• moonriver said on Mar 27, 2008....

  nyt -- It says "the video is not yet available." I guess you had just uploaded your video clip. It takes up to 30-60 minutes before it becomes available. This happened too in my latest blog, also with a video I made... :-)
  
  I'll try again in an hour...
  
  

• nytquill17 said on Mar 27, 2008....

  Oh yeah...forgot about that!  I figured since I could see it then it must be playable.  You'd think I'd know better than that by now after all these years on computers!  Oops!
  
  But thank you very much for stopping by, anyway.  I appreciate it :)
  

• nytquill17 said on Mar 27, 2008....

  There, it *should* be up now.

• moonriver said on Mar 27, 2008....

  Yup, I just finished viewing it. The song reminds me of Irish dance music. I don't know about laugh and cry (maybe because the song has no emotional connotations for me), but it does make me smile, stand up, and do a little happy jig.
  
  You lived somewhere in those *spectacular seaside locales*?? Geesh, some people are so lucky... :-)
  
  

• nytquill17 said on Mar 27, 2008....

  I think it's that heavy-handed piano.  For some reason I found it really stirring.  But then I am one of those people who cries over everything remotely emotional ;)  It's Canadian maritime folk music (Great Big Sea are Newfoundlanders), which is all descended from Irish/Scottish/English jigs and shanties and things.
  
  Yeah, I did live there.  On the one hand, it was kind of hard to make friends because the communities were so close-knit already.  But on the other hand, it's the kind of place that gets in your blood and a part of it never leaves you.  I'm not nautical by any means but I've got this little homing beacon towards the ocean now!
  
  People hardly locked their homes or their cars there.  Not just because it was a safe place, but because people would notice that Cousin So-and-So had a new car that looked remarkably like the pastor's old one!  I knew a lady who went on vacation overseas and all she did was close the hook-and-eye latch on her screen door.  Oh, and you'll hate me for this if you like seafood: free lobster.  We would come home from church during lobster season and there'd be a bucket of live ones on our front deck that someone had left us.  Our neighbor ran a rather successful whale watch company and my family would go out with him about once a year or so and he usually waived all the fees.  And then I'd get to go again because he donated some tour time to the summer camp and I usually went to more than one session each year!
  
  Beautiful place, really unique way of life.  It was a difficult time for me but I'm SO glad now that I got to have that experience.
  

• moonriver said on Mar 27, 2008....

  Do I like seafood? Does the sun rise each morning?
  
  Free... (gulp).... lobster? Aaarghh! Now I'm tempted to blame my parents for not choosing to settle in Newfoundland.
  
  But seriously, some friends and I also had a chance to live in a small community of fisherfolk for about two years. Yup, houses with no locks. We often had free oysters and clams, and sometimes the choicest fish fresh off the boat's hold. We also had free lobsters, but they were too small (about double the size of a thumb) and not too fun to eat.
  
  I know the feeling ... :-)
  
  

• nytquill17 said on Mar 27, 2008....

  Where I lived was in New Brunswick.  I'm in Quebec now.  I really want to go see Newfoundland one day but it is unbelievably cold there (which explains why their music is so good! gotta keep warm!)
  
  Once one of the fishermen "tricked" me into eating a raw scallop - he didn't think I'd do it; I didn't realize he wasn't serious.  Being a polite child, he offered me this "gift" and I accepted.  LOL!  Let's just say they're better cooked ;)  But this guy was really very nice, he used to bring me the cool stuff he caught.  Like a scallop shell where the mother-of-pearl part on the inside was purple (he said he'd never seen that before; my parents still have it on display) or a skate [ray] egg to hatch in a glass of water.
  
  And we used to get our teachers to let us out of almost all our classes in the winter to go skating on a beaver pond that was on school property.  It was a great place to be a kid.  But I imagine it was a bit rough on the teenagers and young adults, so even though I miss it, I do realize there were a lot of opportunities I wouldn't have had if we'd stayed there.
  

• wombat said on Mar 27, 2008....

  Reminded me of Irish tunes, like moonriver said!  Actually--it reminded me of the movie "Titanic" when they went below decks to the party!  I like the "mood" behind the music, and wish I could have lived in times where this was the norm! 
   
  (now I know why sometimes I can't see videos I try to watch, too--I didn't know that!)

• nytquill17 said on Mar 27, 2008....

  Thanks for stopping by! :D
  
  I haven't seen "Titanic" recently enough to remember that scene, but I remember they used a lot of maritime-sounding stuff (appropriately enough) so I'm not surprised that it reminded you of that!
  
  In Newfoundland I think they still have "kitchen parties," where all the village folk drop by and spend the night playing and dancing.  To me that would feel like going back in time!
  
  For my video it was actually uploaded, the problem was that I had made it private.  I thought it worked like flickr where you can make a photo private but still link to it here at soulcast.  But private videos on YouTube apparently can be linked but then they won't play.  I went back and made it public and it started working :)

• wombat said on Mar 27, 2008....

