I love 2 BB side your side B side the C, B side the C side, by the B U T full C, plus bluebirds

Here's a little something to tickle your fancy:

By the C, by the C,
By the B U T full C,
U N I, U N I,
O how hap P we'll B.
I love 2 BB side your side
B side the C,
B side the C side,
By the B U T full C!

That song, or something very similar, was written way back in 1914 by songwriters Harold Atteridge and Harry Carroll for the musical "For Me and My Gal."

Here is a glimpse of what it actually was like to be beside the seaside in 1914 and a few other years as well (3:11)

Okay, so it's not The Alphabet Song but it's the best I could come up with on a chilly day in February.

Speaking of a chilly day in February, Eastern bluebirds have been in our yard for the past couple of days, so Mrs. RWP and I went to Home Depot today and bought two new feeders along with a bag of peanut butter suet and a bag of mealworms to fill them up with. (If you want to try to rearrange the preceding sentence so that it doesn't end with two prepositions, be my guest.) Just so you know, mealworms are not really worms but dried beetle larvae, much in the same way that Yorkshire Pudding is not really a Yorkshire pudding. Please don't misunderstand me. I am not saying that Yorkshire Pudding is dried beetle larvae; I'm saying that mealworms are dried beetle larvae. The jury is still out on Yorkshire Pudding.

I did not take that photo. A man named Ken Thomas did in 2007 in Johnston County, North Carolina. He released it into the public domain, though, so anyone can use it without fear of recrimination from any Internet Nazis or deportation across our southern border by the Department of Homeland Security.

I did take these photographs of our two new bird feeders, however.

It was a chilly day. The wind was blowing and I was in shirtsleeves, so I didn't take pains to take time to produce good photographs. As a result, hardly anything in either photo appears to be vertical. In actuality, both of the shepherd's crooks are vertical but the two bird feeders were not. They were swaying in the breeze. Sorry, people, Ansel Adams I am not.



Let's end this somewhat disjointed (but fascinating) post by listening to Julie Andrews and watching Jane Darwell in her last role (3:49) together.

Where is Pomerania anyway?

[This post is a logical extension of the preceding post, in which I happened to mention in passing that the Seven Years’ War is known in Sweden as the Third Pomeranian War. --RWP]

According to Wikipedia, Pomerania is “a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Divided between Germany and Poland, it stretches roughly from the Recknitz River near Stralsund in the West, via the Oder River delta near Szczecin, to the mouth of the Vistula River near Gdańsk in the East. It is inhabited primarily by Poles, Germans and Kashubians.”

Kashubians? Never heard of ’em. Back to Wikipedia I went.

Kashubians and Slovincians (the latter regarded themselves merely as Lutheran Kashubians) speak Kashubian and Slovincian, respectively. Slovincians are grouped with the Kashubians as Pomeranians. Similarly, the Slovincian and Kashubian languages are grouped as the Pomeranian language. Pomeranian influenced the formation of such Polish dialects as Kociewski, Borowiacki, and Krajniacki, and several expressways in Chicago. Everything in this paragraph is true except the part about the expressways in Chicago. I made that up.

The Kashubians even had their own flag:

Notable Kashubians include Józef Borzyszkowski (1946- ) historian, politician, founder of the Kashubian Institute; Hieronim Derdowski (1852–1902) poet, humorist, journalist; Jan Drzeżdżon (1937–1992) novelist; and Swantopolk II (1195–1266) powerful ruler of Eastern Pomerania. Apparently no notable Kashubian was powerful enough to convince the Kashubians, Slovincians, and Pomeranians to include a few more vowels in their language.

Speaking of Pomerania, Eastern Pomerania was also called Farther Pomerania but Western Pomerania was never, ever, called Nearer Pomerania. Nearer to or farther from what, I have no idea.

The city of Szczecin is the main urban center in Western Pomerania. If you know how to pronounce Szczecin, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din. Click on that link to read Rudyard Kipling’s poem in its entirety, or click on this link to see the trailer for the 1939 movie Gunga Din starring Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joan Fontaine, and, in the title role, Sam Jaffe, who many years later played Dr. Zorba on the TV series Ben Casey. None of this has anything to do with Pomerania.

Here is a scene in Szczecin. After you have seen it, you will be able to say truthfully that you have seen a scene in Szczecin:

The name of the entire region is derived from Old Slavic po, meaning “by/next to/along” and more, meaning “sea”. Thus “Pomerania” is literally “seacoast”, referring to its proximity to the Baltic Sea.

Finally, here is a rare glimpse of typical daily life among the people of Pomerania (3:11).

It has taken all the gumption and personal resolve I could muster and every fiber of my being to refrain from including a picture of a dog.

This has been another educational post from Rhymeswithplague University, your online window into all things worthy of your attention.