What’s your sign?

Not your astrological sign, silly! That stuff is pure hokum! I’m talking about your “Southern” sign. Everybody has one, and it doesn’t necessarily correspond with your birthday.

I found the following list in an old folder and decided to share it with you. I have no idea who came up with it, but everyone deserves to be enlightened with the truth. You folks from the United Kingdom probably won’t understand, though. I recommend that you console yourselves with a generous helping of Bubble and Squeak.


Southern Signs

OKRA (Dec 22 - Jan 20): Although you appear crude, you are actually very slick on the inside. Okras have tremendous influence. An older Okra can look back over his life and see the seeds of his influence everywhere. Stay away from Moon Pies.

CHITLIN (Jan 21 - Feb 19): Chitlins come from humble backgrounds. A chitlin, however, can make something of himself if he’s motivated and has lots of seasoning. In dealing with Chitlins, be careful. They can erupt like Vesuvius. Chitlins are best with Catfish and Okra.

[Editor’s note. I confess to being a lazy editor today. If this were my list, I would have said “his or her life” and “his or her influence” and “can make something of himself or herself” and “if he or she is motivated” in the last two paragraphs even though it would drive some of you crazy. But I’m letting it stay the way I received it. Fortunately (both for me and for you), the writer changed to second person starting with the next paragraph. --RWP]

BOLL WEEVIL (Feb 20 - Mar 20): You have an overwhelming curiosity. You’re unsatisfied with the surface of things, and you feel the need to bore deep into the interior of everything. Needless to say, you are very intense and driven as if you had some inner hunger. Nobody in their right mind is going to marry you, so don’t worry about it.

[Editor’s note. You can tell I didn’t write this; I do know that a pronoun should agree with its antecedent in person and number. I would never say “nobody in their right mind.” I would say, well, you know. --RWP]

MOON PIE (Mar 21 - April 20): You’re the type that spends a lot of time on the front porch. It’s a cinch to recognize the physical appearance of Moon Pies. Big and round are the key words here. You should marry anybody who you can get remotely interested in the idea. It’s not going to be easy. This might be the year to think about aerobics. Maybe not.

POSSUM (Apr 21 - May 21): When confronted with life’s difficulties, possums have a marked tendency to withdraw and develop a don’t-bother-me-about-it attitude. Sometimes you become so withdrawn, people actually think you're dead. This strategy is probably not psychologically healthy, but seems to work for you. One day, however, it won’t work and you may find your problems actually running you over.

CRAWFISH (May 22 - June 21): Crawfish is a water sign. If you work in an office, you’re always hanging around the water cooler. Crawfish prefer the beach to the mountains, the pool to the golf course, the bathtub to the living room. You tend to be not particularly attractive physically, but you have very, very good heads.

COLLARDS (June 22 - July 23): Collards have a genius for communication. They love to get in the “melting pot” of life and share their essence with the essence of those around them. Collards make good social workers, psychologists, and baseball managers. As far as your personal life goes, if you are Collards, stay away from Moon Pies. It just won’t work. Save yourself a lot of heartache.

CATFISH (July 24 - Aug 23): Catfish are traditionalists in matters of the heart, although one’s whiskers may cause problems for loved ones. You catfish are never easy people to understand. You prefer the muddy bottoms to the clear surface of life.

GRITS (Aug 24 - Sept 23): Your highest aim is to be with others like yourself. You like to huddle together with a big crowd of other Grits. You love to travel though, so maybe you should think about joining a club. Where do you like to go? Anywhere they have cheese or gravy or bacon or butter or eggs. If you can go somewhere where they have all these things, that serves you well.

BOILED PEANUTS (Sept 24 - Oct 23): You have a passionate desire to help your fellow man. Unfortunately, those who know you best -- your friends and loved ones -- may find that your personality is much too salty, and their criticism will probably affect you deeply because you are really much softer than you appear. You should go right ahead and marry anybody you want to because in a certain way, yours is a charmed life. On the road of life, you can be sure that people will always pull over and stop for you.

BUTTER BEAN (Oct 24 - Nov 22): Always invite a Butter Bean because Butter Beans get along well with everybody. You, as a Butter Bean, should be proud. You’ve grown on the vine of life and you feel at home no matter what the setting. You can sit next to anybody. However, you shouldn’t have anything to do with Moon Pies.

ARMADILLO (Nov 23 - Dec 21): You have a tendency to develop a tough exterior, but you are actually quite gentle. A good evening for you? Old friends, a fire, some roots, fruit, worms and insects. You are a throwback. You’re not concerned with today’s fashions and trends. You’re not concerned with anything about today. You’re really almost prehistoric in your interests and behavior patterns. You probably want to marry another Armadillo, but Possum is another mating possibility.

