A little extra and the Bishop's wife

I pay a little extra to the cable company to have a cable box with DVR, digital video recording.

I could write more than a few posts deriving from that one sentence. The cable company's rate structure and business model makes me think of modern day pirates. The quality of digital recording is excellent, and it records in high definition if one has that service - I pay a little extra for that, too. Why I should have to pony up more money for high def in a world in which high def became the broadcast standard some years ago has not been explained. Did I use the word 'pirates' yet? There is a problem, of course. (Isn't there always?) The box fills up with recordings, at which point programs and movies have to be deleted to make way for new items of interest.

I record a lot of movies, mostly from the classic movie channel. You know, the one that I was fortunate to get when it was part of a special deal? Otherwise, I'd have had to pay a lot extra for an entire service level of sports channels which I would never watch in order to get the one non-sports channel in that package, i.e. the classic movies channel. Did I use the word 'pirates' yet?

Well, anyway, since I gave myself that relatively inexpensive video projector for Christmas, I've been watching a couple of movies just about every week. The way I currently have things set up, the old Hollywood style projected picture is about 5 feet wide, and a little under 4 feet in height. Widescreen, well at least the tv version of it, is over 6 feet in length. In my small-ish space, I could reorient things and get a much larger picture, but my current method allows for a guest or two without totally rearranging the furniture.

Last night, I finally caught up with "The Bishop's Wife". For some reason or other, I'd never seen it. It's another of those movies with a somewhat messy history. Produced by Samuel Goldwyn using facilities at MGM, it was distributed by RKO, and somehow ended up looking like it might have been filmed at Paramount. The story told of a somewhat fastidious Bishop who had become so focused on the task of raising money for a cathedral that he was ignoring his wife and daughter, as well as the needs of parishioners. Heavenly intervention arrives in the form of a rather rakish angel. Goldwyn became so dissatisfied with the dailies he called a halt to production, replaced the director, had changes made to the sets as well as the script, and changed one important bit of the casting. The role of the Bishop was played by Cary Grant, the Angel was played by David Niven. During the hiatus, the director and Goldwyn decided that the roles should be reversed. Grant was allegedly not very happy with this turn of events. The story has changed over the years, however, so that now it is said that the change in roles was Grant's idea and it was Niven who was unhappy. (Niven was at a low point during the filming. His wife was injured in a fall and died from ensuing complications leaving him with two young sons to raise.) However the change happened, both men gave excellent performances in their new roles. Loretta Young does a decent job as the Bishop's wife, suffering neglect with admirable restraint, but was not quite as inspired in her performance as her co-stars.


One of the stories from the set told of a day the director had trouble with both Mr. Grant and Ms. Young. They each insisted that for one particular scene, they be photographed from their "good side". The only problem was that they both favored the same side. The director filmed the scene with the two stars standing side by side looking out a window. Mr. Goldwyn was not happy. The next day he confronted the director and the stars on the set. After having the situation explained to him, he is said to have remarked that if he was only going to get a shot with a half of the stars faces, then they would only get half of their salaries. There were no further such demands.

The rest of the cast was rounded out with instantly recognizable character actors. Well, instantly recognizable for anyone of my age, or for inveterate moviegoers. I especially liked Monty Woolley in the role of a history professor, and Gladys Cooper as the rich widow funding the cathedral. Elsa Lancaster had been cast in a maid's role, but had to withdraw due to other commitments. During the production delay, she finished up her other role and ended up replacing her replacement who had to exit due to commitments of her own. Two of the young players in the previous year's holiday picture, "It's a Wonderful Like" are in the cast - the fellow who played the young George Bailey, and the young lady who played ZuZu of the petals.

Although the film got glowing reviews, it didn't do a lot of business at the box office. Under the theory that the title made people think it was a religious story, the advertising was changed (and in some markets the name of the picture as well) to read "Cary and the Bishop's Wife!" In those markets, the box-office increased 25%.



It's easy to see why it became a Holiday classic back in the days when movies were regularly shown on broadcast tv. A charming sort of romantic comedy, there's Christmas shopping, snow scenes, and a tad of religion. In once scene, Cary Grant plays a harp in the home of the rich widow. The melody became popular, acquired a set of lyrics, and became a minor hit for Nat King Cole as "Lost April".

