Meet me in the Moonlight

Songs have a way of creeping into people, some you only have to hear ever couple of years to recognize as something special, a song that strikes at some memory or feeling, songs so real that they scrape the mud off your consciousness. Meet Me in the Moonlight is one of those songs. I first heard the song on a compilation CD that serves as a soundtrack to the Bluegrass documentary High and Lonesome. The cut from the compilation is clearly recorded live and its one of the most exciting early bluegrass recordings I can think of. I wish to God I knew when and where the Stanley Brothers recorded this masterpiece. I imagine some hot night, bugs zipping around a under lighted stage somewhere in the Valley of Virginia. Carter Stanley's strong vocal is a perfect indication of why many consider him to be the classic voice of early Bluegrass. Good ears will hear Ralph tell the fiddle player to cut his run by announcing, "ok". Own this version of the song and it will haunt you.

Meet me by the moonlight love meet me
Meet me by the moonlight alone alone
I have a sad story to tell you
All down by the moonlight alone

I've always loved you my darling
You said I've never been true
I'd do anything just to please you
I'd die any day just for you

I have a ship on the ocean
All lined with silver and gold
And before my little darling shall suffer
I'll have the ship anchored and sold

If I had wings like an angel
Over these prison walls I would fly
I'd fly to the arms of my darling
And there I'd be willing to die


After digging into the sources of Meet Me in the Moonlight I discovered it was recorded by the Carter Family. I imagine this is where the Stanley's found the song, both families being native to Southwest Virginia. Ralph talks of working with and knowing A.P. Carter in and around Bristol in the 1940s in his autobiography. The Carter Family version, though not as memorable to me is worth a listen to. Like most Carter family tunes, it has a classic homeliness that begins quaint but finishes as if some immortal source is responsible for its very origin.

It doesn't take long for an amateur Internet sleuth to find, not surprisingly, that the song has far deeper roots than the Carter Family. The song came to the United States from England, as early at 1812. Long history for a good song, but then again, this song is so good that it had to have floated up and down the steep humid hills of Virginia long before the Carters or the Stanleys found it.

The Lost Story

I spent my K-12 years in diocesan catholic schools. Though there was nothing posh or ultra privileged about my education I have a certain affinity to stories about private schools. Private school literature can be separated into two distinct groups. The first is about Catholics being brought up in strict middle class Catholic schools where the clergy mocked and beat you. The second is about America’s thriving post WWII Northeast boarding school culture. The boarding school genre is by far the most popular and every couple of years another movie or book revisits this familiar battleground (Dead Poets Society, Catcher in the Rye, Old School).

Yet, the best story ever written about private schools, and in this case private boarding schools is a story that I read numerous times in grade school but have never been able to locate again. When I was in 7th and 8th grade at Aquinas School, late 1980s, there was a cart full of paperbacks that students were encouraged to pick off of for silent reading periods. On this cart was an anthology of American contemporary short stories. The word contemporary is a bit misleading here because like most things at Aquinas School (and most catholic schools) the library and most material was donated. Thus the “contemporary” title was probably describing a book written in the 1960s.

In this particular anthology was a story about a young man attending a boarding school north of Richmond, Virginia. The crux of the story revolved around a student who cheats during a translation portion of a Latin examination. I remember that the translation dealt with Roman engineers building temporary bridges so troops could cross rivers and streams. The story had wonderful inner dialogue and may have been narrated in the first person. After the exam releases the suspense and tension rise to a fever pitch as the student is called to the headmaster’s office to be discovered and then sent back to his room as his father is sought. The climax of the story is the father confronting the son, clearing out his room and the long, silent ride back home.

There are a thousand more details that I remember about this story but I won’t belabor the reader with a story I couldn’t tell you the title of or the author. The fact is that I loved this story. I'm not going to psychoanalyze why, but it really moved me. For whatever reason it has been on my mind lately and I thought I would share this memory in the off chance that one of you might help me figure it out. I have tried a million different ways to Google the plot in hopes of finding the story, but to no avail.

Flat Stanley came to Lewistown

Flat Stanley was in Lewistown this past November and he even stopped by FHS. Flat enjoyed his time here and he even got to get some bird hunting in.

The Historians Dilemma

A decade and a half ago, when I was learning to be a "historian" at Radford University I took a class called Hist 295. Dr. Ferrari who did her best to show me how to use libraries, court house documents and other repositories to find the crucial and raw primary material that makes history work. Yet, I remember what she really emphasized was the need to find those personal documents, the letters or diaries, the notes in the margin of a book read long ago. That was the fodder that makes history alive, personal and real.

Last night while walking the dog around the frog ponds I had what I am sure is not a new Epiphany. In this digital world, where or how will the historians putting together the lives of Americans mine to construct that personal and private world. Where do we deposit our tweets, wall posts, emails, texts and the other dimensions of our lives to that others may glimpse into our world when we are gone? I can remember writing long and dramatic emails to friends during the whirlwind of love when I was a young man. How and where would I attempt to find those now. More importantly how would the historian of the future find them without the passwords and permissions required in this digital world?

Rehberg v Tester

News today that Dennis Rehberg intends to bring in Minnesota Republican and Tea Party aficionado Michele Bachmann to help him announce his entrance into the 2012 Montana Senate race. It is unknown how this will play out in the long run but on its face this appears as a very poor decision.

Jon Tester is a populist candidate with no strong ideological bent. For the strongly independent and libertarian Montana electorate his politics stand in sharp contrast to someone like Michele Bachmann. Time will tell but I feel this is a moment that will come back to haunt Rehberg.

The Honor of Egypt

Like millions I have been intently watching the situation in Egypt and that anxiety brewed over into desperation today as the all too familiar government repression began today. In what seems like a textbook repeat of the Green Revolution in Iran it appears as if the government is going to use sympathetic civilian actors (or plain clothed government agents to handle the dirty work).

I suppose that for a brief moment on Monday or Tuesday it appeared as if a non-violent transfer of power was possible. I wanted to believe that the proud Egyptian people has voted with their bodies and encouraged Mubarek to give up control. As always those thoughts seem idealistic and naive just a few hours after I was thinking them.

One has to wonder what the end game is here. The international community has lost whatever long standing loyalty for Mubarek. A loyalty that perhaps he deserves for so long standing as a pro western voice against extremism. Certainly today's events will convince the world that the government of Egypt is the fraud that Egyptians have been protesting all week.