A rant: Content creators vs. parasites. Skimmers, aggregators, "curators," affiliate marketers and - real middlemen. Value added?

There's an old stone hand-dug well on my property and I thought it might be fun to put up some sort of pump on it. So I looked for antique pumps in Google and found a site called (more or less) Antique Pumps.
"Just the thing!" I thought. So I looked on the site and it said "Here You Can Find All the Antique Pumps You Could Possibly Want." But here's the thing, all it did was take me to eBay listings of "antique pumps."

Really? This is a site which has earned its slot in my search results?

Earlier today the aggregator site Thumbtack sent me (and sent, I suppose, all other vendors on the site) a harsh email saying, "from now on we will not supply the names of the people looking for your services, because you might contact them off our site (and we would not get our cut). Some rotten apples spoil it for all the rest."

Really? What value does Thumbtack add in order to justify the cut it takes? In my view, it removes value. If a bride searching for wedding music finds our site (Wedding Music in North Carolina) on her own, she can talk to me, we can agree on details and special requests in real time, like real people. And the gig is much more likely to happen.

Thumbtack, in order to preserve its business model of skimming every transaction, makes that impossible. We can send imprisoned emails through its own system but we can't talk to each other. And the cost to this bride is higher. She gets worse service for more money.

I see that people are now calling themselves "curators" - that is to say, the value they add is that they find stuff that's already on the internet. Pinterest is famous for "losing" the original creator of images which may be repinned hundreds of times.

Don't even get me started on "affiliate marketing." Really? You deserve a cut for telling me to buy something on Amazon?

There are middlemen who really earn their keep. For instance, musical agents in the old days may have taken 10-15% of the money paid for an engagement, but they may have earned that money. They may have found the gig or talked up the band or persuaded the client to pay more. Real estate agents in the old days dealt with fussy buyers and fussy sellers and sweated out compromises that got houses sold. I think matchmakers provided an equally difficult and valuable service.

Thumbtack.com and other sites of that nature take hefty cuts but provide no service. If you buy something through a directory site, you are paying extra but getting nothing for the extra percent you pay.

A real middleman bravely undertakes to finds 1400 customers to buy the 1400 widgets that come in a crate. The customers don't have to talk to the scary wholesaler and the wholesaler - who hates customers - doesn't have to talk to them. That middleman earns a cut.

One of my ancestors was a middleman in the fur trade. He went tromping out in the mud in the back country and bargained with feral trappers who never took baths - he paid them for the pelts and cleaned them up (I hope) and sold them in nice tidy piles to the businesses that made fancy fur coats. He earned his cut.

If you consider yourself an aggregator or a curator in your eyes, I ask you to consider whether you are actually a parasite. What are you really adding to the world? (Please let me know in the comments.)

What the world needs more of: people who bring new things into it. What the world needs less of: people who recirculate previously recirculated bits of gossip and astounding stories about possums falling in love with armadillos.

Visiting the "Go Native Tree Farm" in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

I'm in Philadelphia visiting with my daughter and I suggested we go visit the Go Native Tree Farm in Manheim, PA (Lancaster County).

Traffic around Philadelphia is murderously miserable but we finally got out of town heading towards Amish country. It was Sunday so nothing was open, but we drove through some lovely scenery on the way to the tree farm.

Hans Rosenfeld is the proud proprietor of Go Native. He's a young man who's been interested in native species of trees for many years and showed us his robust assortment of hard-to-find native trees. I wanted to get some sassafras trees, which used to be common through North Carolina but now have been eaten away by the deer.

I came away with 4 sassafras trees and:

• A blight-resistant American Chestnut (Castenea dentata) from stock Hans collected himself;
  
• A couple pretty little Allegheny Chinquapins (Castanea pumila);
  
• A hackberry (Celtis occidentalis) - I bought one that did quite well a few years ago, but Jethro ate it...
  
• A persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) to keep the one I had already company;
  
• An American beech (Fagus grandifolia);
  
• A mulberry (Morus rubra)

Hans is very gung ho about hickorie trees ("how can you have the classic East Coast oak and hickory forest without hickories?) and has developed a way to grow them without mangling or stunting their long tap roots. Their native tree price list makes for happy browsing. You can like Go Native Tree Farm on Facebook. The farm, which has been in the family for four generations, is at 678 South Chiques Road in Manheim, PA; call for an appointment.