Most of the movies currently on my DVR are old favorites which I haven't seen in many years. I'm running out of movies I've recorded that I haven't seen. Soon I'll be watching a number of old favorites which I haven't seen in a long, long time. I'm still surprised I spent the money for the projector (it cost about the same as my 16mm print of Casablanca, purchased in 1975 or so). All the little extras I've spent which used to make me feel slightly guilty over the expense incurred have made this possible; it has turned out to be more rewarding than I ever imagined.

Thoughts on Cleaning Up

The colored lights and garland around the porch door have been taken down, as has the Christmas tree. The place has been un-bedecked and de-festooned. The accoutrements of the holiday season have been packed up and stowed away once again.

In my family, the tree and all the trimmings came down on New Year's Day. Even though I was raised a Methodist ("Baptists who can read"), I long ago adopted Epiphany as the day for such activities. This change was not due, as some of my family no doubt supposed, to any laziness on my part. If the truth be told, I am especially find of Christmas trees and "twinkle bulbs". I like the concept of the Season of Light. I've always thought it a bit awkward to take all of the color and glitter down just as we get to the coldest, bleakest, darkest part of the year. But if it has to come down, and I suppose I appreciate it all the more because it is something of a limited engagement, then I suppose waiting out the 12th night makes some sense and is completely justified. The way I now see it, I keep the lights on (or the 'star' shining, if  you will) against the darkness. But in today's world, if no Weismans show up bearing gifts by 12th night, then the chances of it happening are about equal to Linus seeing the Great Pumpkin.

This year I was especially proud of myself, certain that I hadn't forgotten to pack some odd bit away. These last several years there has always been the extra bulbs, or the extra hangers, or the gift wrap - something - that gets overlooked. After everything was moved into the storage unit in the cellar, I did discover the useable top of a broken ornament, and yes, a holiday CD a friend made for my Yuletide amusement and delectation that hadn't made it into the boxes. Ah well, there is always next year.

The season here was unusually warm. On December 24th, the temperature was in the low 60's fahreneight. A few days later, the temperature dropped into the teens and single digits and we finally got a couple of inches of snow. It took a couple of weeks, but winter has finally arrived and announced itself. In case there was any doubt, the garden catalogues began to show up in my mailbox. Who was it who said, "Temptation is a seed catalogue in January"?

My telephone just rang. For the second time today the call was from the same alleged security company. Both calls were quite obviously the same male digital 'computer voice'. The first time I simply hung up. For this second call, I noted, "John (or whatever name was used), you sound like a recording." There was a pause. I continued, "I am listed on the National Do Not Call Registry. Please remove my name form your records and do not call again." At that point, the computer voice split into three or four voices - all of them were laughing uproariously.

For last Saturday's radio show, I decided to continue the methodology of the week before, and feature clips from the radio of various holiday seasons, this time focused on shows from New Year's Day and January the 2nd. As always, I hope listeners enjoy the show.



Oh, and Best Wishes to All.
Except the programmers of smart assed computer robo calls.
(Although I have to admit, the laughter thing was pretty funny.)

Once more, Dear Friends, unto the Holiday breech

Yet another attempt at this post (my third)  - Blogger is misbehaving. Word wrap vanished into the sub-electronic ether. Certain words seem to be acting as control codes. Typing after the end of a sentence seems to produce no result. If this continues, Blogger will get a few lumps of coal in its Christmas stocking.

And now (drum roll) the paragraphs it took half an hour to produce, thanks to the magic of cut and paste (cymbals clash):

Well.

It's 55 degrees Fahrenheit outside on the day before Christmas. This is not the usual December weather for Vermont. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Vera Ellen, and Danny Kaye singing, "snow, it won't be long before....". Fat chance. The lyric, by the way, is from the movie "White Christmas". Not this year.

The egg nog, which takes about five hours to make, is now at the stage where it is 'resting' for about three hours in the refrigidaire. (It's the olde Joie de Cuisiner recipe I favour, and contains a somewhat Bibo Vocatus component.) (I am tempted to add a polite "heh, heh", but considering the season, that appellation should really be a "ho, ho, ho", which won't be quite accurate until I've had a few cups of
ye old recipe.)

