Here’s an interesting list of words, if accurate, or even if not, and I suspect that’s the case for some of them (but I can’t know). Dolce far niente is a worthwhile concept: pleasant idleness, or the joy of doing nothing.
Such lists now appear periodically on line, and I believe they hark back to a pre-Internet book called They Have a Word For It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases by Howard Rheingold (1988).
I have a copy of it around somewhere, bought fairly new. I don’t remember any of the words in it, except the concept of a ponte day. “Bridge” day in Italian, meaning a day off between the weekend and a holiday, an especially useful concept in that country since Italy doesn’t have a version of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, and holidays can fall mid-week.
I also remember the author appearing on the radio show Whad’ya Know? Maybe in 1989. I didn’t listen to it every week in those days, but fairly often. I understand that it ran as a radio show until 2016, and now exists as a podcast.
Just before Christmas 1989, I went to a broadcast of the show when it was in Chicago, at the Blackstone Theatre (these days, the Merle Reskin Theatre). Remarkably, I can listen to it again if I want. So far, I haven’t.
Today I was near the Robert O. Atcher Municipal Center, not far from where we were yesterday. Atcher, besides being mayor of Schaumburg from 1959 to 1975, was a successful country musician.
The trees are just beginning to turn.
Close to the Atcher Center are flowers. We’re in the narrow window when the trees are coloring up, yet some flowers are still blooming. While on the grounds, I noticed a memorial I’d never noticed before. According to various news reports, it’s been there some years — how did I miss it? A plaque for a Schaumburg resident, René LeBeau, who died awfully young. I must have heard about the crash of United 232 when it happened, but I had to read about it to remember. Quite a harrowing story. It’s a wonder anyone survived.
Over the years in mid-August I’ve sometimes spent time in the back yard after midnight, looking up for the Perseids. Not a lot of time, since my sleep habits are fairly regular, and the washed out suburban skies aren’t the best for any kind of observation. So usually I don’t see much.
Just after midnight today, Thursday — about a day after peak — I saw one bright meteor whiz by Cassiopeia. Nice.
A recent Zoom.
Two in Washington state, two in Tennessee, and one in Illinois. There’s another social Zoom tomorrow night for me, involving an entirely different group: besides two in Illinois this time, there will be three in Georgia, including some people I haven’t seen in about 20 years.
I’m using a free Zoom membership, which specifies only 40 minutes per meeting. Yet so far there has been no time limit for me. I figure that’s like the old dope peddler giving out free samples for a little while.
The Perseids and dope, at least one kind of it, bring to mind “Rocky Mountain High.” It’s a lovely song and a paean to the Colorado Rockies, which certainly deserve one. I understand that watching the Perseids while up in the mountains was part of John Denver’s inspiration for the song.
Colorado Rocky Mountain high I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky
Then of course, there are these lines:
Friends around the campfire And everybody’s high
Denver denied he was singing about anything as crass as chemical enhancement under a sublime firmament. Those friends were just high on nature! But I believe he was bending to popular prejudice at the time, saying what he felt he had to say.
One other thing about the song, its least likable aspect. Early in the song, a young man comes to the mountains: He wasborn in the summer of his 27th year. I’ll take him as a stand-in for Denver. That’s fine. Discovering new places that touch your soul counts as a good thing. Later, however, the song bemoans people moving to the area: more people, more scars upon the land.
I’ll give Denver the benefit of the doubt when it comes to conservationism. I’m sure he was genuinely concerned about the state of the environment, especially the mountains he loved. Yet the song pretty clearly contains the following sentiment, even if unconsciously on Denver’s part: it’s OK for me to be here, but not you.
Some unusually cool days this week. I’m not sure whether that had anything to do with what happened at about 7:45 pm on Wednesday out on our deck. I was sitting out there, decompressing from a day of work and other tasks, when I saw a dark blob hit one of our deck loungers. Twack! Two cicadas. Noiseless, though the cicadas have been doing their twilight bleating for a few weeks now. Crickets are also singing after dark, though maybe not as strongly as they will closer to their seasonal demise. By Thursday morning, when I next checked, the cicadas were gone.
