Winston Churchill was right

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) said many memorable things, including something about "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" and "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent" and "I never stand when I can sit, and I never sit when I can lie down", but today I want us to think about and explore a little bit the saying that England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

[Editor's note. Except it probably wasn't Churchill at all who made that remark. It has been attributed to several people including George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and others. No one knows for certain who said it first, but in his 1887 short story, "The Canterville Ghost", Oscar Wilde did pen the following: "Indeed, in many respects, she was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language." —RWP]

Elsewhere in past posts we have mentioned some of the things Brits and Yanks refer to differently, such as lorry (truck), napkin (diaper), biscuit (cookie), cookie (cracker), cracker (noisemaker), lift (elevator), fag (cigarette). The list goes on and on. And we have talked about our differences in spellings and word endings, such as -ise (-ize), -re (-er), -our (-or). At the risk of repeating myself, the list goes on and on.

Today let's explore two more areas, music and money.

Most people in America, musical or not, are probably familiar with musical notation in the form of notes on a staff preceded by a treble clef or a bass clef. (There is also a clef that is referred to as alto, tenor, or baritone clef depending on where it is placed on the staff, but we won't go down that particular rabbit trail.) And most of us know that these notes have names like whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note. There are even briefer increments of time (that is, faster notes when strung together) known as sixteenth note, thirty-second note, and sixty-fourth note. Okay, so maybe most people in America don't know that at all, but stay with me for a minute.

In Britain, the people don't know any of those names. Instead, their naming system for the very same squiggles on a musical manuscript are breve (whole note), minim (half note), crotchet (quarter note), and quaver (eighth note), and the even briefer notes are called semi-quaver (sixteenth note), demisemiquaver (thirty-second note), and—God help us all—hemidemisemiquaver (sixty-fourth note).

Since there is a semibreve or whole note that equals four beats in 4/4 time, it follows as the night the day (thank you, Laertes) that there must also be a breve or double whole note that equals eight beats in 4/4 time. And there is.

I'm feeling faint. Let us move on to money.

Britain changed its currency to the decimal system more than 50 years ago, and now there are 100 pence to the pound, but I distinctly remember a time when 12 pence made a shilling and 20 shillings made a pound sterling. The pound sterling was worth five American dollars ($5.00 USD) and a shilling was about the same value as our American quarter (a quarter of a dollar). Americans had dollars, half-dollars, quarters, dimes (ten cents), nickels (five cents), and pennies (one cent) and used a cent sign (¢) for all coins less than a dollar; the Brits used 's' for shillings and 'd' for pence. In my tireless research I learned that 's' and 'd'were used to refer to shillings and pence, respectively, because in Roman times coins of similar values were called in Latin solidus and denarius. England also had a half-penny coin which was abbreviated 'ob' for the even smaller value Roman coin obulus.

The pound began losing value and for quite a while its value was about $2.40 USD, which made the shilling worth slightly more than an American dime. Nowadays the pound is worth $1.34 USD, making the no-longer-produced shilling worth 6.7 cents or slightly more than an American nickel.

I also remember that the Canadian dollar was worth $1.10USD for a long time, but today it is worth 71 cents. Another rabbit trail.

Don't even get me started on weights and messures.

I will close by wishing you a Happy Columbus Day or a Happy Indigenous Peoples Day on Monday, whichever you prefer to celebrate.

Blogging can be so educational. For example, this week I learned fron jabblog's blog's comment section that a great many people did not know that such a thing as a digital piano existed.

Until next time, I remain your intrepid roving correspondent,

rhymeswithplague

Rabbit Trails R Us

About a month ago I said that a new era had begun because our oldest son brought over a new computer (a teeny-tiny one) equipped with Windows 11 to replace the Hewlett-Packard All-In-One I had been using that was equipped with Windows 10. Microsoft had informed me that it was ending support for Windows 10 on October something-or-other and after running some diagnostics also told me that my HP could not be upgraded to Windows 11.

Remember?

Well, forget all of that. After just a couple of weeks of learning to use Windows 11 with my new teeny-tiny GEMTEK from Taiwan, the computer apparently gave up the ghost (technical explanation: BIOS couldn't find the hard drive for reasons unknown to me).

So my son took the GEMTEK back and I am once again using Windows 10 on my HP, which I had not disposed of but put in an inconspicuous corner of the bedroom awaiting ultimate disposition. I'm so glad I did that. Apparently there was an uproar among users of Windows 10, who make up over 50% of Microsoft's customers and of that portion over 25% could not upgrade, enough of an uproar that Microsoft decided to offer a free one-year extension of its support of Windows 10. All my son had to do was push a key or two to accept the extension and I'm good to go. Apparently. God willing and the creeks/Creeks don't rise.