Hooray, the blogger problem seems to be over. Perhaps there was a site update underway when I started writing. I just popped in to post last Saturday's radio show:

 

Holiday music is an interesting phenomenon. For the first thousand or so years, all the big songwriters did what anyone trying to make a living would do - they went where the money was. Which means that they wrote for the Church. My interest is in the American Pop Song form, which came along much later. While there were a couple of tunes making the rounds in the 1930's, songs like "Jingle Bells", and "Winter Wonderland", Christmas pop didn't really hit the big time until December of 1941. Oh, Irving Berlin had given the idea a shot in the late 1930's with "Hello Mr. Kringle", which was recorded by Kay Kyser, but there wasn't a lot out there unless you wanted to hear Bing's 1935 'Adeste Fideles', with 'Silent Night' on the flip side. (By the way, the Silent Night used an Irish men's chorus and is really quite lovely. Bing recorded the song several times, starting in 1928 with Paul Whiteman. The 1935 release was held up for awhile, as Bing did not wish to profit from a spiritually aligned piece of music. It was released after the label agreed to donate the proceeds to a charity. )

 

In 1940, Irving Berlin sold an idea to Paramount Pictures. As part of the package, he would write all the music for a story about an Inn (with a floorshow, naturally) which would only be open on holidays. Paramount assigned the leads to Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Early in 1941, Berlin composed what would become the biggest selling single of all time. No one really recognized what they had at first, "Be Careful It's My Heart" was expected to be the big hit.

 

On December 7th, 1941, the United States was brought into the Second World War by the bombing of the US fleet at Pearl Harbor and Guam. That Christmas day, Bing introduced the song on the Kraft Music Hall radio program, which he hosted. 'Holiday Inn' was released in August of 1942. The almost mythical imagery of a New England winter struck a chord in a nation at war. By that October, "White Christmas" had become the most popular song on the charts, and it stayed there through January of 1943. It was so popular, Decca wore out the original masters and called all the parties back into the studio to recreate the recording five years later.

 

'Holiday Inn" would go on to inspire a chain of motels, and a remake released in 1954. That version, "White Christmas", was released in VistaVision and Technicolor. It almost didn't get made - after the death of his wife, Crosby withdrew to spend more time with his troubled sons. Fred Astaire was unhappy at Paramount and withdrew to go to MGM. When the project got back on track, Donald O'Connor was hired to replace Astaire, but illness intervened. Danny Kaye was brought in. When I worked in film distribution, one of the companies I worked for specialized in repertory and art product. They got the theatrical rights to Paramount Pictures (well, at least the ones that hadn't been sold to Universal). The rights to the "White Christmas" movie were another matter. From what I heard, Mr. Berlin, the Crosby  estate, and Mr. Kaye all had percentages, and all wanted One Million Dollars each. Upfront. And that cost would be on top of dealing with VistaVision, an early widescreen process which had a distortion free image by exposing a larger area of 35mm film and running it horizontally through projectors; i.e. equipment that no longer existed. Somehow it all got done. Truth be told, it's not a particularly good movie, but audiences love it. With a limited amount of time for a release window, it was the company's biggest grosser until they put the classic Warner Brothers cartoons back on screen.

 

At any rate, I digress. After 1942, pop Christmas songs began to fill the charts. Until recently it seemed like every performer who ever existed had to release a Christmas album. There are country Christmases, Hip Hop Christmases, Bebop, Jazz, Lounge, Accordion Christmases, drunks performing Christmas songs, and etc. - the variety is quite incredible and possibly worth some work as a study in mores and marketing.

 

My Holiday shows are comprised of (mostly) non-threatening secular pop songs which are gluten free as an added bonus.

 

 

 

As always, I hope any listeners enjoy the show.

With Bestest Wishes for an extravagantly Merrie Christmas

and a Most Excellent New Year

  

p.s. Dear Santa, if you take requests, please put some coal into the stockings of the folks responsible for spell check programs. They can be quite wonderful, but sometimes.....

Red Cup mania

Rembrandt tulips
 

Back when I ran bookstores for a living, there was a very successful paperback reprint of Charles Mackay's 1841 opus, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds". One of the chapters examined the tulip mania of the 1640's. Basically, a plant virus struck the Netherlands and caused breaks in the colors of tulips. The desire to possess the affected bulbs built into a frenzy. Fortunes were quickly amassed, and spent, investing in their acquisition. Prices for just one bulb reached to such heights that a well off merchant's lifetime earnings could not afford the purchase of one single bulb. Although the term would not come into use for a number of years, the "economic bubble" burst, destroying both fortunes and lives. The descendants of these tulips still exist: they are usually sold under the name "Rembrandt".



