Why the US must be saved from the abyss - a personal view
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
Upon the world below. – Emily Dickinson
☼ Basket catch at Forbes Field by Roberto Clemente
☼ Joyce DiDonato: mezzo in excelsis, teacher, wit
☼ Zinfandel, once a house red, now something grander.
☼ Andrew Cuomo, NY governor. For political honesty
From major to minor. – Cole Porter
☼ Sublime sleaze of the Larry Sanders Show
☼ FDR - a traitor to his class. How bloody ironic.
☼ Wynton Marsalis (tpt): Telemann to bop.
☼ Fall.
☼ …Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had. – The Great Gatsby.
☼ Two martinis, a lobster, bottle of “California Chablis”, a plastic apron. Klein’s restaurant, Pittsburgh.
☼ Jewish Y, Pittsburgh: Classical music’s stars for peanuts.
☼ By Continental Trailways the length of Pennsylvania to a new job.
☼ Leonard Bernstein on Melody.
☼ Groundhog in our garden.
☼ Gore Vidal vs. William Buckley Jnr on TV
☼ Weight of the NY Times, Sunday edition.
☼ Mount Lebanon’s public library.
☼ How long it would take to spend Citizen Kane’s wealth
☼ Simone Biles defying gravity
☼ Never open a book with weather. First of Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules for Good Writing.
☼ Cardinal in our garden
☼ To create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. Faulkner
☼ Air conditioning.
☼ Star of The Wire – Baltimore!
☼ I was raised to be charming, not sincere. Stephen Sondheim
☼ Snapper soup before it was politically incorrect. With sherry.
☼ Rarity of filling stations among the redwoods
☼ Paradoxical disappointment of Niagara Falls
☼ Stopping grounders with my own glove.
☼ Willingness of youngish, corn-fed woman to kiss me. Socially, of course.
☼ Price of gas.
☼ How easy it was to pass the driving test.
☼ When Obama was elected: the glow.
☼ For fun at the diner: name the states, name the state capitals
☼ In the 1980s, discovering the north-west wines.
☼ There will be no whitewash at the White House. Little did he know (tee-hee). But – and it was a big but – he invited the Ellington band to play there and clearly enjoyed them.
☼ Undefined sadness as the radio antenna of the SS France, travelling east, seemed almost to scrape the underside of the Verrazano Narrows bridge.
☼ Exhuming all these memories – and more – via blogging.
I think you know my country better than most of its citizens. So, which do you prefer a nice Zinfandel or a Chablis?
ReplyDeleterobin andrea: It is said the onlooker sees most of the game. I arrived there well primed; that beats getting born there.
DeleteYour second sentence carries a loaded question; you'll notice my reference to Californian Chablis carried quotes. Meaning so-called. I am not sure such a label would be legal now; the French are very touchy about other countries claiming to create wines from specific areas in France. But I wasn't being snooty; that meal I cited was several times repeated and hugely enjoyed.
As to choosing, it's horses for courses. Zinfandel with meat, Chablis with fish, especially oysters.
Thanks for the compliment. What I was trying to do was spread as wide a net over US culture as I was familiar with. Many people think the word refers solely to incomprehensible poems, symphonies lasting an hour and Cubist paintings. It's much more than that and I was hungry for everything.
Your posts on America have made me homesick. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you for Leonard's first rule. I googled it and found The Gotham Writers page; I've subscribed.
Crow: Homesickness is often thought to be malady; it's merely a longing. My job, as I saw it, was to remind the anti-Trumpists of things that might get forgotten in these feverish times. I could have easily tripled the length of the list. One of the omitted items could have been: Crow's acerbic responses to posts in Works Well/Tone Deaf.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the other nine rules. And remind yourself that Elmore Leonard writes better dialogue than anyone.
Your reminders of the good about the good America are a balm to my disquiet soul.
ReplyDeleteRe: acerbic responses: Yes, so do I. I seem to have lost that woman sometime in 2014. Please know that I near always read your blog even if I no longer know how to respond regularly.
Crow: Intermittent signs of life are all I need. Anything else is a bonus.
Delete...sorry for the typo in the first sentence. At least I didn't open with the weather.
ReplyDeleteSnapper soup is politically incorrect? My understanding is that we gobbled up so many PCB laden turtles that there is now a shortage.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: I must have misremembered a comment you made over a year ago. About turtles' position in the food chain. How do PCBs fit in? You make it sound as if we (humans) are poisoning ourselves. Regrettable, of course, but a self-resolving tendency.
ReplyDeleteI do love a good list. As Bob Hope might have sang, "Thanks for the Memory" Memories in this case.
ReplyDeleteColette: As I said it could have been three times as long.
DeleteYes, much to recall that is Good... especially when things look so Dark and Bad.
ReplyDeleteBohemian: 1971 the Pirates won the series in the seventh game. I was so stressed I took a drive down the West Virginia Panhandle and didn't turn on the car radio until the end of the sixth innings. And the names still ring out like bells: Pagan, Stargell, Clemente, Pagliaroni, Mazerowski, Alley, Blass.
ReplyDelete