September 11, 2001

(Photographs above from “Days of Terror” at nymag.com)


(Photographs above from www.theblackday.org by navexpress)

Papy Biou has returned!

No, that’s not Papy. First of all, Papy is a man and that’s a woman. Papy Biou is a Frenchman whose blog, Le monde comme je l'aime, is one of my favorites. He took a long vacation in July and August to replenish his supply of wonderful photographs. Now he is back, and he has granted me permission to post some of his photographs on my blog. As I said, he takes wonderful photographs. (I don’t know anything about photography, but I know what I like.)

One of the photos he took while on vacation was of this woman with an accordion or concertina or whatever it is. I’m not interested in who she is. I’m not interested in where she is or what she is wearing. I’m not interested in the way the light and the shadow play on her face. I’m not even interested in what that thing is called that she is holding in her lap. But I do want to know one thing. The only really important question is:

Did she make it through to the next round?

Tuesday ramblings # 7 (or #8 if you count last week)

I was surfing the internet in my usual fashion the other day, reading a little bit here and a little bit there, jumping around all over the place, when I happened to read a comment on a blog in the United Kingdom that made me curious. So I clicked on the commenter’s profile and discovered a guy named Alden Smith in New Zealand -- he calls himself “tillerman” and is really into yachting (one of his blogs called Simply Sailing is worth a look) -- and I jumped to a blog of his called Stream of Consciousness and found a little something extra in the sidebar -- an excerpt from “Ode on Intimations of Immortality” by William Wordsworth, formatted thusly:

Our birth is but a sleep
and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us,
our life’s Star, Hath had
elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory
do we come, From God,
who is our home:

Odd, I thought. This was just enough Wordsworth to wet your whistle if Wordsworth is a wordsmith whose words you welish, er, relish, so I thought I would show you the entire stanza (lines 59 through 77 of the 208-line poem) from which the excerpt was, well, excerpted:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

I’m sorry that I don’t know enough about the minutiae of blogging to be able to show the stanza with the indentation Wordsworth intended -- somehow everything always gets pushed over to the left margin -- but it’ll have to do for now. I think you will agree, though, that the stanza says a mouthful and gives the reader quite a bit on which to chew.

That’s enough Wordsworth. Any more Wordsworth (for example, I thought about including “I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud” with its “And then my heart with pleasure thrills and dances with the daffodils”) would have been just a little too much Wordsworth.

Speaking of chewing, we drove over to the local pet shop this morning to replenish Jethro’s dog food supply. The whole place was shut down, closed, kaput -- lock, stock and barrel -- without so much as a “by your leave” or directions to their new location, if any. Three weeks ago all seemed well and normal, and now, today, nothing. As soon as we returned home, I surfed some more on the internet and found that the next nearest establishment that sells the kind of dog food we buy is about fifteen miles away. Oh, well, what’s a little gasoline (petrol for you U.K. readers) compared to the health and well-being of my doggie? We buy Eagle Pack Holistic Select Lamb, Rice, and Oatmeal formula (also a mouthful), which is fortified with chondroitin and glucosamine and all sorts of other stuff that’s supposed to be good for Jethro’s coat, bones, joints, eyesight, and, for all I know, his bark and his bite as well. It’s a bit more expensive than the stuff they sell at the local supermarket, but it’s what Jethro had been eating for two years when we acquired him from his previous owner, who recommended that we continue giving him the food he was used to.

Also, while we were out and about today discovering the downturn in the local pet shop economy, we bought an American flag, a pole, and a mounting bracket. Until now we haven’t owned one, although both of our families flew the flag on holidays when we were young. We decided we wanted to fly one this Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that resulted in nearly 3,000 lives lost in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.

A legend remembered

Exactly one year ago today, one of the great tenor voices of our time, perhaps of all time, died. I’m speaking, of course, of Luciano Pavarotti, Italy’s gift to the world.

In case you don’t follow opera, one of Pavarotti’s signature arias was “Nessun Dorma” from the opera Turandot by Giacomo Puccini (or as his friends called him, Jim. I’m kidding, I’m kidding! But another Italian composer of grand opera, Giuseppe Verdi, is actually Joe Green in English).

Since Pavarotti’s death, he is all over YouTube. In case you never heard his magnificent voice, here is a younger, trimmer Luciano Pavarotti singing "Nessun Dorma" in 1990 with Zubin Mehta directing the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and here is Luciano Pavarotti singing “Nessun Dorma” in 1994 with Zubin Mehta directing the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. For some strange reason, this version has Spanish subtitles..

Here is Pavarotti singing “Granada” at an Eiffel Tower concert in Paris in 1998. Zubin Mehta is nowhere in sight. This time the maestro is American conductor James Levine. And here, later that same evening, from that same Eiffel Tower concert in Paris in 1998, is Pavarotti singing “Nessun Dorma“ in one of his most emotional renditions.

One of Luciano Pavarotti’s last public performances was at the opening of the Winter Olympic Games in Torino, Italy, in 2006, but there was a catch. It was revealed later that he was lip-synching. The entire orchestra and the conductor were just pretending. At first, Pavarotti had turned down the invitation to sing at the games because he felt he would not be able to sing well in the cold, outdoor, night air. But the organizers of the opening ceremonies persuaded him to record his performance in the studio a few days earlier so that he could represent Italy and Italian culture at the games’ opening ceremonies.

Happy listening!