In other words, if I had done nothing, I would have remained in good shape without all the stress and strain of the past month trying to adjust to Windows 11. My son suggested I go with Macintosh but I am an old dog who resists new tricks for the most part.

If you ask me, it's proof in our own day that the French are right: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (The more things change, the more they remain the same).

For some reason I cannot begin to fathom, the whole experience brought to mind the song "Try To Remember" from The Fantasticks, a 1960 off-Broadway production:

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

Try to remember when life was so tender
That no one wept except the willow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That love was an ember about to billow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
Although you know the snow will follow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
Without a hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
The fire of September that made us mellow.
Deep in December, our hearts should remember

And follow.

(end of song)

My trivia-soaked mind reminds me that Jerry Orbach of Law And Order fame was the first performer ever to sing that song in the original off-Broadway production of The Fantasticks in 1960. My mind is beginning to fail me, however, because I also remember actor Jack Palance reciting the lyrics but can't remember whether he did it on The Merv Griffin Show or The Jack Paar Show. Also, a pretty lade with blond hair (that really narrows it down) sang the song on television way back when but I cannot recall her name. She later worked as an actress on one of the afternoon soap operas, either General Hospital or As The World Turns or All My Children. I told you my mind was going.

I must try to remember and follow it.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

This is definitely one of the weirdest posts I have ever written, if I do say so myself.

Do not call the men in the white coats just yet, as I have an awful lot of living left to do.

Faw down go boom

That phrase from my early childhood popped into my mind the other day when my foot missed the curb (British, kerb) completely and I went airborne. Flailing wildly, trying to keep my balance, I was unsuccessful and landed KERSPLAT! on the pavement, face first.

I am recuperating. I am very thankful that my injuries turned out to be minor. No broken glasses, no shards of glass protruding from my eye, no broken bones in the face or jaw, no teeth knocked out. Just a few painful scrapes and bruises on my hand, knee, leg, and eyebrow ridge. My right side has ached for several days with what I presume are bruised ribs. My right leg still aches from knee to ankle. I couldn't pick up anything with my right hand for a few days but it's gradually getting better. I can make a fist now but it hurt too much to make one when I first tried.

I am alive. In the few seconds I was falling and failing to remain erect, and also at the moment of impact, I wondered if I would be.

Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans.

Today is the 68th anniversaro of the day in 1957 that my mother finally succumbed to the horror of metastatic cancer after a long battle. She was 47.

I am 84.5 years old. I have a wife, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. I have a roof over my head, food on my table, and shoes on my feet.

I am blessed, even if occasionally I faw down go boom.

I believe that the Lord protected me even though He did not suspend the Law of Gravity just for me.

Another opening, another show

Today I woke up thinking about concerts, plays, and musical productions I have seen in person during my life. I remember the following, but the list is probably incomplete and the items are not presented in chronological order:

1. Liberace in concert at TCU in Fort Worth. His brother George was there too, playing violin.

2. The First Piano Quartet at TCU in Fort Worth.

3. South Pacific at the Texas State Fair Musicals in Dallas. It starred Mitzi Gaynor as Nellie Forbush and Kay Armen as Bloody Mary.

4. Victor Herbert's operetta Naughty Marietta at the Texas State Fair Musicals in Dallas. I can still hear Patrice Munsel singing "Ah, Sweet Mystery Of Life, At Last I Found You".

5. Amahl And The Night Visitors by Gian-Carlo Menotti at Arlington State College (now UTA) in Arlington, Texas.

6. Man Of La Mancha starring Jack Cassidy at Midnight Sun Dinner Theater in Atlanta.

7. The Rainmaker at Harlequin Dinner Theater in Atlanta.

8. The Fantasticks in 1975 at the Academy Theater in Atlanta.

9. Hello, Dolly! starring Carol Channing at the Fox Theater in Atlanta.

10. Don't Drink The Water, a non-musical play by Woody Allen, at a theater in Manhattan in 1967. It starred Lou Jacobi, Peggy Cass, and Anita Gillette.

11. Evita at a small theater-in-the-round in Atlanta around 1988.

12. You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, a play based on Charles Schulz's comic strip Peanuts, at (I think) the Strand Theater in Marietta, Georgia.

13. The Great Divorce, a play based on the book by C.S. Lewis, at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta.

