Another boring post, or maybe not

From April 1945 until Joe Biden's first/only (pick one) term as president ends a few months from now, 80 years will have elapsed. During this period the U.S. has had 14 presidents, seven of them Democrats and seven of them Republicans. Here they are:

Democrats:
1. Harry S. Truman (1945-1953)
2. John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)
3. Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969)
4. Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)
5. Bill Clinton (1993-2001)
6. Barack Obama (2009-2017)
7. Joe Biden (2021-2025)

Republicans:
1. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)
2. Richard Nixon (1969-1974)
3. Gerald Ford (1974-1977)
4. Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)
5. George H.W. Bush (1989-1993)
6. George W. Bush (2001-2009)
7. Donald Trump (2017-2021)

A closer look reveals that Democrats have held the presidency for 40 of those years and Republicans have held the presidency for the remaining 40 of those years. So it's been half and half, back and forth, six (well, seven) of one and a half-dozen (well, seven) of the other.

What does it prove? Probably nothing, but possibly that American voters are not paying attention, or possibly (and this is my view) that American voters are more than willing to give the other guys a chance but are also more than willing to throw the bums out if accomplisments do not live up to promises.

Let's change the subject.

All my life, including through the recent covid-19 pandemic, I believed that my wearing a mask prevented me from getting what another person might have. It turns out that I was wrong. My wearing a mask does not prevent me from getting what another person might have, it prevents the other person from getting what I might have. In order for me not to get what another person might have requires that the other person wear a mask.

No, really. My mask protects you, not me, and your mask protects me, not you. It boggles the mind. The logical conclusion is that we have to depend on one another in order to survive. What a concept!

In other news, former Secretary of State, former Senator from New York, former First Lady, and former Democrat candidate for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton said on a podcast a few days ago that what Donald Trump really wants is to kill his opponents and to throw the opposition into prison. I do believe that Mrs. Clinton is projecting onto Mr. Trump the things she actually wants to do, a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black,

I end this post with an old saying that is completely unrelated to anything else in the post because when you're 83 continuity is just a word in the dictionary:

"I complained because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet."

More random thoughts

As the saying goes, De gustibus non est disputandum unless you prefer De gustibus non disputandum est. Latin purists do. Do what? you ask. Why, prefer to see the verbs placed at the end of Latin sentences, of course.

The phrase is usually translated into English as "There is no accounting for taste" or sometimes "There is no disputing about taste"; either version is acceptable.

it's true. My dad liked liverwurst, licorice, chicken gizzards, horseradish, Hamm's beer ("from the land of sky blue waters"), and Chesterfield cigarettes. My wife (the lovely Ellie) likes beets, oysters, and pimiento cheese sandwiches. I don't like anything mentioned in this paragraph so far except my dad and my wife.

Enough of that.

From the very early days of commercial television in America back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, certain black-and-white images are stuck in my mind:

• Tuesday nights with Uncle Miltie (comedian Milton Berle) and guys in Texaco service station uniforms singing:
  
  You can trust your car
  To the man who wears the star,
  The big red Texaco star!


• Saturday nights watching Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, and Marguerite Piazza on Your Show Of Shows


• Friday evenings watching Mama with Robin Morgan ("my little sister Dagmar"), Dick Van Patten ("my big brother Nels"), Judson Laird ("and of course, Papa"). and the wonderful Peggy Wood ("but most of all when I think back to those days so long ago, most of all, I remember Mama") speaking Norwegian-accented Englsh two whole decades before she was the Mother Abbess in an Austrian convent solving a problem like Maria by tellng her to climb every mountain, ford every stream, and sending her to be the new nanny for the Von Trapp children


• The grandfather of all late-night shows Broadway Open Hpuse with comedian Jerry Lester and a very tall, very curvaceous, very dumb blonde also named Dagmar


• Afternoon children's shows like Howdy Doody starring Buffalo Bob Smith and Clarabell the Clown; Pinkie Lee starring, who else?, Pinkie Lee; and Soupy Sales starring Soupy, his big dogs White Fang and Black Tooth, and an occasional cream pie


• Game shows like The Name's The Same with Robert Q. Lewis and Beat The Clock with Bud Collier, who had been the voice of Superman on the radio.

As you can see, in times like these, by which I mean a week in which America was subjected to several highly coordinated simultaneous protest demonstrations that shut down bridge traffic in several cities by groups claiming to be "pro-Gaza" or "pro-Palestine" but which are actually pro-Hamas, a terrorist organization funded by the Iranians, I try to maintain a modicum of sanity by retreating into good times of long-past decades that have, let's face it, gone with the wind and are never coming back.

I highly recommend that you do the same, either that or put your fingers into your ears and sing "La-La-La-La, La-La-La-La" until the men in white coats come for us.

How’s that again?