Happy to report there’s a thin mosquito population this year, at least around here. Flies have taken up the slack. Seems like one gets in the house every day through the back door, including some of the metallic-colored ones that used to fascinate me as a kid.
Also in the back yard: blooming hibiscus. Could be Hibiscus syriacus. I can also call it rose of Sharon, though I understand that’s applied to other flowers as well. At Starved Rock State Park recently, I spotted his plaque near the lodge. Looking its century-plus age, including countless touches of Lincoln’s nose. “Commemorating the deeds of the Union veterans of the Civil War,” it says. The Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic erected it in 1914. Looks like the Ladies, who are still around, were trying to keep up with the Daughters.
Our most recent episode of Star Trek: “A Piece of the Action.” I suggested it as one of three options — an action/adventure story, or one of the show’s tendentious eps, or comedy. Ann picked comedy. I’d forgotten how much of a hoot “Action” is, with the high jinks gearing up especially after Kirk and Spock got into pseudo-gangster duds and Shatner hammed it up.
Wet spring has transitioned to a dryish summer so far, though we’ve had a few rainy moments lately. The day we were at Devil’s Lake SP, scattered thunderstorms were predicted, and maybe somebody got some, but we only experienced a little rain driving home that afternoon.
Made an unusual find at Devil’s Lake last week: a visitor guide that’s actually worth a damn. Though no writer names are given, Capital Newspapers in Baraboo published it for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, so it might have been a staff effort. That is, people who have some skill in writing.
So it has practical information — such as how to rent a boat or picnic shelter, activity schedules (clearly published before the pandemic), safety tips, and some well-done maps — but also readable information about the park, such as about the effigy mounds in the park (we didn’t see those), the threat of the dread emerald ash borer, a history of rock quarries in the area, and plans for a new interpretive center.
Also, a short item about the name of the lake. The Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) name is rendered as Ta-wa-cun-chuk-dah or Da-wa-kah-char-gra, which “was translated in its most sensational form (for that era) as Devil’s Lake,” the article notes. It could have been Spirit Lake, Sacred Lake or Holy Lake.
That era being the 19th century, when “reporters produced superlative accounts of Devil’s Lake and reproduced legends (sometimes manufactured) to match… By 1872… the Green County Republican newspaper reported, ‘Had the lake been christened by any other name, it would not have attracted so many people.’ ”
Just another example of Victorian marketing, in other words.
Nothing if not variety: the movies we’ve watched lately have included a selection of musicals, all so different in form and content that I wonder at the elasticity of the term musical. They include Chicago, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Rocketman, and High School Musical 2.
As a sort of fictionalized musical biopic, the colorfully entertaining Rocketman at least made me appreciate just how ubiquitous Elton John was on the radio of my youth. I already knew that, of course, but hadn’t given it any thought in a long time. Also, it inspired me to look up a few clips of the musician himself, illustrating his piano virtuosity.
As for High School Musical 2, the girls are fond of that 2007 movie as part of their relatively recent childhood. I agreed to watch it all the way through, which I never had. The Mouse clearly put time and money into the thing, and the tunes and choreography were accomplished enough, so I didn’t mind watching. But without a sentimental attachment, its resemblance to a fully realized musical is that of a taxidermied animal to a living one.
Tomorrow is Juneteenth, which I’ve thought should be a holiday for years. I still do. Odds are it might be in some soon year.
Summer pic: a trumpeter swan family, who can be found at a pond near where I live.
Dame Vera Lynn has died at 103. I didn’t know she was still alive. I might not have known about her before I first saw this, many years ago, but I certainly did afterward.
Intermittent rain and thunder on Tuesday and Wednesday, and some vigorous warm winds. Enough to randomize the arrangement of our deck chairs but not, fortunately, to move the cast iron deck table. Mostly, though, recent days have been clear and agreeably summerlike.
Last weekend, we made it back to Spring Valley to see the Peony Field, now in full bloom.
Also noticed a Little Lending Library at Spring Valley. I think that’s new. It encourages one and all to Be a Good Human Today.Not as full as the one on my street, but it had a few items, including a stack of booklets whose subject is Baha’i prayers. I took one for a look-see. In each are prayers for various occasions and situations, such as Aid and Assistance, Children, The Departed, Healing, Morning, Parents, Tests and Difficulties, and so on.
