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This week’s song is Miss Mary by Vic Chesnutt. Unfortunately, two years ago he gave in to the angel of death, a sad day indeed.

And your famous Mary is, hey look at that, a similar last name: Mary Chesnut, a South Carolina author noted for writing a sophisticated diary describing the American Civil War and her upper class circles of Southern society.

According to wikipedia – The diary was filled with the cycle of changing fortunes during the Civil War. Although she edited it during the 1870s and 1880s for publication, she retained the sense of events unfolding without foreknowledge. She was very politically aware, and analyzed the changing fortunes of the South and its various classes through the years. She also portrayed southern society and the mixed roles of men and women. She was forthright about complex and fraught situations related to slavery, particularly the abuses of sexuality and power. For instance, Chesnut confronted the problem of white men fathering children with enslaved women in their own extended households.

This week’s Mary Monday is courtesy of Robert Fripp. You can consider him a Two for Tuesday artist too. Here are two versions of the same song from Exposure. The first one is sung by Terre Roche, the second by Daryl Hall.

Your famous Mary of the week is the steamboat Mary Powell.

Mary Powell c. 1861, Oil painting -James Bard, Museum of the City of New York

“Probably no boat on the river, and for that matter anywhere in this country, ever became such a prime favorite as the “Mary Powell.” She was always a favorite among the river fleet and became a part of the social life along the river, and for fifty-six years carried her passengers daily between river points in quiet comfort, and at a speed never equaled by more modern steamers.”

This week’s Mary song comes from one of my favourite artists, Robyn Hitchcock. I first saw him doing this song at Bogart’s in Cincinnati. He can chain me to the bed anytime. Hey, it’s my birthday so I’m allowed one wish, right?

PLAY Chain Mary to the Bed

Famous Mary of the week is Mary Travers, from Peter, Paul and Mary. I remember singing a lot of their songs on family car trips. You too can sing along on YouTube.

Happy New Year! We at OrangeYouGlad hope you had a great holiday. Now get back to work!

This week’s song is Cross-Eyed Mary. Here are two great versions of the song!

The original by Jethro Tull:
PLAY Cross-Eyed Mary

Cover by Iron Maiden:
PLAY Cross-Eyed Mary

This week’s famous Mary is Mary Quant, British fashion designer. This lovely lady is credited with inventing the miniskirt in 1963.

© Terence Donovan. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission.

Thought I’d take a quick break from the Mary Monday and instead share my ten latest tumblr posts with you. Enjoy!

This week’s Mary song is Proud Mary. I know it’s a CCR song but I’m not a Creedence fan so you get the Ike and Tina Turner version. And because Tina Turner is fascinating to watch, you get the video version of the song. Man, her patter at the start of the song kind of summed up their relationship.

Your famous Mary for the week is Mary Cleave, the 10th woman in space on the Shuttle Atlantis.

Now that our Halloween calendar extravaganza has ended, we’re back to our regularly scheduled program. I’ve taken over Monday’s so I can do an actual Mary Monday rather than Mary Monday, um, I mean Wednesday.

This week’s Mary song is Mary, Mary by The Monkees. I loved watching Monkees reruns when I was a kid. Although I loved guys with accents even way back then, my fav Monkee was Mike Nesmith.

And your famous Mary for the week is Mary Mallon, otherwise known as Typhoid Mary.

Love the image of the skulls going into the frying pan

According to wikipedia:

She was the first person in the United States to be identified as a healthy carrier of typhoid fever. Over the course of her career as a cook, she is known to have infected 53 people, three of whom died from the disease. Her notoriety is in part due to her vehement denial of her own role in spreading the disease, together with her refusal to cease working as a cook. She was forcibly quarantined twice by public health authorities and died in quarantine.

Geez, only three people died? I thought it was so many more.

Looks like Mary Mondays, um, I mean Wednesdays, will have to wait another week – or until I have time to figure out why the mp3 player plugin is not working.

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite animations from the old Spike and Mike Sick and Twisted animation festivals.

Okay, I still haven’t come up with something to do with my Wednesday posts, and mostly because I’m lazy I’ve decided to repeat my Mary Monday posts from my personal blogs. Here goes…

It took me ages to actually learn to like my name. All the other girls had fun names like Kimberly and Heather. I felt trapped in plain old Mary. When I started school, I was called Maryann on the roll call (and that was okay because I liked Maryann on Gilligan’s Island and I had no middle name which seemed kind of unique to me) but when my mom gave me my birth certificate I found out that I indeed had a middle name and it was Ann. So I was back to plain old Mary. As I grew older and became more educated, I learned to like my name. Yes it is simple and plain but it carries so much meaning and history. And it is used in so many songs! I thought I’d start posting a Mary song each Monday, accompanied by a famous Mary.

To start things off here’s Sonic Youth with Mary-Christ.

And your famous Mary of the day, Mary Surratt:

She was the first woman executed by the US federal government for her role in the Lincoln assassination. You can visit her tavern and house in my home town. Looks like Robert Redford recently made a movie about her.