I did not make this up. Here is an honest-to-God, actual sentence that someone here in Georgia, in all seriousness, included in a Facebook post this week:

"I think people have forgotten that it is due to others as you would have them, do one to you."

I doubt that the writer had any idea what she was trying to say. The Anerican South has often been called The Bible Belt because of the supposed widespread influence of Christian teachings in that part of the nation, but I have never before encountered such a complete mangling of the Golden Rule.

Short and sweet today. Comments, as always, are not only encouraged but also, in most cases, gratefully accepted. If you deviate from community standards, however, someone may come along and do one to you.

This, that, and the other, #17,643

The story is told of a visitor to New York City who had purchased tickets to a concert. He didn't know his way around the city, so he lowered his car window and called to someone on the sidewalk, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" and the person on the sidewalk answered, "Practice, man, practice."

It is very good advice even though it didn't help the driver reach his destination.

- - # - - # - - # - -
Artur Rubenstein, one of the world's greatest pianists, once said that if he missed a day of practicing piano he could tell it, if he missed two days of practicing piano his wife could tell it, and if he missed three days everyone could tell it.

- - # - - # - - # - -
People often say or write something other than what they meant. For example, while reading a friend's Facebook post yesterday I encountered the following sentence:

"At 13, my mother died of a brain tumor."

Immediately the thought "That is young. How young was she when she gave birth to you?" popped into my mind. I happen to know that my friend's mother was in her mid-thirties when she died.

What my friend meant to say was, "When I was 13, my mother died of a brain tumor."

It's a fairly common error, but I notice such things.

- - # - - # - - # - -
Astrology has never interested me in the least because, let's face it, it is absurd. It makes no sense to me whatsoever that the date, time of day, or latitude where a person is born has any connection to or influence on one's personality traits, to say nothing of the concept that the constellation in the night sky through which the sun happened to be passing at the time can affect in any way one's existence or destiny. Strangely, though, I do find the "signs of the Zodiac" fascinating. In case you are unaware of them or have forgotten what they are, they are:

Aries (the Ram) -- March 21 through April 19
Taurus (the Bull) -- April 20 through May 20
Gemini (the Twins) -- May 21 through June 20
Cancer (the Crab) -- June 21 through July 22
Leo (the Lion) -- July 23 through August 22
Virgo (the Virgin) -- August 23 through September 22
Libra (the Scales) -- September 23 through October 22
Scorpio (the Scorpion) -- October 23 through November 21
Sagittarius (the Archer) -- November 22 through December 21
Capricorn (the Goat) -- December 21 through January 20
Aquarius (the Water Bearer) -- January 21 through February 18
Pisces (the Fish) -- February 19 through March 20

These 12 are further subcategorized into four groups of three and called fire signs, air signs, earth signs, and water signs. Some of them are deemed to be compatible with one another and some are deemed to be incompatible with one another. Things are further complicated by whether one is born "on the cusp" (the period of a few days each month when the sun is transitioning from one constellation to another). It's all very weird and unscientific, in my opinion, although some people follow it religiously.

- - # - - # - - # - -
In conclusion, and having been prepared by exposure to the preceding section of this post, we shall now be transported back in time to the year 1969 when actors and actresses portraying Hippies (q.v.) sang and danced and stripped naked in full frontal and backal (is that even a word?) nudity on the Broadway stage for the first time ever in the nightly finales of the run of the musical "Hair", after which the musical group Fifth Dimension won a Grammy in 1970 for doing the same thing minus the nudity:

When the moon is in the seventh house
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of aquarius
Age of aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

When the moon is in the seventh house
And Jjupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of aquarius
Age of aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in

Oh, let it shine, c'mon (let the sun shine in)
Now everybody just sing along (let the sun shine in)
Let the sun shine in (let the sun shine in)
Open up your heart, let it shine on (let the sun shine in)
And when you're alone let the sun shine (let the sun shine in)
Got to open up your heart and let it shine on in (let the sun shine in)
And when you feel like you've been mistreated (let the sun shine in)
And your friends turn away (let the sun shine in)
Just open your heart, and shine it on in (let the sun shine in)
You got to feel it (let the sun shine in)
You got to feel it (let the sun shine in)
Open up your heart and let it shine on you (let the sun shine in)
Let it tell you my friend (let the sun shine in)

Let the sun shine in)
(Let the sun shine in)
(Let the sun shine)
(Let the sun shine in)
(The sun shine in)
You got to feel it (let the sun shine in)
You got to feel it (let the sun shine in)
Got to open up your heart and let it shine on in
(Let the sun shine in)
(Let the sun shine in)

The preceding songs were writtten by Gerome Ragni and James Rado lryics) and Galt MacDermot (music).

If you are an older reader of this blog, perhaps you found yourself singing and dancing around your kitchen and living room in ecstatic waves of nostalgia for the good old days. Your peripatetic editor and roving corresponden does not wish to know whether you also stripped naked.

Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone. Sometimes they are and sometimes they are not. Here are a few of them:

MSRP
GMO
AOC
CIDP
TED
NTSB

For the uninformed, the confused, and yes, even the dazed whose knowledge of abbreviations is limited to the IRS, LBJ, and the wearing of BVDs, I will now tell you what the above six abbreviations stand for:

Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price
Genetically Modified Organisms
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy
Thyroid Eye Disease
National Transportation Safety Board

A portion of the American population are convinced that Anastasia Ocasio-Cortez is herself a genetically modified organism, but I digress.

Moving right along, I saw a commercial on television for a product called Relaxium. Although it sounds like it might be an antidote for an overdose of Viagra, it is actually a sleep aid. The commercial opens with a man saying, "Hello, I'm former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee". In another version of the commercial the man says, "Hello, I'm former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee". The second version is true but the first version is not. Mke Huckabee is the former governor of Arkansas but he is not now nor has he ever been the governor of former Arkansas. You do see the difference, don't you?

So I pass my days, being literal to a fault. I listen carefully to what is said as opposed to what might have been meant. The stated aim of the Society For Techical Communication back in the 1970s was that every sentence have one meaning, understood at the first reading. It is still my personal goal. In other words, friends, Ambiguity R Not Us.

Finally, some of you may have noticed the snapshot of me in the sidebar at the age of 2 or 3. As part of my ongoing week-long 83rd birthday celebration, here is the full original photograph revealing that it was my mother who was holding my hand:

P.S. - The title of this post is also the title of a song written by Cole Porter (1891-1964).

My new favorite poem

...is the following one, purportedly by Billy Collins:

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

(end of poem)

I say purportedly because I could not find that title in a list of the complete poems of Billy Collins at Poetry Foundation. To be fair, however, I do not know when the list was compiled and Billy Collins, who is still alive and kcking, may well have written the poem since the list was put together, in which case the list needs to be updated.

I laughed when I read the poem and thought about the two big dogs, Rebel and Jasper, who live behind my next-door neighbor's fence. They go ballistic every time I take Abby out our back door. They sound ferocious, like they want to eat her if they could just get to her, and maybe me as well. Abby seems to enjoy setting them off but I do grow weary of the scenario.

I said to Mrs. RWP (the lovely Ellie), "Want to hear something crazy?" and read the poem aloud to her. She agreed that it was crazy, and I said, "I know! It's good but it's crazy! I think I'm crazy sometimes but I finally found someone crazier than me!"

Billy Collins and I are practically twins as we were both born in March 1941. Both of us turn 83 next week, me (I?) on Monday and him (he?) on Friday. Both of us write poems, some of them crazy. There is one minor difference between us, though. Billy Collins served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003; I have yet to be asked.

I wonder as I wander

When and why did people start saying 'from here to Timbuktu'? Why don't they say 'from here to Tegucigalpa' or 'from here to Ouagadougou' or 'from here to Ulaanbaatar' or even 'from here to Kealikakua, Hawaii, where the humuhumunukunukuapua'a go swimming by' instead?

Although careful readers of the previous paragraph know that Kealikakua is in Hawaii, how many of them can match the other four places with their countries?

Why do people in the northern states say "I don't know [person's name] from Adam's off ox" but prople in the southern states say "I don't know [person's name] from Adsm's house cat"?

Why do fools fall in love?

Oh where, oh where has my little dog gone? Oh where, oh where can he be? With his ears cut short and his tail cut long, oh where, oh where can he be?

Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?

Who is Sylvia?

The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring, Tra La

...will just have to wait another few days because Spring has not yet sprung and will not for another week or so. My apologies to the Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan and lovers of The Mikado all over the world (you know who you are).

What if today were proclaimed International Don't Hold Back, Say What You Really Think Day?

One thing I would say is that when U.S.President Joseph Biden said recently that he and Israel's Prime Mnister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Jew, were going to have a 'come-to-Jesus meeting' it revealed an obtuseness, a mental denseness, a complete disregard for what is lnguistically appropriate so great as to be beyond belief. It further indicates, as Anna Russell once remarked about coloratura sopranos, that President Biden has resonance where his brains ought to be. This is just one person's opinion. of course, and you are certainly free to have another, but you would be wrong.

Another thing I would say on IDHB,SWYRT Day is that while I am aware that language is an ever-changing, flowing stream, Americans who believe the principal parts of the verb 'sneak' are 'sneak, snuck, snuck' instead of 'sneak, sneaked, sneaked' and that the principal parts of the verb 'drag' are 'drag, drug, drug' instead of 'drag, dragged, dragged' and demonstrate their beliefs daily through their speech patterns are far more numerous than any resident of the UK could possibly imagine.

