How do you accurately reflect American music (related to the polyglot United States) in one collection of tunes?

Not very easily….

Starting in about 1981, I used to homebrew audio cassette “mixtapes” with different songs that I liked, usually grouped by theme.  They were similar to today’s iTunes or other digital playlists, but I could make as many as I wanted, wherever I wanted.  (*cough* digital rights management *cough*)

When CDs came out, I did the same thing, but my magnum opus was a seven-CD set of American music that I created to play at the “US booth” for a Culture Day at my daughter’s International School a few years ago.

Since representing American culture on one 6-foot long table in a gym was challenging enough, you can imagine the gyrations I went through to put together a set of music that covered most musical traditions in the United States.  I wanted music that represented regions, ethnic traditions, certain places, an era of music and/or were evocative of what I saw as the American spirit of adventure and individualism.  There was also a zero budget, so I depended a great deal on my own music collection (the biases are rather obvious in the final result, plus it had to “play well” for middle school kids in a noisy gym.)

My efforts are below, and I’d love to hear what you think down in the comments. Not every version of every song was available to me (I was doing all of this in the Netherlands) but I tried to find the ones closest to the “classic” or original versions where possible.

We still play these CDs today, after many years, so I hope that means I picked music that stands the test of time.

American Music CD One
1. Great Grampah’s Banjo  –  Pura Fe’
2. Cuban Pete  –  Tito Puente
3. Wouldn’t It Be Nice  –  Beach Boys
4. Hound Dog  –  Elvis Presley
5. America  –  Simon & Garfunkel
6. Big Rock Candy Mountain  –  Harry McClintock
7. Leaving on a Jet Plane  –  Peter, Paul and Mary
8. Appalachian Spring 2nd mv.  –  Aaron Copland
9. You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling  –  Righteous Brothers
10. Georgia On My Mind  –  Willie Nelson
11. Respect  –  Aretha Franklin
12. The Beat Goes On  –  Patricia Barber
13 For Once In My Life  –  Dionne Farris
14. It Don’t Mean a Thing (…. That Swing)  –  Duke Ellington
15. Fortunate Son  –  Creedence Clearwater Revival
16. Summertime  –  Miles Davis
17. Sweet Home Alabama  –  Lynyrd Skynyrd
18. Miami  –  Will Smith
19. Dubuque  –  George Winston
20. My Prerogative  –  Bobby Brown
21. American Girl  –  Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
22. Time of the Preacher  –  Willie Nelson
23. Amazing Grace  –  Dean Shostak

American Music CD Two
1. Go  –  Hiroshima
2. La Feria de las Flores  –  Flaco Jimenez
3. Sloop John B  –  Beach Boys
4. Fly Like an Eagle  –  Steve Miller Band
5. Homeward Bound  –  Simon & Garfunkel
6. I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow  –  The Soggy Bottom Boys
7. All Shook Up  –  Elvis Presley
8. XXX’s & OOO’s (American Girl)  –  Trisha Yearwood

(more…)

During the China 2.0 tech tour, our group had a chance to spend a little time inside the famous Forbidden City in Beijing.

Using my trusty Flip pocket video camera, I tried to capture a sense of the grandeur and enormity of the place (while grossly over-using the words “elaborate,” “enormous” and the phrase “pollution, unfortunately.”) Sorry about the lapse in my mental thesaurus.

I think you’ll be equally impressed with this fantastic cultural heritage destination (and if this whets your appetite, don’t miss a visit to the virtual Forbidden City – here’s a video about what it’s like to see it while inside the real thing.)

For those who can’t see the embedded video box below, here is the direct link to the video on YouTube.

What is a one- or two-sentence description of “an American?” or “American culture?”

When we lived in the Netherlands a few years ago, my daughter’s International School planned a Culture Day to be held in the school gym. When the call for parent volunteers went out, I had fits of guilt that I wasn’t doing enough Mom stuff for my kid, so I showed up at the first planning meeting.

