The plant rooms at the Victorian Conservatory, and a brief note on the 1932 Tarzan.

Perhaps I should wait a few minutes before posting the pictures to which I referred yesterday. The problem won't be the pictures, but could easily be a typing tantrum from me. I have just gotten off the phone with Comcast-Xfinity-NBC-Universal-etc. and I'm madder than a hive of hornets in a Warner Bros. or Disney cartoon. The miserable corporate entity with which I was dealing could easily be depicted as a cartoon villain, but that would only serve to humanize it. Then again, depicting it as Simon Legree would only serve to humanize it.

A few of the angry dancing dwarfs, pictured while
in the act of menacing the white folks in the pit.
 

Last night, a friend came over to watch a movie. After looking at the options available on the DVR, I asked to take a quick look at the Turner Classic Movies on demand section, as titles appearing there are only available for a few days. I had noticed a listing for a Popeye cartoon, with an allotted time of two hours. I wanted to see what the listing comprised - if it was cartoon after cartoon, etc. Imagine our surprise when after the first cartoon, it turned out that the entire 1932 'Tarzan, the Ape Man' was there. Feeling the hand of divine cinema providence, we watched it. It had been quite some time since I'd seen it, and I had forgotten a number of things. Unbelievably, I had forgotten about the tribe of nasty dwarfs. After being captured, the white folks are lassoed into a pit to fight a large ape creature. The dwarfs hurl darts at them for extra fun while performing an odd, gleeful jumping up and down while waving darts menacingly in the air dance. My instinctual reaction is to identify with the white folks in the pit, feeling as though I've been lassoed into it, forced to battle a large creature while deadly darts whizz by - which is how it feels to deal with Comcast-Xfinity-NBC-Universal.

But I digress.
I'll try to write about Tarzan tomorrow.
Today I wanted to post a few pictures of plants in the other rooms of the Smith college horticultural department's 120+ year old conservatory, the rooms not dedicated to the spring bulb show.

While the bulb show always provides that first overwhelming fragrance of Spring, providing a lift to winter weary spirits (not that I am personally weary of winter), the other 'rooms' of the conservatory provide a green and happy relief from the gray world outside. Sadly, this year what has lately been called the 'cool temperate room' was not its usual self. The waterfall was shut off and under repair, many of the plants had been removed, or relocated, or cut back. Things change from year to year, but the waterfall and pool were missed. Herewith, a few pictures of the offerings from the various environments the rooms emulate.

Someone, perhaps with a sense of humor, threw one of the daffodil flowers in with the water lilies.

Sadly, I must get ready for the bus to the grocery store, so this will be it for today.
I hope the various photos are found to be enjoyable.

                     

On becoming obsolete, and the spring bulb show...

(a mental dance and rumination illustrated with pictures taken yesterday at the annual Spring bulb show held in the 120+ year old conservatory of the Smith College horticultural department.)

My computer, a desk top, is aging.
It is slowing down; it's innards are constantly examined for viruses, but they are not the problem.
It stays updated, but the updates seem to add stress.
It's use of the fan has increased; it tries to keep cool as it deals with changes.
It seems as though it no longer has the ability to quickly process the ever increasing amount of data required for its ability to quickly complete what should be simple tasks.
Sometimes I wonder if all of this is a metaphor for the person who operates it.
I was going to write, "the person who owns it..." but that raises a few uncomfortable questions about the true nature of our relationship.
Certainly, it runs programs designed to keep it trouble free more than it once did.
It runs them so much, in fact, that I often have problems getting it to let me use it.

I've encountered this problem before.
It was solved with the purchase of a newer more powerful computer.
That event was in early May of 2011.
As the purchase was a discounted model from a chain store, I suspect that the computer was introduced the previous year.
Which means that it is old in computer years.
I can't believe I just wrote, "in computer years".
(sigh)

Sometimes it seems that most of the electronics are breaking down.
The tv works without a hitch, but the cable box often refuses to respond to commands as it busily updates the schedule page, or spies on people, or whatever it is really doing when I only want to see what else is on, or to simply change the channel.