If you are of a mathematical bent, and even if you are not, I recommend for your reading pleasure two fascinating posts by Mr.Tasker Dunham of Yorkshire, England (speaking of residents of the UK). In one of them, he even mentions me. Here are the links:

Tasker Dunham's post 'Proof of the Pi'

Tasker Dunham's post 'Pythagoras'

I now end today's post by telling you that the Germans have a word for a sense of what is linguistically appropriate and that word is sprachgefühl.

I’ must be slipping

...because the person I was a few years ago would have told you last Saturday that March 2nd is Alamo Day---all together now, 'Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier!'--and that today, March 6th, is Texas Independence Day. Texas declared itself independent from Mexico in 1836 and was an independent country for nine years. As part of its annexation agreement with the U.S. (it was never a territory), Texas can split into as many as five states any time it decides to. The powers that be will probably come after my Lone Star State Nembership Card if anybody turns me in to the authorities.

The days are getting longer; in 15 days the equinox will be here and Spring will have sprung once again. Before that happens, however, it is important to remember to turn your clocks forward one hour this Saturday, March 9th, before you retire for the night, as Daylight Saving Time returns Sunday at 2:00 a.m. after a four-month hiatus.

A short post this time.

Telling it like it is

If there were a movement advocating truth in song lyrics, "Home On The Range" might go like this:

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
'Cause how much can an antelope say?

Truer words were never spoken. I mean, think about it. Skies that are not cloudy all day are rarer than hen's teeth talking antelopes. I wish I could say I wrote that new last line of "Home On The Range" but alas, I cannot. Actually, I could but it would not be true.

In my last post, I shared with you the moment of silence that I found most surprising during several recent Jeopardy! episodes. You may remember that it involved the four words "it might have been" that appear in the last line of a poem by John Grenleaf Whittier, "Maud Muller" to be exact, which I mentioned in the comments section but not in the post itself. Little did I know there would be an even greater shocker of a stumper on Friday evening's program. Read on.

In a category called Novel Endings the clue was "This 1922 work ended with the words 'yes I said yes I will Yes'." and there was a deafening silence onstage during which I yelled 'Ulysses' at the screen at least three times.

According to an article entitled "The 10 best closing lines in books" by Robert McKrum in The Guardian in July 2012, James Joyce's Ulysses is number two on the list, right behind The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

It seems to be a losing battle and the dumbing down of America side seems to be winning. What can we do? I will tell you what we can do, the only thing we can do. We can beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

I didn't write that line either.

,Look before you leap

...is always good advice (better safe than sorry), but especially so today because today is the Leap Day that occurs once every four yars in the Julian calendar. It is also the birthday of two of my friends in real life, Dick S. and Walter T., the latter of whom is no longer with us.

The country in yesterday's Globle game was Oman. The country in English Worldle was Tajkistan. I got both of those. The country in French Worldle was Burundi. I didn't get that one. Call me crazy, but i really enjoy identifying countries by their silhouttes (Worldle) and by their distance from and in what direction from wrong guesses (both Globle and Worldle).

The blank stares I found most surprising on Jeopardy! in the last week occurred in a category called 4 Words. The clue was 'Poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote that of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these.'

All together now, class, the answer in the form of a question is 'What are "it might have been"?'. Without looking it up, do you know the name of the poem by Whittier from which those lines come? I do, thanks to who else?, my old English teacher Mr. D.P. Morris back in Mansfield, Texas, seven decades ago.

A short and hopefully sweet post today, and now that you have looked, you may take a flying leap and hurtle another 1.6 million miles along the path that is the earth's 584,000,000-mile-orbit around the nearest star, a path that takes (as readers of this blog should know) 365.25 days to complete.

All together now...3, 2, 1, LEAP!

The world keeps changing before our eyes

Things that once were true are now false. For example, I learned in school that there are nine planets orbiting our sun. Kids today are told there are eight. Pluto got the axe (translation: was reclassified as a dwarf planet not in the same league with the others).

Things that used to be described one way are now described another way. Take dates, which for the past couple of thousand years in the western world have been referred to as either AD or BC (or, more accurately, A.D. or B.C. before periods/dots/points fell out of fashion). More and more frequently nowadays I see dates referred to as either CE (Common Era) or BCE (Before Common Era). I believe this particular change has occurred in recognition of the fact that adherents of the Jewish and Muslim faiths with calendars of their own prefer not to measure the passing of the years with a Christian reference point. 2024 AD (Latin, Anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") is 5784 AM (Latin, Anno Mundi, "in the year of the World") to members of the Jewish community, 1445 AH (Latin, Anno Hegirae, "in the year of the Hegira") to members of the Islamic community, and we won't go into either the Mayan calendar or the Chinese calendar because they are complicated. You can read fascinating articles about them in -- where else? -- wikipedia.

Allow me a little Jeopardy! stuff before we continue.

The Clue: Minnesota is bordered on the north by Manitoba and this other Canadian province.