New cd of Yiddish theater songs from Poland; new klezmer - cabaret orchestra class held in Durham NC this summer

This has been a very busy month. I finished the first of the Itzik Zhelonek cds (click at left to hear the songs) with the help of bass Randy Kloko, pianists Aviva Enoch and Roger Lynn Spears, guitarist Ken Bloom, and Jerry Brown at the Rubber Room recording studio. You can read the ongoing saga of the search for the Itzik Zhelonek melodies (he printed only the texts) at Polish Jewish cabaret: Yiddish theater songs from Warsaw.

For the last two summers I've been on the staff of Danny Gotham's PickNBow Folk Music Retreat Weekend at the Murphey School in Durham, NC. This year's camp will be held from Friday evening July 26 to Sunday late afternoon July 28. This year Joe Newberry will join us, there will be a concert by Craver Hicks Watson and Newberry, and...

... I'm going to see if I can get people interested in creating a klezmer / cabaret orchestra. I figure if I get five players that will be enough. It will be geared both for people who've never played klezmer music before but would like to try, and people who love klezmer music already but don't get many chances to play it. Also, since my love these days is cabaret music from Warsaw, I thought I'd introduce people to the ravishingly lovely tangos, foxtrots, and other delights of the Warsaw cabaret.

Are you interested in trying klezmer and cabaret music? Contact me at jane@mappamundi.com

Don't count your chickens or...

Fine Yiddish warning:

Don't rub your belly when the little fish is still in the river.

Patsh zikh nisht in baykhele ven fishele iz nokh in taykhele.

Duke Power: worst customer service. Wealthy monopoly shafts customers. Vent!

I am writing to you, gentle readers, from my cellphone, because half an hour ago while I was recording Yiddish songs in my living room, a Duke Energy guy walked up to the house and cut off the power. (I didn't realize it until he was gone because my recording studio was running off a laptop battery.)

Turns out my bill was overdue. I've been a customer of this bloated company since 1981 and always pay my bill. But somehow, without my permission, they seem to have transferred me to a paperless billing system. OK, except I don't get any emails. I also didn't get a phone call. Where are the robocalls when they would actually help?

That guy who cut off the power, I'm absolutely sure he saw me through the window, but instead of ringing the doorbell he pulled the plug and left.

Is this how well a paperless system works? Duke Energy doesn't have to care how its customers are treated because we have no choice, they are the only game in town. Like Time Warner Cable, another wretchedly mismanaged widely loathed monopoly around here.

Just sitting here thinking about the food that's melting in the refrigerator, the work I can't do, and how much I hate being treated this way after decades of paying my bill like a good customer that deserved better than this.

It's Mothering Sunday! Time for pancakes and a beautiful English folksong.

I was contacted by a pastor in the England's Lake District this week - he wanted to know if it would be ok if he played our version of "Mothering Sunday" for his congregation this weekend. (That's his church on the right there.)

I was amazed. It always has seemed to me that the English loathe Americans singing their songs, but he said no, they are not that xenophobic, and that he loved it and knew they would love it too. It made my day. Here it is if you want a listen:



My mother died when she was 50, which didn't seem so young to me at the time, I was 26, but now I have outlived her by almost 20%. I have lived to see my daughter married, which my mother didn't, and soon - if I don't get hit by a truck - I will have lived to see a grandchild, which my mother never did.

Jacqueline Schwab, Robbie Link and I recorded this on "Sedgefield Fair" almost twenty years ago. It's a folksong from a time when many families in England could not afford to keep their children; the boys were sent away to work on faraway farms and the girls were sent out as maids. The kids worked six days a week and rarely could spare the time to travel back to their homes. One of the few times the family might be together was "Mothering Sunday." The children are supposed to make pancakes and the mother sits back and tries not to think about all the mess they're making in the kitchen.