Some days the internet pauses, takes a few breaths, and acts as though it is about to demand a vacation. It reminds me of the days when someone on the east coast could tell that it was after 5pm on the west coast - even simple internet searches slowed down when so many people got home and turned on their computers.




Over the last year I've explored streaming audio-visual content from services such as Amazon and Netscape. The hope was that I'd be able to cancel a large portion of my cable-phone-internet package to reduce costs. If there is a holiday, or a storm which keeps a large number of people home, streaming becomes a problem. One never knows where the problem originates, of course. Is it with Comcast, slowing down my service now that they can? Is it due to so much demand that Netscape or Amazon can't handle it? Is it a part of the electronic infrastructure somewhere in between the coast on which I'm located and the coast on which the streaming service originates? The reality is that when there is a problem, there is nothing we can do about it, whether or not we understand why it is happening. Is that a metaphor for life in the current version of America (or the world)?

These aren't new complaints, of course.
A minor problem can now have major repercussions.
I no longer carry more than a couple of dollars on my person.
If my bank's system, or the internet, or the company that screens for fraudulent purchases for the bank, or the grocery store's system hiccups, or is down, for any reason, I wouldn't be able to purchase groceries (this has happened to me couple of times).

The modern way of using plastic cards to access the 1's and 0's that represent money has been frustrating for some time. I still haven't forgotten my attempt some years ago to make a purchase in New Hampshire, a state that borders the state where I reside (Vermont), in a town about a half an hour's drive from my apartment. The purchase was around $100.00, and was for the business for which I worked (to be reimbursed). The purchase was denied. Luckily, this was during banking hours, so I called the bank. They quickly determined that the problem was that I seldom bought anything in New Hampshire, and seldom spent that amount of money on a purchase, so it had been denied as suspicious. They would authorize it so the sale would go through. Only it didn't. Another call to the bank revealed that they paid a company to flag what it considered suspicious activity on an account, and that company hadn't yet released my own funds to make the purchase. They would call the company while I waited on hold. I was eventually told everything was okay. Except it wasn't. All told, it took about 45 minutes to an hour just to be able to spend my own money which was in my own account.

When everything works the way it is intended, the modern electronic digital computer world can be quite an improvement over the old fashioned, low quality, slower analog world in which I grew up.
As long as one can afford it.

So why do I sometimes wish for a simpler time, a more gregarious time when people connected in person rather than through devices, when movies were screen in theatres and watched with a hundred or more friends of the dark in a shared experience?

The older folks always seem to complain that life was simpler, more beautiful, better crafted, more enjoyable, more social, more (fill in the blank) when they were young. That is when they weren't complaining about how difficult it was when they were young.

Now that I am of that older generation, I hear these same contradictory complaints from myself, see them in the things I type out, and revel in the open space, the balance between them, while accepting that there is nothing I can do, and that it doesn't do any good to try to understand. Then I try to understand.

 

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the computer, simply pushed beyond my capacity by the newer programs, that don't work as well as the older programs. If, in short, I am becoming old fashioned, and obsolete. I also wonder if I care about it in the least.

For now it is snowing, yesterday I reveled in the promise of Spring at the annual bulb show , and I plan to spend the rest of today reveling in a world passing away, a world that, like myself, is busy becoming obsolete.

addenda - While uploading the pictures for this post, the internet paused, lost the connection, and the program became stuck trying to upload the last picture. Tomorrow, I'll try to upload pictures from the conservatory rooms that aren't part of the bulb show. If the technology lets me. In the meantime, I'll be left to ponder whether the systems are simply breaking down, or becoming obsolete. I'll try to let pictures of spring flowers distract me. Before they become obsolete too.

"Time goes by so slowly..."

It's been awhile. The first thing I thought of to write was to quote a line from the mid 1950's song 'Unchained Melody'; "Time goes by, so slowly, and time can do so much...."

