The Woodland Garden (Sunday 31st March 2024)

I have changed this Blip to another from the same session, because it has been honoured on Flickr by being chosen for Explore, leading to thousands of views on their site. I hadn't chosen it as my Blip because I had used an abstracted image of the same acer on 21st March.

The original blip, showing a different acer that had just begun to come into leaf overnight, has been added as a second Extra. The first Extra remains a macro shot of some of its emerging leaves.


L.
Wednesday 3.4.2024 (1147 hr)

Blip #4059 (#3809 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #000
Blips/Extras In 2024 #043/266 + #017/100 Extras
Day #5120 (1253 gaps from 26.3.2010)
Lozarithm's Lozarhythm Of The Day #3198 (#3038 + 160 in archived blips)

Old Forge series  
Flora series
Woodland Garden
Acer series
Leaves series
Diary Blip series

Woodland Garden (March 2024) (Flickr album of 67 photos)

Taken with Pentax K-50 (Yellow) and Sigma AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO DG Macro lens

Beyoncé - Blackbiird (2024)
Friday marked the launch of Beyoncé's album Cowboy Carter, exploring the country music side of her upbringing in Texas. Amongst the original compositions there are various samples and nods to other pieces of music including a reworked version of Dolly Parton's Jolene and a cover of the Beatles' Blackbird, written and performed only by Paul McCartney on The White Album. Shortly before John Lennon was assassinated in 1980, he revealed that he had contributed one “important” line to the song. Although the particular line was not identified it has been speculated that it was, “All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free”, as a reference to the Little Rock Nine:
The song was written as a response to the Civil Rights movement and in particular "the Little Rock Nine, a group of students who had faced racial discrimination after starting at the all-white Little Rock high school in 1957. The incident attracted national attention because it was a test case of Brown v Board of Education, a supreme court ruling that said segregation in such schools was unconstitutional. Arkanas governor Orval Faubus didn’t agree and sent in the national guard to stop the students entering the premises. However, after federal troops were then brought in to escort them in, the fledgling civil rights movement had nine early heroes and the attention of the world – including McCartney" (The Guardian) and dedicated it to people who had been affected by discrimination.
He had written it in Rishikesh, India while studying Transcendental Meditation and hearing the call of the European blackbird, and had demoed the song in April 1968 before recording began on the White Album. Ironically, the American blackbird is a completely different bird with a far less attractive song.
Beyoncé was well aware of the song's meaning and her version adds a harmony vocal arrangement utilising Black American country stars Brittney Spencer, Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy and Reyna Roberts, all of whom struggled to gain a foothold in a Nashville industry in which women and Black artists are often marginalised. Because the Little Rock Nine had been pelted with tomatoes the incident is now referred to as Tomatogate.
I am pretty sure that Paul McCartney's original guitar part and foot-taps from the Beatles' record are sampled directly as the bed of Beyoncé's version. It had been sampled before for Rachel Fuller's version of Blackbird on her 2019 pet charity album Animal Requiem. Rachel Fuller is the wife of Pete Townshend. The new string section from that album is also used on Beyoncé's version.

One year ago:
Flower Friday