Later in the week, we got takeout from an Indian restaurant we visited, and liked, a few years ago. Been buying takeout locally ever other week or so since sit-down restaurants closed.
We feasted on sang paneer, malai kofta, paneer bhurji, lamb bhoona — that was mine — along with garlic naanm, roti and jeera rice. All good.
Well, not really. We’re well enough here in our little spot, but the world’s never all tickety-boo. I only bring it up because I learned that word a few weeks ago. How did I get to be my advanced age without knowing it? Sure, I’m not British, but that’s never stopped me from learning some Briticisms.
Besides, it isn’t exactly new.
At least I know it now. Looking into the word, origin uncertain, and the song (by Johnny Mercer and Saul Chaplin), naturally led me to read a bit about Danny Kaye. Per Wiki: “Kaye was cremated and his ashes were interred in the foundation of a bench in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. His grave is adorned with a bench that contains friezes of a baseball and bat, an aircraft, a piano, a flower pot, musical notes, and a chef’s toque.”
Those reflect his talents. A multi-talented fellow, he was. Wait, there’s a town called Valhalla in New York? Guess so. Hope there’s a really boss mead hall in town. These are a few other clips of the talented Mr. Kaye.
Tickety-boo or not, it’s Thursday, which has the advantage of having all of Friday and Saturday to look forward to. I wondered earlier today: how many songs have Thursday in the title? I couldn’t think of any, but that’s just me. There are some.
Interesting selection, including some bugs in bright — make that psychedelic — amber.
The list also includes songs by a band called Thursday. Didn’t know them. “A significant player in the early 21st century’s post-hardcore scene, Thursday formed in 1997 in New Brunswick, New Jersey,” Allmusic says. “Thursday’s frequent gigging and furious passion fueled a grassroots response, and by 2002 the band was on the main stage of the Warped Tour and enjoying MTV support for the single ‘Understanding in a Car Crash.’ ”
Good for them. One more thing for this spring Thursday during the pandemic. We ordered pizza for pickup today, supporting a local chain. Been a good while since we had any. The scene at pickup.
With any luck, scenes of this sort will be fixed in amber before too long.
I go off on tangents fairly easily, but then again they’re about the only trips you can take these days. I had a good one yesterday evening, after work and after dinner and after our walk. A discussion some time ago about writing good headlines inspired me to think about a half-remembered list in The Book of Lists, which I pull off the shelf every few years. Specifically, Dr. Demento’s 10 Worst Song Titles of All Time.
I checked. It’s on p. 178. Back when I originally owned the book, in the late 1970s, you’d read such a list, be amused, and that was that. You might hear one of the songs on the list on Dr. Demento, if you listened to the show. I wasn’t a regular listener back then, though I did hear it sporadically — often enough to hear the likes of “Fish Heads,” but never anything on the list that I remember.
So I decided, true to form when on a tangent, to look more closely at some of those bad song titles, at least in Dr. Demento’s opinion (a list he created for The Book of Lists). I toyed with the idea of reposting all of the titles here, but most of the 10 titles are pretty long, and I didn’t feel like all that transcription, so I looked to see if they were posted elsewhere on line. As far as I can tell, there are other versions online, such as this one, that certainly features some bad song titles, but none of them are on ’70s list in The Book of Lists.
Or this list, which claims to be a ’90s version of the original, but has only one title in common with it: “How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I’ve Been A Liar All My Life.”
In our time, you can go to YouTube and see most if not all of the bad-title songs, such as “How Could You Believe Me…,” which I have to say hasn’t aged that well.
So I picked a few of the songs from the ’70s list and looked them up. Such as “Would You Rather Be a Colonel With An Eagle On Your Shoulder Or A Private With A Chicken On Your Knee?” That might count as a bad title, but it sure is amusing.
I was happy to find that it was a WWI song, recorded by Arthur Fields but also sung by Eddie Cantor. If I’m not mistaken, the “chicken” in the title had an innocent connotation in referring to flirtatious French girls, but also a less-innocent connotation for those in the know, referring to French prostitutes.
