Tuesday, July 20, 2010

SUMMER RAIN JOHNNY RIVERS

Drew's Herbs/"Summer Song"


My favorite summer song ... sung by Johnny Rivers; lyrics by Jim Hendricks.




Summer Rain taps at my window


West wind soft as a sweet dream
My love, warm as the sunshine
Sitting here by me, yeah
She's here by me
She stepped out of a rainbow
Golden hair shining like moonglow
Warm lips, soft as her soul
Sitting here by me, now
She's here by me
All summer long we were dancing in the sand
Everybody just kept on playing "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
We sailed into the sunset
Drifting home, caught by a gulf stream
Never gave a thought for tomorrow
Let tomorrow be, yeah
Let tomorrow be
She wants to live in the Rockies
She says that's where we'll find peace
Settle down, raise up a family
One to call our own, yeah
We'll have a home
All summer long we were grooving in the sand
Everybody just kept on playing "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
Winter snows drift by my window
North wind blowing like thunder
Our love is burning like fire
And she's here by me, yeah
She's here by me
Let tomorow be

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Birds of Prey


The peregrine falcon perched on my leather-clad forearm is Angus.  The falconer on the right is my cool co-worker John.   Angus is the most handsome bird I've ever seen.  When John releases Angus to fly free for exercise, and he's ready for Angus to return, John will hold up a piece of meat and Angus will spy the meal from even a mile away and come flying back.  He can reach speeds of up to 200 miles per hour!

"Falconer" is also a novel by John Cheever ... a novel I didn't much care for though I generally love John Cheever, and I should probably give "Falconer" another shot.

And tonight I'm going to a presentation by the Harwich Conservation Club called "Birds of Prey" and I'll see and learn about all sorts of raptors.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Happy Birthday to Marcel Proust: Born July 10, 1871, in Paris

Coddled from the get-go.  When in In Search of Lost Time the young narrator (based on Proust of course) is discovered very upset and crying because his mother has neglected to kiss him goodnight, his grandmother, hoping to stop his tears, decides to give him his birthday presents early.  Considering "light reading as unwholesome as sweets and cakes," she gifted him with "four pastoral novels of George Sand."


"My dear," she said to Marcel's mother, "I could not allow myself to give the child anything that was not well written."


Though they rarely lived in separate residences, Marcel wrote his mother thousands of letters during her lifetime.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Mountains




No mountains in Indiana where I grew up.  The first serious mountains I saw were The Alps in Bavaria. I still remember rounding a curve in the road in my boss's deluxe 1956 Oldsmobile and coming upon an amazing view that to a hick from the sticks seemed almost too beautiful to be real. We didn't say "Wow" in those days but my eyes spoke the exclamation for me.  I probably said "Jesus!" or "Oh my god!"


Philip Hamburger, a writer whose work often appeared in the "Talk of the Town" section of The New Yorker was also impressed with his first similar view:  In 1995, in "Letter from Berchtesgaden" he wrote: "I walked to the window and was staggered by the jagged, snowcapped Bavarian Alps.  Their beauty is of a magnitude touching the threshold of pain."


When composers Gustav Mahler and Bruno Walter were passing beneath the Austrian Alps, Mahler said to Walter, "No need to look, I have already composed them."  (And Mahler, upon his first view of Niagara Falls, shouted, "At last, a real fortissimo!")


In an early autobiography called Lions and Shadows, Christopher Isherwood writes of his first view of The Alps:


                    Next morning the sunshine woke us early.  Chalmers,
               with whom I shared a room, was the first out of bed;
               yawning, stretching himself, he hobbled over to the
               window, started back in mock horror:  'Good God!
               It's arrived!'
               
                    Mont Blanc confronted us, dazzling, immense, cut
               sharp out of the blue sky; more preposterous than the
               most baroque wedding cake, more convincing than
               the best photograph.  It fairly took my breath away.
               It made me want to laugh.
              
                     'I don't believe it!'
                  
                      'Neither do I!'


                  

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Emily Dickinson Grave; West Cemetery; Amherst, Mass.




Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.