One contestant said Alberta, one said Manitoba, and one didn't buzz in at all.

The Answer: What is Ontario? More on geography later in the post.

It made me feel especially old when no contesdant buzzed in for these two:

Category: Presidential TV
Clue: The Man From Independence
Answer: Who is Harry Truman

Category: Notable Names
Clue: This woman was America's first black Congresswoman
Answer: Who is Shirley Chisholm?

Well, that's enough of that. Too much, probably.

I have been improving my geography and international skills by playing three online games every day -- two versions of Worldle (not Wordle) and Globle (not spelled Global). If you want to try your hand, here are the three addresses:

worldlegame.io
worldle.teuteuf.fr
globle.org

The second of the Worldle games is played in French and includes identifying the country's neighbors, capital city, flag, unit of currency, and population range.

Today, for the first time since I began playing these games several months ago, the answer to Globle and the English version of Worldle was the same country, Sierra Leone. The French version's answer was Australia (spelled the French way, Australie). I enjoy these games a great deal and can now recognize the silhouettes of such places as Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, United Arab Emirates, Lithuania, Venezuela, Myanmar, and many others that I couldn't have recognized before.

Which in the overall scheme of things doesn't matter to a hill of beans, but playing each day has helped me keep my mind active. I used to do that by playing the piano, but between my failing eyesight and my stiffening fingers, those days are pretty much over.

I close today's post with a question. Did you know there is a connection between Donald Trump and John F.Kennedy besides the fact that they were both presidents of the United States? Well, there is. Mar-a-Lago, Trump's palatial home in Palm Beach, Florida (126 rooms, 62,500 sq ft on 17 acres), which he purchased in 1985, was built during the 1920s by Post Cereal heiress Marjorie Meriweather Post while she was the second of three wives of financier E.F. Hutton (yes, that E.F. Hutton). Their daughter bcame the actress Dina Merrill, whose second of three husbands (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree), actor Cliff Robertson, starred in a film called PT-109 as U.S. Naval Lieutenant (junior grade) John F. Kennedy, who was commander of the vessel when it was rammed and sunk by the Japanese in the Solomon Islands during World War Ii. It is of only passing interest that President Kennedy's parents, Joseph and Rose Kennedy, lived in Palm Beach, Florida, when they were away from Hyannisport, Massachusetts. That is a coincidence, not the sort of connection I meant.

If I have told you any of these things before, I do apologize. My memory is not what it once was either.

Here we go again

I just can't resist. Here are several recent additions to the ever-increasing list of answers to unanswered clues on Jeopardy!:

Who is Clark Gable? (The clue was that this man kept vigil when the plane carrying his wife, actress Carole Lombard, crashed.)

Who is C.S. Lewis? (The clue was that this man used the name N.W. Clerk when writing A Grief Observed about his wife's death.)

What is yawning? (The clue included the word 'oscitation' and added that if you start doing it, I probably will too.)

Who is Irving Berlin? (The clue was that this man did not write "God Bless Cuba" when his wife fell ill during their honeymoon in Havana.)

Who is Billy Wilder? (The clue was that this man's gravestone in Californiae reads, "I'm a writer but then nobody's perfect".)

What is the Grand Canyon Suite? (The clue mentioned Ferde Grofé and Arizona.)

Who is Paul Harvey? (The clue was a photo of him while the vcoice-over said, "This newscaster always gave us 'the rest of the story'.")

Who is Toulouse-Lautrec? (In a category called "Ah, The French" the clue showed a photo of a man with a dark beard and wearing a hat and a long coat. The voice-over included the words 'artist' and 'short'.)

Who is Jacob? (In the category Quoting The Old Testament, the clue was "This man said 'Joseph, my son, is alive. I will go and see him'.")

What are 86 and 99? (The clue said these two numbers identified the agents in Get Smart.)

Whar are foxes? (Also in the category Quoting The Old Testament, the clue was "Take up these, the little these, for it is these that spoil the vines",)

There are many categories and clues, of course, about which I know absolutely nothing. That goes without saying. I just happened to know these.

Helpful-to-know Factoid #1 -- Billy Wilder directed the film Some Like It Hot, the last line of which is Joe E. Brown telling Jack Lemmon, "Nobody's perfect".

Helpful-to-know Factoid #2 -- Irving Berlin wrote "God Bless America".

Not-so-helpful-to-know-but-interesting-nevertheless Factoid #3 -- Before Ferde Grofé wrote the "Grand Canyon Suite" in 1931, he played the piano in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra for over a decade and wrote many orchestral arrangemens for the group. Perhaps the most notable one (no pun intended) was a new work by George Gershwin written originally for solo piano that Mr. Grofé arranged into a full orchestration. Its debut, with Mr. Gershwin on piano and Mr. Whiteman conducting the orchestra in New York City, occurred exactly one hundred yearss ago this week, on February 12, 1924. You may have heard of it. It is called "Rhapsody In Blue".

