I recently received this notice of a conference on maritime music being held at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut in June. Now I know nothing about this particular field of study, but my latent desire to become a pirate is leaving me itching to write a proposal. The husband and I have been throwing around possible paper titles:

What DO you do with a drunken sailor: Addiction, Transgression and Discipline in 19th century maritime song.

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum: Drunkeness, Debauchery and Duty on the High Seas

Actually, I would kind of like to work up a paper on the Thomas Weelkes� madrigal �Thule, The Period of Cosmographie,� a text that has always fascinated me for its complete exoticism:

Thule, the period of cosmography,
Doth vaunt of Hecla, whose sulphurious fire
Doth melt the frozen clime and thaw the sky;
Trinacrian Aetna's flames ascend not higher.
These things seem wondrous, yet more wondrous I,
Whose heart with fear doth freeze, with love doth fry.

The Andalusian merchant, that returns
Laden with cochineal and China dishes,
Reports in Spain how strangely Fogo burns
Amidst an ocean full of flying fishes.
These things seem wondrous, yet more wondrous I,
Whose heart with fear doth freeze, with love doth fry.

I first encountered this madrigal a number of years ago when I was putting together a choral program to conduct for the opening of an exhibit of early navigational tools at the Adler Planetarium. Thule was the name for what in ancient times was thought to be the northernmost land in the world and thus the coldest. Something about the line �Doth melt the frozen clime and thaw the sky� has always got to me. Part of this is due, no doubt, to Weelkes setting of this portion of the text. The madrigal is written for six voices and gets quite densely layered (making it fiendishly difficult to sing welol), but the voices come to rest together on more sustained notes on this text, so it stands out in beautiful, passionate chords. Yet nothing compares to the fear, exhilaration and passion of the early explorations of new love.

As I write this, AJ has awakened and is lying in bed singing �The Peppermint Twist� � quite a different species of composition altogether, although definitely hard to ignore.

Today will be spent getting my house and desk back in order after yesterday�s day of enforced rest. I�m always shocked at how fast the house falls into a state of decline when I�m down for the count even for a single day. It looks like wild animals have been rampaging through the kitchen and family room (and this is probably not too far from the truth). This afternoon we�re heading to my brother- and sister-in-law�s for my niece�s birthday party. AJ�s already planning on monopolizing their foosball table. He can barely see over the top, but he�s already obsessed with this game. As I was putting him to bed last night, he was telling me �I�m going to play foosball at C�s house, Mommy. It has little guys and a ball and holes and the ball goes down, down.� I�ll bet he was playing foosball games in his sleep. That might explain his exceptionally cheerful mood this morning.

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