14. The Screwtape Letters, a play based on the book by C.S. Lewis, at the Ferst Center For The Performing Arts in Atlanta.

15. My Fair Lady starring Noel Harrison (son of Rex Harrison who originated the role of Henry Higgins) at the Parker Playhouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

16. Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, and Gerry Mulligan all in the same evening at the Fox Theater in Atlanta during an Atlanta Jazz Festival around 1979 or 1980.

The 16 items above were all professional productions. Items 1-5 occurred during the 1950s. I have seen many amateur productions as well, including:

17. Oklahoma! at the Murray Arts Center in Kennesaw, Georgia.
18. Fiddler On The Roof at the Murray Arts Center in Kennesaw,Georgia.
19. Little Women at the Murray Arts Center in Kennesaw, Georgia.
20. Our Town at the Murray Arts Center in Kennesaw, Georgia.
21. H.M.S. Pinafore at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama.
22. Cabaret at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama.
23. Beauty And The Beast at the Murray Arts Center in Kennesaw, Georgia.
24. Handel's Messiah in Omaha, Nebraska; Boca Raton, Florida; and a few other places.
25. Bach's Magnificat in Arlington, Texas.
26. Mendelssohn's Elijah in Atlanta, Georgia.

My daughter saw Cats on Broadway and has seen national touring productions of Les Miserables several times.

Everyone's interaction with the arts is unique. I'm sure my list pales in comparison to what or whom some of you have seen.

Speaking of seeing, I once saw Ronnie Millsap walking down a concourse at the Atlanta airport, and I once saw Angie Dickinson and Burt Bacharach eating dinner at a restaurant in Manhattan, and I once sat in an auditorium not far from Irving Berlin. I suppose those don't count since the people mentioned were not performing their craft at the time. Oh, I almost forgot that I also breathed the same air as Dick Clark when I was 17 and spent an afternoon on American Bandstand at a television station in Philadelphia. Just one more sign of advancing age, I guess; my memory is starting to go.

I would love to hear about your concert- and play-going experiences in the comments section.

Happy Blogaversary to me

Today (September 28, 2025) is the 18th anniversary of the day I started this blog back in 2007.

When I started I had no idea that I would still be at my post (pun intended) all these years later. Yet here we are, I writing and you reading.

The thingamajig over there in the sidebar shows that I have 140 followers, but most of them are no longer actively participating. There are only a few of you who comment regularly nowadays, but I am not deterred by that fact. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Oh, wait, that was Nick at the end of The Great Gatsby.

Some of my early readers are dead and I know it—Dr. John Linna of Neenah, Wisconsin, for exampe, and good old Putz who was really David Barlow out in Utah—and some just faded away like General Douglas MacArthur after he was fired by Predident Harry Truman. And some, I'm sure, took one look and left for greener pastures immediately.

There will be no balloon drop, no blasting of celebratory horns, no high-kicking chorus line. Just a moment of quiet reflection and gratitude for good times gone by and good times yet to come, shared witn an audience I've never met.

Thank you, current crowd (among whom are Janice, Emma, Kylie, Ellen, Terra, Graham, Keith, Tasker, and until she disappeared without explanation, Rachel). We few, we happy few, we band of bloggers.

Year 19 is about to begin. Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!

Join the Navy and see the world, even Narragansett Bay

When my dad married my stepmother in 1958 I gained four step-sibllings: Bobby Gerald (21), Clarence Edward (20), Patsy Louise (17), and Billy Russell (15). I was 17 too, three months older than my new stepsister (but do not wonder, we were not each other's type) and I went overnight from being an only child to being the middle one of five offspring in our newly blended family. Since there was already a Bob in the family, my new stepmother began calling me Bob Jr.; the name stuck and I am still called that to this day.

In 1960 I played the piano for the wedding of Bobby Gerald and his bride Linda, and they recently celebrated their 65th anniversary. The other siblings have all passed on now, as has my stepmother who died in 2004. Mrs. RWP (the lovely Ellie) and I have not been back to Texas since her death but we stay in touch with Bobby and Linda about once a month by telephone.

Recently Linda called to say that while going through some papers in an attempt to do some decluttering she found an old letter I might like to see because it mentioned my Dad around the end of World War II. I asked her to send it to me and it has arrived.

At the upper left of the faded envelope, the return address read:

NAVY DEPARTMENT
_______________
USS PCE 869
c o Fleet Post Office
New York, N. Y.
__________________
OFFICIAL BUSINESS

and the envelope was addressed to:

Mr. Roy Wisner
Corning Glass Works
Central Falls, Rhode Island

There was no zip code because zip codes had not been invented yet.

