Yelling “May Day” is not an international signal of distress and other information you may wish to tuck away for future reference

[Editor’s note. From the archives, here is my post of May 1, 2009. --RWP]

Everything you ever wanted to know about May Day but were afraid to ask

Here is a photo taken in 1907 of May Day festivities in Maryland.


More information about May Day than you ever thought possible can be found in this article from Wikipedia, including May Day’s relationship to Walpurgis Night and Morris dancing and the May Queen and the Maypole (not to be confused with the Walpole) and even International Workers’ Day.

For example, what happens in Finland? “In Finland, Walpurgis Night is, along with New Year’s Eve and Midsommar, the biggest carnival-style festivity, taking place in the streets of Finland’s towns and cities. The celebration is typically centered on plentiful use of sparkling wine and other alcoholic beverages ... From the end of the 19th century, this traditional upper class feast has been co-opted by students attending university, already having received their student cap. In the capital Helsinki and its surrounding region, [activities] include the capping (on April 30 at 6 pm) of the Havis Amanda, a nude female statue in Helsinki, and the biannually alternating publications of ribald matter called Äpy and Julkku by students of the University of Technology. Both are sophomoric...”

One can only assume the article means both publications of ribald matter, not both students of Finland’s University of Technology.

In Scotland, at St. Andrews, some of the students gather on the beach late on April 30 and run into the North Sea at sunrise on May Day, occasionally naked. This is accompanied by torchlit processions and much elated celebration.

In Hawaii, May Day is also known as Lei Day.

If you read too far in that Wikipedia artile, you will learn of many lewd and lascivious connotations surrounding the celebrations of May Day as well, but I’m not going to help you find them. You’ll have to ferret them out for yourself. Instead, I leave you with this example of Morris dancing.


It must have been really difficult to find six men named Morris.

Note. It is also noteworthy to note that yelling “May Day” is not an international signal of distress. Yelling “m’aidez” (“help me” in French) is an international signal of distress.

(end of original post)

P.S. -- The Wikipedia article on May Day has changed somewhat in the four years since this post was originally published. For example, just today I found this fascinating new paragraph:

“In Oxford, it is traditional for May Morning revellers to gather below the Great Tower of Magdalen College at 6:00 am to listen to the college choir sing traditional madrigals as a conclusion to the previous night’s celebrations. It is then thought to be traditional for some people to jump off Magdalen Bridge into the River Cherwell. However this has actually only been fashionable since the 1970s, possibly due to the presence of TV cameras. In recent years, the bridge has been closed on May 1 to prevent people from jumping, as the water under the bridge is only 2 feet (61 cm) deep and jumping from the bridge has resulted in serious injury in the past. There are still people who insist on climbing the barriers and leaping into the water, causing themselves injury.”

...which only goes to prove, kiddies, that you can lead the rear end of a horse to water, but you can’t make him sink.

Speaking of quirky...

...which we weren’t, but I decided to change subjects...

One of my pleasures back during the 1990s was watching the series Northern Exposure on the telly.

Call me crazy, but I really liked it.

It was low-key.

It was funny.

It was a dramedy (a portmanteau word meaning “drama and comedy”) but it had no laugh track (I hate laugh tracks).

Best of all, it was quirky.

Here, in two parts, is the pilot episode that launched the series:

Northern Exposure Pilot - Part 1 (18:01)

Northern Exposure Pilot = Part 2 (22:46)

Did I mention it was quirky?

Perhaps Northern Exposure is not your cup of tea. So sue me.

I like things that are offbeat, not run-of-the-mill. Movies such as Big Fish and The Purple Rose of Cairo and Raising Arizona and Harold and Maude and television series such as My So-Called Life and Thirtysomething and Twin Peaks and one whose name I can’t remember about a family that owned a funeral parlor (British, parlour)*, that’s what I like.

It’s the same thing when it comes to music.