  "kitchen parties" sound wonderful!  My hubby has told me of his times growing up here in New England where everyone went "to the basement" and played whatever instrument they could to have impromptu music parties like that.  I wish I could have known him then and been there!
   
  Hey, I got to experience Newfoundland for about 5 minutes one time---our plane to Germany landed there to refuel.  I got off and walked into the terminal to look around the gift shop and bought a pin that said, "I love Newfoundland."  I still have it somewhere..... It was like 40 below outside!
   
  But if I could handle the cold, I would love to have lived on the coast somewhere like this....I love the ocean, ships, far-away places and stories about that kind of life.
   

• nytquill17 said on Mar 27, 2008....

  Have you read "The Shipping News"?  By E. Annie Proulx.  It's set in Newfoundland and the author spent a good deal of time there and did tons of research so that she could get the setting and the dialects and everything just right.  It's newer fiction so there are some unusual passages and stuff but it's a great book that I really enjoy every time I pick it up.  They made a movie out of it with Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, and Judi Dench and I know some people didn't care for it but I for one thought it was great.
  
  In the movie there is a scene where one of the locals says, "Yep, yep," with the last yep said on an intake of air so that it's almost a gasp.  I saw it for the first time in an English class and I almost squealed with delight!  Because the people where I used to live really did have that same verbal tic and to me that meant that they had really done their homework to get the movie right.
  
  Wow, that was an off-topic ramble!  Anyway :D
  
  My husband told me that when he was younger, they used to hit -40 in the winters here where we live pretty regularly.  Nowadays the we get -20 regularly and -30 in a cold snap.  What I've heard about Newfoundland is that it stays cold there for most of the year!
  

• wombat said on Mar 27, 2008....

  (when am I going to learn to write one or two words, hit submit, then edit, to keep this from happening?)
   
  Anyway!  No, I haven't read that book, but it sounds interesting, especially about the "verbal tic."  I like to think of my hubby as sort of from this kind of world, as he is descended from the "Wabanaki Tribe."  He dismisses all this, but I did research, and am still facinated by all that amazing history of Canada and New England and places like Newfoundland.
   
  What I remember about getting off the plane was the captain on the speaker saying, "If you want to experience what it feels like to feel 40 below, you can get off the plane and visit the gift shop, but hurry back."
   
  I couldn't resist!  This was in 1987, I think---I was pregnant, and on my way to Germany where my son was born.

• nytquill17 said on Mar 27, 2008....

  Took care of it for you :)
  
  Wow, that sounds like it was an eventful time for you!  Pregnancy, overseas flights, 40 below...lol!
  
  In university I did two major reports in two different classes - one on the confluence of French/English after the Norman invasion, and one on the confluence of French/English after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec.  Quebec has a very rich history and culture and I love how unique it is in all of North America.  People here are very passionate about their heritage even if they're not all scholars in it.  I could study it forever and still be intrigued!
  

• wombat said on Mar 27, 2008....

  Well I could bore you with my experiences, but I won't.  It would be nothing like what you are speaking of.  But I do have a fondness for the flavor of the culture.  Perhaps we have become too mixed in "our culture" to have these wonderful things.  Maybe that is why I love thinking about my hubby's culture that he seems to be unaware of.  Thank you for the comments to my ramblings.

• crybabylu said on Mar 27, 2008....

  I liked the video, the pictures, and I thought the song was kind of catchy tune.  Some one likes donkeys.

• nytquill17 said on Mar 28, 2008....

  (I have a minute to sit here and catch my breath before I finish getting ready)
  
  Thanks for listening to it, Dee!
  
  The "donkey" isn't a real donkey but a nickname for a certain type of winch they use on some boats.  But I only know that because I read it in the inside of the CD.
  

• silverwhisper said on Mar 30, 2008....

  OK, that was a nifty tune--good visuals, nyt!
  
  like moon, i too thought it was irish--the instrumentation and structure of the lyrics say that so clearly to me. indeed, i kept expecting the singers to start exhibiting brogues as i listened!
  
  yeah, it's stirring. and it's also incredibly infectious! :D
  
  ed

• nytquill17 said on Mar 30, 2008....

  Thanks, Ed!  I wish I could tell you everything I know about these pictures but I think that might be too much detail to give out on the internet as it was a fairly small and unique community and if I have a stalker out there somewhere willing to work hard enough, they could put it all together.  Of course if someone wanted to find me badly enough they could probably do it by now anyway...
  
  Yeah there is a lot of Irish influence.  And I'm sure that a fair number of maritime folksongs actually come from Ireland (or Scotland too) and have just been adapted over the years.
  
  Infectious is right.  I keep catching myself whistling or humming it.  For like a week now!  But you know it's a good song when that happens and you totally don't mind it :D
  

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