Dr. Seuss, Elizabeth Taylor, and Gerard Manley Hopkins

What do those three have in common? What links them together? What makes them share space in the title of this post?

The answer to all three questions, friends, is simple:

Me.

The real Dr. Seuss, Theodor Seuss Geisel, was born on March 2, 1904 -- belated happy birthday greetings -- and died on September 24, 1991, at the age of 87.

Elizabeth Taylor, who was often called The Most Beautiful Woman In The World, was born on February 27, 1932, and died this week, on March 23, 2011, at the age of 79.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, an English poet of the nineteenth century, was not so long-lived. He was born on July 28, 1844, and died on June 8, 1889, at the age of 44.

You may be thinking Sic transit gloria mundi. Then again, you may not.

Here comes the tie-in.

Yesterday, the day of Elizabeth Rosamund Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky’s funeral at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, Mrs. Rhymeswithplague and I saw a live performance of Seussical, the musical, in Kennesaw, Georgia. If you ever have an opportunity to see Seussical, I highly recommend that you do. It is delightful.

The last time Mrs. Rhymeswithplague and I attended the theater was several years ago at Theater on the Square in Marietta, Georgia, where we saw You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown. I think I detect some sort of pattern here, but that is irrelevant.

Gerard Manley Hopkins was a noted convert to Roman Catholicism. Ms. Taylor, an acknowledged beauty, was a noted convert to Judaism. Yesterday at the funeral of The Most Beautiful Woman In The World her friend, actor Colin Ferrell, read “The Leaden Echo and The Golden Echo” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Actually, they are two related poems that are usually read together as one. Here they are:


The Leaden Echo

How to keep — is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing away?
O is there no frowning of these wrinkles, ranked wrinkles deep,
Down? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there’s none, there’s none, O no there’s none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age’s evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death’s worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there’s none; no no no there’s none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.


The Golden Echo

Spare!
There is one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun’s tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth’s air,
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
One. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever’s prized and passes of us, everything that’s fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matched face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an everlastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear, gallantry and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks, loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant, girlgrace —
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring sighs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what while we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold
What while we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then whý should we tread? O why are we so haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged, so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered,
When the thing we freely forfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder
A care kept. — Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where. —
Yonder. — What high as that! We follow, now we follow. — Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,
Yonder.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

(AP Photo)

Now might be a good time to say it: Sic transit gloria mundi.

It might also be a good time to quote Horton the Elephant:

“A persons’s a person, no matter how small.”

To complete today’s daily devotional trifecta, let us read Proverbs 31:30 in the New International Version: “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”

I’m no longer talking about Elizabeth Taylor, friends. I’m talking about Mrs. Rhymeswithplague.

Science was never my best subject.

I have made a major mistake. A big boo-boo. A faux pas (supply your own adjective). Not only do I apologize profusely, but I also repent in sackcloth and ashes.

In my previous post, I suggested that you would have to turn either your head or your computer 90 degrees to the right to see my birthday cake properly.

Remember?

Well, I was wrong. A thousand pardons. Actually, I was half wrong. Make that 500 pardons.

You do have to turn your head 90 degrees to the right, but you have to turn your computer 90 degrees to the left.

Wait, is that right?

The problem is that you are facing your computer and your computer is facing you. It would have been just as accurate to tell you to turn the computer 90 degrees to its right, which would be to your left, actually.

I hesitate to use the terms clockwise and counter-clockwise in this discussion because it all depends on your point of reference. If you are a clock, facing me, then clockwise actually means counter-clockwise.

I trust that you are not a clock.

In the end, though, the most important thing to remember is this:

All’s well that ends well.

William Shakespeare said that. Or maybe it was Christopher Marlowe.

Literature was not my best subject either.

As Snow White said when she mailed her film to Rochester* to be developed,...

“Some day my prints will come.”

That joke is so old that it has died a natural death and the younger folk have no idea what I’m even talking about. And, yes, I just split another infinitive.

Anyhoo, below are three photographs taken at my 70th birthday bash, which was held at my older son’s home last Sunday afternoon, a couple of days into my 71st year so that the crowd from Alabamistan could attend.

To see the second photograph properly, you will have to turn either your head or your computer 90 degrees to the right, but it simply can’t be helped. If you have a desktop instead of a laptop, my sincerest apologies. My cake had 14 candles (one for every five years?) and I blew them all out in one breath. This aerial view of my cake is reminiscent of what the crew of the Enola Gay must have experienced as they flew over Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945. I’m not quite old enough to remember that, but almost, plus my sense of humor is definitely warped. The younger crowd, the ones who don’t know about photographic film or the Enola Gay, will probably think of Google Earth instead.

The third photo, the pièce de résistance in my opinion, shows why I want to live to be at least 100. (Hint: So I can have a photograph made with my wife and great-grandchildren.)