Just one portion of the Solar Hill gardens last June. The entire space,
including my garden, would comprise about eight squares of this size,
including all of the area around the tree center left.

When I last posted, I had just finished planting the tulips. I'm in the process of shutting the gardens down for the winter.  It is a large task (I've also been tending Solar Hill's gardens.) As plants go into their dormancy,  it's a good time for many of them to be transplanted. Several peonies, asters, a daylily, etc. were either being overgrown by their neighbors, or were getting less sunlight due to tree growth, etc. For good garden culture, plants should be cut back, leaves cut off and disposed of to prevent overwintering of diseases, and so on and so forth. I've accomplished most of it, but am still in the final stages of getting it all done.

Generally, I've been in the garden four to five days a week recently. Today was going to be a long garden day, as there weren't a lot of other things which couldn't be put off - I want to finish putting the garden to bed this week. Now, last night there was a meeting of our all volunteer community radio station's Board. This was our first meeting after our annual bash, so yearly Board elections had to be held. I've been returned to the position of Board President/Station Manager. This morning, about 7am or so, I sat down to fire off a few emails based on discussions from last night. Then the phone rang with a DJ's questions. The man calling is learning disabled, and calls several times a week, often asking the same question he asked the day before. He hasn't finished his training, but wants to fill in time slots which other DJs have posted that they won't be able to make. He has a case of radio fever, which often affects new DJs. I've repeatedly told him he has to finish his training, and must have the person who helps him present when he does a show. But he still calls and tries to get me to say something different. There is a DJ doing her last show today, so there needed to be posts to the station's email list, the station's Facebook page, etc. The upshot is that I finally stopped working on station business at 3pm. (By the way, an 8 year old, who has been doing a show with her mother since she was old enough to talk, just did her first 'by herself' show at 2pm. She put many of our adult DJs to shame. There were almost no children's songs that would have been heard on the show she does with her mother. Nope, this kid is into Spearhead, and jam bands.)
The station is another sort of garden.

I did spend about a half an hour of personal time on Facebook, checking responses to posts for my radio show, what a few of my friends and family were up to, etc. There were several Facebook sessions, sending messages to people about station business and etc. It was therefore impossible to escape the issue/outrage of the moment: the Red Cup. It would seem that all of Facebookland is obsessed with the red cup. Folks are posting impassioned diatribes about the issue. Memes, images with a slogan which are easy to repost allowing the poster to avoid having to think through what one might say, are spreading like soft butter on a hot skillet. There is a veritable red cup mania.

What happened is this: some church (or church official) that no one ever heard of called for a boycott of the Starbucks coffee chain. The problem started when Starbucks began using their holiday themed coffee cup. It is red, with a Starbucks logo in green and white. The church was offended, nay, outraged, that there was no "Merry Christmas!" scrawled across the cup. No "Season's Greetings" (which would have caused more of a "War on Christmas" fervor). No pictures of Santa Claus, the Christ child in the manger, nothing. Why, it is another example of the persecution of Christians! This little bit of idiocy has become a target for everyone who wants to outdo their friends by posting an ever more incisive meme (which I still unintentionally read as 'me me') in a frenzy of self righteousness equaled only by the original call for the boycott.

Warning: this being the year 2015, and social media being what it is, one of the examples of the red cup memes contains expressions of common vulgarity.

" ...whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first."
                                                                       - Charles Mackay, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"

Of course, my own cynicism leads me to wonder if the church and its representative actually exist. The large coffee corporation could have hired someone to start all of this just to get themselves a lot of free publicity.
                                                        
Another object of mass intoxication is the once wonderful holiday of Halloween, which has been built into a merchandising bonanza. The madness now begins in August when "pumpkin spice" English muffins hit the shelves of the supermarkets. Of course, there are no pumpkin spice muffins to be had anywhere near Halloween itself. This past September, in a Halloween products commercial I saw on television, the Halloween goods were displayed in front of a group of fir trees, which were decorated with colored lights. Holiday creep is upon us. At any rate, I never got my radio show of October 31st, Halloween,  posted - so here's that show, mostly big band Halloween songs. I know it seems odd to be posting it over a week late, but I'd like all my shows to be here for friends and family from away who might have some crazy interest in just what I've been up to these last few years.



