This is my last post

...of 2020.

Did I scare you there for a minute?

No, I do not plan to leave the blogging world anytime soon. One never knows, of course. One could get hit by a truck on the way to the grocery store.

But unless that or something worse happens, I hope to be around for quite some time yet.

I have surprised myself by publishing more posts on this blog in 2020 than in any year since 2013.

It's true.

This blog saw the light of day in the last week of September in 2007. By the end of the year I had written 43 posts. Annualizing the rate, had I started the blog at the beginning of the year there might have been 172 posts in 2007.

In 2008, there were 228.
In 2009, there were 206.
In 2010, there were 184.
In 2011, there were 219.
In 2012, there were 220.
In 2013, there were 194.

Beginning in 2014, I began to blog less frequently.

In 2014, I wrote 100 posts.
In 2015, I wrote 91 posts.
In 2016, I wrote 77 posts.
In 2017, I wrote 71 posts.
In 2018, I wrote 86 posts.
And in 2019, I wrote 79 posts.

which brings us to 2020, which in a few more hours will be gone forever. For some unknown reason my blogging output increased this year. This is my 126th post of the year, a significant increase over each of the last six years, but nowhere near the heady days of 2008 through 2013.

When I started this blog in September 2007, I was 66 years old. In about two and a half months, if I am still alive and kicking, I shall turn 80. No wonder I have slowed down.

Unless I am picking up again.

Only time will tell, and I apologize for boring you with all the statistics.

The way I figure it, there have been some high points and some low points in all these years, and I have no way of knowing which are which. I'm pretty sure I have offended some along the way, and again, with very few exceptions, I have no way of knowing which are which, or perhaps that should be who are who or whom are whom or whatever the heck it should be.

So as a sort of end-of-year mea culpa (my fault, my most grievous fault), I want to reach way back into my childhood into the Cokesbury Hymnal from the Methodist Church in which I grew up and give to everyone an end-of-year apology in the form of the words of the 1911 hymn, "An Evening Prayer" by C.M. Battersby. The music was by Charles H. Gabriel, but you will have to imagine that.

Since 2020 has been too much like one long nightmare from which we all hope to wake very soon, I think it is fitting to turn an evening prayer into an end-of-year request for forgiveness.

It may not help, but it couldn't hurt.

An Evening Prayer
by C.M. Battersby

If I have wounded any soul today,
If I have caused one foot to go astray,
If I have walked in my own willful way,
Dear Lord, forgive!

If I have uttered idle words or vain,
If I have turned aside from want or pain,
Lest I myself should suffer through the strain,
Dear Lord, forgive!

If I have been perverse or hard, or cold,
If I have longed for shelter in Thy fold,
When Thou hast given me some fort to hold,
Dear Lord, forgive!

Forgive the sins I have confessed to Thee;
Forgive the secret sins I do not see;
O guide me, love me and my keeper be,
Dear Lord, Amen.

U.S. History lesson and a most unusual photo

Today, class, before 2020 passes into history, let's take a glimpse back in time to the America of a hundred years ago, to the year 1920.

I can hear some of you saying "Let's not" but I am going to forge ahead anyhow. Stick with me. You may learn something.

World War I had ended with the armistice in November 1918. American women had just received the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and everyone was looking forward to the election in the fall of 1920. The deadly Spanish flu had lasted from February 1918 to April 1920, infecting 500 million people – about a third of the world's population at the time – in four successive waves. The death toll worldwide is estimated to have been somewhere between 17 million and 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million.

On the American political scene, President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, wanted to serve a third term but his failing health made that unlikely. In the Republican Party, former president Theodore Roosevelt had been the favorite for another run at the presidency, but that hope ended when he died in January 1919. Whom to pick, whom to pick? Both parties were in a quandary.

At the Democratic Party's National Convention in San Francisco, on the 44th ballot (repeat, 44th ballot -- Donald Trump would have been apoplectic), James M. Cox, the governor of Ohio, was chosen to head the ticket and he picked the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York, as his Vice-Presidential running mate. Here they are at a campaign stop in Washington D.C. in 1920:

Do you notice anything unusual or surprising about that photo? The answer is revealed before the end of this post.

The Republicans chose Senator Warren G. Harding, also of Ohio, to be their candidate. He became the 29th president of the United States. His Vice-Presidential running mate, Calvin Coolidge, then became the 30th president when Harding died in office in 1923.

Here is what the electoral map ended up looking like in 1920:

The "big three" states in electoral votes that year were New York (45), Pennsylvania (38), and Illinois(29). Not California, Not Texas. Not Florida. The North and West voted Republican and there was an almost solidly Democratic south except for the state of Tennessee. The nation's political map has changed a great desl in the last hundred years, mainly because the political stances of the Democrats and Republicans have changed as well.

About that photograph, it is the only one I have ever seen of Franklin D. Roosevelt standing tall and erect, unassisted by crutches or canes, or not sitting in a wheelchair. It made me wonder just when he contracted polio, and I have learned that it happened the very next year, in 1921. He became very ill while his family was on vacation at Campobello in Maine. He became permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Although he was diagnosed with poliomyelitis at the time, some now think his symptoms were more consistent with Guillain–Barré syndrome.

The Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, the Stock Market Crash, the Great Depression, World War II were all yet to come.

Roosevelt probably thought his career was ended and that his life was ruined.

He could not have been more wrong.

He went on to become Governor of New York, and then the longest-serving president of the United States, from 1933 until 1945.

Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen

...which was prepared and served by our Alabama son-in-law....

Le menu du 26 décembre:

tranche de jambon avec quartier d'ananas
haricots verts
patate douce hasselback
macaroni et fromage cheddar
rouler avec du beurre
thé glacé

and the pièce de resistance (not shown):

cordonnier pêche à la cannelle

Translation for non-Alabamians:

ham slice with pineapple wedge
green beans
hasselback sweet potato
macaroni and cheese
roll with butter
iced tea
cinnamon peach cobbler

The best one hour, thirteen minutes, and fifty-three seconds you could spend this Christmas season

...musically, at least, would be to watch and listen to:

This youtube video of "Carols From King's" from 2006.

"King's" refers to Kings College, Cambridge, in England, where every Christmas Eve a similar event is broadcast live around the world by the BBC. It is carried in the U.S. on National Public Radio. In my time zone it occurs from 10 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. on December 24th, but in the U.K. it is mid-afternoon.

This is definitely not the Trans-Siberian Orchestra or Lady Gaga or the Beatles.

What it is is beautiful.

You might find yourself listening to it more than once.

Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars, let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and...

...Saturn?

Fear not, Jupiter and Saturn are not going to collide today. It just looks like it to the naked eye.

Your roving reporter (that would be moi) just looked it all up so you wouldn't have to. Jupiter is 886,736,536 kilometers or 532,041,921 miles or 5.927468 astronomical units (AU) from Earth today. Saturn, on the other hand, is 1,619,972,917 kilometers or 971,983,750 miles or 10.828849 astronomical units (AU) from Earth today.

So it's a simple matter of subtraction. Saturn is 733,235,981 kilometers or 439,941,588 miles or 4.901385 astronomical units (AU) farther away from us than Jupiter is. They will not collide as they seem to the naked eye to be doing. No, friends, they will be merely like ships passing in the night, one closer to us and one farther away from us. Very large ships, to be sure, and not really within hailing distance of each other.

You can rest easy. You can breathe now. It's all an optical illusion to us, the viewers.

FYI, class, an astronomical unit or AU is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun and equal to about 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) or 499 light-seconds (8.3167 minutes). The actual distance varies as Earth orbits the Sun, from a maximum (aphelion) to a minimum (perihelion) and back again once each year. The AU was originally conceived as the average of Earth's aphelion and perihelion. (Thank you, Wikipedia.)

For your further enlightenment, it takes light 49 minutes, 17.7347 seconds for the sunlight reflected from Jupiter's surface to reach us here on Earth, and it takes 1 hour, 30 minutes, 3.6473 seconds for the sunlight reflected from Saturn's surface to reach us here on Earth.

We ain't just playing backyard beanbag toss here.

In other news, today is the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year in our Northern Hemisphere and the longest day and shortest night of the year in our Southern Hemisphere.

Your head can now stop spinning and you are free to return to your normally scheduled activities.

Would a rose by any other name really smell as sweet?

William Shakespeare famously said that it would. In Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2, Juliet says, "What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet." (lines 46-47).

But would it really? Somehow, I doubt it. I'm thinking of various English versions of the Bible, where the same verse seems to say different things depending on which version you happen to be reading.