Speaking of blue, how many songs can you think of that include the word 'blue' (but not 'blues') in the title. If we included 'blues' we'd be here all day. Here's my list:

Blue Skies
Blue Moon
Blue Velvet
Am I Blue?
Alice Blue Gown
Lavender Blue, Dilly Dilly
Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue
Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain
Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea
My Blue Heaven
Blue Suede Shoes
Where The Blue Of The Night (Meets The Gold Of The Day
Bluebird Of Happiness
The Blue Tail Fly
Song Sung Blue

In my eagerness I seem to have co-opted the task, so please try once again to match as many songs as you can with their artists instead.

Finally, from our brand-new "Yeah, Right" Department, if you think Presidents of the United States would never lie on national television, consider the following three examples. Richard Nixon said, "I am not a crook" (November 17, 1973), Bill Clinton said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" (January 26, 1998), and Joe Biden said, "I know what the hell I'm doing" (February 8, 2024).

So many questions, so little time

An unanswered question on Jeopardy last week was "What is Whatever Happened to Baby Jane??" and it got me to thinking, as we former colonials say. How many other films that contain a question mark in the title can you come up with?

Here's my list:

Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?
What's Up, Doc?
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
What About Bob?

There is the 1966 song "What's It All About, Alfie?" but the film was just Alfie, not a question.

One film title that was definitely a question did not include a question mark. Quo Vadis is a Latin phrase meaning "Where are you going?" but the 1951 film starring Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr had no question mark.

There must be dozens of songs that are questions. Here are some:

How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?
When Will I Be Loved?
Will The Circle Be Unbroken?
What Now, My Love?
What Kind Of Fool Am I?
Is That All There Is?
Where Is Love?
Do You Know The Way To San José?
Are You Lonesome Tonight?
Why Do Fools Fall In Love?
What's New, Pussycat?
What's Love Got To Do With It?
If I Said You Have A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me?
Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?
Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?

and on and on and on.

Extra credit if you can match songs with artists.

.Their price is far above rubies

Within a month, Mrs. RWP (the lovely Ellie) and I will become great-grandparents for a second time, and we just learned that a third great-grandchild is expected to arrive in August. Time and tide, I've heard, wait for no man. I can report for a certainty that time does march on. Tides, on the other hand, come and go.

Here's one of my favorite passages from Shakespeare:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

If anyone cares, that passage is from Julius Caesar, Act IV, scene iii. Brutus is talking to Cassius.

From time immemorial, sophomore students at Mansfield High School (my alma mater) read Julius Caesar in Mr. D.P. Morris's English class. Except us. The year we were sophomores, the school district hired a second English teacher, Mrs. Elinor Field, and assigned sophomore English to her. In the spring of 1956 Mrs. Field, being the thoroughly modern sort, scrapped Julius Caesar and decided we should read instead The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit, a 1955 novel by Sloan Wilson that had just been made into a 1956 film starring Gregory Peck, I don't remember a thing about the novel. I finally got around to reading Julius Caesar on my own about 15 years later.

Because I do not possess very many of this world's goods, I suppose an argument could be made that I have spent my life bound in shallows and in miseries. I reject that notion out of hand. The fortune to which my own particular flood tide led consists of a wonderful wife who has shared the voyage with me for more than 60 years, three magnificent children, six magnificemt grandchildren, and, so far, as I mentioned earlier, three great-grandcildren with whom I am eager to become better acquainted.

It's important to understand what is truly valuable. I am rich in the things that count.

Three things you may not have known

Of my many, many Itish friends, the ones with whom I spend the most time are Carb O'Hydrates and Patti O'Furniture.

The words Sue (as in (1) "A Boy Named Sue", the song made popular by Johnny Cash or (2) the character Betty White played on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Sue Ann Nevins, host of "The Happy Homemaker" show on fictional television station WJM-TV in Minneapolis, Minnesota), Sioux (as in (1) the Lakota Sioux tribe of native Americans or (2) the towns of Sioux City, Iowa, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota), Sault (as in the town of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan), and sou (an old French coin worth five centimes or 1/20th of a franc) are all pronounced exactly like the first syllable (with yet another spelling) of a two-syllable, hyphenated word for an assistant in a kitchen. Can you tell me the word?

One hundred twenty-five years ago today, on January 29, 1899, my favorite aunt, Marion (Silberman) Caracena was born in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. She died in November 1987 (88 years, 9 months later) in the town next to it, Abington. I have missed her ever since (and I'm biting my tongue to keep from saying because Abington makes the heart grow fonder).

Patchwork quilt

This past Sunday morning the low temperature at our house was 8°F (-13°C), the very opposite of toasty.