Well, I thought I might go on about nothing in particular (there a whole 'nother mess o' memes being posted about a Republican Presidential candidate who has been playing fast and loose with the truth, and expressing somewhat surprising opinions such as his belief that the pyramids were built by the Jewish patriarch Joseph to store grain. He is the current Republican frontrunner in the reality show contest for the Presidency of the United States. Instead of continuing in this vein (by the way, I swear I'm not making this stuff up), I think I'll go sample the pumpkin bread I baked while composing this missive.

Herewith, my radio show from this past Saturday, November the 7th, in which we listen to excerpts from the radio, as well as a few of the songs on the jukebox, around early November, 1944. The featured broadcast at the end of the show is one of the Eddie Condon Jazz Concerts, with guest stars Lee Wiley and Red McKenzie.



As always, I hope any listeners enjoy the show(s).

Swimming uphill in a sea of angst

Oh, good God(dess) (of your choice)(not that you have to make a choice or have a God or Goddess), I have been remiss in posting again. I never got last week's radio show posted here, and now I'm going to have to have a twofer again.

There is a rational explanation.

Well, perhaps 'rational' isn't quite  the best choice of words. Was it rational to upgrade my computer during Mercury Retrograde? To Windows 10?

While I often have a little but of fun with the idea and concept of blaming electronic communication oriented debacles on this particular planetary singalong, experience does seem to bolster the validity of the concept.

And this week has taught me that Experience may not be the best teacher. When I clicked on the "update" button to replace Windows 7 with Windows 10, did I consult my mental diary of upgrade experiences? Nooooooooooo. Of course not. Instead, I bought into the "all your programs and settings will be there" assertion of obfuscating advertising-copy novelists. That claim had about as much validity and relationship to the concept of truth as a Republican Presidential candidate approaching primary season. (Sorry - I suppose that last bit is from a deep-seated need to vent a buildup of spleen. The state in which I reside is geographically located next to the sate of New Hampshire, which is often in a state about something or other, and has the 'first in the nation' primary. The general area is currently lousy with Republican candidates pushing a worldview which has little resemblance to the world as it exists. Lest anyone think I exaggerate, please remember that there is ample record proving that many of the Republican candidates either deny, or shillyshally around, the basic truths of evolution, and global warming. I don't know why I find this so undefensively reprehensible; after all, these folks have yet to accept that Regan era  "trickle down" economics didn't work to lift the masses into financial nirvana, and aren't going to do so. (Speaking as the possessor of an XY chromosome set, I would share my knowledge of 'trickle down', but I don't wish to be vulgar.) As the New Hampshire primary is in February, and as the tv stations hereabouts (from Vermont and Massachusetts) cover New Hampshire, the profusion of political advertising makes it unsafe for those who value either their sanity, or an even temperament (or both), to turn the damn thing on. It's akin to advertisements for Christmas goods blaring at one in June.

But I digress. And I shall do so for another minute - I saw not just Christmas advertising, but Christmas themed tv movies on cable channels at the end of May. People have been joking for a few years now about the mixing of Halloween and Christmas items at the stores. A few weeks ago, I saw an advertisement for Halloween costumes or candy or something. The backdrop against which the live action was displayed was of evergreen trees with lights in them. There is no escape.

The writing of this entry in the blog has been interrupted several times. I had an unexpected ride to my garden (normally a 40- 45 minute walk) where I worked on the sad task of shutting some of it down for the season. I also got to enjoy the new addition to the garden this year - the Chinese Asters. I'd never grown them before, and thought they would be a little taller. The seed was only available as mixed colors, which I usually don't like. But these are just wonderful. I don't know if they will seed in, but I will definitely be putting these end of season bloomers in the garden again next year.

I haven't yet started in on Windows 10. For now, I am going to assume that Microsoft is in league with the bureaucrats who designed the current Medicare system.  It's either that, or they are in league with Satan. I've run out of time to try to expound upon their attempt to drive me insane.

