¤ milky moon ¤

Couldn't find it anywhere. Pardon my ignorance.

It's come up before. No one can find anything. We think it's just a bird that makes a chim-choo-ree sound - it doesn't seem to be a term in general use for any species, so it may just be personal to Joanna.

Silly people! It's anyone who has more than a 1000 posts...except milki.

Mary Poppins reference? (Honestly though, she said before she liked the film, right? It doesn't have to be a bird!)

Yeah, I think the answer before was just that it was an invented bird name with a nod to Mary Poppins. Maybe she just liked the sound of it.

It makes sense that there'd be nostalgic references also since it's a song about her sister.

It's good to know

Seems also to be the name of a fancy restaurant in Hamilton New Zealand.

A superb place to eat...apparently.

I emailed the restaurant to see where they got the name.

Cool. I was guessing it came from Mary Poppins.

hello, i'm from brazil

I think I discovered about the chim choo ree secret.
It's a very ordinary bird from brazil called Bem-te-vi in portuguese.
The scientific name is Pitangus sulphuratus. It's known for his trisyllabic singing that reminds a ''chim choo ree''.

listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC22mh5AEaE

what you think ?

There's quite a lot of geography in Emily, especially near the beginning:

the meadowlark [North & South American meadows] and the chim-choo-ree [if the above member is right, it’s the great kiskadee bird, which lives in open grassland containing some tall trees, from Texas to Uruguay] and the sparrow [grasslands almost worldwide]
set to the sky in a flying spree, for the sport of* the pharaoh [king of Egypt, possibly from prehistory, certainly from ~1500BC, to 30BC, then applied to Roman emperors when in Egypt so theoretically to about 640AD]
a little while later the Pharisees [an early Jewish sect or political party, active in the Holy Land ~250BC to 70AD] dragged a comb through the meadow
do you remember what they called up to you and me, in our window?

there is a rusty light on the pines [N America, Europe, Asia] tonight
sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow
down into the bones of the birches [northern hemisphere]
and the spires of the churches [Christendom]
jutting out from the shadows
the yoke, and the axe, and the old smokestacks and the bale and the barrow
and everything sloped like it was dragged from a rope
in the mouth of the south below

:
:

the lines are fadin' in my kingdom
(tho I have never known the way to border 'em in)
so the muddy mouths of baboons [open savannah, woodland and hills of Africa and Arabia] and sows and the grouse [pine forests to moorland and mountainside of N America as far south as Texas, also Greenland, Europe and Siberia] and the horse and the hen
grope at the gate of the looming lake that was once a tidy pen
and the mail is late and the great estates are not lit from within
the talk in town's becoming downright sickening

in due time we will see the far butte [mostly western USA] lit by a flare
I've seen your bravery, and I will follow you there
and row through the nighttime
gone healthy
gone healthy all of a sudden
in search of the midwife
who could help me
who could help me
help me find my way back in
there are worries where I've been

:
:

come on home, the poppies are all grown knee-deep by now
blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow
peonies [Asia, southern Europe and western N America: incidentally, they are notable attractors of ants] nod in the breeze and while they wetly bow, with
hydrocephalitic listlessness ants mop up-a their brow

:
:

Pa pointed out to me, for the hundredth time tonight
the way the ladle leads to a dirt-red bullet of light [northern hemisphere]
squint skyward and listen -
loving him, we move within his borders:
just asterisms in the stars' set order

:
:

* MM’s lyrics page gives ‘over’

Steve, I'm pretty sure the second verse is a depiction of the sun setting over Nevada City - it matches her descriptions of the countryside around there, where she grew up. The river where Emily's skipping stones is, I'm pretty sure, the same as the one in Cosmia.

The Pharaohs of Egypt used to hunt caged birds with boomerangs - the bird would be released, the Pharaoh would kill it; so it would be caged and released only to die.

The Pharisees are (in)famous for their strict adherence to the letter of the law - they're the sect that judged Jesus. Dragging a comb through a meadow is similarly nitpicking to strict adherence to rules and regulations.

Baboons and sows, I'm pretty sure, are references to certain kinds of people - noisy, pugnacious, etc. Of course, sows and the rest are domesticated or introduced species that live almost everywhere Europeans do.