Laboring in obscure corners: the saga of Foxtrot Katinka

I've been immersed in a huge project of trying to find lost tunes for about 130 songs popular in Warsaw, Poland, between the wars. This search, which has consumed all my blogging time, is quite a treasure hunt.

It took a while to figure out that the tune for one of my lost songs (which is not really a song, more an advertisement for a sock-and-handkerchief store run by a Mr. Boymvol) was this: Katinka, a Russian Fox Trot-Sky.

The lyrics of this 1926 song by Henry Tobias are not going to win any prizes: "Out in Russia there are lots of Russians," it begins. Despite the kitshy lyrics, the song became very popular in Europe (I see there are Finnish and Greek versions of it on youtube). But George Olsen sang it first, in the original English. I am very fond of the fake Russian scatting in the middle.




I have a new sub-project, which is to record the songs of Itzik Zhelonek very informally (generally first thing in the morning before I change out of my pajamas) and bundle them with the sheet music I write up. If you would like to know when there's a new song up (there are actually about five of them already but I haven't officially admitted I'm doing this) you can sign up here and get the first bundle (the famous song Yosl, Yosl) free:

Do you think it's ok to create an advertisement called "Mass Casualty Event"?

I am trying to create a wild turkey reserve on 18 acres of land and so I bought chewfa - a tuber turkeys are supposed to love - from a company called Mack's Prairie Wings. So naturally I get their catalog and here is one of their offerings. Somebody walked over my grave when I saw it.

Really delicious coconut buttermilk cake

COCONUT BUTTERMILK CAKE
Butter two 8" cake pans, then cut rounds of wax paper, stick them into the bottoms of the pans, butter them too, and finally flour the buttered pans. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1-1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup sweetened coconut, whizzed in food processor to chop it more finely

Cream butter and sugar, add egg, baking powder and soda, salt, and vanilla and beat some more till very fluffy. Add flour, coconut, and buttermilk. Blend.

Put in the two pans and bake for about 25 minutes. Invert the cakes, peel off the wax paper, and while the cakes are hot coat them with raspberry jam, which will seal them and prevent drying out. I then cover the pans with big bowls to keep them moist while they cool.

Icing:
1-1/2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cream of tartar
3 unbeaten egg whites
4 tablespoons water
1 tsp vanilla extract

Use a double boiler if you have one, if you don't have a double boiler, substitute any sauce pan half full of water (which you'll boil, duh) and a bowl that fits into the saucepan. They say "don't let the bottom of the bowl touch the water" but that's ridiculous, it works fine if the bowl is bobbing in the boiling water. Put all your ingredients in the bowl and use your electric mixer to whip the icing for 5-7 minutes until it's fairly stiff and holds a peak.

Frost the top of the lower cake layer and sprinkle lots of coconut on it. Then put the second layer on top and do the same. Ice the sides and mash coconut all the way around. Scrumptious.

Yiddish New Year's Eve song for all

Matthew Rothenberg wrote a Yiddish version of the Scottish New Year's favorite Auld Lang Syne:

Ver ken fargesen alte fraynt
Zey ligen in gedank,
Lomir gedenken alte fraynt,
Un simkhes mit gezang.

Dermon zikh fun di alte teg,
Dermon zikh fun amol,
L'khayim tsu di alte teg,
Un simkhes fun amol.

Ot iz mayn hant, maynt guter fraynt,
Un gib mir yetst daynt hant;
Lomir makhen a shnaps, maynt fraynt,
Mit freylekhs zayn bekant.

A translation from the Yiddish text of Auld Lang Syne:

Who can forget old friends
They like in the memory
Let's remember old friends
and celebrations with song

Remember the old days
Remember long ago
Let's raise a glass to the old days
And celebrations of long ago

Here's my hand, my good friend,
And now give me your hand
Let's take some shnaps, my friend
And be friends with freylekhs (happy dance tunes)

I've moved one of my obsessions to a different blog, if you're interested go visit An exploration of Yiddish Theater songs and kleynkunst. Happy New Year!

Where are Shlomo Lindenfeld's recordings?

