This are snippets Pete has gotten from the presenter on Thursday. Pete will update with more information and will be posting other snippets from that conversation. What he is doing is choosing some of the more memorable stories for you to listen to, consider and "noodle on." Noodling, by the way, is a highly technical writing term referring to the act of thinking. When I am doing a project or planning out an idea, I like to take in information and think about it all from time to time and then do my writing, my exploring, to see how the idea might be shaped.

Stay tuned for more podcasts from Pete and more of his reflections from the visit. You should begin to use the site to post your own ideas, reflections and wonderings...

geoff gevalt

On Wednesday, 19 students of Bensen Village school, along with a few teachers, Pete Sutherland and I travelled to visit a sweet, energetic talker who has both an interesting perspective on her life in Bensen but also an interesting way of speaking -- interesting turns of phrasing. She is a history buff, the curator of the Benson Museum, the oldest person in town, the keeper of all things big and small about Bensen and a highly affectionate person, referring to troublemakers in school long ago as "imps."

I admit I am intrigued with sound.

Today, I went to visit a 91-year-old woman in Benson with a class of 8th graders who are doing a Ballad Writing Workshop with YWP and musician Pete Sutherland. When I arrived at the Sunset Lake home of Genevieve Trutor, I heard the booming pond ice and simply had to record some of it. Take a listen.

I kick myself for not taking a picture, but here's the scene: 9 a.m., 40 degrees, sunny, looking out at a northern Vermont pond with white ice. Probably half a foot thick, chilled deeply over the last few days, now being hit by early morning sun. Birds out, ice contracting, shifting violently in the sun's heat, one boom leading to another and another.  A couple of crashes as the ice rushes to contract and cracks. I stand beneath a couple of tall pines that were trimmed at 10 feet to allow for the view and to walk near shore. Beside me is Genevieve's red painted house, her deck hanging out over the water.

This is a song I wrote with the 3rd graders at St. Joseph's School in Burlington back in 2000. The (TRUE!) story was of the grandfather of a boy in the class.

You can hear that I changed a few words in the performance - I am always doing that. I think original songs and original words are never quite "done" - you can keep looking for a new word that says exactly what you meant to say inn the first place....

THE BALLAD OF RICHARD COTE

Oh my name it is Richard Cote, je suis ne au Quebec

At twelve years old mon pere me dit, “Bon chance, voici tabac”,

I traveled south into Vermont, across the mountains green

And I bought un ferme pres de Vergennes when I was just eighteen.

At twenty-eight still single, I finally took a wife

We had two lovely daughters - one son, our baby died;

I drove out to Niagara Falls in 1959

To work above the pounding roar on the big electric line

THE OLD INDIAN SONG

I learned this old song from Howard Burnor an 87-yr old man in Morrisville some years ago - maybe I'll tell you THAT story when I see you. He'd learned it from his mother, who had heard it from a "trapper in Belvidere" - this sums up alot about the way old songs used to be passed along before radio, CDs, iPods, file sharing etc.

It's pretty obviously NOT a song that would ever have been sung by native Americans - I think its no older than the middle of the 19th century, the tune sounds Irish to me (what the Irish and Scots call a "lament", the French Canadians call a "complaint" etc) - and the words - well, let's say that it sounds like a white person speaking FOR an Indian - typical.....

An old Indian sat in his little canoe

Drifting along o'er the waters so blue

He sang of the times in the lands where he'd roamed

Before those palefaces among them were known

In the days when the white man first came to this land

We used them like brothers, we gave them our hand