*Rochester, New York, is the headquarters of Eastman Kodak.

Quote of the day

“The calla lilies are in bloom again. Such a strange flower, suitable to any occasion. I carried them on my wedding day, and now I place them here in memory of something that has died...Have you gathered here to mourn, or are you here to bring me comfort?...I’ve learned something about love that I never knew before. That I never knew before. You speak of love when it’s too late. Help should come to people when they need it. Why are we always so helpful to each other when it’s no longer any use?...This is my home. This is where I belong. Love was in this house once, and for me it will always be here, nowhere else...One should always listen closely when people say goodbye because sometimes they’re, they’re really saying farewell.”
..................-- Katherine Hepburn in Stage Door Canteen (1943)

(Click anywhere on the quotation for the full treatment.)

People around my age may spot Adolphe Menjou in the wings and Ginger Rogers in the audience.

Okay, so maybe it isn’t “Fourscore and seven years ago” or “Veni, vidi, vici” but it ranks right up there with “I am not a crook”....

It’s just my opinion, but that was one president who should have said farewell a little sooner.

A final thought: Katherine Hepburn’s emotion, though quite effective, was obviously artificial, but Mrs. Nixon’s was very real.

A is for apoplectic, E is for extraterrestrial, M is for Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP)

Today is the 70th anniversary of my first glimpse of planet Earth and vice versa. If I have amassed threescore and ten big ones, can fourscore and seven be far behind? Abraham Lincoln, eat your heart out. Perhaps, like my cousin who used to live there, I will have a Gettysburg address of my own one day.

It’s my party, and I’ll cry if post what I want to. It doesn’t have to make sense. You can’t make me make sense.

Here are some bits of flotsam and jetsam, comments actually, that I left scattered around the blogosphere recently as my birthday approached:

“It has become practically an article of faith among certain people in the U.S.A. that while whites are undoubtedly racist concerning blacks, it is impossible for blacks to be racist concerning whites. The reason given is that racism is by definition the suppression of, oppression of, or denial of rights to persons of a minority group by persons of the majority group. Therefore, members of the minority group cannot possibly be racist in their views, speech, or behavior. This seems to me to be a very inadequate and flawed definition of racism, which clearly operates in both directions.” (United Kingdom)

[Note. Why can’t we just make beautiful music together the way Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder did in this video? --RWP]

“I hope one day to be as wealthy as you Brits and be able to afford my very own creative writing tutor. Until then, I will muck along with the help of a few active verbs and a handful of eager adjectives. (United Kingdom)

[Note. And an online copy of Strunk’s The Elements of Style. --RWP]

“Did I ever mention that I watched Biff Pocoroba up close and personal in his rookie-year spring training in West Palm Beach in 1975? The fact that in later years, in order to get to the church we attended after we moved to Atlanta, we had to drive past Dale Murphy's house every week never dimmed the luster of that 1975 spring training!” (California)

“When I was a boy we had a little flock of White Leghorns, Black Dominicks, speckled Dominicks, and a Rhode Island Red or two. My dad placed a white porcelain doorknob in each nest to encourage the hens (I started to say ‘give them something to shoot at’ but I thought better of it.)” (The Netherlands)

(Photo courtesy of Tony Northrup at www.northrup.org/poultry)

“I know I’m thinking of calla lilies and not your canna lilies, but Katherine Hepburn comes to mind (‘The calla lilies are in bloom again...’ from Stage Door Canteen). Our area finally has a few jonquils here and there, and we spotted some forsythia, a couple of tulip trees in full splendor, and even some cherry blossoms hereabouts. I do hope the winter is over.” (Arkansas)

[Note. If you simply cannot get enough of listening to Katherine Hepburn talk about herself, then this (9:05) and this (9:56) and this (9:40) and this (9:52) are definitely for you. There are two more segments, but you get the idea. If a single photograph of Katherine will do, look in the dictionary under “self-absorbed.” --RWP]

“I have no idea who Michael Schumacher is, but there’s something obviously wrong with a country where the Queen Mother’s teeth should have been in a sports figure’s head, and the sports figure’s teeth should have been in the Queen Mother’s head.” (United Kingdom)

[Note. On second thought, we should all live to be nearly 102, regardless of the condition of our teeth. --RWP]

“Just once I would like to encounter a schoolroom where the alphabet chart says A is for anachronism, B is for bituminous, C is for charlatan, D is for demonic, E is for effervescent, and so forth....” (United Kingdom)

I feel so much better now.

I’m really not crazy, just giddy at having reached this milestone.

Let’s have some cake.

(Copyrighted Photo by Christophe Verdier)

What, leaving so soon?

Perhaps a better question is: How did that white cake turn into a chocolate one?

Today may be St. Patrick’s Day...

...but tomorrow is my birthday.

You’re all invited.