So, here's the radio show from two Saturdays ago which, after a slight nod to the (then upcoming) change of seasons visited September 1938 as the Latchis Memorial Theatre was about to have its grand opening, which was thwarted by the Hurricane of 1938. I don't have the time now to post any of the newspaper articles or pictures - there are a several over three posts on the radio show's Facebook page. Use this link to check those out - you'll be able to click through each post,  but you won't be able to "like", or comment, etc.
 https://www.facebook.com/Recycled-Radio-621059471269529/timeline/
The show's finale is a half hour "Camel Caravan" with Benny Goodman originally broadcast September 20th, 1938.



Last night's show (September 26th) fell on George Gershwin's birthday. It seemed fitting that the show be devoted to his music.



As always, I hope anyone who is kind enough to listen to my little efforts enjoys the shows.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Once more I find I'm not sure how to begin.

I look at the words I've typed and found them wanting.
Nothing seems quite right.

When I was a child, I was given swimming lessons at a not quite local pool. I have a vague memory that this was through the auspices of the Cub Scouts. I do remember that it was a bit of a drive. There were diving lessons, and I liked jumping on the diving board, savoring the spring of my body as it arced into the air while I aimed myself at the water which always smelled of too much chlorine. The instructor then sent me up the ladder of the high diving board. As I walked out to the edge to prepare for the dive, I was consumed by fear. Well, actually, it was more like absolute terror. I could not bring myself to do it. I may have climbed back down in ignominious defeat. The fact is, I don't remember. I do remember that finally there was nothing to do but to jump, which I think I did rolling myself into a cannon ball shape. Writing has become like that; I stop, look, and  while I don't exactly experience fear or terror, there is this hesitancy, this unsatisfied pause until the only thing to do is to dive in, whether it be graceful of form, or rolled into a ball which will splash anyone nearby.



The Brook House (reopened this year after years of darkness due to fire)
at the main corner of downtown, and the little park where the Dunkin'
Donuts parking lot used to be  - lit up for the Holiday Season 2014.

It is the day before Christmas, 2014. This is my 20th Christmas in Brattleboro. I have lived here longer than I lived in any other town or city. There is something about the Christmas - New Year axis, perhaps due to the cultural indoctrination of media seeking something to write about, that sends me wandering through the twisted paths of memory until I pause in summing up reflection and move on, ready to dive in elsewhere. (I pause again - reading "the Christmas - New Year axis" conjures a sense of evil and forbidding that was unintended, but perhaps a bit accurate.) These last few years, one thing has stood out to me each Christmas season - the lights are disappearing.

When I was a kid, we always put up outdoor Christmas lights. Ours were always a tasteful affair, simple strands entwined with laurel around the windows, on the square arch of the porch, and spiraled around the lamppost. The windows had electric candles (each window a set of three) with orange bulbs. My father insisted on order, so the lights had a simple color pattern that was repeated - there was no willy-nilly blend of color, no bulbs of the same color together. Our neighbors' lights were a glorious mess. I adored them all. I loved the trips around town, shopping errands, visits to relatives' homes, any chance to drink in all the color warming the cold dark night.

A few years ago a tree started appearing in the old bandstand on
the Brattleboro town Common. This was taken a couple of days ago.

In those days, most towns had strands of lights which ran across Main Street. Stores were decorated inside as well as outside. Memory suddenly finds myself shopping at the 'Gilded Age' B. Altman's store in New York City, a gift purchase from an upper floor secured under my arm, riding old wooden escalators down toward the entrance. The main floor suddenly pops into view, several stories of open space beneath me. It is decorated with Christmas trees, colored lights everywhere, red ribbons tied into giant red bows draped across gleaming polished brown wood. It was startlingly, joyously beautiful.

When I moved to Brattleboro, the stores still decorated for Christmas. There were strands of old colored lights running across the Main Street business area. The lights were considered shabby and in need of replacement. Much money was raised, many thousands of dollars were spent on new lights entwined with sparkly garlands. The company which made them was hired to put them up, maintain them, take them down, and store them until the next season. When the next season arrived it was discovered that the concern had gone out of business; the lights had disappeared.

The former parking lot of the Dunkin' Donuts as it appeared many years ago
 after a hefty pre-Christmas snowfall - long before the little park was created.
The mural style painting behind it is a view of Brattleboro
as it appeared from a local hill in
the early 1800's.

