Tag: thanksgiving

Damn You, Richard Gere

jono55

The movie Ordinary People came out in 1980. It was the first film that Robert Redford directed, and won four Academy Awards. For me, the most memorable takeaway was a piece from the soundtrack, a work entitled Canon in D Major, by Johann Pachelbel. For a few months anyway, it might have been the most often-played classical selection in the country.

Even today I play it regularly, and there are several interpretations of the short composition in my music library. “Music library” has become one of those phrases that definitely dates a person, hasn’t it? I wonder how many songs a Gen Z actually owns, rather than rents? Never mind, here is a recording of “the Canon” that I own and can share with you. It’s from the soundtrack of Ordinary People.

Canon in D Major, arr. by John Williams

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This past week Robin mentioned in passing that she would like to see the film An Officer and A Gentleman again. It was one of those times that I instantly made it a quest for myself, to set up a romantic evening with my bride, perhaps to slightly burnish my image in her eyes. I had no trouble finding it, however, since it was available on six subscription services. Not much of a quest, really.

But when I presented it as the evening’s television watching I took full credit, much more than I deserved … that’s me all over. Puffing up my accomplishments and glossing over my failures has worked for me for the longest time, why would I change now?

The film was released in 1982, and starred very young versions of Richard Gere, Debra Winger, David Keith, and Lou Gossett Jr. Not a bad film at all, even if a bit formulaic, but formulas often do work well. It was the final scene that made it a classic date movie, maybe in the top ten.

Got your lady handy? Play the video below. A typical American female will become very pliant upon viewing it. One caveat, however. While she might be embracing you at the moment, she is almost certainly imagining you are Richard Gere.

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I learned this week that there has been considerable research over the years on finding substances that smell so bad that they are actually incapacitating. Substances that cling to the victim, resisting being washed off. The use would predominantly be in crowd control, rather than at the battlefront. I found this idea amusing, although I can easily imagine that it could be a powerful deterrent. One man doing much of the research around World War Two eventually came to smell so bad he had to sleep in a public park.

Let’s suppose that I am twenty years old and participating in a vigorous civil protest against some authority. Let’s also suppose that I have a very promising date next Saturday night with someone I have been pursuing with great ardor for months. Now, if I knew that there was a good chance that I would be sprayed with something that would make me smell like a “rotting corpse lifted from a stagnant sewer” for the next month, I might skip the event altogether.

For some reason this all reminded me of the Monty Python sketch about the killer joke. Warning, do not watch this if you understand the German language. We’re not sure about the safety of the video even now.

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Our American Comic Opera production is not as yet entitled or completed, but the script is being added to daily. Most recently we have yet another Ukrainian “peace plan.” The origin of the plan was apparently in Russia and was leaked to someone on the American side who brought it to Cluck’s aides. Although he hadn’t actually read the program itself, Cluck became a great fan and has told the Ukrainians that they better wise up or the plan will be implemented. Word is that it gives Putin everything he wanted and more, which bothers Cluck not a bit.

The only problem with all of this is that there are some groups of people who think that the plan stinks to high heaven. Here is a partial listing:

  • More than three-fourths of the American public
  • Most members of Cluck’s own party
  • Every Democrat in existence, even unborn ones
  • All of Europe
  • The Falkland Islands
  • et al

If you disagree with the peace plan, there are Cluck-ers who have signaled that there might be a special gallows erected where the Rose Garden used to be at the White House, just for you (although I admit that this is more conjecture than fact).

Casting for the opera’s production will begin whenever there are more than two succeeding days which pass without an atrocity being committed by the Cluck regime. Hopes are therefore dim that we will ever hear a single note.

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What Are Their Names, by David Crosby

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We will be spending Thanksgiving with the Hurley family In Durango this year, and are grateful for the invitation. Whenever we do this, Robin and I are asked to bring the same two items. The first is a cranberry-marshmallow dessert salad that was Robin’s mother’s contribution for years. The second is a stuffing recipe made with pork sausage and safe as prominent ingredients.

We partially construct both of them here and then finish them on Thursday as the turkey roasts. It’s pretty easy to keep them cold for the two and a half hour journey. So far there have been no problems with snow on Highway 550, the road that still puts lumps in my throat, so we’ll probably go that way. The alternative route is an hour longer, and although less hazardous even that way requires prudence and planning when making the trip in winter. Both roads must cross mountain passes. Both have been problematic in the past.

I never have any difficulty coming up with a gratitude list on Turkey Day, because my cup truly overfloweth. First and foremost each year I spend time wondering how it was that Robin ever decided that marrying me was a good idea. For her, that is. For me it was unbelievably good fortune because, no exaggeration here, she had saved my life.

