fills) should be able to expand the exercises into time and fill patterns of their own creation.

The Exercise

You can download the practice sheet below.

Fefo is an eastern African rhythm I learned while taking a djembe workshop in Chelsea during the early spring of 2007. The files listed below contain the djembe parts for that rhythm and are included here with permission from the instructor of that workshop. Please be advised that these sound files are low-quality.

Tuning Your Kit

The best instructional video I've found for tuning a kit is called: Drum Tuning, Sound & Design. It's a bit pricey as DVDs go, but if you're willing to spend several hundred dollars on a kit, you should be willing to spend $25 to learn how to tune it.

Beginning to Play

The best instructional text I've found for learning to play the instrument is:...

These songs represent my initial foray into making popular Folk and Gaelic lyrics available on my web site. Future songs will be listed individually. The songbook is downloadable below as a PDF file.

In order to make use of this article you should:

1.Know what a jig is
2.Be able to read drumming notation

Introduction

The bodhrán is a versatile instrument, but the drum kit is more versatile, and the combinations of sound it can bring to Celtic music are vast. However, it's important to remember that Celtic music isn't rock and roll, jazz or any other kind of music and can't be played on the kit as if it is.

The Feet: Emphasizing the Music

When playing a jig on the bodhrán, emphasis is almost always placed on beat 1 of the measure. Additionally, emphasis is often placed on beat 4 of the measure, so that beat 1 is emphasized most, while beat 4 might also be emphasized with a rim click or other device. Slightly less often a double-downstroke is used on beats 1 and 3, so that beat 1 is emphasized most, while beat 3 is slightly softer.

This emphasis translates to the drum kit by means...

After Makaly's head split, I took several pictures of the djembe, head and weave and posted them on my web site. My hope was that I might find a replacement Fiberskyn head for the drum and then write an instructional journal entry about how I made the switch.

Sadly, I couldn't find a Fiberskyn head to match my drum, so I sold it. However, several people have found my djembe photos during their online searches, so I have decided to leave them up and point to them specifically in this entry. They're instructional, in their own way, because they show the way a goat skin head can split, the way a traditional djembe body is constructed and the way a djembe weave is put together.

So, here they are. Hope you find them helpful: Djembe Repair.

In order to make use of this article you should:

1.Know what a reel is
2.Be able to read drumming notation

Introduction

A basic reel rhythm on the bodhrán normally utilizes a strong bass note on the first and/or second beats of the measure, which serves to 'drive the tune'. On the kit, this is accomplished with the bass drum followed by ornamentation on the snare, toms and hi-hat in beats three and four.

The Exercises

These exercises follow that framework in that they employ a bass note in beats one and two and ornaments with the other drums thereafter. Unlike the jig exercises, the sheet music below is not divided into foot and hand work. Rather, it progresses from rudiments in the first exercise to more complex rhythms in the second. An intermediate bodhrán and kit drummer should be able to improvise from there to create exercises that cultivate skill in more complex Celtic kit rhythms....

This is Kofi Ameyaw singing the lyrics to Naki, a lullaby in the Ga language, during a monthly clinic for the Orion Community Drummers in 2009. This piece was popularized by Obbo Tete Adde. Please be advised that these sound files are low-quality.

Here is the complete rhythm for Kotejura as practiced by the Orion Community Drummers in 2009. Please be advised that these sound files are low-quality.

River Tam danced to this tune in an episode of Firefly. It's a Scottish jig and beloved to me for its connection to one of my all-time favorite science fiction series.

Many thanks to the Whistle This! web site for providing me with the resources to learn this tune. To hear it performed by other musicians on the Whistle This! web site, click here.

I am delighted to announce that my poem entitled, "The Interstitial Fairy Demolition Crew Casts a Circle" will appear in the Summer Solstice 2010 issue of Eternal Haunted Summer.

I am delighted to announce that my short poem entitled, "A Path Without Bones" will appear in Eternal Haunted Summer. This is a relatively new online market for Pagan fiction, poetry and reviews, and I wholeheartedly support its endeavor to connect Pagan writing with Pagan readers. Do go check it out!

My short poem "Fetters" is now available in the Winter 2010 issue of Goblin Fruit.

I am delighted to report that my short poem "Fetters" has been accepted for publication in the Winter 2010 edition of the very fine poetry journal Goblin Fruit. Mike Allen of Mythic Delirium repute is guest-editing this edition.

My short story "The Ruin of Beltany Ring" and my poem "Godtouched" are now in print in the inaugural issue of Witches & Pagans.

I am delighted to announce that my poem entitled, "The Harper" will appear in Lorelei Signal's 'Best of 2008' anthology.

"Akhila, Divided" has been favorably reviewed by Michael M. Jones of SF Site. The full text of the review can be found at the foregoing link.