The song was composed by Alex North, who composed scores for Hollywood movies. In this case, the movie was 'Unchained'. The lyrics were by Hy Zaret, who refused the movie producer's request to put the film title in the lyrics, which is how that title came about. 'Unchained' is a little known (and little seen) 1955 film about a man in an experimental 'prison without walls' who struggles with a decision to escape and reunite with his family, or to finish out his sentence. Among the cast is Todd Duncan, the baritone who was hand picked by George Gershwin to perform the role of Porgy in 'Porgy and Bess'. Mr. Duncan was the first to record the song, by the way. In once scene, filmed at the experimental prison in Chino, California, Dexter Gordon can be seen playing his saxophone. He was incarcerated there at the time, for possession of heroin. His playing was dubbed by Georgie Auld.



The shoreline by our campsite at Little Tupper Lake.
It really is a lovely spot.

There were a number of loons about, including 13 of them
together. That's not a common occurrence, by the way.

I'd been thinking often about getting back to this blog, without doing so. Today, as I was looking something up, this page opened of its own accord. Perhaps I hit a shortcut button, I don't know. It seemed like a good suggestion, so here I am. Since the last entry here, I've managed to keep myself busy, as usual. This year, it took forever to put the garden to bed, as the season extended into November. (I made a ton of pesto which I froze and am happily consuming.) I went off on another adventure camping/canoeing trip to a wilderness area of the Adirondacks (a bit stressful this year, as the old friend with whom I go camping spent the entire week being most disagreeable). And I started up my radio show again after almost a year and a half's sabbatical, etcetera. Christmas was a bit of a bust; the largest dinner I think I ever made was cancelled when friends declined to travel due to snow. Extreme cold a few days later ended up freezing the pipes, which translated into losing heat and hot water. The loss of essential services was not an auspicious start to the new year. What was possibly my personal all time best Christmas tree, and decorating job, was destroyed, destroyed again, and yet again while being moved for the accessing of heating pipes. I could go on with a litany of slights and challenges from the universe, but I've little desire to do so, and I doubt that anyone cares - including myself.

Here's a few of my garden photos, all taken in mid to late October.

I was about to go on about the state of the world, my country, my friends, movies in general, watching a Fred Astaire movie last night, the projected Stephen Spielberg remake of 'West Side Story', spinning this or that fantastical tale along the way (all too true, however), tying it all in with concepts of time, and life as an open air prison; but I've just noticed the hour, and I've already spent too long choosing which photos to post and getting this far. I probably won't be able to get back here for a couple of days, but I do intend to do so. There's so much to note as we sink into the abyss.

Falling by the wayside

March? I haven't posted since March? Jeepers (mentally adds, singing, 'creepers, where'd ya get those peepers...'). Makes me wonder just what the hell I've been up to all this time. I'd write a bit of it out if I could remember any of it. Actually, I do, but much of it isn't that interesting, and a large part of the rest would be stressful ranting and raving about the political situation in my country. There have been a number of wonderful movies I've watched, or watched again. And there has been the garden, of course. As for the movies I've screened, there have been so many it would be a minor miracle if I could still name them all. The idea was to write them down here, making notes about each, but that project fell by the wayside.

A page from the Tyndale Bible.

Now there's a phrase I haven't used for awhile, "fell by the wayside". While it's meaning is readily apparent, the origin of the phrase may not be. It goes back to a 1526 translation of the Bible by William Tyndale. It was the first bible in English to be translated from Greek and Hebrew sources, and the first to hit the printing press. There had been an earlier version (the Wycliffe Bible) in Middle English in the late 1300's, but due to its use in a pre-Reformation movement, it was banned in 1409. By the late 1400's, owning one could bring the death penalty. But that's another story. The Tyndale translation, by the way, became a principal source for the King James version of the early 1600's. The "fell by the wayside" reference is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 8, verses 5 thru 8. It occurs just after a mention of unclean spirits being cast out of Mary Magdalene and two other women, and concerns a farmer who went out to sow his seed. The sower was a bit sloppy, and some seed 'fell by the wayside'. In fact, a lot of it seemed to fall by the wayside. Only that seed which fell upon the 'good ground' was productive. Just after the teaching of this parable, the Teacher walked upon the waters, a pretty nifty act.