I know that there have been moments when she has wondered about her selection as I am not a great prize but more a thing cobbled together of many parts, like a shorter and less murderous creation of Victor Frankenstein. But here we are, on our thirty-third Thanksgiving together. And so down the road we go, salad and stuffing in hand. If we ever are stranded by car trouble on these trips there will always be something to eat in the cooler in the back of the car.

May your holiday go well and your clothing be elastic enough in the waist to accommodate a bit of excess.

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… there are places I’ll remember …

jono55

The following clip made me into an instant Elissa Slotkin fan. It also reminds me that there are plenty of men and women out there who can point the way for those working in the resistance to the Cluck regime. Who are they? Well, comedians like Jimmie Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, for instance. And the editorial cartoonists that I’ve been posting more of recently, and now the six serving members of Congress who made a video reminding members of the armed forces that not only can they refuse to obey illegal orders, but they are obligated to do so. Anyway, here’s the clip.

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Garrison Keillor came to Montrose this past Wednesday evening to present his one-man show to a respectful sellout crowd. He has been a beloved entertainer for nearly fifty years. There were many moments I could relate but I’ll pick just two.

All in all, Robin and I found the evening to be a moving experience. An elderly man of eighty-three years pacing the stage for nearly ninety minutes while basically giving a humorous and often touching autobiographical recitation. What made it so special was that as he did so he was also retracing parts of our own lives, since we have been fans of his for from the beginning.

Early on in the show he was talking about admiring the more popular hymns sung in his church and when he began to sing a line from one of them the entire audience sang quietly along with him as if we were being given cues and there was an invisible conductor. There was a soft murmur in the hall … a moment.

After speaking for nearly an hour and a half without an interruption he again lapsed into song and began to walk up the aisle toward the entrance to the auditorium. Just before he disappeared through the entry doors he shouted back to us “Goodnight, Everybody.” And he was gone.

The song was In My Life, by the Beatles.

In My Life

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There are places I’ll remember
All my life, though some have changed.
Some forever, not for better;
Some have gone and some remain.

All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall.
Some are dead and some are living,
In my life I’ve loved them all.

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you.
And these mem’ries lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new.

Tho’ I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before,
I know I’ll often stop and think about them,
In my life I love you more.

Tho’ I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before,
I know I’ll often stop and think about them,
In my life I love you more.

In my life I love you more.

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Screenshot
Screenshot

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Okay, this is where I get serious. Don’t panic, it will be for only a moment. I’m a small-town boy in a small town in a part of the United States that is far enough from the seats of power that even ICE has trouble finding it when they want to persecute someone. I have no special talent for political divinations, no secret knowledge.

But I believe that Cluck is done.

He was never more than a bag of gas, like an ugly balloon sold at a holiday store. Inside there is nothing of substance. And the knives are in. It’s only necessary that we allow enough time to pass that the contained effluvium can make its way to the outside and he will collapse. At least politically. MAGA won’t disappear, but they are a mad minority, a delusional contingent that is forever stampeding in one direction or another, and without their figurehead they will retreat to where they came from, simmering in their own hatreds and looking for Cluck’s replacement.

But that leaves a whole lot of people who have found themselves standing up to their waists in a manure lagoon and wondering how they ever got there and how do they get out of it?

They know right from wrong, they know what putrefaction smells like, and they have been looking for an exit, a way back to fresher air and clearer thinking.

Don’t ask them what political faction they are in, that’s a waste of your time and theirs. Ask them instead if they want to get back to work they respect and understand. If they want solid schools for the children of their communities to attend. If they would like a return to living their lives as private ones, without government interference. If they would be willing to sacrifice when they could see the reason they were being asked to do so was real and worthwhile.

There is a Lakota saying which I first heard from the leader of a musical group of indigenous Americans called Brulé. The saying is Mitakuye Oyasin, and it translates into We are all related. It is what Mr. Schiller was thinking when he wrote the poem Ode to Joy which contains the line Alle Menschen werden Brüder … the translation is: Every man becomes a brother. It is a part of most of our religious traditions.

Point out what we need to do, show us the why we are doing it, and then stand back. We’ll figure it out from there. (Would someone please pick up that collapsed balloon and toss it in the trash? Thanks, I know I could count on you.)

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We Are All Related by Brulé

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With our national holiday devoted to eating nearly upon us the cartoon at right below says it all, really. It’s a parody of the Normal Rockwell painting that is entitled Freedom From Want. This Thanksgiving we have plenty of want around the good ol’ US of A, and a whole lot of it has been deliberately engineered by Cluck and his Claque.

Screenshot

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We offer thanks for the sun and the rain and the earth and someone else’s hard work.