For example, in the story of Elijah hiding in a cave in the book of First Kings, chapter 19, the King James Version (KJV) of 1611 reads:

"And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice" [emphasis mine].

However, in the New International Version (NIV) a late-20th-century translation, the same couple of verses read as follows:

"Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper" [emphasis mine].

Okay, "shattered" and "brake (broke) in pieces" mean essentially the same thing, as do "rent and "tore apart", but is a gentle whisper the same thing as a still, small voice? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure.

Here's another example. Proverbs 24:6 says in the KJV, "in multitude of counselors there is safety" but in the New American Standard Bible (NASB) the same verse says, "in an abundance of counselors there is victory."

Again, are victory and safety the same thing? I think not.

So what's a person to believe?

It may depend on whether your Bible was produced by Roman Catholics or Protestants. In the KJV (Protestant), Matthew 11:12 reads "And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force" but in the Douay-Rheims version (1899, Roman Catholic) it reads "And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away". So if you know that Flannery O'Connor's second novel is entitled The Violent Bear It Away you also have a pretty good idea which Bible she was reading.

Wait a minute. Suffereth? Suffereth? Another thing about words is that their meanings can change over time. Believe it or not, suffer used to mean permit or allow, which clarifies what Jesus meant when he said "Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven."

There is also First Thessalonians 4:15 where the word "prevent" in the KJV can be confusing unless you know that in 1611 it meant "precede".

I don't know if any of this is of interest to you, but it interests me. However, since the quality of mercy is not strained (Shakespeare wrote that too), I will show some mercy and stop for now.

I reserve the right to bring up the subject again sometime.

Tonight's blank stares on Jeopardy!: What is Foreigner? (band that had a hit with "I Want To Know What Love Is")

Two more Jeopardy answers no one knew

...but me:

1. What is Fort Worth?
2. What is the Mongol Empire?

You probably are tired of hearing me tell you these things, but I just can't help myself.

I didn't think we would be doing any Chrustmas shopping this year, but yesterday we went to a local department store and did some, plus we ordered a few things online last week that have now been delivered to our home by FedEx (Federal Express courier service, for readers not in the U.S.). We still need to buy gifts for some of our grandchildren, and then our shopping will be finished.

There will still be all the gift-wrapping to do, but Mrs. RWP likes to do that. She really does, and she is very good at it. If it depended on me, it might never get done.

We didn't put up a Christmas tree this year (second year in a row) and our nativity set is still sitting in its box on a shelf in the garage. I need to pull out the ladder and put in a new light bulb over the garage door. It's also time to replace the HVAC filter in the furnace in the attic.

Perhaps I should watch less Jeopardy and do a little more work around the house?

Don't answer that.

In case anyone cares, today is Beethoven's birthday.

Hodgepodge

...describes (according to Wikipedia) a confused or disorderly mass or collection of things; a "mess" or a "jumble".

That's what today's post will be, because I have several things floating arround in my cranial stew and I have neither the time nor the inclination to sort them all out.

Read on at your own risk. You have been warned.

Topic 1 - Writers On Writing

In a 1984 interview with The Paris Review, the American writer James Baldwin (1924-1987) made several remarkable statements about writing:

• I find writing gets harder as time goes on. I’m speaking of the working process, which demands a certain amount of energy and courage (though I dislike using the word), and a certain amount of recklessness.
• You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
• Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.
• I don’t try to be prophetic, as I don’t sit down to write literature. It is simply this: a writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.
• Write. Find a way to keep alive and write. There is nothing else to say. If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.
• [My first drafts] are overwritten. Most of the rewrite, then, is cleaning. Don’t describe it, show it. That’s what I try to teach all young writers—take it out! Don’t describe a purple sunset, make me see that it is purple.

These were all cited in a recent article by Emily Temple in Literary Hub entitled “Write a Sentence as Clean as a Bone” and Other Advice From James Baldwin". There were more, but those are enough.

For more on writing from a successful writer, I recommend you read the book Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott.

Topic 2 - Recent questions on Jeopardy! that no one knew but me

I'll give you the answer first, putting it, as always, in the form of a question. Pertinent information from the clue will follow in parentheses:

• Who is Sequoyah? (inventor of the Cherokee syllabary around 1820)
  
• Who is Josephine? (wife of Emperor Napoleon)
  
• Who are Lerner and Loewe? (writers of My Fair Lady)
  
• What is a unicorn? (mythical horned beast, along with behemoth, mentioned nine times in the King James Version of the Bible)
  
• What is void? (in the first chapter of the book of Genesis, Earth is described as being without form and this. The category was Empty Words.)
  
  That last one astounded me more than usual that no one could come up with the answer.
  
  Topic 3 - Midwinter Holidays
  
  Hanukkah begins tonight at sunset and ends eight days from now on December 18th. Between then and Christmas, do not wish your Jewish friends a "Happy Hanukkah" or they will know you are not paying attention.
  
  I hope this post was hodgepodgy enough for you. I may elaborate on some of these topics at a later date.
  
  Don't hold your breath.
  
  

I used to think that I was fairly well informed

...but friends, those days are fading fast. There are more and more subjects regarding which I would fail miserably if they were categories on a certain television program that shall remain nameless.

For example, yesterday I ran across (not literally) an article from The New York TImes entitled "The 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century (So Far)". I am not going to give you a link to it. You are capable of finding it yourself if you wish to. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime, and other annoying expressions.

Glowing descriptions of the 25, their roles, and the films in which they appeared were provided by A.O. Scott, Marjane Satrapi, Manohla Dargis, Julian Schnabel, Ryan Coogler, James Gray (about all of whom I know nothing), and Denzel Washington (about whom I know a little bit).

I have omitted the glowing descriptions (I might also have called them breathlessly gushy) to spare you such memorable sentences as the following:

"She’s flat-out glorious in “The Paperboy” (2012), a delectably vulgar whatsit in which she outshines a showboating male cohort, alternately urinating on Zac Efron and tearing her pantyhose in an orgiastic frenzy over John Cusack."

You can thank me later.

Moving right along....

Of the 25 greatest actors of the 21st century (so far) themselves, I had never heard of about half of them. I say "about half" because I had heard of 12 of them. I had never heard of the other 13. It would have been impossible for me to have heard of exactly half of them because that would be, let's see, multiple by 4, carry the 3, um, 12 and a half, and that would be impossible.

Here's the list. You can tell me how well you did in the comments:

25 - Gael García Bernal
24 - Sônia Braga
23 - Mahershala Ali
22 - Melissa McCarthy
21 - Catherine Deneuve
20 - Rob Morgan
19 - Wes Studi
18 - Willem Dafoe
17 - Alfre Woodard
16 - Kim Min-hee
15 - Michael B. Jordan
14 - Oscar Isaac
13 - Tilda Swinton
12 - Joaquin Phoenix
11 - Julianne Moore
10 - Saorise Ronan
9 - Viola Davis
8 - Zhao Tao
7 - Toni Servillo
6 - Song Kang Ho
5 - Nicole Kidman
4 - Keanu Reeves
3 - Daniel Day-Lewis
2 - Isabelle Huppert
1 - Denzel Washington

I grow more out of touch with every passing day. All in all, however, it is not a bad thing to be.

What names are missing from the list that you would have included? What names are on the list that you would have omitted? How many have you never heard of?

Round and round she goes, and where she stops...

...is 2,000 light-years closer than anyone thought heretofore.

It's true, according to VERA.

Not Vera Lynn, the English singer who sang "We'll Meet Again" during World War II. She died in June at the age of 103.

And not Vera Ellen, the American singer who appeared in the 1954 film White Christmas . She died in 1981.

No, friends, I mean VERA as in VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (and by the way, "VLBI" stands for Very Long Baseline Interferometry), a project that was started in 2000 to map three-dimensional velocity and spatial structures in the Milky Way.

Perhaps we are not 2,000 light-years closer to being sucked into The Black Hole At The Center Of All Things but you won't know for sure unless you read this article right here plus there is a lovely map of our galaxy with lots of arrows to keep you puzzled and/or amused as well.

Speaking of space exploration, tonight's unanswerable question on Jeopardy!, which I of course knew, was "What is a heat shield?"

One question I expect never to hear on the program that shall remain nameless is "What is Very Long Baseline Interferometry?"

Carry on, nurse space cadets readers, just as though you had never read this post. To quote Walter Cronkite or somebody from CBS a few decades back, all things continue as they were then, except You Are There.

Flabbergasted

It happened again tonight and I was, as usual, that word up there in the title of this post.

But what made it even more unusual than it usually is was that it happened not once, not twice, but three times within 30 minutes.