Now that I've wandered off onto this tangent, I'm no longer sure of where the heck I was headed. Was it to post a few pics from the garden? Or the chance to write mildly amusing commentary on making my own tomato paste, or the adventures of putting up copious amounts of fresh homemade pesto against the depravations of winter? (I used up the very last of last year's pesto a few days before starting this year's batches.) Or were the seeds a reference to all the movies I've watched lately? Or haven't watched?

A part of the larger garden at Solar Hill (which I help maintain) where my garden is located.
At the top of the photo is a bit of the playground for the Neighborhood Schoolhouse

More of the Solar Hill garden. Just off to the left are a large number of peonies, one of which can be seen here.
The Japanese dogwood was kind of spectacular this year; it demanded a photo.

A portion of my garden this past June.

Another part of my garden in mid to late Spring.
There's lots more, including other seasons. I'm considering starting a garden blog.

That last bit in the text above (the 'haven't watched' part) refers to an attempt to screen the RKO 'Hitler's Children' for one of my younger friends. While he's knowledgeable about independent movies from the late 1980's or so up to today, he's somewhat less aware of earlier movies. At any rate, my younger friend is going to be a first time daddy soon. He made his announcement via a Facebook post whose only content was a sound file that mystified a number of folks. It was the sound of the baby's heartbeat in the womb. Now, he's never seen any of the Nancy Drew movies, and thus has no associations what-so-ever for Bonita Granville, or, for that matter, with cowboy star Tim Holt, both of whom have the lead roles in the movie. So one night not long after the incidents in Charlottesville with tiki torch bearing American Nazis, white supremacists, and the follow up ravings of Donald Trump in the role of President of the United States, we settled in to watch this bit of lurid potboiler propaganda history.

The film starts out with a Nazi rally (above), and proceeds, via flashback narration, to a 1933 confrontation between American students in Germany, and a group of teenage male Nazis in training. A fight breaks out, during which wholesome Nazi Tim Holt holds onto the American's baseball bat, refusing to give it back. Plucky Bonita Granville looks him in the eye and suddenly exclaims, "Heil Hitler". When Holt's arm rises in automatic salute, she punches him in the stomach. When the German headmaster refuses to stop his charges from fighting, the American teacher (Kent Smith, giving a performance only slightly more lively than a cigar store Indian) simply yells out, "Achtung!", which causes the German boys to fall into line. If only it were that easy in real life. We then see a little bit of the school room education of the day:

Just after Tim Holt's praise for Hitler in the clip above, my young friend asked me to stop the movie. Under the current political climate, and being an expectant father, it was too much. His heart had started racing, and he was beginning to have a bit of a panic attack. We were only about 10 minutes into the film. Thinking back on it, it was probably a good thing we changed the picture. I'd have freaked out if I was an expectant parent, too. And I'm not just thinking of the scene in which a young mother to be hopes her birth is painful as a tribute to the Führer. This picture gets far more lurid and serious.

Of course, the reverberations of movies like 'Hitler's Children' into our own time should give us pause. We currently have an administration in power which excuses the outrages of the far right, pretending there were good people amongst them, condemning those on the left for their part in the violence (even though every report I saw or read stated that the 'antifa' crowd only resorted to violence when the Nazi types began charging at women, children, the clergy, and people with brown skin). Pictures that came out of the event were startling.

Is it live, or is it Memorex?