A downtown business association purchased bunches of those little white lights that were popular for about 5 minutes in the late 1990's. They were strewn throughout the branches of trees. It looked like we were attempting to be a ski resort. A park was created at the town's center in what had been a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot. A tree was put in the center of the space, and decorated with those little colored lights. It wasn't long before the tree lights were all white too. The last few years, after the terrible fire at the Brooks House, only the lights in the little park went up. This year the lights came back to the downtown trees, but wrapped around the trunks instead of being spread through the branches.

Around 2007, the start of the recession,  Holiday lights on people's homes began to vanish. Every year there seem to be fewer decorated homes. I haven't had a car for a few years now. Last night I joined with a couple of friends as we went driving around to see the lights. There weren't many. The owner of the car used to live in Keene, New Hampshire - a half hour away. As it is a much larger, more prosperous college town, we drove over to see the lights there. Again, there were very few.

One of the few houses with lights this year in Brattleboro
- and on one of our less reputable streets at that.

One of the things I discovered my first Christmas in town 20 years ago was that there was a tradition of putting a giant star on the top of Mt. Wantastiquet, which is on the New Hampshire side of the river.

 

After a visit here in 1856, Thoreau wrote of his sense of it looming over Brattleboro.

 

The star was a merit badge project of a local boy scout. The Scouts adopted it, and saw to its maintenance. The past couple of years, trees had grown up around it and the light from it had grown dim. This year there is no star on the mountain.

Memory plays its hand and a quote floats out of the past from the eve of World War One. To paraphrase British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, 1st Viscount of Fallodon,  "The lights are going out all across the country. We will not see them lit again in our lifetime."

All of this is, I suppose, a little odd considering how some people go insanely overboard with Christmas lights; there are television programs showcasing the most vulgar displays. In a way, that's what Christmas has become - that crazy house with all the lights, loud music, an overbearing show. You wouldn't want to live next door to it, but it sure is fun to drive by now and again.

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At the beginning of December, I was asked to return to the Board of our Community Radio Station and to reassume its Presidency. Since then I have been so busy, I haven't even gotten the last two weeks of my radio show posted here. This is spite of having decided to push ahead with keeping more than three weeks of my shows available. As I have no more time to devote to this entry, here without all the charming and wonderful newspaper articles is the show from December 13th, (the Frank Sinatra's birthday edition):



.. and my Christmas show from last week...



The show after mine last week ( December 20th) didn't make it in. There I was with all that Holiday music with me... so I stayed and played such classics as "Boogaloo around the Aluminum Christmas Tree", and "I Saw Hanukah Harry Beat Up Santa Claus".



I hope anyone kind enough to listen to these shows will enjoy them.

Merry Christmas everyone.
            
   
   

Sargent Santa

To paraphrase one of the characters in the Charlie Brown comic strip, "Oh, Good Grief". I never got last Saturday's radio show posted. At present, I can only keep the recordings of my show active in the service I'm using to stream them (here and on Facebook) for three weeks. Hopefully I'll have something better soon. My apologies.

This was a show that kept me on my toes. In order to produce one of these, I use records, CDs, and MP3s played on the station's iMac. (I used to tape record my 78's and play those too.) I also edit sequences out of old radio shows, and burn most of them to disc. For this show, the last 50 minutes were going to be played on the station's computer, and were in a file folder that turned out not to have copied properly to my flash drive. Luckily, I remembered how to get to an online library for radio show collectors, so I was able to deliver the 'featured' program (promoted on Facebook) of the Kraft Music Hall originally broadcast on December the 2nd, 1943. Hosted by Bing Crosby, the episode's guest was Ed Gardner from the "Duffy's Tavern" program.



The characters of 'Duffy's Tavern' (l to r) Miss Duffy, Eddie the Waiter, Clifford Finnegan, and Archie the manager.

The opening of Duffy's became one of those oft repeated phrases from what we now call "pop culture". (A tack piano begins to play "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling", a phone rings) "Duffy's Tavern, where the elite meet to eat. Duffy ain't here. Archie the manager speaking. Oh, hello Duffy..." Gardner played Archie, and co-created and co-wrote the show with Abe Burrows. Duffy's was a bit of a dive bar on an unfashionable stretch of the East Side of Manhattan. There were regular characters like the man crazy Miss Duffy (originally played by Gardner's wife, Shirley Booth), and a dimwitted barstool jockey named Clifford Finnegan. Abe Burrow's son James would later co-create a tv show about a bar in Boston where "everybody knows your name", which had regular characters including a man crazy waitress and a barstool jockey named Cliff.