I don't know what you may be thinking, but I'm talking about those heretofore rare occasions when I know an answer on Jeopardy! but no contestant does.

The answers I knew tonight, which are phrased in the form of a question as the program's rules require, were:

What is Kennebunkport?
What is a fetlock? and
What is Dog, The Bounty Hunter?

My mother, a very wise woman, had a saying for occasions such as this one.

Here it is:

Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back.

I wonder why I am flabbergasted when I know something someone else doesn't, but I am not flabbergasted when I don't know something someone else does.

In closing, and it may help shed some light on why I am the way I am, here's a question my father liked to ask: What can go up the chimney down but can't go down the chimney up?

Voice, fiddle, and flute

In the previous post, in which we (okay, I) talked about people changing words to the lyrics of songs, reader Kathy from Virginia recalled that her father-in-law used to sing "Amazing Grace" to the opening theme music from the television program Gilligan's Island. The phenomenon she mentioned is different from changing an occasional word here and there, such as the example I had pointed out, changing "flaring lamps" to "glaring lamps" in the second verse of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

But the Battle Hymn itself is an example of what Kathy was talking about. Before "Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord" and so forth were sung to the tune we all know, that very tune had a completely different set of words, "John Brown's Body Lies A-Moulding In The Grave".

Christian songwriter Dottie Rambo a few decades back put her lyrics "He Looked Beyond My Faults And Saw My Need" to the old Irish folk tune, "Danny Boy" and no one objected/cared/was any the wiser.

Even the poem by Francis Scott Key that became our national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner" (which begins, "O say, can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?") is sung to an 18th-century tavern drinking-song tune called "To Anacreon, In Heaven".

I kid you not. You can listen to it right here (1:06) .

I am indebted to the simple tune of "Jesus Loves Me" for helping me and young folks everywhere remember the names of the 12 disciples of Jesus:

Let's name the twelve disciples one by one,
Peter, Andrew, James, and John,
Next come Philip, and Thomas too,
Matthew and Bartholomew.
James (the one they called the Less),
Simon, also Thaddeus.
The twelfth disciple Judas made.
Jesus was by him betrayed.

Back in my sacrilegious youth, there was a Pepsi-Cola commercial that went "Pepsi-Cola hits the spot, twelve full ounces, that's a lot, something something and something too, Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you" and some of us who ought to have known better made up new words:

Christianity hits the spot,
Twelve apostles, that's a lot,
The Holy Ghost and the Virgin too,
Christianity's the thing for you.

Well, that's more than enough of that.

What songs can you think of (excluding bawdy ones) that are sung to the tune of a different song?

P.S. -- This all seems very familiar. Perhaps I have blogged about it before.

P.P.S. -- In the comments, Yorkshire Pudding mentioned that "My Country, 'Tis Of Thee" is the same music as "God Save The Queen" and Alphie Soup mentioned that Elvis Presley's song "Love Me Tender" is the music of a 19th-century American song called "Aura Lee". These very good examples suddenly brought three others to mind:

1. The music of Della Reese's hit song "Don't You Know" is "Musetta's Waltz" from Puccini's opera La Boheme.

2. The love ballad "Full Moon and Empty Arms" from several decadea ago is music from Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.

3. "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" uses music composed by Frederic Chopin in his Fantasie Impromptu.

And now for something entirely different...

I hate it (is that too strong a word?) when people change the lyrics of a song. I'm sure they have what they consider to be good reasons, but I do not like it one bit when someone's original and well-thought-out words are casually tossed aside and summarily replaced.

Here's an example. In the last verse of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" Julia Ward Howe (I almost said Katherine Lee Bates, silly me) wrote:

as He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free

Many hundreds of thousands of American soldiers actually died during the Civil War to put an end to slavery in the United States of America, but in the last few years that line is frequently changed from "let us die to make men free" to "let us live to make men free".

What's the big deal? you may be asking. Why are you so up in arms (to coin a phrase) about something so unimportant and inconsequential?

I happen to think it makes a difference whether a person is willing to live or willing to die for something -- family, country, faith.

I think it was Eldridge Cleaver who said, "If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem".

I recently heard another change to (would you believe it?) the same song. One verse goes, "I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps / They are building Him an altar in the evening dews and damps / I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps" and someone sang, on film yet, "by the dim and glaring lamps" instead. Not flaring. Glaring. Is that an improvement? I think not. I know warfare has changed a great deal since the 1860s, but is it really necessary that we replace coal oil with flashlight batteries in an iconic song from a certain historic period?

I know there are much more important things to discuss. Covid-19. The electoral college. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.

But wasn't it a welcome break to think about something else for a few minutes?

Flotsam, Jetsam, Detritus, Drivel, Happy, Bashful, and Doc

Those are not the names of the seven dwarfs (dwarves?) in the Disney version of Snow White.

Okay, three of them are. The missing ones are Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, and Dopey. In their place I put what many think my posts are made up of.

They are wrong, wrong, I tell you.

Did you know that Snow White had a sister named Rose Red? Well, she did.

People have asked me why I like trivia. I don't like trivia. I just tend to remember things that I read or see, unless it is really, really important, and then I can't remember it to save my life. I suppose most of the things I remember (or at least have a good recall concerning) are subjects in which I am interested. These do not usually include science or math, but sometimes I surprise myself.

I am not nearly as smart as I used to think I was. I have enjoyed watching the program Jeopardy! for many years (and I'm going to miss Alex Trebek, may he rest in peace, greatly). I used to think I knew the answers to most of the questions. For the past couple of months I have actually kept count each evening of the answers I know, and usually it's a little over half of them. It all depends on the categories. I know absolutely nothing (or frightfully little) about rappers and rap music, 21st-century films, and (see above) science or math.

I guess random facts stick in my brain, such as Alexander Hamilton was born on the island of Nevis, the country named for a king of Spain whose name is derived from a Greek phrase meaning "lover of horses" is the Philippines, and Harper Lee wrote To Kill A Mockingbird.

What tickles and usually astonishes me the most is when I know the answer but not a single one of the three contestants does, which happened twice recently when the answers were "kerosene" and "Pythagoras". The problem is not only that new facts are occurring all the time but that facts change (which to my way of thinking means they were not "facts" in the first place). When I grew up, for example, there were nine planets in our Solar System, and now there are only eight. When I was exposed to the periodic table of elements for the first time, there were 94 elements. Now there are 118. Nobody had ever heard of a quark when I was in school, and now six types have been identifed: up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top.

So as what I thought I knew recedes into history, so will I. Eventually no one will remember me at all. But even more distressing is that people who can name the 12 labors of Hercules or can quote at length from King Lear will become rarer and rarer until there are none at all.

Full confession: I can do neither.

I told you I wasn't as smart as I thought I was.

The Apostle Paul said it best: "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." (Romans 12:3)

Here endeth another post from your sober friend, rhymeswithplague.

Seasons change, and the world keeps turning

We have had the second frost of the season. When I took Abby out for her early constitutional this morning, the lawn was white instead of green. City people who live in high-rise buildings probably don't think about frosts or know when they occur.

This fall has been a strange one. The first frost occurred back in October, and in the time since then we have seen many mornings in the 50s and afternoons in the 70s (I speak in Fahrenheit). Summer doesn't seem to want to leave just yet.

The trees are confused. The maples and poplars have shed their leaves with the assistance of the high winds of tropical storm Zeta, but many of the oaks are still green and hanging on for dear life, reluctant to accept the inevitable.

i too am in the autumn of my life. One thing I know is it's a long, long time from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September. And the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame...and the days dwindle down to a precious few. September... November...

Winter will be here before you know it. As for me, I don't dread it. I'm looking forward to spring.

And these few precious days, I'll spend with you. These golden days I'll spend with you.

A treat for you, two treats really, to while away the hours during the pandemic or lockdown or wherever you happen to find yourself

...because what else do we have to do besides sit around feeling sorry for ourselves?

Treat Number 1

People my age grew up thinking that our solar system had nine planets, but we had our hats handed to us a few years back when Pluto was downgraded, by those who ought to know, from planet status to dwarf planet status. Now we learn that another Planet 9 may be out there and why astronomers think so. Hint: It involves two more dwarf planets that have been discovered beyond Pluto, and one of them is called Biden. I'm serious. Why don't we ever hear about this stuff on the nightly news? Read all about 2012 VP113 and 2015 TG387 and Astronomical Units (AU) in the following fascinating article:

Beyond Pluto: The Hunt For Our Solar System's New Ninth Planet

Treat Number 2

Speaking of Planet 9, and now that you have had your mind expanded, here's one you cannot miss. Authors Harry Medved and Michael Medved said in their 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards that the worst film ever made was a 1959 gem called Plan 9 From Outer Space. (Plan 9 has absolutely nothing to do with Planet 9; I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.) If you go to this page in Wikipedia you will be able to read all about Plan 9 From Outer Space as well as watch the entire movie (1 hr, 19 min, 7 sec).