Here is proof, if you need any, that time really does fly: Donny Osmond is 66, Marie Osmond is 64, Madonna Louise Ciccone (the Material Girl) is 65. Wayne Newton and Barbra Streisand are both 81. Elvis Presley, as I mentioned the other day, would have just turned 89.

Years ago in Florida I worked with a guy named Otto Hlava. I told him one day that his name sounded like what comes out of a Hvolcano. He was not amused.

Some people are raised by mothers who believe "Feed a cold, starve a fever" and other people are raised by mothers who believe "Starve a cold, feed a fever". By which type of mother were you raised? Do you still follow the method your mother used? If not, why not?

Transitions are important in writing because they help achieve continuity in a piece by relating what came before to what follows. This post has no transitions whatsoever. It's just -- wait for it, wait for it -- a patchwork quilt.

I say Carmina, you say Burana, let’s Carl the whole thing Orff

That isn't original with me. I should be so clever. No, I saw a meme on Facebook that made me smile and I decided to pass it along to you.

Someone has said there are two kinds of people in the world, those who say there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.

I say there are three kinds of people in the world, those who make tbings happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened

That's not original with me, either. It probably has been years since I had an original thought in my head. As somebody else (I don't know who) has said, creativity is the art of concealing your sources.

I thought that was called plagiarism.

Thursday night's lack of answers on Jeopardy! included who is Beethoven?, what is the Ionian Sea, and who is Pol Pot? The clue (British, clew) for the Final Jeopardy Round mentioned Vietnam and all three contestants wrote down Ho Chi Minh.

I'd better stop while I'm ahead.

The mulberry bush returns

The low temperature around here this morning was 10°F (-12°C), most un-Georgia-like of Mother Nature.

Moving right along....

I enjoy blogging, the act of mining the vast near-emptiness that is my brain and composing posts to be published on this very 'web log' out of what few nuggets of gold I manage to dredge up (oops, mixed metaphor). It is therapeutic to rid my brain of the thoughts that spring up continually along with the inevitable detritus, flotsam, and jetsam of daily existence that help make an otherwise dull life interesting.

To be more accurate, I should say that I currently enjoy blogging because sometimes it seems more like hard work, and I also have a firm enough grasp of reality to know that it may not be enjoyable at some point in the future.

So it is abundantly clear that in spite of the words Giuseppe Verdi put into the mouth of the Duke of Mantua at the beginning of Act 3 of the opera Rigoletto, it is not just La donna (woman) who è mobile (is fickle).

I don't know very much about opera when it comes right down to it. I have just a superficial, passing acquaintance with it. I know that Georges Bizet wrote Carmen in French although it takes place in Spain, and that Giacomo Puccini wrote Madama Butterfly in Italian although it takes place in Japan. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote The Magic Flute and The Marriage Of Figaro. Puccini also wrote La bohème on which the Broadway musical Rent was loosely based, not to mention that "Don't You Know?", the song that helped launch Della Reese's career several decades ago, used the music from "Musetta's Waltz" from the same opera.

I know what let's do, let's toss a few opera singers' names around like Luciano Pavarotti and Maria Callas and Enrico Caruso and Amelia Galli-Curci and Roberta Peters and Lawrence Tibbett and Kirsten Flagstad and Joan Surherland and Placido Domingo and Birgit Nilsson and Renata Tebaldi and Kathleen Battle and Robert Merrill and Beverly Sills and Loritz Melchior and Renée Fleming and Marilyn Horne and Kiri Te Kanawa and Jessye Norman and Leontyne Price, the last of whom was from Laurel, Mississippi, the place where Ben and Erin Napier renovate all those houses on Home Town, their program on the Home & Garden Television network (HGTV), not to change horses in mid-stream or anything.

Finally, last night on Jeopardy! three people did not know that the way an egg must be cooked to produce a solid interior is called hard-boiled. A middle-aged man said, "What is soft-boiled?" and two middle-aged women never buzzed in at all. I found it incomprehensible.

Until next time, I remain,
yr obdt svt

Genericization of trademarks

...is a real thing and probably has happened more often than you might think. For example, do you say facial tissue or Kleenex? gelatin or Jell-o? insulated vacuum-sealed beverage container or Thermos? transparent covering or Cellophane? pressure-sensitive cellulose tape or Scotch tape?

What about crayons?

Wait a minute. Crayons?

I imagine, though I have no proof, that 99 and 44/100ths per cent of people who use crayons and speak English call a crayon a crayon. Where I grew up in North Central Texas, nobody -- and I do mean nobody -- ever said 'crayon' or 'crayons'. No, friends, they engaged in their own unique genericization of trademarks and called them crayolas. Our teachers would say, "Children, get out your crayolas" (except our third-grade teacher, Mrs, Cora Spencer, who called us "Little People") or one child might say to another, "Would you hand me that magenta crayola, please" (we were brought up to be polite). Having moved to Texas from Rhode Island when I was six, I found it bizarre but didn't say anything.

