A Poem and a Few Songs for Burns Night, and ROW80, Including Knitting

urns Night is coming up!

I've had some posts on this topic over the years.

There was one in which I waxed poetic about discovering lost manuscripts, another in which I shared a photo of Allan Scott-Douglas, who plays Jamie in Outlander the musical, another with Andy Stewart singing Johnny Cope, and one in which I mentioned listening to an LP of Burns' poetry. We left all our records behind when we moved, sadly.

This year I have a poem I just discovered, Winter Evening by Archibald Lampman.

And I've got lots of music!

I've got playlists for two Scottish bands:

Runrig

Idlewild

I've got a few other Scottish artists scattered throughout my playlists, including Big Country, Nazareth, The Vaselines, Orange Juice, Simple Minds, and Donovan.

But I also recently went back to a band I've liked for years, and just discovered that they have a new album out!

Cousteau

This is the tracklisting from the promotional EP through which I first discovered them.

YouTube is helpful when I don't want to lug CDs back and forth to the office!

New song, BURMA (a WWII-era acronym for Be Upstairs Ready, My Angel)

Awesome cover of Leonard Cohen's So Long, Marianne:

In creating playlists for a different story, I discovered that 1983 was an amazing year for music. Every single one of these 60 songs were released in 1983:

I haven't even included everything that came out that year, from AC/DC, Iron Maiden, REM, and more.

Quick ROW80 update: I'm still editing The Handful of Time on paper. Got sidetracked drafting a new fun side project.

And I started a new knitting project!

Do you have any side projects that you turn to every once in a while, for fun?

Stories or art that will never see the light of day, beyond being shared with a few friends or family members?