One of the more distasteful aspects (and there are so many) of this political season has been the proliferation of requests for money. I get 40+ requests each day through emails and messages. Some of them weave desperate tales about the world going straight to hell without my $5.00, some act as if I have always known the petitioner personally, and more than a few insult me because I haven’t responded to them or have allegedly given too little. Those last snide little notes are my favorites, actually. At least there is a bit of creativity in them. There seems no good mechanism available to shut off the deluge, so I no longer read any.
I have lost track of how to decide which are legitimate requests coming from a legitimate candidate and which are scams. Even what seemed like a trustworthy central agency for liberal donors to use – ActBlue – is embroiled in scandals that churn to this day. Not comforting at all.
I suspect some dirty tricks in part of this, with soulless Republican operatives besieging left of center voters with these pleas and messages in an attempt to cause them to throw up their hands and run to the woods until after Election Day.
I confess to almost giving into such a temptation myself … had even started the car and had my map in hand. I didn’t go, mostly because it looked like rain and I had forgotten where my sleeping bag was.
Thus, from now on I will only seek out worthy candidates’ websites, those who support issues I care most about and donate to their campaigns, ignoring these pesky intrusions. The urgent electronic pleas? Delete them en masse.
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We’ve had a little tent camper, the Sylvansport GO, for the past eight years. It weighs only 800 pounds and thus was able be towed without too much anguish by our Subaru Outback. But the past couple of years we’ve used it much less, and we have largely gone full circle and back to tents. So we sold the GO to a couple from Nederland CO just this week. We wish them as much fun as we’ve had with it.
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Each year as Autumn nears, I begin to drone on about the beauties of the tune, “The September Song,” at least partially because September is my favorite month of the year, and the song reflects the sweet melancholy of that month. I’m going to bring you up to date again on the history of where the song came from.
I know that I’ve already talked about this in the past, but if your memory is like mine, everything that happened 48 hours ago or longer has been erased so this will all be new. At any rate, the song was written for a Broadway musical that was entitled Knickerbocker Holiday, which was first staged in 1938. The star of the musical was Walter Huston, and he asked for just one song he could sing that would fit his somewhat limited vocal range and rough voice. The people who wrote the song, Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson, came up with what has become a standard and has been recorded by scads of other people.
As a bit of background, I’m writing this in the first week of September, and we have no leaves changing anywhere around town at all. Because it’s a favorite of mine, I’m also going to include one version of the lyrics (there are many) along with a recording of Walter Huston doing his best warbling.
As a bit of background, I’m writing this in the first week of September, and we have no leaves changing anywhere around town at all. Because the song is such a favorite of mine, I’m also going to include one version of the lyrics (there are many) along with a recording of Walter Huston doing his best warbling.
When I was a young man courting the girls
I played me a waiting game
If a maid refused me with tossing curls
I’d let the old Earth take a couple of whirls
While I plied her with tears in lieu of pearls
And as time came around she came my way
As time came around, she came
Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short
When you reach September
When the Autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn’t got time for the waiting game
Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days
I’ll spend with you
These precious days
I’ll spend with you
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Robin and I took a drive Saturday to do some people-watching at the Telluride Film Festival. We never watch the films, it’s an expensive proposition to get a badge at all, and even more so if you want to avoid standing in endless and sometimes nonproductive lines. What we do is walk up and down the main street gawking, eat an overpriced lunch, and at noon in the small park in the center of town there is always an outdoor panel discussion on some aspect of the world of film or theater.
There were some people on the panel yesterday that we recognized, including Kenneth Branaugh, Carrie Coon, and Tracy Letts. The discussion was a lively one, the main topic not always obvious. The most memorable comment came from Ms. Coon when she said that American theater is at an inflection point. Unless it finds a way to make the tickets more affordable it will increasingly become a venue for only the wealthy to attend. Big round of applause for that one.
Our usual routine is to drive to a place called Mountain Village, which is several miles up the mountain from Telluride, park in a ramp, and then take a scenic gondola ride down to the festival site. Parking in Telluride itself can often be problematic at this event. Our companion in the gondola going down the hill was John Malkovich’s agent. Charming man, didn’t give his name.
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Part of being an actor is the rhythm of the life of being an actor, and that involves coming together with a group of people, making something together that is intense and requires a lot of intimacy, and then walking away from it with the possibility that you will never see any of those people again.
Carrie Coon
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Little Home In The Valley 