"Shackleton's Banjo"
written and read by Jeff Hinich
September 15th 2022 at the Loft Algoma Conservatory of Music
Book launch for local author Paula Dunning
written and read by Jeff Hinich
September 15th 2022 at the Loft Algoma Conservatory of Music
Book launch for local author Paula Dunning
SHACKLETON’S BANJO
---Hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold. Long months of darkness. Safe return, doubtful. Sir Ernest Shackleton’s apocryphal 1913 London Times advert.
5000 applied, some two dozen chosen. Irish, Scot, Kiwi, Brit.
Meteorologist, magnetician, artist, surgeon, stowaway, musician, biologist, photographer, carpenter, sailors all. Before the mast, bound for the Antarctic. Not a dallier on board.
‘Twas a tonic. What other way to say it? Music after the meals. Sea shanty chants, per chance.
--To our wives and sweethearts, may they never meet.
Each singing, till our voices cracked, ricocheting off the bergs. Then the pack ice locked us in, freezing all over.
69 dogs: Bummer, Shakespeare, Hercules et al. And a cat, Missus Chippy. Broken hearts each time we said goodbye. All gone, save our 28 souls. Only now can we speak of it...
Grabbing the banjo as Endurance was crushed, a last purchase at the boss’s insistence.
--This vital mental medicine, he called it.
Shack could not play a note, but could sing and dance with the rest of us. Earnest, he was. There was Hussey frailing the same seven tunes, till we made them our own. Marston, his paints became the glue. Skipper Worsley, scanning the sky with his sextant. Hurley’s film captures and releases light. Wild, Wordie and How. Each to their own. What they knew, that saucy crew. Shackled to fate.
If we don’t starve, we go insane. Let the music keep us whole. At 40 below we scribbled in our diaries, scratched our heads for reason or rhyme.
--When that polar wind moans, it chills your skeleton bones
heard tell it’s foretold, that’s the rub from Shackleton’s banjo
457 days of watery heave or icy gyre. An overturned hull became our refuge on the isle of the elephant.
Took 17 more days and 6 of us, dead reckoning aboard the James Caird. Then 36 hours, a forced march traversing the glaciers of South Georgia. Four months to attempt rescue, find all 22 hands waving.
Next expedition, January 5, 1922, Shackleton remains in the harbour of Grytviken. Died reaching for some fathomless truth. Buried by Hussey, the plucky banjo player, rubbing the strings of australis. Brahms lullaby, a last request, lamenting beneath a southern cross.
100 years to the day, one hemisphere and a century apart. Our voices break over a Precambrian shield, moored among our own mammoth mounts. Overlooking moose and partridge, not penguin or seal. A differing clime, separated by degrees, related by plunge of temperature and nuance of fortune.
Alive we were, when reaching for the frozen grail. Now, the magnetic poles themselves are on a tear. The fragile planet teeters, an ill wind tattles. No good will come of it. A tea for your thoughts or a biscuit? What to make of it all? A smudge of sage upon a half shell, for the old salts. A toast of grog to the tunes we lost and the time we found.
To earnestness, endurance and empathy."
© 2022, January 5
jeffrey riordan hinich
---Hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold. Long months of darkness. Safe return, doubtful. Sir Ernest Shackleton’s apocryphal 1913 London Times advert.
5000 applied, some two dozen chosen. Irish, Scot, Kiwi, Brit.
Meteorologist, magnetician, artist, surgeon, stowaway, musician, biologist, photographer, carpenter, sailors all. Before the mast, bound for the Antarctic. Not a dallier on board.
‘Twas a tonic. What other way to say it? Music after the meals. Sea shanty chants, per chance.
--To our wives and sweethearts, may they never meet.
Each singing, till our voices cracked, ricocheting off the bergs. Then the pack ice locked us in, freezing all over.
69 dogs: Bummer, Shakespeare, Hercules et al. And a cat, Missus Chippy. Broken hearts each time we said goodbye. All gone, save our 28 souls. Only now can we speak of it...
Grabbing the banjo as Endurance was crushed, a last purchase at the boss’s insistence.
--This vital mental medicine, he called it.