After you have availed yourself of both treats, not only will you have learned the difference between Planet 9 and Plan 9, you will also have used up at least 1 hr, 19 min, 7 sec of your life that you will never get back.

I do not say wasted.

What is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days according to the American poet James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). It didn't take him that long to write it; those dates are the year he was born and the year he died, but you knew that.

I'll tell you what is so rare as a day in June.

A week in November. This week, as a matter of fact.

I'm not referring to the election, which as of this writing isn't over yet. I'm talking about the weather here in Canton, Georgia, USA.

The weather app on my smart phone says it all (the high and low temperatures shown are in Fahrenheit):

Sunday 73 63
Monday 73 64
Tuesday 72 66
Wednesday 75 63
Thursday 75 57
Friday 73 54
Saturday 70 57
Sunday 73 62

I'd say that I have spring fever, but it isn't even spring. Oscar Hammerstein II wrote that. And with music supplied by Richard Rodgers it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1945.

Here's Andy Williams singing it in 1962 (3:08).

I'm as restless as a willow in a windstorm too, I'm as jumpy as a puppet on a string, but I think it has more to do with the election than the weather.

P.S. -- I definitely do not feel gay in a melancholy way. Language sure does change over time, doesn't it?

My son-in-law who lives in Alabama...

...about three hours from us is teaching a class here in Georgia tomorrow, so he is spending the night with us tonight. He drove over this afternoon and arrived bearing a lovely fall bouquet for Mrs. RWP as well as the ingredients for a meal that he announcd he would be cooking for us. It was delicious. We had chicken and dumplings, fried okra, and speckled butter beans, the Southern equivalent of filet mignon and baked potato. He will leave very early tomorrow morning and drive another hour and a half before reaching his teaching destination. We were glad to see him and are glad he became part of our family. He is an absolute gem. He is downright superior.

Changing the subject, why are there 5,280 feet in a mile? To learn the answer to that question and a few others as well, read this:

Why Are There 5,280 Feet in a Mile?

Lastly, what do I.M. Pei, Freddy Mercury, the Code of Hammurabi, Gitche Gumee, and the Articles of Confederation have in common?

Don't know? That's an easy one! They are the answers to the Final Jeopardy question in five recent episodes of the television game show Jeopardy!

Gitche Gumee, perhaps the most obscure of the five, is an Ojibwe (Native American tribe) phrase meaning "Big-Sea-Water", which is what the Ojibwes called what we call Lake Superior. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used the phrase in his 1855 poem, "The Song Of Hiawatha":

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis....

Post-lastly, which do you think is harder, to write poetry using trochaic tetrameter or to remember to phrase all of your answers in the form of a question?

Those are the Great Lakes of North America from space. Lake Superior is the largest one at the upper left. The little squiggly line at the lower left is the Mississippi River.

Some light reading for this weekend, with your choice of beverage

Here are a few articles that piqued my interest this morning, and I hope you will find them interesting too:

1. How to Count Every Language in India

2. The True Story of the Short-Lived State of Franllin

One of my daughters-in-law is from the very area that would have been Franklin but is now known as northeast Tennessee.

I'm getting old (I do not say crotchety) and forget easily (of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most) so I may have shared this semi-interesting article with you before. If I have, well, I'm going to do it again.

3. The Sixth Sense Turns 20: M. Night Shyamalan And Haley Joel Osment Tell All

It just occurred to me that if M. Night Shyamalan's first name were Midsummer, then The Sixth Sense could also be called A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Speaking of unusual names, the young, tall, lanky, black (how many adjectives are too many?) technician who assisted my doctor during my recent visit to receive two more intra-vitreal injections (I get shots in both eyes every few weeks because I have macular degeneration) introduced himself as Mel. Mel spoke English with an accent I couldn't identify so I asked him where he had come to the U.S. from. "London," he said, and I said, "That is not an English accent I'm hearing. What I meant was where are you from origially?" and he said "Ghana."

I mentioned that I had friends who had lived in northern Ghana for many years as Christian missionaries in the town of Tamale, and I pronounced it TOMMA-lee as Ghanaians do, not as Mexicans would when referring to what they want for dinner. Since we were becoming chummy and he realized I knew a little about his country, he suddenly told me that Mel was short for Melchizedek but that most people had never heard the name before. I told him that I knew the name, that it was in the Bible, and it is. It's in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament and the book of Hebrews in the New Testament.

The Bible is full of people with unusual names from our perspective, like Sennacherib (whom I once blogged about right here) and Tiglath-pileser (I haven't blogged about him) and Maher-shalal-hashbaz (or him). I have never met anyone named Tiglath-Pileser, but there is an American actor/rapper named Mahershala Ali -- he has won an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and two Academy Awards -- who was born Mahershalalhashbaz Gilmore in Oakland, California, in 1974. In school he was known as Hershal Gilmore.

Some people claim that Maher-shalal-hashbaz is the longest personal name in the Bible, but there is a longer one that you may not recognize until I tell you how translators translated it. That name is Pele-yowes-el-gibbowr-abdiad-sar-shalowm.

You know it. It has been sung every Christmas season since 1742 in Handel's Messiah: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called "Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." Of course! Pele-yowes-el-gibbowr-abdiad-sar-shalowm!

Here is one last article for your weekend reading:

4. How To Make Crispy, Juicy, Fried Chicken

Since it calls for either bourbon or vodka, you may want to give it a closer look. The strangest part of the recipe to me, though, is that it says to refrigerate the chicken immediately after cooking it. So it's a recipe for cold fried chicken, which is not the way we eat it here in the South. Very few people around here want to eat reheated chicken.

We have covered a variety of subjects, but why should today be any different?

Would I lie to you?

No, I would not.

Here is the driveway of some friends of ours this morning after Hurricane/Tropical Storm (pick one) Zeta passed through north Georgia during the night:

And here's the same view a few hours later when some Good Samaritans showed up and began to remove the debris:

Our friends, Cindy and Darrell, attend the same church we do. I am showing you these photos, which were taken from their front porch, to prove several things:

• Cherokee County has a lot of trees.
• Atlanta really is a city built in a forest.
• People here have long driveways.
• People here have steep driveways.
• North Georgia has a lot of hills.
• It doesn't necessarily take good fences to make good neighbors.

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind

And blow, it did. Pardon me for sounding like Yoda.

Last night Hurricane Zeta, or what was left of her, blew through north Georgia. Around 4 or 5 this morning we had some of the strongest winds I have ever experienced. Today many trees are down and many roads are closed.

We are fine. Our house and yard sustained no damage, but our next-door neighbor's Bradford pear tree was uprooted and currently is lying (laying?) across the sidewalk, partially blocking our street. The authorities are saying our highest winds were between 50 and 55 miles per hour, not extremely high as such storms go. The eye of what had been Hurricane Zeta passed very close to Canton on its way to somewhere else. Locally, one man died just a few miles from us when a large oak tree fell on the monile home where he was sleeping and he was crushed to death.

In other news, the pathology report on the biopsy of the growth over my left eyebrow confirmed that it is a squamous-cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer. I am having a consultation with the surgeon on November 9th to determine the next step, which will probably be to schedule what is referred to as Mohs surgery, named after the physician who first performed it. In Mohs surgery, a layer of skin cells is removed and examined under a microscope. If cancer cells are present, another layer is removed. The procedure is repeated until a layer is reached in which no cancer cells are present. I had never heard of Mohs but it apparently is quite common and its success rate for the treatment of both squamous-cell carcinoma (SCC) and basal-cell carcinoma (BCC) is 99 per cent.

And all these years I thought BCC meant blind carbon copy. Do not make me feel any older than I already am by claiming not to know what a blind carbon copy is, or carbon paper, or a typewriter.

Here, for your amusement and amazement, is Leroy Anderson's "Typewriter Song" performed by the Brandenberg Symphony (3:56).

You're welcome.

Four days, four moods, four poems

On four different days in four different years I was in four different moods and wrote four very different poems. They could have been written by four different people.


