I've never been into poetry, even though song lyrics are a lot like it. I have thought it pretentious sounding, even though I have a ravenous love for words. But I started coming across biographical tidbits about Emily Dickinson — that she wore only white, that she never left the house. I read "My War are Laid Away in Books", by Alfred Habegger, and became obsessed. She is incredibly fascinating — such a strange character. I got so excited about how her poems related to her life.

I am interested in artists who were not known or appreciated in their lifetime. J.S. Bach is another one. Now, I wonder why that should interest me so?

On Easter Sunday, 1809, my paramour and I visited Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst, Mass. It was a great field-trip. It was a thrill to see her own bedroom and the window where she lowered a basket of brownies to the children below! Her brother's house next door is also very interesting. It's quite decrepit and un-renovated, which is just how I like a house to be.

Her letters are as good as her poems, maybe more so in my opinion. I took phrases from her letters and biography for this song. Of course, as always, I also wrote original lines and took applicable turns of phrase from my cut-n-paste computer notebook. This collage writing is my typical way of working. Hey, I've read that the Bible is a collage!

Verse, not used:

Clutching a vanilla-scented heliotrope, and a Lady's Slipper orchid, {flowers on Emily's casket}
She whispered imploringly to me, {made up}
"I could not make up my mind; do you think he ever did?" {from a letter by Emily}

Oh my Gosh, this idea is so fun. So, let's say that giants were a true ancient race, that they were mentioned in the Bible and their burial mounds are all over North America. Some giants' giant graveyards are as big as many football fields. Early Ohioan farmers were frequently finding big bones, but then came the big Smithsonian cover-up! According to my sources, it is quite a sinister institution.

I thought the story of the giant petrified woman in a waterfall and the multitude of footprints heading for water were quite poignant. I'm interested in the emotional life of fantastical characters —like, for example, how does a clone feel about being a clone? What I like about history is how people remain a lot the same — the same fears and hopes over centuries. I hereby include giants in that shared emotional history.

Giants at war.

I've long-liked the painter Ammi Phillips. He was an itinerant portraitist or "limner". In the time before photography, painters traveled around looking for clients. A lot of their work was anonymous, not really thought of as art. I like the often-strange human proportions and stiffness in this work. They were craftsmen, not polished like European painters. Ammi Phillips worked a lot in Columbia County, NY (where I live and the locale that Sister Kinderhook is based on).

I particularly liked his portrait of a young teen-aged girl, Harriet Leavens. Try as I might, I could not find any biographical information about her whatsoever.

Memorial pictures are another anonymous art/craft form that I'm a fan of. These were women's work. Eunice Pinney is one of my favorites. In one of her mourning pictures, she prepared a memorial to herself when she was 43 years old, leaving space on the tombstone for her children to fill in her age and the year of death. In an unusual undedicated memorial picture, she left space on the tombstone for someone to write the name, age and year of death of the deceased person. It was a blank and a business plan — she was pre-making memorials to sell.

You'll find a certain kind of verse on these memorial pictures. This is what Eunice wrote on the back of her own:

"For Oliver Hector Holcombe if he will get it framed:
Dear children pray now and then cast A sorrowful thought upon me,
You see where you'r coming at last. Prepare you for eternity.
This piece is the product of one week. Finished by your disponding mother June 13- 1813
Who worships the great God; that instant joints The first in heav'n, and sets foot on hell.
Faith builds a bridge from this world to the next, O'r death's dark gulf; and all its horror hides."

For these lyrics, I am endebted to Clara Barrus. At the time I was researching the song, I thought I was studying the writings of an unknown historical-society-lady; that her words were from some obscure mimeographed pamphlet. But in actuality, she's a fascinating woman. She wrote this book: Nursing the Insane.

Clara Barrus was some kind of partner (hm) to John Burroughs, who was a naturalist akin to Thoreau, and a buddy of Walt Whitman. Clara's spirited account of the Anti-Rent wars is actually John Burroughs experience and memories.

In the song, I give much space to description of the rebels' costume. It was just so drag and weird — I love it.

Read up yourself on this obscure rebellion. It was a real serf situation. Ay, by Rasputina Field-Trip™, I've visited the manorial home of the biggest Patroon.

Here we find the Feral Children.

And here is the original Snow-Hen.

I think I devoured that entire Feral Children website.

Austerlitz is a town here in Columbia County. They say that it was named as Martin Van Buren's revenge on Waterloo, NY. Van Buren was a Napoleon fan.