Please don't tell me that you know thousands of people who say 'crayola' instead of 'crayon'.

This all popped into my mind a couple of days ago when I read an annoucement from the Crayola Company that the third annual Crayola Creativity Week will occur from January 22nd until January 28th, 2024. One way of observing it, they suggested, was to see how many words could be made from the two-word phrase 'Creativity Week'. I suppose they were talking to children, but they didn't have to tell me twice.

Here are the words I found, 154 in all:

a at are art arty ate acre ace arc ark act activity active aver avert create cart cat crate creak creek crave crew craw caw car cave caver creaky cavity catty cake civet care carve crave cite cay eve every eye ewe eke ever evict ewer ere ice icy icky ire it I kit kite kew key kitty rack race racy rice ray rave raw rate ret reek rake rite react reactive review tart take tack tick trace track trick tricky trice twice try tray teak tea tear teary teat tit tire ticker trait treat tyke tar twit tat trek tacky trite tact tract ticker tweet tweeter teeter very vice vet view viewer veer vitiate vat vary week we wet wetter were wait wreck ware wear wart wick wit witty wire wiry wave waver wavy wacky weary wry wreak wicker wive waiter wary way watt wake weave weaver ye year yew yea yet yaw

Perhaps you can find even more.

Here is your trivia factoid of the day: Although the word 'crayola' was coined in 1903, since 1984 Crayola has been a wholly ownd subsidiary of Hallmark Cards.

Happy birthday, Elvis

You would have turned 89 today had you not left us when you were 42.

it It is hard to picture Elvis Presley or James Dean as old men.

They say only the good die young. Those two were very good at what they did, but that is not the same thing, not the same thing at all.

Mama was 47.

I will be 83 in a couple of months.

Your assignment for today is to read two short poems, "Little Boy Blue" by Eugene Field and "When I Was One-And-Twenty" by A.E.Housman. Only after completing your assignment may you say something snarky in the comments section.

The wheels on the bus go round and round

...or maybe they go 'round and 'round. I suppose it depends on how pedantic you want to be. Back in Poughkeepsie, New York, where I worked for IBM in the 1960s, a fellow named Douglas B. who was on temporary assignment with us from IBM High Wycombe in the UK always (well, not always but whenever the occasion presented itself) wrote 'bus and never simply bus because, he said, the word was a contraction of the word omnibus.

Here are some answers no contestant on Jeopardy! knew this week but I knew them:

Who is Molly Pitcher?
What is Van Cleef & Arpels?
What is Mumbai?

Today is called Epiphany or Three Kings Day or Feast of the Three Kings depending on where you live and what church you happen ti attend. If you don't happen to attend any church, today is called January 6th. Some people also call it Twelfth Night but other people call January 5th Twelfth Night. A day without learning something new is a day withour sunshine, in my opinion.

This week I learned that the Methodist Church in Great Britain is recommending that all British Methodists, clergy and laity alike, stop using the words 'husband' and 'wife' because those words can be 'hurtful' and 'offensive'. My first thought was "To whom?" and my next thought was "The snowflakes are moving again". If that makes me something-or-other-phobic I will wear the badge proudly.

Well, folks, the wheels on the bus or 'bus have gone round and round or 'round and 'round quite enough for one post.

T.T.F.N.

Once again, off we go into the wild blue yonder

Ho hum, another day, another 1.6 million miles of space hurtled through.

Is that how you feel? I definitely don't.

It is New Year's Day 2024. In my part of the world (the southern U.S.) many people do strange things on New Year's Day and wouldn't dream of not doing them. They think you (I) are (am) strange when you (I) don't do the things they do. Specifically, I'm referring to eating black-eyed peas to bring good luck in the new year, eating collard greens to bring financial prosperity in the new year (collards and money are both green), not washing clothes (because whatever you do on New Year's Day you will continue to do all year long), not sweeping your floors (because all the good luck will be swept away), and shooting off fireworks, lots and lots of fireworks.

It occurs to me, and ought to be self-evident, that each person's experience is unique. Even identical twins raised together have different experiences (one has an older sibling and one has a younger sibling).

Consider two people, one standing at the North Pole or the South Pole (I don't care which) and one standing at the equator. In the course of one 24-hour period, each will have made a revolution, but the one at the pole would have essentially piroutted in place and the one at the equator would have travelled 25,000 miles. Another difference is that the one at the equator would have passed from day to night and back to day again, while the one at the pole might have experienced either 24 hours of daylight or 24 hours of darkness.

So the next time you are tempted to say to someone, "I know just how you feel," remember this post and bite your tongue.

Speaking of this post, it feels very familiar. If I have posted stuff like this before, please send up a flare or something.

What do people do on New Year's Day in your part of the world?