The school primarily served the children of people working at the NATO headquarters in town, so there was a great mix of parent nationalities at the meeting. For some reason, though, I happened to be the only US parent, so I ended up as “The US Booth Planning Committee of One.”

That meant that I had to figure out how to encapsulate my nation in a 6-foot-long folding table in a gym….talk about something that forces you to figure out your national identity!

For the first time in my life (even though this was my 3rd go-round living overseas as a US expat) I had to ask myself, “What does it mean to be an American?”

I spent time at college Web sites looking through their American Studies courses (here’s the University of North Carolina’s American Studies classes and the Crossroads project at Georgetown University) reading foundational documents like John Winthrop’s 1630 “City Upon on a Hill,” reading up on the pioneers and American explorers,  investigating the beginnings of the Internet and Web culture in Silicon Valley and ordering posters – Martin Luther King, cowboys, space and other Americana – from AllPosters.com (such things were hard to find on the Dutch economy, as you might imagine.)

After a lot of poking about and also asking a variety of Dutch, German, Czech, Norwegian, British, Canadian, Polish and Belgian colleagues to describe my country in only a few words and phrases, here is how I grouped my posters and table memorabilia:

**  The cowboy influence.  As foreign as the American West may seem to someone in the modern Bronx or Birmingham, it is absolutely central to our culture because it represents wide open spaces, exploration, freedom and self-reliance.  They are the underpinning to what makes us tick.

**  We don’t care about your ancestors. Several people told me how much they admired and yes, envied, how relatively free Americans are from expectations based on “what Daddy did.”  No one really cares about where you’re from or the importance of your aristocratic family; we’re all about what you’ve done.  Many in other countries still find their dreams and ambitions quite hamstrung by their family origins.

**  The automobile. Thanks in part to Henry Ford, we have a machine that encompasses everything we like:  individuality, freedom (road trip!) the clarion call of huge but drivable distances,  acceptance of picking up and moving, all matched up with a national restlessness.

**  The freedom to fail. It had never occurred to me, but many outside the US admire the fact that we allow people to really blow it, but we encourage and in fact expect that they will try again.   This ethos persists in today’s Internet culture, where you’re often seen as a failure if you haven’t failed (you must not be trying hard enough, right?)

Why doesn’t Europe build a Google?  Chirdeep Singh Chhabra says that Europeans need to learn to fail, and TechCrunch journalist Mike Butcher weighs in on pointless criticism of others’ efforts instead of how Silicon Valley tries to learn from failure.

**  Music. It’s rather extraordinary, the impact that my country has had and continues to have on music.

Jazz. Blues. Rock. Hip-Hop.  Unique niche music like Cajun, ragtime and tejano.  The breadth and depth is unmatched.

**  Exploration and new frontiers. We never stop. From Lewis and Clark to the Wright Brothers flying at Kitty Hawk to outer space, we are always looking over the mountain and wondering what’s on the other side.

The most important lesson I learned from preparing for Culture Day was how many clichés still ring true in my country:  ”The chance to be whatever you want to be.”  ”Saying what you think.”  Everyone is from somewhere else.  Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The United States has its problems, there is no doubt about that, yet so many still try to move here. Why?  A recent article in The Economist, Going to America (subtitled “the greatest strength of America is that people want to live there”) addresses issues of immigration and why people still line up to come here and start a new life. Regarding a study of desirability factors:

“It is also a mistake to rate Americans as less tolerant because they are nationalistic. Americans may have an annoyingly high opinion of their country, but theirs is an inclusive nationalism. Most believe that anyone can become American. Almost nobody in Japan thinks that anyone can become Japanese, yet Japan is rated more “tolerant” than America. This is absurd.”

