≡ Menu

Rite of Spring

by Vanderleun on March 8, 2019

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>

Related Posts:

Comments on this entry are closed.

Larry Geiger March 9, 2019, 7:52 AM

A bird with whiskers. The cat will be jealous.

Link
PA Cat March 9, 2019, 8:43 AM

American human rite of spring, 1908 version (back when a gentleman caller was still a beau; the present anthem of the seventh-inning stretch began as a courtship song of sorts):

Katie Casey was baseball mad,
Had the fever and had it bad.
Just to root for the home town crew,
Ev’ry sou [cent]
Katie blew.
On a Saturday her young beau
Called to see if she’d like to go
To see a show, but Miss Kate said “No,
I’ll tell you what you can do”:
Chorus: Take me out to the ball game. . .
Katie Casey saw all the games,
Knew the players by their first names.
Told the umpire he was wrong,
All along,
Good and strong.
When the score was just two to two,
Katie Casey knew what to do,
Just to cheer up the boys she knew,
She made the gang sing this song:
Chorus: Take me out to the ball game. . .

And here is the Haydn Quartet version, which topped the Billboard chart for 16 weeks in 1908:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g0qS9L-fhY&ab_channel=warholsoup100

Link
John the River March 10, 2019, 8:34 AM

Woke up on this Daylight Savings Time morning to fresh snow on the ground.
Just enough powder on the porch to see the prints of the birds feet dancing back and forth looking for fallen seeds from the feeder.
My friends, who art in Florida and cursed be thy names, called last night to “warmly” describe the weather there.
Most days I’m good with winter in New England, some days (before the meds kick in) I feel like this…
https://onthenorthriver.com/2015/01/27/this-man-is-stupid/

Link

Next post: The Valley of Shells and Bones

Previous post: Boomer Anthems: “Forever Young” (Now in the two generation edition)

Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020

Only by Fire is Fascism Finished

Year upon year in Earth’s darker forests,
Heaped at the foot of the trees,
Dry drifts of wood rot and leaf fall increase
Which sunlight shall never seize.

The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.

The ash that descends in the September skies
Where the leapers swam down the stones?
Best answered by bombs from mid-heaven at prayer
With that fire which hollows the bones.

The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.

If their god decrees war, God’s war shall prevail.
His lessons are seared in His stone.
No dreams shall defer, nor wishes erase,
The answers that burn in the bone.

The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by bell, book, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.

Only by Fire is Fascism Finished.
This Sin is demanded that Your Line may Live.
Only through Fire is Freedom Reborn.
Each generation pulls the Sword from the Stone.

— Van der Leun

My Back Pages

Van der Leun: The Normblog Bio of Your Host“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”