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.