October 25, 2004

Our friend Carolyn came over for lunch
And as we finished at the table
Someone said, “Let’s go for a ride!”
So into the car we piled,
Like children giddy with anticipation,
Not knowing where we were headed
But eager to be having an adventure;
And someone said, “Where shall we go?”
And we said, “We don’t know!”
And someone else said, “Name a direction!”
And because the fall thus far at home
Had been drab and disappointing,
We headed north toward the mountains, laughing.

Five hours later we returned,
Tired but invigorated,
Having been to Helen and Unicoi Gap
And Hiawassee and Lake Chatuge,
Making all of the hairpin turns
And ascending, always ascending, until
We crested and began to descend
Through another set of hairpin turns,
And all the while we oohed and ahhed
And said how glad we were that we had come,
Drinking in the brilliant reds, the dazzling yellows,
The shocking oranges of autumn, the mountains ablaze
Against a clear blue sky.



Byzantine Christ

Naught else consumes me, naught but the prize,
Naught but the flicker of love in your eyes.
All else I flee from, all else abhor,
All else excoriate, all else deplore.

This is my one goal, this is my quest,
This my one hope, and away with the rest.
All else is vanity, all I despise;
Say me a silent Well Done with your eyes.

The Thing About His Poetry Is

it just lies there, flat as the proverbial
pancake, it doesn’t lift off the page
like a rocket bound for some distant
world, it doesn’t make your brain want to
soar into the blue. The herons are

never flying in his poetry and no stars
are ever mentioned; he wouldn’t recognize
a constellation if one hit him square
in the face. Your heart with rapture
never fills, there are no fields of
daffodils with which it can dance, in fact

dancing itself is pretty much
frowned upon in his economy,
it’s all business with him, cut and dried.
If his poetry were the financial section
of the newspaper there would always be
a bear market without the slightest hint

of hope, and in spite of all this
the public can’t get enough of him,
his books are all best sellers and
he’s making money hand over fist
even though the thing about his poetry is
it just lies there, flat as the proverbial

pancake.



To Eleanor

The moon, falling softly on the sea;
The wind, moving gently through the grain;
And you, turning quietly to me –
......You three bring joy, silent joy that stills my pain.

The sea, which receives the moon’s caress;
The grain, which receives the wind’s soft touch;
And I, who receive your quietness –
......We three are blessed. No one else can know how much.



Over the years I have written around 40 poems in all. Some are better than others.

Obviously.

Yes, Virginia, there is life outside of blogging

As proof, here is a list of happenings that occurred in or to the rhymeswithplague household in recent days:

• While taking care of my son's dog, a 14-year-old black Lab, last weekend while my son and his family had gone out of town, I fell in their hallway KERSPLAT! and it wasn't pretty. I made a perfect three-point landing on my left kneecap (badly bruised), my right forearm (scraped the skin off), and my nose (bled profusely, partly because the 81-mg aspirin I take daily for my heart acts as a blood thinner -- Mrs. RWP said she hadn't seen that much blood since she retired from nursing -- and partly because my face hit the hardwood floor the hardest). In addition, I am sporting one black eye and had to have the nosepiece on my glasses repaired by an optician. It was not so much a fall as that I found myself hurtling from the foyer through the hall to the dining room trying to retain my balance, which I lost while trying to make a large, blind, deaf dog go someplace he didn't want to go. Technically, I wanted him to zig and he was determined to zag. I am used to dealing with a 14-pound dog and this one weighed 80 pounds. The bottom line is that the dog won.
• I went to a dermatologist to have a growth removed that had appeared over my left eyebrow within the last year. I thought it might have been some kind of wart but the physician's assistant called it a "cutaneous horn" and possibly a squamous-cell carcinoma; it measured 1.2 cm (0.5 in.) in length. Now we must wait about a week and a half for the results of the biopsy.
• The tension spring on my garage-door opener broke suddenly and the very heavy door came crashing down (another KERSPLAT!) on the cement floor. Fortunately the car was not under it at the time, nor was an aninal, nor was a person.
• The absentee ballots Mrs. RWP and I requested arrived in the mail. We filled them out, signed them, and returned them to the Cherokee County Elections Office in person because we didn't want to risk their being lost or destroyed by an incompetent or possibly diabolical postal employee.
• Mrs. RWP and I ventured out to our primary care physician's office and received the "high dose" flu vaccinations for the coming season that the medical community recommends for older Americans.

Whew!

That's a lot of happenings. I don't really expect you to be particularly interested in what happens to me when I'm not blogging, but one never knows.

I considered including photograps of my scrapes and bruises and black eye, but I decided to have pity on you and spare you the gruesome details.

When a woman says "my wife" it jars me for a split second

...because the concept runs counter to my ordered view of the world and I am always thrown, perplexed, momentarily confused. The same thing happens when a man says "my husband". Nevertheless, I continue to make progress in trying to understand the changing world around me, but not without some struggle. Remember, I will be 80 on my next birthday..

Today I ran across something fascinating.

The Paris Review has a recurring section called "First Person" in which are published essays written in the, well, you know. This month's offering (which word is a misnomer; I'm sure the author was paid handsomely) is entitled "The Eleventh Word" and was written by a woman named Lulu Miller. The article/essay/whatever-it-is was accompanied, for reasons that will become clear as you read it, by this illustration:

So for your reading pleasure, wonderment, and general perusal (note use of the Oxford comma), here it is.

Please share with us your reactions to Ms. Miller's piece. I was strangely reminded of the passage in the book of Genesis where God brought the animals to Adam and whatever Adam called each one, that was its name.

What's in a name? A rose by any other name woul smell as sweet. Somebody said that once.

In other news, today is what used to be called Columbus Day in the United States of America. It commemorated the day in 1492 when a certain Italian sailing under the financial backing of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain landed on an island in the Bahamas and was said for many years to have discovered America. America had been there all the time, of course; he just encountered it on his voyage. He was not even the first European to encounter it. Vikings had done that several centuries earlier and several hundred miles farther north. And the indigenous people had been around for quite a while before that. October 12th is now called Indigenous Peoples Day instead.

Old habits are hard to break, and I'm doing my best. But it's more difficult when the world is falling apart and the things you thought you knew are disintegrating before your eyes.

East is East, and West is West, and I'm all tuckered out

When I was a boy growing up near Fort Worth, Texas, that city billed itself as "Where The West Begins". In my young and slightly quirky mind it naturally followed as the night the day that Dallas, 30 miles to the east, must be the place "Where The East Peters Out". In those days there were almost 30 miles of open country between the two, separated only by the tiny towns of Handley, Arlington, and Grand Prairie. Today it is one huge metroplex -- that's what it's called, the metroplex -- of 7.5 million people all smushed together.

I was a true easterner by birth, a "Yankee's Yankee" from east of the Connecticut River in the New England states. My family moved when I was six from the city of Pawtucket in the smallest state of all, the one with the longest name, the State Of Rhode Island And Providence Plantations, to the then-largest of the then-48 states (it was demoted to second-largest after Alaska became the 49th state in 1959).

Because my parents were from elsewhere, I did not act like many of my southwestern friends whose families had lived in Texas for generations. I never wanted to drive a tractor or play football or hunt squirrels with a .22-caliber rifle or ride a bull or bucking bronco at the local rodeo to impress the girls. I was more interested in sitting in a comfortable chair and reading, or playing the piano (which I began doing at the age of seven), or watching one of the three channels on our new-fangled contraption known as television. I was, as our family doctor told my mother during my teenaged years, sedentary.

I still am.

The most strenuous activity I have done in recent years my entire life was cardiac rehab sessions that involved walking on a treadmill for 30 to 45 minutes three days a week, riding a stationary bicycle, and doing upper and lower body exercises while holding light weights like dumbbells or medicine balls.

Not all at the same time, of course. That would be (a) silly and (b) next to impossible.

My insurance paid for three months of the rehab. I paid 50 dollars a month to the hospital to keep going until I had completed 18 months in all. Then it was time to stop.

I didn't keep track, but I have often wondered just how many trips between downtown Fort Worth and downtown Dallas I must have made walking on that treadmill and pedaling that dadblamed bike during those 18 months.

I might even have made it all the way back to Rhode Island. I just remembered there was also a rowing machine that would have helped me make it across the Connecticut River.

To say I am out of shape is a huge understatement.

Does anyone know who this out-of-shape fellow is?

Sixty-three years later, I still remember

...October 4,1957. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik into earth orbit that day, but that is not the reason I remember it. I remember it for an entirely different reason.

If you type the word "Sputnik" in the box at the top left of my blog and then click on the little magnifying glass, you will see several posts that explain why that day was a significant day in my life.

