If Your Brain Is Slow…

Looking back on 2009, I realized that it’s been over two years since Oz and Ends last published an Akkordionspieler Carnival posting to celebrate German (and other) kids playing accordions in tents (and elsewhere).

And yet, this is the day for the weekly Robin. Oh, what to do?

Dick Grayson to the rescue!
This panel comes from Star Spangled Comics, #80, published in 1948 and republished in The Robin Archives, vol. 1. Is there no problem the Boy Wonder cannot solve?

Akkordionspieler Carnival Returns

In August 2006, as I was trying to figure out this blogging custom called a "carnival," I hosted the self-proclaimed Akkordionspieler Carnival--all links supposed to be about German kids in tents with accordions.

Unfortunately, it proved very tough to meet all those criteria, so the Akkordionspieler Carnival committee is being more relaxed this time. So relaxed that this whole carnival is simply a Flickr search.

Clearly, the star of the image on the left (from Portugal) is the chihuahua.

What gives this photograph (from Germany) its pent-up energy is the unicycle on the right. Alas, we never get to see the fellows use it.

A lot of the accordion-playing kids in these photos are buskers or, to use the less quaint and colorful term, beggars, like the lad on the right (from Rhodes).

But some young accordionists are playing for the sheer joy of music. And for the girls, of course.

Carnival of Akkordionspieler at last!

Back on 11 July, I issued a call for entries for an online Carnival of German Kids Playing Accordions in Tents. I supplied a graphic model.

Fuse #8 produced an image from Don Parrish's trip to North Korea. Parrish writes, "We also attended the Mangyongdae Schoolchildren's Palace, were we saw the propaganda kids, the ones routinely photographed by tourists. They were supposed to smile as they played musical instruments or embroidered." And what musical instruments? Accordions, of course! No Germans, no tents, but by the large number of kids and accordions (and the small number of alternatives) I say this qualifies.

Becky commented, "My Canadian mother-in-law (of German extraction) plays the accordion, and after 12 years it still gives me the willies..." So there's an untented German-Canadian example--also a stretch, but beggars can't choose.

Even I, with all my interest in this important topic, couldn't come up with blog items that fit all the criteria. But some webpages came reasonably close.

The Accordion Orchestra of Maisach sponsors a Pupils' Orchestra for musicians aged 8 to 14. Again, the large number of kids and accordions makes up for the lack of a visible tent.

In May, Legoland Deutschland hosted a concert with "Ensembles from more than 7 nations...demonstrating that the accordion can be used to interpret all kinds of music." Rap-polka fusion, for example.

In a situation that cries out for analysis, the Jewish Museum Berlin has illustrated a page on Freud's theory of "drive/trieb" with a figurine of a blond boy playing the accordion.

And although technically he hails from Austria, not Germany, I must acknowledge the "jungen Akkordeonspieler Lukas."

Strolling through the Carnival of Children's Lit

Big A little a has posted the Fifth Carnival of Children's Literature, which is well worth serenading.

The link I found most personally intriguing was Gail Gauthier's Original Content on reading Pinnochio in adulthood. I've never read that novel in its entirety, but you know my taste tends toward the old-fashioned. With century-old translations available through Project Gutenberg, I'll load one on my PDA and see what happens.

On this carnival's deadline day, the internet gods spared me the puzzlement of figuring out how and why and what items I might submit by putting my phone/DSL connection down like a horse with two broken legs. And the next carnival's host doesn't actually seem to be a blog about children's literature, so I expect to sit out that one as well.

But I'm still accepting entries and reminiscences for the very first Oz and Ends blog carnival of German kids playing accordions in tents, now through the end of July.

Carnival of Children's Lit & Akkordeonspieler

I'm new to blogging, and carnivals are one aspect of the culture I'm still puzzling out. It's not that I imagine blog carnivals to be as raucous as, say, a German kid playing an accordion in a tent.

I get the idea of aggregations of above-average blog entries. I enjoy exploring the links in the carnival entries I've seen, and am very glad someone's gone to the trouble.

I just don't get the process yet. Who is that someone? What are the criteria for links? What defines each carnival's theme? Why does hosting circulate? Such sites as Blog Carnival have been designed to fill a perceived need, but they don't answer those questions. Perhaps there are as many different combinations of answers as there are carnivals. Perhaps part of the appeal of blog communities, like other communities, is insider status: like finding your way here in greater Boston, if you don't already know where you are, you don't belong there.

In any event, the past Carnivals of Children's Literature are swell. Big A little a will host a new one on 23 July. Entry deadline is 15 July. And what happens in between those dates? I really don't know.

So I've decided to institute the Oz and Ends blog carnival of German kids playing accordions in tents to find out. It's open for entries through the end of July.