Henry Ziegland

Submitted by Thomas:

Henry Ziegland thought he had dodged fate. In 1883, he broke off a relationship with his girlfriend who, out of distress, committed suicide. The girl's brother was so enraged that he hunted down Ziegland and shot him. The brother, believing he had killed Ziegland, then turned his gun on himself and took his own life. But Ziegland had not been killed. The bullet, in fact, had only grazed his face and then lodged in a tree. Ziegland surely thought himself a lucky man. Some years later, however, Ziegland decided to cut down the large tree, which still had the bullet in it. The task seemed so formidable that he decided to blow it up with a few sticks of dynamite. The explosion propelled the bullet into Ziegland's head, killing him.

Open Ground

So. I posted this thing recently on my other blog about an amazing-looking farm/cooperative in Kentucky called Open Ground, which (in their own words) is:

"a grassroots educational and social service organization helping people positively affect their natural and social environments through procreative participation. Our programs serve the general population with a primary concern for people who are frequently left out - those who are marginalized for ethnic, cultural, or economic considerations, or who have developmental, physical, or social disabilities.
On-site programs include workshops, exhibitions, and socials designed to increase tools and opportunities for personal and cultural expression; they are inclusive, encouraging greater world community and ecological consciousness.
People come to:
- take a break, gain a skill, experience others, strut their stuff, earn PD credits
- learn with as well as from excellent facilitators
- listen and speak without offensive or defensive posturing
- laugh freely
- reconnect with the basics, breathe fresh air, listen to the river, talk to the stars"

After I posted this, my husband called me to explain the enormously weird coincidence. And then he posted this comment in response to my post:

Just for the record, let me codify the multi-levels of weirdness going on in here:

1. You just happened to get a message from Open Ground, which you just happened to post to your blog, and it just happens to be the farm my Dad bought twenty-five years ago.

2. I just happened to click on the link after I'd read your blog.

3. When I opened the link, I saw pictures and immediately said, "That's my Dad's farm"--even though there was not really anything there to suggest such an idea.

4. When I couldn't find any information to confirm that it was my Dad's farm, I clicked on the "Our Facilitators" link and scrolled down and recognized Don Boklage's name. (Why would I remember the name of the guy who bought my Dad's farm twenty-five years ago? You know me . . . I can't even remember the names of some of the students I taught last year!)

Cue the music. Feels like stepping into the Twilight Zone.

Karen Dalton

So. About 13 months ago, I bought myself an iPod. It was about 3 days before I was to leave for Spain for 5 weeks, and I thought it a more space-efficient way to take my music along on the journey. My good friend, Luke--music aficionado/expert extraordinaire--very thoughtfully gave me 4 CDs FILLED with MP3s to upload to my iPod to take along. I attempted to upload them before I left, but discovered on the plane, to my dismay, that I hadn't uploaded them properly, so couldn't play them.

In the intervening year, I never bothered to re-upload them correctly, once I learned how to do it. Well, this summer I have started uploading all the random CDs that have been lying around all year, languishing as they wait to become part of the iPod canon. I listen to NPR every morning while I make coffee and do dishes, before I start uploading. This Saturday morning on Weekend Edition, NPR featured a little known folk singer from the 60s called Karen Dalton. I was really taken with her voice and intrigued by her biography. I thought, "This seems like the kind of woman Luke would know; I should ask him for a copy of an album" (she only recorded 2).

About 3 hours later, as I uploaded albums into my iPod, I came across the MP3 collections of random stuff Luke had given me last year. And you'll never guess who the 3rd artist on the first CD I uploaded was...

That's right.

Karen. fucking. Dalton.

You can check out the NPR coverage of her here.

Smash it [the banana] up

Do weird things like this ever happen to you?:

You're making cookies and entering CDs your friend gave you into your iTunes. You are currently uploading a band called the Damned, of whom you've never previously heard. Suddenly, they begin singing a cover of "Smash It Up" by Offspring. At that precise moment, you realize that you are smashing bananas to put into the cookie batter.

It's a weird, weird, wild world, my friends.

Chiapas

I wrote this last semester and just got to posting it now:

i just had a weird moment of synchronicity.... This morning i was hanging out at Sunergos, and some customers, the baristas and myself were talking about Chiapas, Mexico (because we were all enjoying that particular brew...mmm!). We did some internet research and found out it is a coffee-growing region of Mexico.

Just now, as I was researching for my anthropology class on a TOTALLY unrelated topic (class in America), an article about coffee growers in Chiapas turned up on an article search. I had previously never known that Chiapas grew coffee; and now, TWICE in one day....

V for Vendetta, Elizabeth and M I T

So, I think it might be one of my unofficial New Year's Resolutions to try to post more "coincidences." My trouble is that I rarely write them down for later posting as they happen, so I end up forgetting them by the time I'm online again. Here's one my friend, Elizabeth, sent me back in November.

I just wanted to tell you something - so, this weekend late at night, I caught a large part of the middle (I think) of V for Vendetta on TV, which I haven't seen. Then, this morning as I'm walking through the labyrinth of MIT buildings, I see all these V face stickers stuck on posters, the head of the woman representing the women's bathroom, etc. I thought, well, that's a coincidence. Then I realized it was November 5 yesterday, and that's probably why - and THEN I remembered in the movie how they kept talking about there not really being any coincidences.

The November 5th thing is Guy Fawkes' Day, for those of you who are not anglophiles. And for those who ain't seen the movie or read the comic, the character V dresses up in a Guy Fawkes costume to perpetrate his anti-fascist schemes.

Pretty weird. But monstrously so.