As November gave way to December that year, a story appeared in the news that the "Big Three" were meeting. That meant Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States; Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain; and Premier Joseph Stalin of Russia were meeting, and there could only be one topic - they were planning the invasion of Nazi Europe. The United States had spent the two years which had passed since Pearl Harbor retooling its industries to produce tanks, planes, ships, and other devices of war. Millions of its men and women were either fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, bombing Germany, or waiting in England for the build up to finish and the invasion to begin.

Here in Brattleboro, for a few days in early December, Christmas advertising featured "Sargent Santa". There was a campaign to sell War Bonds. If you couldn't afford a bond, which would be repaid with interest in 10 years, you could buy War Stamps. Save enough Stamps and they became a Bond. Brattleboro's three movie theatres (they only had one screen each in those days) provided entertainment to weary patrons....

I hope anyone kind enough to listen enjoys the show, as well as the panic in my voice (accompanied by a sense of impending doom).
     

Thanks or Franks?

November the 26th, 1940 was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The war in Europe had intensified with the near destruction bombing of Coventry, England by the Nazis a week before. Here in Brattleboro, folks were getting ready for the holiday - well, the one as celebrated in Vermont, anyway. See, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had declared Thanksgiving be held a week early on the 3rd Thursday of the month. The idea originated with merchants who were hoping the extra shopping days would be a boon to their businesses at a time when the country was finally emerging from the great depression. Republican Vermont decided that setting the holiday was the state's right, and declared it to be the traditional 4th Thursday of the month. As the kids might have said, it was Thanks, not Frank's.

At the very end of October 1940, a new venue opened in Los Angeles called the Palladium. On opening night, 10,000 people showed up to dance to Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, with vocalists Connie Haines, some new kid named Frank Sinatra, and the Pied Pipers. Dorsey and company were still there on November the 26th when the sustaining remote featured in this week's show was broadcast. (A 'sustaining remote' was unsponsored, and usually late at night. Of course, it didn't hurt that the show was broadcast on NBC whose parent company RCA also owned the record company which released Dorsey's recordings.)

That Tuesday night here in Brattleboro, it snowed (over 6 inches deep) which made it a little difficult for those going over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house for Thanksgiving dinner. The paper had contained a couple of suggestions for those dealing with the season... as well as ads for holiday shopping.

 

There were quite a few ads for Thanksgiving dinners out. The minimum wage set by President Roosevelt's two year old  Labor law was 30 cents an hour, with the average work week being close to 50 hours - although attempts were being made to restrict work hours to 40 per week at regular pay and an extra four hours at time and a half.



The Latchis was one of three movie theatres in Brattleboro, but that Tuesday it had the best movies in town. Well, the Auditorium did have - for one day only - The Grapes of Wrath on Tuesday. It usually showed westerns and serial chapters on the weekends. The other theatre, the Paramount, usually had the best pictures, but the Latchis had the good ones that week. (Including West Brattleboro, the 1940 census showed the population at almost 11,000. Today it is 12,000.
We're down to one movie house - the Lacthis, whose main auditorium is still intact; three newer, smaller auditoriums have been added in the old ballroom. the old crying room, and one of the attached storefronts.)

The auditorium of the Latchis Hotel and Theatre as it exists today.



 

 

With one of those Philco's you could have easily heard that broadcast with Tommy Dorsey, even though it was broadcast from New York City on WJZ - 770 kilohertz on the AM dial, the NBC Blue network. (NBC had two networks, the Blue and the Red. The government told NBC they could only have one - so the Blue was spun off into its own network - which became ABC.) You too can listen to that Tommy Dorsey broadcast by the way. It's included in this week's radio show. 

 

Until I get a permanent home for my radio shows, these programs are only available for three weeks at a time. More clippings from the local newspaper can be found Monday thru Friday on the show's Facebook page. You can see those posts (click on one of the photos in each post to page through and see everything) even without having a Facebook account by clicking this link: Recycled Radio's Facebook page. I hope anyone kind enough to listen enjoys the show.