They say that 13 is unlucky

...(whoever "they" are) and today is the 13th anniversary of this blog. So far, knock on wood, cross your fingers (I'm joking), nothing bad has happened to me. On a historical note, five stents were inserted into my coronary arteries in 2017, but I consuder that to have been a good thing.

If my blog were a person, puberty would be right around the corner. If my blog were Jewish, it could have a Bar Mitzvah.

Speaking of 13, many tall buildings, especially hotels, do not have a 13th floor, except actually they do but it is called the 14th floor.

Denial is not a river in Egypt.

I could call this my blog's 14th anniversary all day long but the truth would be as plain as the nose on your face, especially if your name is Pinocchio: it's my blog's 13th anniversary.

Do the math: 2020 minus 2007 is not 12 and it's not 14. It's 13.

Happy 13th birthday, llttle blog.

As luck would have it, this also happens to be my 100th post of 2020.

On such a momentous occasion, cards and comments are nice, but money is even better.

If you think I'm being serious, you must be new around here.

And if the next 13 years go by as fast as the last 13, I'll be 92 very soon.

Binge watching as a tactic

Today was the first time Mrs. RWP and I have ever "binge watched" anything. For 12 straight hours, from 11 a.m. until 11 p.m., we watched Dr. Jeff, Rocky Mountain Vet on the Animal Planet channel.

Yes, we did.

And in so doing we managed to avoid Fraklin Graham's prayer walk from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol buulding in Washington, D.C. with 50,000 of his closest friends as well as President Trump's announcement that he was nominating Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to replace the recently deceased Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an associate justice on the Supreme Court.

So the day was not ompletely wasted.

Our heads are now filled with images of dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, camels, turtles, chinchillas, ferrets, and various other members of the animal kingdom. And although we did not see a single parrot, cockatoo, owl, iguana, or python on this go-round, the political season is not over yet.

There's more than one way to skin a cat.

What happened to rhymeswithplague?

I'll tell you what happened to rhymeswithplague. No one is in a better position to know. I'll tell you exactly what happened to rhymeswithplague.

Nothing, that's what.

But I have been incommunicado blogwise for the past 10 days because we get internet access through our landline telephone provider and we have had no dial tone for that period of time. We still don't, and the modem for my desktop computer is receiving no wi-fi signal through the phone jack so I am stuck.

And since my handy-dandy iPhone from the Apple Corporation depends (or so I mistakenly thought) on my home's wi-fi connection to access the internet as well, my blogging has been at a standstill.

Until my firstborn told me today to turn off the wi-fi in Settings in my iPhone and let Apple use Data mode instead.

He is brilliant.

I am not.

The Queen is not dead. Long live the Prince of Wales.

When Queen Victoria died at 81 in 1901, her eldest son, the 59-year-old Prince of Wales, became King Edward VII.

Fast forward 80 years. (It occurs to me that the phrase "fast forward" has disappeared from today's world along with "radio dial" and "telephone cord".)

In 1981, when Diana Spencer, future mother of the Duke of Cambridge and the Duke of Sussex, became engaged to Prince Charles Philip Arthur George of the House of Mountbatten-Windsor, the current Prince of Wales, she left her ancestral home in Althorpe and moved into Clarence House, I think it was, in London to prepare for her forthcoming marriage and new role as Princess of Wales.

The person who was assigned to be her mentor, to teach her how to become part of the royal family, to show her the ropes as it were, was the person who, as far as Prince Charles's bedchamber goes, was both her predecessor and her successor, none other than Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Here are a couple of true historical snippets:

1. Camilla's great grandmother, Alice Frederica Edmonstone Keppel, was a longtime mistress of Charles's great-great-great-grandfather, the aforementioned King Edward VII. You can look it up.

2. Andrew Parker-Bowles, Camilla's husband, was an equerry to the Queen. On the wedding day of Charles and Diana, he wore a bright red uniform and a golden helmet amd rode horseback alongside their wedding carriage.

Camilla bore two children to Andrew, a son, Tom Parker-Bowles, and a daughter, Laura Parker-Bowles Lopes.

Since Camilla was cut out of the same cloth as her great-grandmother, Princess Diana once remarked in a filmed interview that "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."

As we all know, Diana died in a horrific automobile crash in Paris in 1997. Camilla, whose marriage to Andrew Parker-Bowles ended in 1995, continued on with Charles as before. Speaking of historical snippets, there is a recording of a telephone conversation between Charles and Camilla in which he stated his wish to be her tampon. They married on April 9, 2005. Camilla did not become the Princess of Wales, however. She became the Duchess of Cornwall instead.

Charles is now 71, and is still the Prince of Wales, the oldest one ever. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, is now 94. She may outlive her own mother, who lived to the ripe old age of 101. Here is a photograph of the blended families with all of the step-siblings on Camilla's and Charles's wedding day in 2005:

If Charles, who is getting on up there and could die at any moment (as could Joe Biden or Donald Trump or you or I), outlives his mother he will become king and the world will remember him as Charles III or Philip I or Arthur I (or perhaps II?) or George VII. If she outlives him, however, then the first child of Charles and Diana, Prince William Arthur Philip Louis, the Duke of Cambridge (or as he is more popularly known, Kate Middleton's husband) would become king.

There is precedent for what I am saying. Before Edward VIII became king he was known as Prince David, and before George VI became king he was known as Prince Albert.

If you became the next British monarch instead of Charles or William, which of your names would you use? I could choose to become either Robert I or Henry IX. I would choose Robert.

Which title is better for this blog's first-ever embedded video?

1. You Take The High Road, And I'll Take The Low Road, And I'll Be In Scotland Afore Ye
2. It's A Long Way To Tipperary
3. Something else -- tell me in the comments

P.S. -- That was 13 seconds of your life that you will never get back.

My ma gave me a nickel to buy a pickle’

I didn't buy a pickle (as the old song goes),
I bought some chewin' gum.

CHORUS: Chew, chew, chew, chew,
Chew chewin' gum,
How I love chewin' gum.
I'm crazy over chewin' gum,
I chew, chew, chew.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, even when my aunt gave me a quarter for soda water, and my pop gave me a dollar to buy a collar, and my uncle gave me money to buy some honey, I still went out and spent it all on chewin' gum.

And I'm not the only one.

Singer Kitty Kallen did the same thing (2:10).

So did Dean Martin and Ella Fitzgerald and Teresa Brewer and numerous others, but to have included them all here would be cruel and unusual punishment indeed.

Actually, I haven't chewed gum in a very long time, and I hadn't thought of the word "chiclet" for decades until this morning when I ran across this very interesting article:

"How A Mexican General's Exile In Staten Island Led To Modern Chewing Gum".

As a guy who grew up in Texas I am very familiar with General Santa Anna -- he's the one who killed Davy Crockett and 180-some others at the Alamo -- but I never knew until now about his connection to chewing gum. I'll bet you didn't either.

Live and learn.

Hi, my name is Bob and I’m a Pharisee

I hope, actually, that I'm not a Pharisee, but I needed to get your attention.

The following is from the book 12 Steps for the Recovering Pharisee (like me), written in 1970 by John Fischer. The original list was written in first person plural (we, our, us) but I decided to change it into first person singular (I, my, me) to help get what I hope is my point across more forcefully:

12 Steps for the Recovering Pharisee

1. I admit that my single most unmitigated pleasure is to judge other people.
2. I have come to believe that my means of obtaining greatness is to make everyone lower than myself in my mind.
3. I realize that I detest mercy being given to those who, unlike me, haven’t worked for it and don’t deserve it.
4. I have decided that I don’t want to get what I deserve after all, and I don’t want anyone else to either.
5. I will cease all attempts to apply teaching and rebuke to anyone but myself.
6. I am ready to have God remove all these defects of attitude and character.
7. I embrace the belief that I am, and will always be, expert at sinning.
8. I am looking closely at the lives of famous men and women of the Bible who turned out to be ordinary sinners like me.
9. I am seeking through prayer and meditation to make a conscious effort to consider others better than myself.
10. I embrace the state of astonishment as a permanent and glorious reality.
11. I choose to rid myself of any attitude that is not bathed in gratitude.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I will try to carry this message to others who think that Christians are better than anyone else.

i have just enough active gray matter left to discern that the above is sort of a self-test. I won't ask you your score and would appreciate it if you didn't ask me mine.

Let me count the ways

Once upon a time, 1852-1941 to be exact, there lived in England a man named William Arthur Dunkerley who wrote using the name his parents had given him at birth as well as the names John Oxenham and Julian Ross.

