Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun

Give me the splendid silent sun with all its beams full-dazzling,
Give me the juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
Give me a field where the unmowed grass grows,
Give me an arbor, give me the trellised grape,
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching content.
Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I am looking up at the stars,
Give me odorous at sunset a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.

Walt Whitman

I Shall Be Free No. 10

(because this is one of the best-est Dylan songs ever) *listen*

I'm just average, common too
I'm just like him, the same as you
I'm everybody's brother and son
I ain't different from anyone
It ain't no use a-talking to me
It's just the same as talking to you.

I was shadow-boxing earlier in the day
I figured I was ready for Cassius Clay
I said "Fee, fie, fo, fum, Cassius Clay, here I come
26, 27, 28, 29, I'm gonna make your face look just like mine
Five, four, three, two, one, Cassius Clay you'd better run
99, 100, 101, 102, your ma won't even recognize you
14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, gonna knock him clean right out of his spleen."

Well, I don't know, but I've been told
The streets in heaven are lined with gold
I ask you how things could get much worse
If the Russians happen to get up there first.
Wowee! Pretty scary!

Now, I'm liberal, but to a degree
I want ev'rybody to be free
But if you think that I'll let Barry Goldwater
Move in next door and marry my daughter
You must think I'm crazy!
I wouldn't let him do it for all the farms in Cuba.

Well, I set my monkey on the log
And ordered him to do the Dog
He wagged his tail and shook his head
And he went and did the Cat instead
He's a weird monkey, very funky.

I sat with my high-heeled sneakers on
Waiting to play tennis in the noonday sun
I had my white shorts rolled up past my waist
And my wig-hat was falling in my face
But they wouldn't let me on the tennis court.

I gotta woman, she's so mean
She sticks my boots in the washing machine
Sticks me with buckshot when I'm nude
Puts bubblegum in my food
She's funny, wants my money, calls me "honey."

Now I gotta friend who spends his life
Stabbing my picture with a bowie-knife
Dreams of strangling me with a scarf
When my name comes up he pretends to barf.
I've got a million friends!

Now they asked me to read a poem
At the sorority sister's home
I got knocked down and my head was swimmin'
I wound up with the Dean of Women
Yippee! I'm a poet, and I know it.
Hope I don't blow it.

I'm gonna grow my hair down to my feet so strange
So I look like a walking mountain range
And I'm gonna ride into Omaha on a horse
Out to the country club and the golf course.
Carry the New York Times, shoot a few holes, blow their minds.

Now you're probably wondering by now
Just what this song is all about
What's probably got you baffled more
Is what this thing here is for.
It's nothing
It's something I learned over in England.

The Little Prince

is a good book.

I don't really want to waste words explaining why. I read it this summer, and I guess I've meant to post on it for a long time. I'm reading it again - reading it aloud to my students. So hopefully some quotes will find there way here soon

g'night.

Top 7: old movies

1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. Roman Holiday
3. Charade
   
4. My Fair Lady
5. The Scarlet Pimpernel
6. It's a Wonderful Life
7. Buster Keaton's "Cops"

(top 5 was unnecessarily hard)

on The Scarlet Pimpernel

Is the book as good as the movie?

It may sound an unusual question, but I grew up on the Leslie Howard 1934 Scarlet Pimpernel (aka Ashley Wilkes) and it's pretty darn good. Definitely in the top 5 oldies favorite list, if I had one. But I'd been hearing about how good the book was, and when I found a copy (a trashy paperback copy, no less), I began reading it.

The SP is a bit difficult to get into. Madame, ah, excuse me, Baroness Orczy has highly ridiculous elaborate and descriptive writing. And it is a few chapters before the plot builds up to the chase of that "demmed elusive Scarlet Pimpernel." But I was completely drawn in by halfway through. And when I had finished it, I found myself heading to bed, wishing again I could reenter the world of her elaborate language, the charming Madame Blakeney, and the ridiculous Percy.

I think it a valid critique to say Orczy spends a long time building up to her climax and then abruptly wraps things up.

However, two days later, into my hands fell a copy of The Elusive Pimpernel, and I promptly arrested my reading of A Day No Pigs Would Die, and began living the life of Marguerite once again. So perhaps she knew all along she would continue the story.


This means I am in the middle of three books, and about thirteen sewing projects. And these hobbies leave me little time for writing about these interesting things in my life. And my writing is sorely rusty.

Eliot humor

"Oh, he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his brains. They say, when he was a little boy, he made an abstract of 'Hop o' my Thumb,' and he has been making abstracts ever since. Ugh!"
- Sir James (of Casaubon)

p. 83

photojunk

a few weeks ago, courtney and i began a desktop-war of crazy weird photos splattered across her laptop screen. it began when she decided to put on the 12-in screen, this lovely photo:
and so i put up:









and then when she put up (full size so all you got was my cheek):

i put up (beautifully streched across the screen, i might add):

the culminating act was when i opened the computer to see:

a few photos later, i put up this:

how could anyone replace that? i won (i say).
sigh. just look at him.

(but then, i guess courtney didn't feel like she could change it, so it wasn't very fair.... I miss Mark a lot. he turned two on Sunday)

more from Middlemarch

"...for the growing good of the world is party dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
(952 - the end)

George Eliot

but another cheer for gmail

click here
for gmail fan silliness
(and never-you-mind what yahoo is getting, courtney)