Shack could not play a note, but could sing and dance with the rest of us. Earnest, he was. There was Hussey frailing the same seven tunes, till we made them our own. Marston, his paints became the glue. Skipper Worsley, scanning the sky with his sextant. Hurley’s film captures and releases light. Wild, Wordie and How. Each to their own. What they knew, that saucy crew. Shackled to fate.
If we don’t starve, we go insane. Let the music keep us whole. At 40 below we scribbled in our diaries, scratched our heads for reason or rhyme.
--When that polar wind moans, it chills your skeleton bones
heard tell it’s foretold, that’s the rub from Shackleton’s banjo
457 days of watery heave or icy gyre. An overturned hull became our refuge on the isle of the elephant.
Took 17 more days and 6 of us, dead reckoning aboard the James Caird. Then 36 hours, a forced march traversing the glaciers of South Georgia. Four months to attempt rescue, find all 22 hands waving.
Next expedition, January 5, 1922, Shackleton remains in the harbour of Grytviken. Died reaching for some fathomless truth. Buried by Hussey, the plucky banjo player, rubbing the strings of australis. Brahms lullaby, a last request, lamenting beneath a southern cross.
100 years to the day, one hemisphere and a century apart. Our voices break over a Precambrian shield, moored among our own mammoth mounts. Overlooking moose and partridge, not penguin or seal. A differing clime, separated by degrees, related by plunge of temperature and nuance of fortune.
Alive we were, when reaching for the frozen grail. Now, the magnetic poles themselves are on a tear. The fragile planet teeters, an ill wind tattles. No good will come of it. A tea for your thoughts or a biscuit? What to make of it all? A smudge of sage upon a half shell, for the old salts. A toast of grog to the tunes we lost and the time we found.
To earnestness, endurance and empathy."
© 2022, January 5
jeffrey riordan hinich
'The Magician'
Songs written and sung by Jeffrey Riordan Hinich
Radio Interview on "The Book Cover" 01/12/21
Host Lisa Tucker has author, naturalist, songwriter and musician Jeffrey Riordan Hinich on the show.
"Jeff Hinich is a Henry David Thoreau enthusiast who has participated in the Thoreau Society Annual Gathering for many years. Jeff has written “Waking With Thoreau – Lungs of the Planet and Other Possibilities” where he explores the life and works of the author of “Walden or Life in the Woods” which was first published in 1854. Thoreau was much more than an author. He was a surveyor, pencil maker, abolitionist, naturalist, and transcendentalist who was an early proponent of environmentalism.
Jeff says, “My home for the past forty years has been a contemporary Walden, a Northern Ontario lake, touched by a railway on one shore, somewhat remote from the nearest community. As the morning light illuminates these Algoma highlands, I begin to write and work, gathering inspiration and metaphor from the moods of this landscape.”
The Book Cover Interviews with writers and authors from around the Algoma region, delving into their books and ideas.
Host Lisa Tucker has author, naturalist, songwriter and musician Jeffrey Riordan Hinich on the show.
"Jeff Hinich is a Henry David Thoreau enthusiast who has participated in the Thoreau Society Annual Gathering for many years. Jeff has written “Waking With Thoreau – Lungs of the Planet and Other Possibilities” where he explores the life and works of the author of “Walden or Life in the Woods” which was first published in 1854. Thoreau was much more than an author. He was a surveyor, pencil maker, abolitionist, naturalist, and transcendentalist who was an early proponent of environmentalism.
Jeff says, “My home for the past forty years has been a contemporary Walden, a Northern Ontario lake, touched by a railway on one shore, somewhat remote from the nearest community. As the morning light illuminates these Algoma highlands, I begin to write and work, gathering inspiration and metaphor from the moods of this landscape.”
The Book Cover Interviews with writers and authors from around the Algoma region, delving into their books and ideas.
|
New music
S.O.S. Norgoma "The Norgoma offers a cultural and iconic opportunity on our waterfront. Why toss it aside when it has the potential to enrich our community? My song asks this question." - Jeffrey Riordan Hinich © 2019 |
Waking with Thoreau, Lungs of the Planet and other possibilities
a new book by Jeffrey Riordan Hinich
Available for Purchase
a new book by Jeffrey Riordan Hinich
Available for Purchase
Jeff reads from the chapter, " Thoreau's Compass", Milwaukee, WI Oct. 6 2013
video credit: Gary and Bonnie Halvorsen
video credit: Gary and Bonnie Halvorsen