Thank you for this, Gerard. Everything has been so horribly depressing lately. Sometimes simple and sweet can hit the spot. Song made me a little misty. My wife went to a Judy Collins concert not so long ago. She said that Judy’s voice is just as clear and fine as it was when this song was recorded.
JWM
ghostsniperJune 26, 2020, 7:15 PM
Some people only see this stuff in videos.
I see it everyday with my eyeballs.
I’m richer than I seem, and know it, and appreciate it.
nunnya bidnez, jrJune 26, 2020, 7:38 PM
Oh sure, you get to see deer cavorting.. whoop-de-doo.
But have you ever seen a pack of rats running down a subway platform, fighting over a slice of Famous Ray’s pizza?? Or a flock of seagulls …real seagulls, not that whiny British synth band…
dogging the stern of the Staten Island Ferry, grabbing french fries that hoodies from Stapleton are tossing in the air??
No? Man, you haven’t seen it all.
Grinning! My day has been made, and I thank you for it!
It’s hard to appreciate just how tiny these are in real life.
JWM
DerakJune 26, 2020, 9:03 PM
Way off topic but.. Gerard, can someone reach Old Remus? He has not posted in three consecutive tuesdays. This is troubling to me. He is an anchor and if he is missing, moving, shaking, I guess for some reason I need to know.
AnneJune 26, 2020, 9:34 PM
All the mid country/fly over states are under attack. They are being invaded by groups of out of state liberals (WA State). These young people are being moved in to flood the voting process, to act as agents of change, to take jobs away from the local middle class.
Are there any R people out there acting so creatively? Or, are they just all waggin on about their guns?
VanderleunJune 26, 2020, 10:00 PM
I’ve written to Remus but have not heard back and no news is no news.
NoriJune 26, 2020, 10:57 PM
A most appropriate title,Something Wonderful:The Good Life.
Funny how the lyrics mean so much more today than they did then.
That blue camo dog at the 2.00 part is a k-9 to keep. Sweet.
ghostsniperJune 27, 2020, 4:01 AM
Rats and sea gulls eating pizza and french fries?
That’s what you’re bringing to the table?
When I was an EMT on a call to a run down urban housing development I saw a very young negro child whose fingers were chewed off by members of the rodentia class. I lived in Florida for 40 years and once saw about a hundred sea gulls devouring a beached dolphin, vulture style, and it was ghastly. So yeah, nunnya, I’m familiar with those things too. I prefer the rural wildlife.
Snakepit KansasJune 27, 2020, 6:47 AM
A good decade ago plus I was on an evening walk on the pier in Santa Cruz CA. Someone was feeding a large seal some people food. It barfed on his leg.
He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff’s talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush–and that was all.
NEW Real World Address for Complaints, Brickbats, and Donations
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
“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’.”
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
He thought he kept the universe alone;
Gerard Van der Leun
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
Comments on this entry are closed.
If only we could give Cook County to Wisconsin.
Thank you for this, Gerard. Everything has been so horribly depressing lately. Sometimes simple and sweet can hit the spot. Song made me a little misty. My wife went to a Judy Collins concert not so long ago. She said that Judy’s voice is just as clear and fine as it was when this song was recorded.
JWM
Some people only see this stuff in videos.
I see it everyday with my eyeballs.
I’m richer than I seem, and know it, and appreciate it.
Oh sure, you get to see deer cavorting.. whoop-de-doo.
But have you ever seen a pack of rats running down a subway platform, fighting over a slice of Famous Ray’s pizza?? Or a flock of seagulls …real seagulls, not that whiny British synth band…
dogging the stern of the Staten Island Ferry, grabbing french fries that hoodies from Stapleton are tossing in the air??
No? Man, you haven’t seen it all.
Too bad we can’t post pictures. One of my lophophora flowered this morning. That is a rare sight.
JWM
So let it be written. So let it be done.
Grinning! My day has been made, and I thank you for it!
It’s hard to appreciate just how tiny these are in real life.
JWM
Way off topic but.. Gerard, can someone reach Old Remus? He has not posted in three consecutive tuesdays. This is troubling to me. He is an anchor and if he is missing, moving, shaking, I guess for some reason I need to know.
All the mid country/fly over states are under attack. They are being invaded by groups of out of state liberals (WA State). These young people are being moved in to flood the voting process, to act as agents of change, to take jobs away from the local middle class.
Here is one example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/technology/tiktok-grandma-trump-biden.html
Are there any R people out there acting so creatively? Or, are they just all waggin on about their guns?
I’ve written to Remus but have not heard back and no news is no news.
A most appropriate title,Something Wonderful:The Good Life.
Funny how the lyrics mean so much more today than they did then.
That blue camo dog at the 2.00 part is a k-9 to keep. Sweet.
Rats and sea gulls eating pizza and french fries?
That’s what you’re bringing to the table?
When I was an EMT on a call to a run down urban housing development I saw a very young negro child whose fingers were chewed off by members of the rodentia class. I lived in Florida for 40 years and once saw about a hundred sea gulls devouring a beached dolphin, vulture style, and it was ghastly. So yeah, nunnya, I’m familiar with those things too. I prefer the rural wildlife.
A good decade ago plus I was on an evening walk on the pier in Santa Cruz CA. Someone was feeding a large seal some people food. It barfed on his leg.