Harald Sohlberg: Fisherman's Cottage (1907)
Good evening, Kibitzers!
Lovely summer weather here today, but we’re headed right back to humid 90s this week. But, we don’t have a scorching drought, floods, fires, tornadoes, or a cat 5 hurricane, so it’s not that bad. I hope everyone is safe!
Update: Many people in the Caribbean are not safe. Denise Oliver Velez diaries it here, with details on what World Central Kitchen is doing. In the thread, Pogoatty lists some additional worthy donation links.
So, funny story: As I mentioned at the outset of Debate Hell, I had a rapid change of plan about tonight's KTK. I had just the thing to change to, too, because I'd been watching this extremely calming YouTube channel called S.S. Marigold. It's of a species of YouTube in which someone does soothing things in their attractive and perfectly orderly home, often without sound other than quiet, ASMR-type noises. To enjoy these, you have to be willing to suspend disbelief and accept that this person lives in a home (that they often describe as "shabby") that would normally be found only in a magazine. But that's a nice story, right? Who wouldn't like at least an occasional vacation in that lovely, calm life? I happily started assembling a diary in a plain text document, as I often do to reduce my vulnerability to vanishing diary drafts.
The S.S. Marigold is a smallish, 70s-vintage houseboat, moored at a dock in a large lake, probably in northern Illinois or Wisconsin -- there are cicadas. A lady lives on this houseboat with her two cats and a carefully-curated array of mid-century collectibles. (These just look like flotsam from childhood to us older folks, but I think this household was the result of a more deliberate process.)
On her channel, she quietly marks the passing of the seasons by decorating, cooking simple dishes, planting a container garden, and shooting moody nature footage. It's all very cozy, peaceful, and relatively inconsequential activity, the sort of thing I myself am all about when it's freakout time in the real world.
SO THEN, after I'd watched allll the videos and carefully selected a group of them, and saved their links in my text doc and written descriptions, only then did I open a new DK draft and start pasting. And guess what? S.S. Marigold videos can't be embedded! I so seldom run into that, it never occurred to me to check. So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to link to some of them anyway, so you can go be soothed if you like, and then I'm going to add a bunch of boat-themed music and invite you to add your favorites.
Episode 1: preparations for fall include potting autumnal flowers, baking zucchini-carrot muffins, and making a chicken casserole for supper. If she makes something, she generally gives a recipe in the notes on the YouTube page, and that is true here. [8:02]
Episode 6, Christmas: Putting up lights and decorations, stringing cranberries; making coconut chicken curry. [9:47]
Episode 17: Spring! Many vegetables, herbs, and flowers are planted in pots on the deck and dock, and a couple of attractive salads and a stylish cocktail are prepared. [13:21]
Episode 18: Further eye-popping deck gardening, and a sunset canoe ride. Plus, cheesy corn fritters for lunch, and another fancy cocktail. The white kitty is determined to eat a cicada, but the cicada is not into it. [13:47]
Time for music! Crosby, Stills, & Nash: Southern Cross (official video, from their 1982 album Daylight Again) [3:54]
Hues Corporation: Rock the Boat (Dutch TV show TopPop, June 1974) [3:15]
Tatiana Eva-Marie & Avalon Jazz Band: La Mer (Beyond The Sea original French lyrics) [3:29]
Fats Domino: When My Dreamboat Comes Home (unknown venue, 1956, featuring Herb Hardesty on tenor sax) [2:24]
Heart: Dreamboat Annie (unknown venue, ~1977) [2:42]
Playing for Change: Otis Redding's Dock of the Bay (This 2011 recording celebrates the two lead vocalists, Roger Ridley and Grandpa Elliott. Both have now walked on, but at the time of the video's release, only Ridley had passed.) [4:14]
Styx: Come Sail Away (Winterland, January 1978) [9:01]
Harry Belafonte: Jamaica Farewell (Ed Sullivan Show, June 1956) [3:41]
For jakedog: Jimmy Buffett and The Coral Reefer Band: One Particular Harbour (Miami Marine Stadium, 1986, from the video Live By The Bay). Steel drum solos by the band's pannist, Robert Greenidge. [7:13]
Finally, the not-even-exhaustive Ship of Fools section: Google’s AI search results tell us that between six and sixteen different songs by that title exist. (I think the smaller number is how many were written and performed between the 1960s and 1980s.) It seemed like the right song to go big on, given the circumstances of this diary, but it’s actually a whole other diary!
World Party: Ship of Fools (official video, 1987) [3:52]
Robert Plant: Ship of Fools (Madison Square Garden, NYC, May 1988) [5:46]
Grateful Dead: Ship Of Fools (Rich Stadium, Orchard Park, NY, July 1990) [8:00]
I am torn between my concern that explaining jokes is needless and makes them not funny, and my concern that no one will know what the hell I’m talking about. Please ignore this explain-the-joke glossary when it turns out you don’t need it: