A month of Saturdays

Memory is such an odd thing. At the moment, there is a panel from the comic strip 'Peanuts' floating around in my brain. One of the characters in the strip is uttering a well timed, "Good Grief". I can't quite remember  which character says it, though. I want to say it's Charlie Brown, but then I think it must be Lucy. Or Linus. I notice that I haven't posted here for an entire month. Good Grief.

It's been a busy time. There's been quite a bit of work at the garden. I still haven't gotten around to writing much about Solar Hill, where my little plots of insanity are located. I could swear (and I do more than I'd like) that I've written a brief history of the place. It was once a Governor's (and Senator's) mansion. The house has also been used for research by an optics company, as the main building of an experimental college, and has for over 20 years now been used as offices for alternative healers, therapists, and similar or related services. A second building was added at some point - I think for the college. It now houses the Neighborhood School House, an experimental educational facility of some note. They've added pre-school. Every nice day, shortly after 10:30am one group heads to the garden during recess, and I instantly hear the voices of 6 or 7 of the very youngest youngsters calling out, "Hi, Steven", "Hi, Steven", "Hi Steven". I both love it and want to run and hide at the same time.



I always feel odd taking pictures with people in them. I don't want to 'invade' someone's space.
As the tulips started blooming, a couple of the kids saw me about to take a picture and asked
if I would include them. As I'm not mentioning anyone's name, I hope it's okay to post this.

 

The above photo of tulips is not one I had intended to post - it's inclusion was an accident. I can't get rid of it, though. If I add a caption, the photo vanishes along with the photo above it. If I try to delete it, all heck breaks loose and much of the text vanishes. Or re-arranges itself. After struggling with it for awhile, I decided to utilize the lessons acquired in the aging process and simply let it be.

In April and for a good bit of May I spent so much time working on Solar Hill's gardens that I'm now pressed to catch up with my own. At the moment, I'm glowing over the return to blooming life of a few of the iris. The white ones haven't bloomed in many years. The ever so delicate light yellow ones haven't bloomed in many years longer. Soil amendments helped. (Sometimes spreading manure is a good thing.) Weeding helped - I now firmly believe that the Iris don't like too much around them. They want to show off and become somewhat recalcitrant if they sense any blooming competition.  The yellow iris were left behind by my friend Jonathon and incorporated into my garden when I had to move it many years ago to make more room for the schoolhouse's playground area. I remember them as being of a darker shade, with brown falls and veining. Maybe that one is there but hasn't bloomed yet? Maybe it has something to do with the soil? At any rate, they only bloomed once after their initial move. I've moved them over the last two autumns, and this year they finally seem happy. (They should be, they are where they can show off.) I've long had a problem with yellow colors in the garden - I just don't know how to use them to my liking. Maybe that's because I don't try very often.
But these delight me.

Blogger is once again giving me a bit of trouble, and the morning is a wastin'.  Time to go. More on the garden, and May's radio shows, later. 

 



Playin' rondo variations on the sciatic nerve

Grump, grumpy, grumpola, to grump, or not to grump... do you see where this is going? Do I? Should that be "Do eye" just to be contrary and upset grammariticians? No, I'm not just trying to cover up for my lack of posts, or the fact that I'm now behind by three radio show links on my own blog. If I thought anyone actually read any of this or listened to my shows through the posted links in any sort of regular fashion, I'd be horrified. Something is wrong. I'm having the worst attack yet of pain from the sciatic nerve. It's so bad that I can't think off hand if this is the beginning of week three or week four of this go'round. I'm out of any kind of painkillers, and it will be another two hours before there will be a bus to the market. My spine is now making complaints. I wonder if has to do with the rainy weather? My skin condition has been acting up - it's not supposed to be painful but it is at times, and I seem to be in one of those times. It's enough to make me wonder if there is a doll somewhere that looks like me with any number of pins stuck in it.

I've been goofing off and watching movies again. Last week, all but one of the movies I watched had some bearing (not that much really) on my radio show. I've just deleted a couple of paragraphs about the interconnectedness of the movies I watched. I shall try to get back to pondering such things a little later - after I get to the store and purchase a giant bottle of Aleve. For now, I'll just catch up with posting the last few weeks of radio shows.

I'll start off with the program from April 16th. The legislature in my state has had a major push to decriminalize the use of marijuana. The bill passed the Senate, but once it got to the House it became the unhappy subject of legal shenanigans. A committee decided to delay, stonewall, and obfuscate by re-writing the bill, and took out the decriminalization part in favor of just discussing regulations. They passed their version to the next committee, which put everything back, plus added a clause which would allow folks to have two plants for their own use. (The two plants thing was standard, if unacknowledged, 'look the other way' practice in Vermont some 20 years ago.) With the "four-twenty" a few days away, I thought I'd do a show featuring viper songs of the 1930's. ("Four-twenty" is a pot culture reference, and a day on which "smoke-ins" are held to encourage repeal of anti-hemp and anti-marijuana legislation. It grew out of a meeting of students at the appointed time to search for a fabled abandoned field of pot. These things take on a life of their own.)



The above, by the way, is one of my most played shows on Soundcloud. It was almost lost - the station's recording computer program burped and ate my show. Luckily, one of the DJs wanted to hear it, didn't know about my recording and posting my shows, and set his home computer to record the program. His volume was set a little high and there is a bit of distortion - particularly during the first few minutes - but I'm extremely grateful the show was saved, and that someone likes my show enough to record it. Another listener used to record it on cassette tapes and send them out to his friends.

Up next, the show from April 23rd, which took note of the birthdays of Lionel Hampton, Shirley Temple, and one of the show's Patron Saints and Goddess of Song, Ella Fitzgerald. It was also the start of Passover. In all of the surviving radio shows which are generally available, there are only a couple which even mention it. Those two mentions were from "The Eternal Light", a drama series. I assume that shows like "The Goldbergs" had Passover themes, but those shows are not among the survivors. So, for friends who celebrate the holiday, I included a segment I made last year which edited together scraps found of a NYC Yiddish radio station. Included in that segment, the Barry Sisters sing "Yiddle Mitn Fidl" in both Yiddish and English.



Just as a by the by kind of thing, "Yiddle With His Fiddle" was the most successful Yiddish musical ever filmed. (I think the actual citation is that it is the most successful movie in Yiddish.) It starred Molly Picon, a wonderful entertainer now largely forgotten. I screened a 16mm print of it when I lived in NYC, but don't remember much of it. I can't find a reference to this anywhere, but I'm fairly certain it was a stage show long before it was a movie. I have a memory of discovering that a theatre on Second Avenue (or was it on Third?) on the Lower East Side whose existence was endangered had been where the show played, with Molly Picon as the star.

And that brings us to the most recent show, which "played a few" for the birthdays of Blossom Dearie, Duke Ellington, Kate Smith, Lorenz (Larry) Hart, and Bing Crosby. There were also segments for Walpurgisnacht and May Day. Whew! Too much to do, not enough time. Many years ago, I did a show called "Bing and..." which was only Bing Crosby and various other performers in duets and etc. It was, I think, the most fun I ever had in the 'doing' of one of my shows. Maybe this Saturday I'll do more for Bing. And Kate Smith only got one song. Few now remember  that she was a jazz baby singing "hot" songs.



Well, now that the posting of the radio shows has been caught up, I can go writhe in pain until it's time to catch the bus. I shall try to get back later (today, tomorrow, or whenever) to record impressions of the movies I've watched, as well as the garden and this year's attempts at Spring.