The last of life, for which the first was made

On Thursday evenings when Mrs. Rhymeswithplague and I aren’t otherwise committed, we like to eat out with a group of old friends at a local family-style (translation: cheap) restaurant. And when I say “old friends” I mean OLD friends. This started out as the senior group, as in senior citizens, from our church way back before we ourselves were included in that category. The participants have changed over the years as people have moved or died or become home-bound with the frailties of age or disease. The diners in the current group range from 62 to 90 years of age. Except for Patrick, Esther’s brain-damaged, 40-year-old son whom we all love and who always attends with his mother, I am usually the lone guy in the group now, unless Wayne comes with Sharon. Lewis and Anne are both gone. Jeanne’s Hugh died in June. Moffie is at home with Bob, who has Alzheimer’s. Audrey is at home with her Bob, who has Parkinson’s. Several ladies are widows. Face it, old age ain’t for sissies. We hope to be active as long as possible.

Anyway, Audrey has invited the group for dessert tonight, so we are planning to gather at a different restaurant to be nearer Bob’s and Audrey’s house. As we haven’t seen Bob for several months, we’re looking forward to this evening.

Robert Browning said it best in “Rabbi Ben Ezra” and I think it applies to friends no less than to husbands and wives:

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith ‘A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!’

A Student’s Guide to my Labor Day poem about Tab Hunter

No Tuesday ramblings this week, but here’s a Student’s Guide to my Labor Day poem about Tab Hunter instead:

A Student’s Guide To My Labor Day Poem About Tab Hunter

Notes 1 through 4A refer to the title of the post; notes 5 through 6 refer to the title of the poem, and notes 7 through 17 refer to the body of the poem:

1. Walt Whitman: American poet (1819 - 1892). Here’s a Wikipedia article about him.

2. Robert Louis Stevenson: Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer (1850 - 1894). Here’s a Wikipedia article about him.

3. Rudyard Kipling: English author and poet (1865 - 1936). Here’s a Wikipedia article about him.

4. Hollywood: According to Wikipedia, a district in the city of Los Angeles, California, situated west-northwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word “Hollywood” is often used as a metonym of cinema of the United States.

4A. Metonymy: Not to be confused with synecdoche.

5. Tab Hunter: See Wikipedia article and official fansite.

6. His 2005 Memoir: Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, published in Hardcover at $24.95 originally but currently available used for $0.41 at amazon.com

7. “When lilacs...bloom’d”: First line of a poem by Walt Whitman (see note 1) written as an elegy to the recently assassinated Abraham Lincoln, entitled “When lilacs...bloom’d”. Another of Whitman’s poems, “O Captain! My Captain!”, was also written shortly after Lincoln was assassinated -- he really liked the dude -- but the latter poem always makes this writer think of Mike Hampton, a pitcher for the Atlanta Braves baseball team, about whom he has thought of writing a poem called “O Hampton! Mike Hampton” but he hasn’t done it because it would need to end with “On the deck Mike Hampton lies, fallen cold and dead” and his writing is not that macabre -- yet.

8. “laid him down with a will”: Meant to remind the reader of the first stanza of “Requiem” by Robert Louis Stevenson (see note 2):

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

9. Judy Garland: See Wikipedia article.

10. Her daughter Liza: Liza Minnelli. For how she would like you to see her, see her website. For a more recent photo of her and a little about her life, see Wikipedia article.

11. “And Tab Hunter, home from the hill”: Meant to remind the reader of the second stanza of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Requiem”:

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

12. “Nothing new...under the sun”: Meant to remind the reader of the words attributed to King Solomon in chapter 1, verse 9, of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” The phrase “under the sun” appears 27 times in the twelve chapters of the book of Ecclesiastes.

13. “East may be East and West may be West”: The first line of the poem “The Ballad of East and West” by Rudyard Kipling (see note 3) is “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”

14. “But ever the twain shall meet”: See #12.

15. “And fans still deny Elvis Presley’s dead”: Self-explanatory.

16. Anna Nicole: Oh, forget it.

17. “moth and corrupting rust”: Meant to remind the reader of the words of Jesus Christ as quoted by the apostle Matthew in chapter 6, verses 19 through 21, of the book of Matthew in the New Testament: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Time does not permit us to elaborate on the subject of lilacs (bushes with lavender-colored flowers, which color is sometimes used in reference to homosexuals and homosexuality), labor (about which much is also written in Ecclesiastes), or America’s Labor Day (the first observance of which occurred on September 5, 1882).

But maybe there’s time for a little rambling here at the end. Today was my parents’ wedding anniversary. It also is the anniversary of the formal surrender of Japan to the United States on the battleship U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay in 1945. It is also the anniversary of the Great Fire of London that destroyed most of the city in 1666.

With deepest apologies to Walt Whitman, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, and the entire Hollywood film colony...

Let’s have a little Labor Day fun:

On Learning That Actor Tab Hunter Is Alive, Is 77 Years Old, And Admits In His 2005 Memoir That He Is Gay

When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,
The brides were bred and the grooms were groom’d,
’Twas time for the corpse to be exhum’d,
For He laid him down with a will.

The fifties and sixties all up and fled,
Ms. Judy Garland is long since dead,
Her daughter Liza’s been multi-wed,
And Tab Hunter’s home from the hill.

There's nothing new that’s under the sun,
One career’s gone and another’s begun,
Old age and youth alike can have fun
(The word is out on the street).

One has to get something off one’s chest,
One generally knows what one loves best,
For East may be East and West may be West,
But ever the twain shall meet.

The grooms still groom, still the brides are bred,
And fans still deny Elvis Presley’s dead,
And Anna Nicole to her husband said,
“Just lay you down with a will.”

So life goes on, as it surely must,
Except for those who have turned to dust.
The rest attract moth and corrupting rust,
And Tab Hunter’s home from the hill.