Today I turned 67 years old. My parents divorced when I was quite little; my mother was gone by the time I was 6 months old. My father, my brother, and I lived with my Aunt and Uncle in what had been my Grandfather's house. My Uncle had fought in WWII. When television came in, I wasn't allowed to have it on much after 5pm, when my Uncle got home. The noise and cacophony of tv shows with children's laughter, and especially sudden loud sounds, unnerved him and he would fly into rages. I won't dwell on it, or on what would now be easily recognizable as PTSD, except to say that I often felt terrorized as a child. The experiences I had in those years would come back to affect me later in life. As it turns out, I was diagnosed as having PTSD too. The stresses and coping mechanisms from those days got me through my first years on my own in the late 1960's, the Vietnam war protests, getting beat up because I had long hair, being beaten up and/or threatened for being perceived as gay, being shot in the head (not as serious as it sounds, except for the psyche - it was delivered via a pellet rifle after I was seen returning a European kiss on the cheek to a male friend returning to Germany. Still, the bullet lodged in my skull and they thought I might have some damage.) During my years managing bookstores in NYC, my assistant was from Pakistan. When the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran, my assistant became agitated and predicted the rise of ultra conservative Islam. He was in New York studying to become an architect so he could build decent homes for the poor of his country. He told me flat out that with the rise of conservative Islam, he was concerned about returning home; he might be killed for becoming educated, and going to the United States. The best cashier I had was a gorgeous black woman from the Caribbean, with a lilt in her voice which would make most people smile. My warehouse manager, who was the guy I trained to run the science fiction section, was from Cuba. You get the idea; I had a lot of friends and co-workers who, if they were around today, might face deportation. The sad fact of the matter is that my country is rounding people up. Some have been deported, some are being held. Many on trumped up charges, or minor traffic style violations. Now a  movement is on to deport those who were brought here as children, who grew up here, and became part of the fabric of life here. Legal protections for transgender folk are being removed. Repealing the right of marriage for gay folks won't be far behind. The Trump Department of Justice has already insisted that gay folks are not entitled to job protections under federal anti-discrimination laws. Confrontations in the culture wars continue, and will, until decent normal everyday people start to riot. And what then? Well, perhaps that's why the Trump administration has 1.2 Billion dollars in the Federal budget for 'detainee beds'. I have been accused of having a decidedly liberal paranoia about this, but I could spend several hours writing out the reasons for such suspicions, and pointing out the similarities between the US today and Europe in the early 1930's. You're free to laugh at me if you want, I won't mind. But I will remind you that Nazis are on the march. In America. They may be carrying mass market torches, but that doesn't change the fact that they are there, marching, provoking, waiting. Their own leaders will tell you that an army is being built. We have a President who threatened violence from his supporters if he wasn't elected. His supporters threaten violence if he is removed from office. Go ahead and laugh some more. But remember the following image when the 'arrests' start. It was painted on a fence in California a few days after the Charlottesville events. And you'd better hope to hell everyone in your family is straight, and white. A lot of the seeds being sown aren't for flowers.

Waiting for the fog to lift...

It's one of those gloriously foggy mornings, the kind that one gets in my area in late September or early October as the morning air cools over nearby warm water. It's late November, though, and it's the time of year when older lady cousins should be wiping frost from windowpanes, smiling, and declaring it to be 'fruitcake weather'. The fog, and the obscured road ahead, function as metaphor.

It's been quite awhile since I last worked on these pages; it's the longest break I've taken from these meanderings since this project was started. It's a kind of obvious cliché to note that much has changed during my absence from this - this - this what? Diary? Forum? Longer form Social Media? (It's probably best that I not get into a discussion of Facebook at this point, except to note that any entry over a couple of paragraphs in length goes largely unread. The same is true for linked articles, except that people will respond - at length - in high dudgeon to the assumed content from merely reading the title.)

an end of summer garden visitor

Aside from the usual cheery transformations of climate and politics (not unrelated), I've had a personal development of some significance. I've removed myself entirely from the low power Community Radio station I helped create. It's the usual story of frustrations with an all volunteer Board of Directors (I was the President, for a second time), the volunteer staff of 60 some persons, and attempting to manage both. All as an unpaid volunteer. Things erupted over the July 4th weekend; after two sleepless nights in a row, I realized that I just couldn't do it anymore, and resigned. I also walked away from my radio show. I figured that if I weren't easily accessible, I wouldn't be called upon to do things, or, for that matter, feel that I should participate. I'd assumed I was putting the show on hiatus, and would return after a nice rest, but I no longer know if that will happen.