I once thought of writing something using the name Scott Silberman but nothing ever came of it. I actually did write something a few years back using the name Billy Ray Barnwell, but like the narrow way described by Jesus of Nazareth, few there be that find it.

A man named Matthew who was also called Levi wrote down a lot of things he heard J of N say one day to a big crowd on the side of a mountain, and it took up three chapters in his book. One of the things was this: "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat: because strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

William Arthur Dunkerley writing as John Oxenham composed a poem he called "The Ways" but it was not about a broad one and a narrow one:

The Ways
by John Oxenham

To every man there openeth
A Way, and Ways, and a Way.
The High Soul climbs the High way,
And the Low soul gropes the Low,
And in between, on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.
But to every man there openeth
A High Way and a Low,
And every man decideth
Thw Way his soul shall go.

It goes without saying, ladies, that in the context of this very old poem "man" includes woman and "his" means his or her. Let's not quibble. For good or ill, I am an equal-opportunity feminist.

This post doesn't seem to have any identifiable theme. Still, I forge ahead.

Eric Blair wrote using the name George Orwell. Mary Ann Evans wrote using the name George Eliot. Samuel Langhorne Clemens wrote using the name Mark Twain.

Tell us, what is the name (other than your blogging name, if you have one) you would use to write your magnum opus blockbuster next book?

This is my 92nd post of 2020

...and with it my output so far this year has exceeded the annual output of each of the last five years. Here's the proof from the sidebar:

2019 (79)
2018 (86)
2017 (71)
2016 (77)
2015 (91)

My most prolific year vis-à-vis blogging was 2008, when I published 228 posts. I was a busy bee.

Apparently I have had a new burst of energy. At my age, though, I will probably get tired, like these guys:

Hooray! Even Hip, Hip, Hooray! (or as they say across the pond, Hip, Hip, Hip, Hooray!)

This small celebration has occurred because I have just used New Blogger to insert an image into a post!

I followed Tasker's, Adrian's, and even Yorkshire Pudding's advice and logged out of blogger, logged back in, and clicked on "Try new blogger" (I had done this before but eventually reverted to the legacy blogger). This time more icons appeared in the line of editing functions than before. It now includes "Insert image" and "Insert video" -- HOWEVER, COMMA, even this new page DOES NOT INCLUDE THE THREE DOTS (...) THAT INDICATE MORE FUNCTIONS LURKING JUST OUT OF SIGHT.

I may never get the same New Blogger page that others seem to have, but at least I finally received a more complete one than I had received heretofore.

Those two tired kitties up there are Smokey (L) and Bandit (R) and they are recuperating from their hard day at the office on my daughter's verandah in Alabama.

In the feline world, there are no worries about COVID-19, no concerns about presidential elections, and no frettings over the activities of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

I am reminded of an old nursery rhyme:

Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, where have you been?
I've been to London to visit the Queen.
Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, what did you there?
I frightened a little mouse under her chair.

The difference between Buckingham Palace in London and my daughter's verandah in Alabama is simply this:

In Alabama, thrones are occupied by cats, not queens.

I wish they would tackle world peace instead

While we lesser creatures spend our lives creating blogposts and commenting on the blogposts of others, greater minds than ours ponder things like the following article from the current issue of Scientific American magazine:

"This Twist on Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox Has Major Implications for Quantum Theory"

which has the even more intriguing subtitle, 'A laboratory demonstration of the classic “Wigner’s friend” thought experiment could overturn cherished assumptions about reality'.

I am clearly out of my element and in over my head. I have never heard of Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox and don't care about Quantum Theory, I don't know what “Wigner’s friend” thought experiment proved or didn't prove, or why it is considered classic, and I have no cherished assumptions about reality that I am aware of.

I'm sure it is very important, but it seems like so much flotsam and jetsam to me.

So why even bring up the subject, you may be asking.

Simple. I want you to read the article from start ro finish and tell me what you think.

Only then can we begin to tackle world peace.

As they say on Facebook...

It's Throwback Thursday!

That, friends, is how the Rhymeswithplague family looked in 1980, a mere 40 years ago. I had my famous Afro hairstyle. Before I got it, some people thought I looked like Engelbert Humperdinck and other people thought I looked like Harold Reid, the bass singer in the Statler Brothers Quartet. After I got it, people didn't say much of anything. They were dumbstruck.

Our children, from left to right, were 13, 16, and 15 years old at the time. It is hard to believe that today they are 52, 54, and 55.

Mom and Dad are also getting on up there.

I must tell you that I have not figured out how to insert photographs using New Blogger. Well, I have figured out how it is done, but my particular version of the New Blogger screen does not include all of the Editing Functions. I'm not kidding. Insert Photo and Insert Video are missing.

I had to "Revert to legacy Blogger" to include the photo in this post.

Keep your fingers crossed that I make headway with New Blogger soon because Old Blogger is supposed to be going away at the end of September.

And then, unless things change, there will be no more photographs, Throwback Thursday or otherwise, from this corner of the blogosphere.

Please, sir, may I have another?

I'm talking about puzzling and even unanswerable questions, of course. What did you think I was talking about?

Here are a few:

1. Why is antelope pronounced 'AN-tuh-lope' but Penelope is pronounced 'puh-NEL-oh-pee'?
   
2. Why is telephone pronounced 'TEL-uh-fone' but Persephone is pronounced 'per-SEF-uh-nee'?
   
3. Why do people in the U.K. say 'DEB-ree' but people in the U.S. say 'duh-BREE'?
   
4. Why do people in the U.K. say 'luh-BOR-uh-tree' but people in the U.S. say 'LAB-ruh-tory'?
   
5. Why do people in the U.K. see Worcestershire and say 'WUSS-ter-sher' but people in the U.S. tend to say 'WERE-CHESS-ter-SHYRE'?
   
6. Why do people in the U.K. see Gloucester and say 'GLAWS-ter' but people in the U.S. tend to say "GLOW-CHESS-ter'?
   
7. Why do people in the U.K. see Cholmondeley and say 'CHUM-lee' and people in the U.S. see Natchitoches and say 'NACK-uh-dish'?
   

There are many such questions. Can you think of a few?

I'm after different ways of pronouncing the same word, not why zuchinis are called courgettes or why blackberries are called brambles or why trunks and hoods are boots and bonnets.

Rack or wrack your brain (or both) and join in the fun.

As Robin once said to his BFF...

"Holy place names, Batman!"

Here's a list of holy-sounding place names that I threw together. Can you identify the ones that cannot trace their origin to the Bible?

1. San Mateo, California
   
2. San Marcos, Texas
   
3. Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico
   
4. St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada
   
5. Corinth, Mississippi
   
6. Phillipi, West Virginia
   
7. St. Paul, Minnesota
   
8. St. James City, Florida
   
9. St. Peters, Missouri
   
10. San Antonio, Texas
    
11. St. Joseph, Missouri
    
12. St. Marys, Georgia
    
13. St. Louis, Missouri
    
14. St. Charles, Illinois
    
15. Santa Barbara, California
    
16. Santa Monica, California
    
17. San Miguel, California
    
18. San Gabriel, California
    
19. Santa Teresa, Costa Rica
    
20. San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico
    
21. San Francisco, California
    
22. San Clemente, California
    
23. Santa Clara, California
    
24. San Juan, Puerto Rico
    
25. Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
    
26. San José, California
    
27. San Leandro, California
    
28. St. Augustine, Florida
    
29. Mount St. Helens, Washington
    
30. Santa Catalina Island, California
    
31. Saint-Tropez, France
    
32. San Isabel, Colorado
    
33. St. Lawrence Ruver, Canada
    
34. Santa Ynez, California
    
35. St. Simons Island, Georgia
    
36. San Diego, California
    
37. Espiritu Santo, Brazil
    
38. Padre Island, Texas
    
39. Santa Fe, New Mexico
    
40. Santa Cruz, California
    
41. Joshua, Texas
    
42. Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Colorado
    
43. Mont Saint-Michel, France
    
44. St. Petersburg, Florida or Russia (take your pick)
    
45. Saint Martin (island in the West Indies)
    
46. Saint Kitts (island in the West Indies)
    
47. Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Quebec, Canada
    
48. Port St. Lucie, Florida
    
49. St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada
    
50. Saint Pierre and Miquelon (a French Overseas Collectivity near Newfoundland and Labrador)
    
51. Santa Gertrudis (towns in the Mexican states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, Oaxaca, and Vera Cruz; also a breed of cattle)
    
52. San Saba, Texas
    
53. Santa Rosa, California
    
54. Christchurch, New Zealand
    

I'm sure there are many others, but these are the ones that sprang to mind.