[Editor's note. While happening to re-read this post at random on September 3, 2017, it suddenly occurred to me that the one whose name I couldn't remember was Six Feet Under. The human brain is a marvelous thing. --RWP]

I don’t want to hear Doris Day sing “Que Sera Sera” (2:26), I want to hear Pink Martini sing “Que Sera Sera” (3:55).

Sometimes I want to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” (6:03), and sometimes I want to hear Michael W. Smith sing “Breathe” (6:32).

Sometimes I want to hear “Revelation Song” (4:58) more than anything else in the world.

Yes, I do.

But I never, ever, want to hear anything by the Rolling Stones or Lionel Richie or Meat Loaf or Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga or....

The list goes on and on.

Quirky, huh?

There is too a there there and I can prove it

When people of a certain age who grew up during a certain time think of Oakland, California, they probably think of the Black Panther Party and Bobby Seale and Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver. We can’t help it. It’s who we are.

There are also people for whom sports is their life, their raison d’être, who might think only of the Oakland Raiders football team or the Oakland Athletics baseball team.

But mention Oakland, California, to someone of a literary bent (like, well, moi, for instance) and the writer Gertrude Stein comes to mind, and especially her famous statement about Oakland that “there is no there there.”

Ms. Stein said other odd things too, like “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” (not “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” as some people think) and “Pigeons on the grass alas.” I recall that the American television series Northern Exposure once had an episode entitled “Cicely” (Episode 38, Season 3) in which someone parodied Gertrude Stein by saying, “A squirrel on a log, agog,” but I digress.

Here is that pigeon poem:


From Four Saints in Three Acts

Pigeons on the grass alas.
Pigeons on the grass alas.
Short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass. Pigeons
large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass alas pigeons on the
grass.
If they were not pigeons what were they.
If they were not pigeons on the grass alas what were they. He had
heard of a third and he asked about if it was a magpie in the sky.
If a magpie in the sky on the sky can not cry if the pigeon on the
grass alas can alas and to pass the pigeon on the grass alas and the
magpie in the sky on the sky and to try and to try alas on the
grass alas the pigeon on the grass the pigeon on the grass and alas.
They might be very well they might be very well very well they might
be.
Let Lucy Lily Lily Lucy Lucy let Lucy Lucy Lily Lily Lily Lily
Lily let Lily Lucy Lucy let Lily. Let Lucy Lily.

--Gertrude Stein


What I want to say about Gertrude Stein is that I don’t understand her poetry at all. It doesn’t make me think. It doesn’t fill me with awe and wonder. It doesn’t make me laugh or want to sing. It just makes me scratch my head and say, “Huh?”

In some quarters, that will make me forever persona non grata.

Be that as it may, a writer named Matt Werner recently wrote an online article entitled Gertrude Stein puts the “there” back in Oakland for Google Books. You really should read it if only to see some vintage photographs of Oakland and to find out exactly why Ms. Stein made that famous statement. Also, Mr. Werner proves that there really is a “there” there in Oakland, California, by including the following photograph in his article:


(photo by Joe Sciarrello)

See? I told you so.

So there.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

Today’s post is a glimpse into another time, another place.

Here is a picture of Mrs. RWP and me from around 1980 or 1981 that I don’t think I have shown to you before. And, in a sense, I’m not going to show it to you now either. Unfortunately the hand-held-cellphone photo of the old snapshot that I made before I got my smartphone is so out of focus that it is, dare I say it, less than perfect.

In a way, though, that sort of view -- out of focus, less than perfect -- is a pretty accurate representation of the way we often remember events from our past. We remember the big picture, of course, but the details are not quite so clear. We see them through a glass, fuzzily.

I was about 40 when this photo was taken. Mrs. RWP still had dark hair then.



I thought I cut quite the dapper figure, but the day I came home with the Afro perm my wife just laughed and laughed and laughed.

Some people who were probably high on speed told me I looked like Engelbert Humperdinck. Here he is singing “Please Release Me” (3:27).