Angel's Trumpet and Russian Sage

The weather this past summer was hotter and more humid than I could take. I spent a small fortune, close to $300.00, for a portable air conditioner. (My rented studio has no windows, just a sliding glass door to a balcony.) As I once passed out from the built up heat in this place, I felt the expense for something I'd only use for a couple of months a year was justified. The heat and humidity also made it difficult to work in the garden. I take care of the much larger Solar Hill gardens; with time at a premium most of my work on my own spaces went to the vegetable garden. The flower garden suffered from neglect.

 

 

The late fall crop of raspberries was wonderful, heavily producing over an extended season. I delightedly made an unconscionable amount of raspberry jam, even though I abandoned an entire picking for a week's wilderness camping via canoe trip.

Paddling between Little Tupper Lake and Rock Pond in the Adirondacks.

One of several beaver lodges on the same passage - taken on the way back a few days after the above photo.

Sanity has been maintained through the video projector and many, many movies. Of course, I'm upset with myself for failing to note them. While I'll remember Kay Francis in 'Mandalay', I'll never be able to remember much of the other Kay Francis titles from a Turner Classic Movies DVR binge. Mandalay, by the way, is a hoot. Francis played a good girl sold into white slavery style prostitution by a traitorous boyfriend. After surviving and escaping her time as "Spot White", she ends up killing the traitorous tormentor, falling for an alcoholic ex-doctor, and trudging off with same into the jungles on a mission of mercy to relieve the suffering of plague victims.

 

Kay Francis as Spot White in 'Mandalay'.

How could I not note a WWII era western, 'Cowboy Canteen', in which Jane Frazee's ranch is turned into an entertainment venue for servicemen stationed nearby? Charles Starrett wanders about, two rollicking numbers are provided by an impossibly young Roy Acuff and his Crazy Tennesseans, two numbers are contributed by Tex Ritter, plus there's couple of numbers from Jimmy Wakely and His Saddle Pals. Add in Vera Vague, plus a few turns by a number of country and western vaudevillians. The toppers (for me) were the two songs provided by 'ranch hands' The Mills Brothers, "(Up a) Lazy River", and "Paper Moon"!

 

The Mills Brothers, fresh off their farmhand duties (in
spectacularly ill advised costumes), 'rehearse' their hit "(Up a) Lazy River".

Roy Acuff (on the right), and a few of the Crazy Tennesseans,
as they perform "Wait for the Light to Shine". 

I am remembering such things with a little more clarity than had become my custom. I was reading an article on the internet, clicked on a link, and saw a reference to drugs which cause memory problems. I followed the latter link, and found the statin I've taken for years for bad cholesterol listed. I stopped taking it for a couple of weeks to see what would happen. My memory improved! My vocabulary, which I admit I'd downplayed and dumbed down after being told I intimidated people, began to return to everyday use. I'd had episodes in which I'd be doing a tribute show on the radio, and at station break be unable to name the person being saluted. I even heard myself on one show's recording credit Louis Armstrong when I meant Louis Jordan. Things are much better now. The memory isn't as sharp as it once was, but where recalling a bit of once well known information was taking 20 minutes, that action now takes anywhere from 10 seconds to a few minutes. It's not consistent, but it is a definite improvement. It's been six months since I stopped the statin; my doctor went along with this experiment provided I took another cholesterol test after 6 months. The improvement is enough that I'm concerned, lest the test put me back on the damn pills.

Early morning mist obscuring an island with pine trees, reminiscent of a Turner painting, Rock Pond, Adirondacks.

 There's a lot more movies to note, more life events to note (this is a sort of diary, after all), but my late breakfast of oatmeal (with maple sausages, the entire concoction drizzled with maple syrup) is ready. Now that mornings (when I usually do this kind of thing) are no longer spent at the garden, I am going to try to get back in the habit of writing. He said, as the fog lifted.