What lists have been waiting to spring to your mind?

Bloggia est omnis divisa in partes tres*

According to one source, the "seven deadly sins" (also called the "seven cardinal vices") are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride.

Their opposites, the "seven cardinal virtues", are chastity, temperance, charity (or generosity), diligence, patience, gratitude, and humility.

Why bring these up now?, you may ask.

I'll tell you why.

Because we need less of the first list and more of the second in our world today, that's why.

Here are 14 Latin words: humilitas, luxuria, gratia, gula, patientia, avaritia, industria, acedia, caritas, ira, moderatio, invidia, superbia, castitas.

Can you match the Latin words with their English equivalents in the two lists?

*Note. The three parts into which my blog is divided -- I can't speak for other blogs -- are the facts, the fun, and the frustration. You heard it here first.

My personal frustration at the moment is that since New Blogger came along I have lost the ability to insert a photograph into a post. All helpful hints will be appreciated.

If it’s Tuesday, it is time for another post

...so here it is.

The fact that your correspondent has absolutely nothing to say is beside the point.

The fact that his brain has been slowly turning to mush during these endless months of inactivity due to pandemic-caused quarantines/shelters in place/lockdowns/ever-changing new normals is of no consequence whatsoever.

The fact that the only thing in this post with which some of you might disagree is the word slowly means nothing in the greater scheme of things.

It is Tuesday (except where it's Wednesday), and it is time for another post.

He ain't heavy, Father, he's my chicken

(Editor's note: The following meme is not original with me. It appeared for the umpteenth time today on Facebook so I decided to capture it and make it available to you. Why should I be the only one to suffer? It is supposed to make you laugh, or at least smile, or nod your head knowingly. This will be easier to do if you live in the United States. If you do not live in the United States, I can only hope that you recognize some of the individuals and then laugh, or at least smile, or nod your head knowingly. --RWP)

Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?

DONALD TRUMP: I've been told by many sources, good sources -- they're very good sources -- that the chicken crossed the road. All the Fake News wants to do is write nasty things about the road, but it's a really good road. It's a beautiful road. Everyone knows how beautiful it is.

JOE BIDEN: Why did the chicken do the...thing in the...you know the rest.

SARAH PALIN: The chicken crossed the road because gosh-darn it, he's a maverick!

BARACK OBAMA: Let me be perfectly clear, if the chickens like their eggs they can keep their eggs. No chicken will be required to cross the road to surrender her eggs. Period.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Chickens should not be forced to lay eggs! This is because of corporate greed! Eggs should be able to lay themselves.

JOHN McCAIN: My friends, the chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON: What difference at this point does it make why the chicken crossed the road?

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not. The chicken is either with us or against us. There is no middle ground here.

DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?

BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken.

AL GORE: I invented the chicken.

JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white?

DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he is acting by not taking on his current problems before adding any new problems.

OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross the road so badly. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a NEW CAR so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

ANDERSON COOPER: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way the chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price droped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR. SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ENEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.

KING DAVID: O Lord, why dost the chicken cross the road And why art the chicken hawks beset around it? Surely in vain the road is crossed in the sight of any predator.

GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart-warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2020, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2020. This new platform is much more stable and will never reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?

Blogger was not dicey, it was DuckDuckGo, plus an unusual reading assignment

At least I think it was DuckDuckGo. I stopped using it as my search engine and the quirk disappeared. I call it a quirk because I don't know what else to call it. It was very frustrating not being able to access one's own blog.

Be that as it may, your reading assignment for today, class, is this article from the loved/hated (choose one) Wikipedia on Peerage of the United Kingdom.

All of the peerages in the United Kingdom are listed, not alphabetically but by the date of their creation, which makes things a bit confusing if you are trying to look something or someone up.

In all, according to Wikipedia, there are 31 Dukes (although I read somewhere else that there have been 74), 34 Marquesses, 193 Earls and countesses, 112 Viscounts, and 1,187 Barons. I don't know whether that figure represents currently or historically. (Note that I continue to use the Oxford comma. Graham Edwards who lives near the town of Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides Islands of Scotland will be so pleased, but Yorkshire Pudding, who is without peer, couldn't care less.)

If you absolutely refuse to read today's assignment, please stay busy by twiddling your thumbs until next time and try not to disturb the other students.

This is my 84th post of the year, which is 2020 but feels in many ways like the 1984 described by George Orwell. Since 2020 is now 7/12ths complete, my handy-dandy calculator tells me that if I continue on my current pace of blogging -- I can hear some of you saying "God forbid" -- I will have posted 144 posts by the end of the year.

One cannot know whether one will continue on one's current pace. One can only watch and pray.

Whether you pray for or against is entirely up to you.

Blogger is being dicey and I'm not feeling too peppy myself

Wouldn't you know it, just when I finally figure out how to create new posts and modify existing ones using my Apple phone, my desktop computer's version of Blogger has decided to prevent me from reaching my own blog, at least with the browser and search engine I use, which are Mozilla Firefox and DuckDuckGo, respectively. The only way I know of at present to get around this fine kettle of fish dilemma is by clicking on links to myself in the blogs of my friends who have added me into their bloglists.

I don't have a bloglist, at least not one showing on my blog. My bloglist is in my head, and I usually access my favorite blogs in alphabetic order by blogname, starting with Adrian's and then Neil's and then Michelle's and on and on through Graham's and kylie's and ending with Ian's and Tasker's. My old friends Remus and Carolina and Daphne and the other Ian have all disappeared from Blogland. For the longest time I continued going to both Frances's and Kate's places but they seem to have stopped blogging as well so I stopped going to their places. Pam still blogs occasonally so I have high hopes for her. I no longer read JG's as he tends to be too earthy for my tastes. In recent months I have added Bonnie's and Red's and Linda's and Rachel's to my mental list. I do check in at Sue's but rarely leave a comment. Lowell has slowed down significantly. Dr. John Linna in Neenah, Wisconsin, has been dead for several years.

Some of you know who these people are and some of you don't have a clue.

Maybe I am just talking to myself here, or into thin air.

I will come back when I am in a better frame of mind.

Don't take any wooden nickels.

Someone had a birthday a few days ago

...and she does not mind at all my telling you that she is now 85:

(Editor's note. Ai this point in the post I originally included photographs of both of our sons and their families and of our daughter and her family, and I thanked them all for making this particular birthday of Mrs. RWP's so memorable. Because of the terrible things that can happen in today's crazy world, I have decided to remove the photographs in the interest of their privacy and safety. --RWP)

Moving right along...

In comments on the previous post, several people commented how green our neighborhood looks, but Graham Edwards who lives near the town of Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides Islands of Scotland didn't. He said it looked verdant. (For readers in Alabama, verdant means green.) Graham went on to say that he was going to say green but then he remembered that this is a highbrow blog so adjusted accordingly.

This being a highbrow blog and all, my mind went immediately to the second stanza of "The King Of Love My Shepherd Is", a hymn written by Sir Henry William Baker in 1877 that uses an earlier English translation of a Welsh poem based on the 23rd Psalm:

Where streams of living water flow,
my ransomed soul he leadeth;
and where the verdant pastures grow,
with food celestial feedeth.

The hymn has had several musical settings, including the well known Irish folk melody St. Columba, and the one by Dykes that was sung at Princess Diana's funeral in 1997, but my personal favourite is the one by Harry Rowe Shelley (1858-1947), performed here by the First Baptist Church choir of Portland, Maine in 2004:

"The King Of Love My Shepherd Is"

Here are the lyrics in case you couldn't understand them all from the video clip. They are actually a combination of the 23rd Psalm from the Old Testament and the parable of the lost sheep from the New Testament.

The King of love my shepherd is,
whose goodness faileth never.
I nothing lack if I am his,
and he is mine for ever.

Where streams of living water flow,
my ransomed soul he leadeth;
and where the verdant pastures grow,
with food celestial feedeth.

Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

In death’s dark vale I fear no ill,
with thee, dear Lord, beside me;
thy rod and staff my comfort still,
thy cross before to guide me.

Thou spreadst a table in my sight;
thy unction grace bestoweth;
and oh, what transport of delight
from thy pure chalice floweth!

And so through all the length of days,
thy goodness faileth never;
Good Shepherd, may I sing thy praise
within thy house forever.

(end of song)

The Welsh really know how to write a poem and the English really know how to translate one.

Just think, if this were a lowbrow blog and Graham Edwards had not used the word verdant, we might all be singing "Lavender Blue, Dilly Dilly, Lavender Green" or "The Green, Green Grass Of Home" by now.