This winter, instead of sewing a quilt, I'm doing something similar: I am hunting for clues to the performers, composers, and recordings referenced in the seven books of theater song lyrics by Itzik Zhelonek. I found these little books of lyrics (no melodies) in the National Library of Jerusalem and the Chabad Library in Brooklyn. These were supposedly the most popular songs of their day, there are about 130 in all, but some seem to have disappeared completely from the surface of the earth.

One of my greatest frustrations is the total disappearance of Shlomo Lindenfeld. He made a lot of records but not a one survives among all the databases and collections I can find except this:

Opgeforn by Die Idische Bim-Boms (Di Yidishe Bim-Boms). The Jewish Bim-Boms was a duo: Herman Feinstein and Shlomo Lindenfeld. One record.

If anybody knows where I can find anything more by Shlomo Lindenfeld, please let me know. I'm looking for these songs:

Nerven, nerven (Nerves, nerves)
Gevald, vu nemt men a direh? (Golly, where can one find an apartment?)
Di velt hot zikh ibergekert (The World Turned Upside Down - same tune as the previous)
Yontif / Yom-tov in der vokhn (mid-week holiday)

Adapt or die

Bobbed Hair Drives Hat Pin Maker to Suicide

November 30, 1924: Anton Stickler [sic], a Swiss hat pin maker, has ended his life in Geneva. His wife said that he had been out of work for many months because all the hat pin factories were closed because no more hat pins were needed with women wearing the new style of tight-fitting bob covers.

The amazing rudeness of cell phone slaves

I was at a party of (mostly) strangers last night. I never subject myself this kind of noise and drinking and pointlessness, but having promised my son to go to one if he would, he did, so I did, punto.

I sat in a corner watching a woman in animated conversation suddenly inform those around her: "my leg is buzzing." She pulled out her phone and read her message while the people she'd been talking with stood patiently waiting. The phone went back in the pocket, the conversation continued, the leg buzzed again, the woman pulled out the phone. This time she not only read it but popped her thumbs at it for quite a while as the polite humans around her went into a vague suspended animation, smiles politely frozen onto their faces (I would have walked away).

Belatedly noticing something amiss, after one of the texts the woman with the cell phone endeavored to be more social by showing the message to the strangers.

Later we got our dinners and sat down. The guy across from me left his cellphone on the table and at its (frequent) mellifluous chimes he instantly tended it, abandoning us the way butlers in Upstairs, Downstairs leave the servants' quarters and rush off to discover why the master of the house is ringing.

Someone next to me obliquely mentioned the rudeness of cell phones at parties. You might snigger, thinking this couldn't actually be oblique under the circumstances, but the guy cheerfully chimed in: "I hate 'em, I don't need 'em at all."

When pushed, he got very animated, reached down to his little briefcase and pulled out a notebook computer which he started waving in the air, and that's when I bolted.

Old codgers think the person directly in front of you has priority over one pulling your strings from afar. Why do cashiers stop checking people out to have lengthy phone conversations? Because one who is already in line is a 'bird in the hand' and therefore birds in the bushes may be wooed without penalty?

Yes, I'm just another codger amazed there's nothing wrong with taking calls in public and yakking away, interrupting real-world conversations and activities, when in fact electronic connection is cheap and constant and it's face-time which is rare and precious...

I close this antiquated rant with a quote from the Urban Dictionary.

Pavlovian Texting: The phenomenon occuring in groups of people when one person in the group reaches for their cell phone to receive a message, text, etc thereby causing all other members of the group to also check their phones for messages.

A doina on the subject of good and bad latkes

Aviva Enoch and I, purveyors of new funny Hanukkah music, did our last scheduled concert of our Mrs. Maccabee songs last night for the Fearrington Village Havurah. They fed us a great brisket dinner and gave us a standing ovation! We had Paul Deblinger there working the slide projector - we've discovered that if we flash the words on the wall, people sing along even if they never heard the songs before.

For the first night of Hanukkah: "Sour Cream and Hanukah Latkes," the first of the Mrs. Maccabee songs

It was just a year ago that Aviva and I premiered the first two of the songs that have now become the Mrs. Maccabee's Kitchen cd. "Sour Cream and Hanukah Latkes" was the first one. Listen for free!