Plog - Vardø Harbour

Plog from Vardø -- Church with Radar

On a windy morning, I sketched this view in my ubiquitous Moleskine from the hotel pier.

Came by Hurtigruten, the Coastal Steamer, to this old, important bastion at the North-Eastern tip of Norway.

Vardø has amazing scenery and through a weird and wonderful lunar landscape (where we saw a sea eagle) and where Vardø people have their holiday cabins, you reach this old deserted fishing village, Hamningberg.

A good if extreme place to gather for a friend's 50th birthday!

Long time, no poem

But the jazz yesterday made me look up this old one.

To Duke Heitger:


and to the Jazzin' Babies:



Hear the Jazz Go Down

'You step inside but you don't see too many faces
Coming in out of the rain to hear the jazz go down'
(Mark Knopfler: Sultans of Swing)

Passing in the cold street
you're pulled inside by music
erupting through the wall

Trio fills the pub, eight drinkers
fight for space. Candles
scorch brown panels, turn beer to brass,
wine to pulsing blood

A sax and battered trombone
nailed to ceiling. Photos
of visiting bands, four seats
by the bar, long bench along the wall

Silent listeners except one couple
arguing about a missing
napsack. Barman shushes, liquid
guitar tells them to shut up

Stony-faced, the player walks strings,
moves from soft to stinging rain.

Drummer slams lids, breaks plates,
pounds steak in an unseen kitchen

Bass player vibrates your thighs
like deep rumbling volcanoes

and the jazz goes down.

Shisa

New Orleans comes to Oslo

Yesterday a septet of Norwegian men in their 20's, playing trad jazz! and aptly named Jazzin' Babies were joined by famous New Orleans trumpeter Duke Heitger at Oslo Jazz Festival -- and I was there!

Superb and surreal: 100 year-old people's music played by babies :)
A couple of them are barely 20, I hear.

And the energy of a seasoned jazz trumpet joining them from over there.

It was something!
All of it held in an old pub in the City Square, built around the year 1700.

Most Popular - the mind boggles...

Most Popular News!

Talk about news as entertainment. Yahoo Online News actually talks
about "the most popular world news" :(

BTW today it is "Donkeys get marines around Afghanistan"

Just weird--

I know it means "most emailed" or "most hits"-- but still...

Shisa

Plog: Black Sea

A week in Romania, on the Black Sea. I fell in love with the small low villas -- terracotta-tiled roofs, pastel-paint walls-- can't have changed much since Roman times...shaded by a pergola of vine-leaves, sunflowers and roses in the yard... sometimes a Coca-Cola parasol to break the heat of the day over a kitchen table with a wax cloth...