Some people who were probably high on Jack Daniels or Jim Beam told me I looked like Harold Reid, the bass singer in the Statler Brothers quartet. I won't subject you to their singing but here they are accepting an award as Vocal Group of the Year in 1982 (2:17).

I hope you watched both videos. Then you will know more fully what I meant at the top of the post about a glimpse into another time, another place.

For those of you who never click on links to videos, here is a photograph of the Statler Brothers (I presume you do not need a photo of Engelbert Humperdinck):


(photo from gettyimages.com)

What were we talking about?

Oh, yes. My Afro.

Some people were very kind and didn’t say anything at all.

Eventually Afros went out of style and I let my hair return to its normal, straight self. Today, what is left of my hair continues to fall out at a rapid pace.

Today, alas, where once there were waves, all that remains is beach.

Part Three of the Texas Triumvirate of Very Important Days has arrived

April 21st.

First of all, let me say “Happy Birthday!” to Jerry Ragsdale, a guy I used to work with at AT&T who hails from Conyers, Georgia, and whom I haven’t seen or talked to in about 15 years but whose birthday it indeed is today.

The Texas Triumvirate of Very Important Days (patent pending) is how I refer to March 2nd, March 6th, and April 21st.

March 2nd is Texas Independence Day. If you have to ask “Independence from what?” you are pathetic indeed and obviously weren’t paying any attention in History class. Independence from what? Why, Mexico, of course! Mexico! I say it a third time: Mexico!

March 6th is Alamo Day. Every living, breathing American in my day (perhaps it is no longer so) had at least heard of Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie.

And finally we come to April 21st. The Battle of San Jacinto. Revenge for March 6th, big-time. Dear to every Texan’s heart.

I posted about it in 2009 with a post entitled “Rules to live by: (1) Always post a sentry during the afternoon siesta; (2) Choose your underwear very carefully." and if you want all the gory magnificent details, just read it again.

Here are two more things that are dear to every Texan’s heart:






(Field of Texas bluebonnets; photo by bombay2austin on Flickr. Noncommercial use permitted with attribution)


That’s right. The Lone Star flag and a field of bluebonnets.

And you thought I was going to say George W. Bush and Willie Nelson.

Before April disappears for another year

...I want to present you with a treasure from the past, a “golden oldie.” It’s Al Jolson singing “April Showers” (3:06).

I hear some of you asking, “Al who?” and I hand you now a virtual towel because you are obviously still wet behind the ears.

Jolson -- J as in junta, U as in ubiquitous, N as in numismatic, T as in tetracycline, A as in aphrodisiac.

Wait. That spells junta, not Jolson. I lost my head there for a minute. A thousand pardons.

What I meant to say was Jolson -- J as in jarring, O as in onomatopoeia, L as in lugubriously, S as in surreptitious, O as in obsequious, N as in Nefertiti.

J, O, L, S, O, N. Jolson.

Let’s say it together, class:

Jolson.

If you have a little time to spare, you might also want to read every word of this Wikipedia article about Al Jolson.

Then listen to him sing that song again.

Here’s another “golden oldie,” a true one, even older than Al Jolson:


(Photograph by Philippe Pikart, 2009, of the bust of Nefertiti from the Ägyptisches Museum Berlin collection, currently in the Neues Museum.)

You can read about her here.

Then there will be nothing left to do but sit back and hum Al’s song and wait for the flowers that bloom in May.

If only life were that simple.

Tree’s a crowd

Last week I participated in a microfiction meme over at Grandma’s Goulash. If you don’t remember my entry, it had to do with donkeys at the bottom of a canyon.

Well, it’s another week now and another microfiction meme has reared its ugly head. This could become habit-forming. Here’s this week’s picture, followed by my contribution, which is limited by the rules to 140 characters:



When Nigel turned to Pamela at the dinner party and whispered, “Let’s make like a tree and leave” she hadn’t realized he meant it literally. (140)

Here’s the link to Grandma’s Goulash if you would like to have a try at it yourself.