I (rhymeswithplague, not Susan Boyle -- we’ll get to her in a minute) began this blog in September 2007 and subsequently posted about the summer solstice on, would you believe, the summer solstices in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Inexplicably (today’s five-syllable word), I did not post a single word about the summer solstice on the summer solstices in 2011 or 2012.
Here are those three posts from 2008, 2009, and 2010:
1. Get ready to party, people! (2008)
2. The long, hot summer approaches (2009)
3. What? Summer solstice already? (2010)
On the summer solstice in 2011, however, I posted Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar in which Mrs. RWP and I wished her brother a happy 80th birthday and I also mentioned the National Hollerin’ Contest in Spivey’s Corner, North Carolina.
And last year, on the summer solstice in 2012, I posted The vibrations of deathless music which included a video of Junior Brown singing “You’re Wanted by the PO-lice and My Wife Thinks You’re Dead” (3:36). Yes, it did.
These posts, taken as a whole, prove one and only one thing:
It is not just mad dogs and Englishmen who go out in the midday sun.
If you don’t get that cultural reference, let me enlighten you. Here is Noel Coward singing his own composition, “Mad Dogs and Englishmen Go Out in the Midday Sun” (2:30), which includes the line -- I do hope Yorkshire Pudding is in the house today -- “In Bangkok, at twelve o'clock, they foam at the mouth and run.”
I do wish you a happy solstice or a merry solstice or a safe and sane solstice or whatever it is that you want to be wished. This year the summer solstice occurred earlier today (June 21, 2013) at exactly 1:04 am EDT (5:04 UTC), when Earth’s Northern Hemisphere reached its point of greatest inclination to the Sun. [Editor’s note. In Earth’s Southern Hemisphere, today is the first day of winter. --RWP]
Warning: Do not try to balance an egg on its end today. That is possible only on an equinox.
Finally, as Susan Boyle said on more than one occasion, “Thank you for your support.”
Showing posts with label Paul Newman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Newman. Show all posts
Friday, June 21, 2013
Monday, November 8, 2010
What we have here is a fail-yah to communicate.
[start semi-rant mode]
We have just come through the American election of 2010.
The liberals think the conservatives don’t get the message. The conservatives think the liberals don’t get the message. The president thinks the American people don’t get the message. The American people think the president doesn’t get the message. The Democrats think the Republicans don’t get the message. The Republicans think the Democrats don’t get the message. The Libertarians and Tea Party members think no one else gets the message. Everyone thinks he or she is right. It’s the other person, obviously, who is wrong.
Clearly, in the words of Strother Martin in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is a fail-yah to communicate.
President Obama now says (in an interview aired on November 7, 2010, on the CBS-TV program 60 Minutes) that he doesn’t plan to change his agenda but will attempt to communicate better because people failed to understand his message. My own opinion is that people now understand his message very clearly. Perhaps they didn’t two years ago, but now they do, based not on what he has said but on what he has done. And a very clear majority of the American voting public have firmly rejected it (except in a few apparently very liberal places where people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer and Barney Frank managed, astoundingly, to get themselves re-elected). The president, however, seems to care more about what people in other countries think than what the majority of Americans think. We are expected to follow like sheep and accept whatever he has decided is best for us.
I have an announcement, folks: The American system doesn’t work that way. In fact, it works just the other way; he is supposed to do what the American voters want. In what used to be America (that is, according to the U.S. Constitution), the people were in charge. Abraham Lincoln probably phrased it best as “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” (and just so you know, Abraham Lincoln was not a Democrat; he was the first Republican president.) But right now President Obama does not appear very Abraham Lincolnesque. Instead, he seems to be Strother Martin and the rest of us have become Paul Newman.
Denial, my friends, is not a river in Egypt.
[end semi-rant mode]
If you are a U.S. citizen, whether you agree or disagree with me, I’d love to hear from you. But for this one post, if you are not a U.S. citizen, please follow Archie Bunker’s advice to his wife, Edith, and stifle yourself.
However, if you want to move here and become a citizen of the United States and vote in our elections, I say, in the words of Edith Bunker herself: “I welcome you with open arms.”
We have just come through the American election of 2010.
The liberals think the conservatives don’t get the message. The conservatives think the liberals don’t get the message. The president thinks the American people don’t get the message. The American people think the president doesn’t get the message. The Democrats think the Republicans don’t get the message. The Republicans think the Democrats don’t get the message. The Libertarians and Tea Party members think no one else gets the message. Everyone thinks he or she is right. It’s the other person, obviously, who is wrong.
Clearly, in the words of Strother Martin in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is a fail-yah to communicate.
President Obama now says (in an interview aired on November 7, 2010, on the CBS-TV program 60 Minutes) that he doesn’t plan to change his agenda but will attempt to communicate better because people failed to understand his message. My own opinion is that people now understand his message very clearly. Perhaps they didn’t two years ago, but now they do, based not on what he has said but on what he has done. And a very clear majority of the American voting public have firmly rejected it (except in a few apparently very liberal places where people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer and Barney Frank managed, astoundingly, to get themselves re-elected). The president, however, seems to care more about what people in other countries think than what the majority of Americans think. We are expected to follow like sheep and accept whatever he has decided is best for us.
I have an announcement, folks: The American system doesn’t work that way. In fact, it works just the other way; he is supposed to do what the American voters want. In what used to be America (that is, according to the U.S. Constitution), the people were in charge. Abraham Lincoln probably phrased it best as “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” (and just so you know, Abraham Lincoln was not a Democrat; he was the first Republican president.) But right now President Obama does not appear very Abraham Lincolnesque. Instead, he seems to be Strother Martin and the rest of us have become Paul Newman.
Denial, my friends, is not a river in Egypt.
[end semi-rant mode]
If you are a U.S. citizen, whether you agree or disagree with me, I’d love to hear from you. But for this one post, if you are not a U.S. citizen, please follow Archie Bunker’s advice to his wife, Edith, and stifle yourself.
However, if you want to move here and become a citizen of the United States and vote in our elections, I say, in the words of Edith Bunker herself: “I welcome you with open arms.”
Monday, June 21, 2010
What? Summer Solstice already?
For your Summer Solstice 2010 reading pleasure, I give you
my Summer Solstice post from 2009
and also
my Summer Solstice post from 2008
because I wouldn’t want to have to work too hard in all this heat
and all this light
which is the whole point.
For those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, we will now have a group sing.
All together, now:
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springþ þe wde nu,
Sing cuccu!
Awe bleteþ after lomb,
Lhouþ after calue cu.
Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ,
Murie sing cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu, wel þu singes cuccu;
Ne swik þu nauer nu.
Pes:
Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu!
There now. Don’t you feel better?
And for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere who are currently experiencing mid-winter, bleak or otherwise, and who may prefer a little eye candy to all this singing (hi, Katherine), I give you Paul Newman, who won the Best Actor Award at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival for his role in The Long Hot Summer:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)