Buddhist table grace

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Riding Off From It

jono55

DISCLAIMER

I don’t do jokes on this blog, mainly because I can’t tell jokes very well and often leave my listener scratching their head and wondering just what it was that was supposed to be funny. But for some reason, the story of the Scottish Regimental Sergeant Major that I first heard sixty years ago is an exception to those woeful facts. For one thing, I remember the whole joke (amazing). For another, when I tell it in conversation I can bring to bear what I believe to be an absolutely irresistibly humorous Scottish accent. ( I summon my inner Billy Connolly). All of this is to preface an off-color joke which might offend tender sensibilities, and for that I apologize in advance.

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A Scottish Regimental Sergeant Major in full dress marches into a drugstore and asks for the pharmacist. The Sergeant opens his waist pouch and pulls out a neatly folded cotton bandanna, opening it to reveal a smaller silk square which he unfolds to reveal a severely battered condom.

“How much for repair?” the Sergeant Major asks the pharmacist.

“Six pence,” he replies.

“How much for a new one?”

“Ten pence.”

The Sergeant Major folds the condom into the silk square and the cotton bandana, places it in back in his kit bag and marches down the aisle and out the door.

Next day the Sergeant Major walks back into the drugstore and asks for the same pharmacist. He pulls out the folded cotton 
bandanna, then opens the smaller silk square which once again reveals the ill-used bit of latex. He then declares:

“The regiment votes for repair.”

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Having mentioned Billy Connolly, I feel obliged to share one of my favorite bits of his, taken from a concert in New York.

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One of my daughters once said that in our family when something bad happened you were given 5 minutes to grieve, and then you had to make a joke about it.

It’s true that there have been times that my discomforts whenever I have come face to face with the appalling in life made me into a stuffer, someone who puts his feelings away until there is a more convenient time to deal with them. Being a time which may or may not ever come along. I do that less now at this season of my life, but a lifetime of such putting-things-off is not an easy habit to break off completely.

This clip from Lonesome Dove illustrates pretty well what I’ve been talking about. A boy dies of snakebite while on a cattle drive, and his compañeros are burying him. As Woodrow F. Call says, the best thing to do with death is to “ride off from it.”

And there are times when “riding off from it” is necessary. In another time and place when I found myself (believe it or not) in charge of running codes on children who had arrested, my mind all on its own would click into a cool and quiet groove where the alarmed and frantic behaviors of those around me were only static, and what I needed to do was laser-clear to me. There was a need to bring order to this clamor and I took that as my role. The other personnel in the room needed to be rapidly given assignments without raising their panic level, and I found that I could do that.

Finding that I had this facility came to be a useful thing in my emergency room work. Looking back, though, I can see where a problem gradually developed in that I began to apply it to everyday life, in relationships and situations where it wasn’t appropriate or constructive.

Because sometimes the best thing is not to “ride off from it,” but to sit down and weep. Not in some vague tomorrow but right then, on that very chair in front of you. With friends, if you are fortunate.

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Took a longish drive on Monday to Basalt CO, to the Steadman Orthopedic Clinic, for consultation on a bunion. You know, one of those foot things where for no good reason your big toe decides to go off and do its own thing.

.It’s one more case of life’s attempts at humor which falls flat. Life isn’t very good at humor, actually, being much more adept in the role of sorrow-bringer or day-screwer-upper. We met a very pleasant surgeon who was not completely full of himself, which I have found to be quite an unusual thing. He was an excellent communicator as well, and what he communicated was that if possible he would like to avoid surgery altogether, but if it became necessary how that would be accomplished. We left the clinic with a plan and we’ll see how things go from here.

En route we saw three small herds of antelope pronghorns, each group containing about twenty individuals. It’s been several years since we’ve seen even one, so it was a banner day in that department. Some light snow had been predicted, which did not materialize.

We stopped in Grand Junction on the way home to do some shoe shopping that the surgeon had suggested, and visited the Mesa Mall to do just that. It was like stepping back into 1980, because here was a vibrant mall with a great many stores (and nearly completely absent those ghostly empty stores), a bustling food court, and gaggles of teenaged girls wandering about in what seemed aimlessness, but was probably not. There were teenaged boys as well, and one sturdy group of four walked by us as we consumed some fast-food Chinese cuisine, all four young men being tall and strong and wearing identical haircuts.

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Each year at this time I try to find a particular table grace of Garrison Keillor’s and I fail to do so. What I do succeed at finding each year is yet another prayer that cuts through the gourmandic fog of the day. Here is this year’s.

O, heavenly Father, we thank thee for food and remember the hungry. We thank thee for health and remember the sick. We thank thee for friends and remember the friendless. We thank thee for freedom and remember the enslaved.

There are so many people on this planet that it is quite likely that somewhere in the world there is a man who was born on the same exact day that I was and at exactly the same hour and minute. He may be living halfway across the globe and have had the hardest of lives, such trials that if I knew them they would make my own problems seem positively trivial. In this season of Thanksgiving I think of him and my wish is that in the years to come the blessings would be distributed more evenly between he and I.

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Thank You For A Life, by Kris Kristofferson

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