Like many Americans, I spend a lot of time fussing over what’s going wrong with my country and how it doesn’t live up to its ideals. The cure for that, ironically, is to leave it for extended periods of time as an expat or for lengthy travel. Depending upon where I go, I’m always grateful upon return that I can twist the knobs on any faucet in my country, and drinkable water magically flows.  I’m also grateful that I can pretty much do what I want and be who I am.

How’d the Culture Day event go?  Well, I think people thought my table was a little “heavy” for middle-schoolers (and one American teacher asked me why there was no Harley-Davidson display. Sigh.)

For me personally, it was a smashing success.

If downhill skiing or snowboarding are not in your skill set, or you’d like to learn but have previous knee injuries (like a torn ACL – anterior cruciate ligament – which makes it tough to handle sudden lateral movement) then you may feel left out when it comes to wintertime vacation spots.

I know I’ve felt that way….my husband is an avid downhill skier but I’ve never learned, and now my own old ACL injury makes it risky to try (basketball and racquetball are not in my future, either.)

A winter trip to near Lillehammer, Norway a few years ago had me in major pouting mode – what the heck was I going to DO all day long while he was on the slopes and the kids were learning to ski?

Enter the calorie-obliterating (400+ calories/hour) and relatively-easy-to-learn sports of cross-country skiing and snowshoeing.  After a short lesson at our Hafjell resort, I could manage cross-country skis and poles pretty well, and I really enjoyed the hushed quiet of schussing along through the trees with my instructor.

If you’d like to try the same experience in the US, the 15th annual Winter Trails day is coming up this Saturday, January 9, 2010.

At more than 100 facilities, both children and adults can try cross-country and/or snowshoeing at no cost.  The organizers – SnowSports Industries America (www.thesnowtrade.org), American Hiking Society (www.americanhiking.org) and the Cross Country Ski Areas Association (www.xcski.org) – all hope that you’ll find these trail sports a satisfying alternative or addition to downhill snow sports.

Are any of our readers big cross-country or snowshoe fans? Let us know down in the comments about your favorite resorts for those sports.

In January 1841, a 21-year-old man named Herman Melville set sail out of New Bedford, Massachusetts as part of the crew aboard the whaler Acushnet.

His experiences at sea laid the foundation for the novel Moby-Dick, and if you’re a fan of history or literature, you may want to be at the New Bedford Whaling Museum starting at 8 bells (noon) on Saturday, January 9, 2010 for the annual Moby-Dick Marathon.

A wide variety of people (including descendants of Melville) will read the entire novel, in 8-10 minute intervals, from start to finish.

Parts of it will be read in other languages like Portuguese, since there’s a large Portuguese influence in this part of New England.

From the Museum’s Web site:

“Starting at 4 bells in the 1st dog watch (6 p.m.), light whaleship fare, including grog and cider will be served. Coffee and snacks will be available throughout the night, with breakfast to follow at 8 bells (8 a.m.) in the morning watch. Join with us in this celebration of our heritage. Come at any time. Leave at any time. The Marathon lasts approximately 25 hours.”

Until this year, the Marathon was held on January 3, the day Melville actually sailed in 1841, but it’s been moved to the first weekend after the 3rd so that more can take advantage of a weekend trip.

The Whaling Museum….located at the perfect New England-y address of “18 Johnny Cake Hill”….is nicely laid out and a must for history buffs.

They also have a museum blog and are on Twitter (if you tweet about the reading, use hashtag #mdm14,) the photo-sharing site Flickr, Facebook and they have a YouTube Channel.

The seafaring town of New Bedford itself is good for a stroll, so I recommend a visit if you’re in southeastern Massachusetts.

A similar marathon reading event was held at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut in summer 2009, aboard the Charles W. Morgan, the last surviving wooden whaling ship (it was built the year that the Acushnet sailed with Melville aboard.)

I’m not sure if they’re going to repeat the event in 2010, but the video below warms the heart with a topside deck full of Melville readers.

If you can’t see the embedded player box, click here to see the Mystic CT Moby-Dick Marathon video on YouTube.