I didn't recognize the name, neatly typed using an old-fashioned typewriter. I wondered what sort of letter this might turn out to be.

Inside, typed on U.S.S. PCE 869 letterhead, was the following:


24 August 1945

Dear Roy:

This will introduce to you, Clifford Brague, who has just been honorably discharged from the Navy under the point system. For personal reasons, he wants to make his home in Pawtucket or Providence now that he is out of the service, and I have referred him to you with the thought that you could use him in your shop organization.

Aboard ship his work has been in the operation, maintenance and repair of diesel engines and ship's auxilliaries. He has been one of our leading men for some time and his work has been exemplary in every respect. He is completely reliable and his personal integrity is unquestionable. If you have any opening in the organization in which he might fit, I would appreciate your giving him every consideration. You would not regret it, I am sure.

Before coming into the Navy in December, 1942, Mr. Brague worked for the Century Ordnance Plant, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His work there was strictly along the machine shop line, in the set up of production jobs for machine operators. In the event that you do not have an opening in the type of work for which he is qualified, you are probably in a position to give him some very good leads on some other good stable organizations in the area. I know you will give him any help possible.

Sincerely yours,

Don Shoemaker

(end of letter)


I know that before the war Dad worked at Dearborn Brass Works in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Perhaps this had become the Century Ordnance Plant mentioned in the letter. Such things were common during the war. For example, the IBM building in Poughkeepsie, New York, where I worked in the 1960s had produced rifles during the war instead of accounting machines. And I know that after our family moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in August 1947 my dad found work at Consolidated Vultee Aircraft (known as Convair, which later became General Dynamics) and held that job until his death in 1967. I never thought about it before, but I have no idea where Dad worked in Rhode Island after leaving the Navy. My mother went to work daily at the Coats & Clark Thread Factory and my Dad went somewhere to work as well, but I have no idea whether Mr. Wisner hired him at Corning Glass Works or he found work elsewhere. A strange gap in my knowledge. I never realized it before.

I do find it very satisfying to learn that my dad received such a glowing recommendation from Don Shoemaker but I am in the dark as to just who Shoemaker was, whether the ship's captain or someone in another position. Whatever else my dad may have been (I have talked about our relationship elsewhere on the blog), he was definitely a hard worker, a man of integrity, and honest as the day is long.

At the end of the war, the USS PCE-869 was sold to the Republic of China (that is, Taiwan) and continued to be of use until it was decommissioned and ultimately scrapped in 1971.

Dad's floating home spent time in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, escorting other ships part of the way to the European and Pacific theaters of operation. It traveled through the Panama Canal, and sailed as far north as Greenland. I think he had shore leaves in Portland, Oregon; San Diego, California; south Florida; Norfolk, Virginia; and New York City. His ship was sometimes employed as a "sub chaser" ("sub" being short for submarine). Years afterward, Dad relived in his nightmares the dropping of depth charges and seeing dead bodies floating up to the surface. During Dad's final days in the Navy, his ship was at Quonset Point, Rhode Island.

Below is a photo of the vessel where my Dad and about 80 other men lived and worked from 1943 through 1945:

Uncle Sam wanted him, and he went, enlisting at the age of 36. He was older than the captain of his ship. Most of the guys were half his age and called him "Pop". He talked about the Navy every single day of his life after he left it.

Don’t blame me, I saw it on Facebook

...and I didn't laugh out loud but my eyes twinkled and I smiled for a long time; it was the sort of low-key humor (British, humour) I love:

A mnemonic for remembering the names of the five Great Lakes of North America:

"Lisa Likes Licking Lettuce Lightly"

Lake Superior
Lake Michigan
Lake Huron
Lake Erie
Lake Ontario

Isn't that helpful?

In the past, American schoolchildren were taught to think of the word HOMES because the names of the lakes are indeed Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. However, HOMES refers to the lakes in random order.

Perhaps one of the following senetences would work better because the lakes are referred to in geographic order from west to east:

Saying Mnemonics Helps Everybody Out
Some Men Hate Exercising Outdoors
Sarah Made Henry Eat Octopus
Spencer Meanly Hid Elizabeth's Oboe

Here's proof:

You are invited to submit your own mnemonic for the names of the Great Lakes in a comment. I will publish it unless it is lewd, crude, rude, salacious, or obscene, in which case it will never see the light of day. I alone will be the judge of what is lewd, crude, rude, salacious, or obscene.