Next: “I’ve Got Those Wake Up 7:30, Wash Your Ears They’re Dirty, Eat Your Eggs and Oatmeal, Rush to School Blues,” a novelty song recorded by Jimmy Boyd in 1953.
Hm. Couldn’t place Boyd until I read he did the first recording of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” the year before. Ah, that singer. Popularized a song that will not die. Boyd had his heyday as a boy singer, but didn’t have much of a career later — or didn’t want one, hard to say. Anyway, here’s the song.
I decided to look up one more from the ’70s list, three out of 10 being enough for now: “A Woman is Only a Woman, But a Cigar is a Good Smoke.” That was a song title? In college (I think) I told someone that Freud had said that. Maybe I believed that myself. Thought it was a quip from Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, though that’s a work I’ve never read nor even lightly grazed.
But no: it’s from Kipling. From a spot of late Victorian comic verse. In 1905, tunesmiths Harry Smith and Victor Herbert wrote a song called “A Good Cigar is a Smoke,” so perhaps Dr. Demento didn’t quite get the title right, though one of the lines in the song is, “For a woman is only a woman, my boy, but a good cigar is a smoke.”
You know, I ought to claim that Smith and Herbert actually just translated the song from German. Sigmund Freud wrote it and included it Jokes, which was published in 1905, same year as the English version of the song. Mere coincidence?
The tangent trip isn’t over yet. Just getting to the best part. After I listened to “A Good Cigar is a Smoke,” the YouTube algorithm suggested “Ashokan Farewell.” Pretty song. I hadn’t heard that in a good while, so I listened to it. Then the usually dense algorithm suggested this.
“Wayfaring Stranger” performed by Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra. A Norwegian band, of all things. Wow.
A lot of musicians have recorded “Children, Go Where I Send Thee,” such as the Weavers, where I first probably heard it, or Odetta, just to name two.
But for joy and sheer verve, I haven’t heard a rendition to match this one.
Johnny Cash, members of the Carter family, Carl Perkins, the Statler Brothers and the Tennessee Three, in 1971 in Denmark and in their prime. Solid camera work, too. Somehow or other I never saw this wonderful clip until the other day.
I pinned this to the wall behind the front door today. It’ll be there until I will be obliged to take it down. Why there? Just a passing whim. I was tired of it lying around my office. It’s a plastic bag and a relic of the 1970s or the ’80s at the latest. Not only that, a souvenir from San Antonio. At one time, Record Hole was a local chain of record stores in that city. Or so I believe.
The brand is long gone, and so far I’ve found only one trace of it online — a passing mention in an article about a different and surviving record store, as of 2016. Not that I’ve looked very hard. But Record Hole is so obscure that it didn’t even make in on this list of defunct retailers, which includes Record Bar, Record Town and Record World.
Some time ago, I picked up the bag at my mother’s house — again on a whim — and brought it back home. She’d been using it to store odds and ends. I might well have bought a record at a Record Hole and left it with her 40-odd years ago. I didn’t buy many records, but I did buy a few. Or maybe my brother Jim bought something there.
At one time, Record Hole was established enough to air local TV ads. I vaguely remember them, because they featured a primitive animated version of ’70s-record-listening dude.
Who was sitting on a record on a turntable. Trippy, man. The store’s motto, which is also on the bag but upsidedown and backwards in my picture: Whatever music plays in your head, we can put in your hand.
Plastic bags, though they may last for centuries in landfills, are notoriously ephemeral when it comes to being saved elsewhere. Sure, it’s still worthless now, but some happy descendant of mine might make a fortune off the bag in, say, the 23rd century, when the notion of plastic bags and records are historic curiosities that excite collector interest.
Close to the Atcher Center are flowers. We’re in the narrow window when the trees are coloring up, yet some flowers are still blooming.
While on the grounds, I noticed a memorial I’d never noticed before. According to various news reports, it’s been there some years — how did I miss it? A plaque for a Schaumburg resident, René LeBeau, who died awfully young.
I must have heard about the crash of United 232 when it happened, but I had to read about it to remember. Quite a harrowing story. It’s a wonder anyone survived.
