Blue Moon...

Oh, my Goodness. Good Lord. Etc.
It's Thursday evening and I still haven't made last Saturday's radio show available here.

There are several things to write about, more garden pictures to post, and no time for any of it. It's been another week of constant motion when awake, but I've no idea what I may or may not have accomplished.

Tomorrow (Friday July 31st) will have the first Blue Moon in several years (using the newer "second full moon in a month" definition).

The radio show, therefore, played a bit of music for a Blue Moon.

The song "Blue Moon", by the way, was not an instant success. It was written for Jean Harlow to sing in a 1934 MGM musical spectacular, "Hollywood Party". At the time it was called "Prayer"; in it Ms. Harlow sought Divine intervention to become a movie star. It wasn't used. MGM later needed a song for an early sequence in "Manhattan Melodrama", the movie John Dillinger shouldn't have gone to see. Larry Hart wrote a new lyric, and "It's Just That Kind of Play" was submitted. It was not used. Then MGM asked for a song for another sequence later in the same film. Hart again went back to work, and this time "The Bad in Every Man" was filmed, sung by Shirley Ross who would later sing "Thanks for the Memory" with Bob Hope. It didn't catch on. BUT...Jack Robbins, the head of MGM's publishing division, liked the song. He wanted to publish it, but asked if a more romantic lyric could be provided. Hart wrote another lyric. It became one of the great classics of the American Song Book, and a jazz standard. (During the show, Blossom Dearie and Bobby Short sing a duet using two of the earlier version's lyrics.)

I hope everyone enjoys their Blue Moon.
And enjoys the show, of course.


     

It's July

It was 20 years ago this past May that I gave up my life in the cities and moved to Brattleboro, Vermont. I'm not one of those people who doesn't expect or want things to change. Change is necessary. Things evolve. The human species may be devolving, but that is another story, or another blog.  (By which I don't mean a different blog - the thing I mean is a different blog entry. Sorry for the clarification, but following the most recent style of usage is, to my mind, unclear.  But then so is much of life these days.) It should not, however, be assumed that I approve of some of the changes that have occurred over these last two decades. Not that my approval is required, or, for that matter desired.

As I garden, I am somewhat familiar with the changing patterns of the weather. As I've aged, I find that I now have difficulties with high heat and humidity. Twenty years ago,  June was paradise. July began to get warm; the last two weeks would have temperatures in the 90 degree Fahreneight category (and up) accompanied by high humidity.  Some sanity would be restored in August. These last few years, it gets hot by early May, humid by early June, and stays uncomfortable until late September. Plants flower at different times now. There always was a bit of variance, but every year the differences have expanded and grown.

 I now find it difficult to work in the garden in direct sunlight as it gets towards noon. I'm fine in cloudy weather - well, as long as the temperature isn't up into the 90's, or the humidity so bad that I wonder if our species will evolve gills. (Like the old days?) I don't think my reactions are entirely due to changes brought on by the aging process. No, it's hotter in the sun. The more delicate flowers don't last as long as they once did. The intensity of the sun has increased. This morning, taking a photo or two of the garden resulted in becoming immediately drenched in perspiration to such extent that even items in my pockets were soaked through. If there were still handkerchiefs, I'd have had to wring mine out before using it to wipe my brow. And that was a little after 8am with a temperature in the upper 70's and with a cloud cover.

The thing of it is, even if the climate wasn't changing, mid to late July would be an uncomfortable
mess. There is something in this weather that is mean. Everyone gets cranky. And one can't blame them. And then there are those of us who don't have air-conditioning... so, during last night's radio program, I found that the tuner on the old Philco was acting up. Maybe it's a tube. Maybe it's the humidity. What can I say? It's July. 

Getting around to it...

Oh Good Lord... here it is Thursday and I haven't gotten around to posting last Saturday night's radio show (with or without the usual weekly wordy ramble accompanied by visual materials). The memory does vaguely recall that there were two days in a row in which the weather politely suggested I stay out of the garden. Those days were so filled with awe and wonder that I have little awareness of what I did during them. It was reasonably peaceful - which means that the new neighbor, a nearly feral young man caught in the web of social services, wasn't banging himself or his supposed friends against the shared wall while screaming obscenities mixed with occasional threats of violence. I do catch myself day dreaming about acquiring my own home, with my garden just outside of my door - all located far enough outside of town that I won't have to deal too often with other people. I'm certainly not misanthropic, I just don't want to be bothered. I dare say a couple weeks of listening to little but crickets - and the ever present echoing whoosh of automobiles - will propel me back towards the unwelcoming arms of humanity after, oh, say, a decade or so.

The spring garden, with its visual perfume of peonies, iris, and the first blush of roses, has faded into memory. The flow of words and the mental image of the garden are ripped from my being by a telephone call - after moments of silence and static a young man with an  Indo-Pakistani accent explains to me that he is calling from "Windows Technical Department". As this is the 5th such call I have picked up this week, I responded in a manner that was not entirely kind, and did not reflect any of the generosity of spirit to which I aspire. I glumly reflect that I should be thankful it wasn't another of the calls for a local Social Services Agency. My telephone number was previously held by an agency which contracts with the state to provide various services. They've been under fire for a $650,000.00 retirement payout last year to a previous executive, which was topped by the recent revelation of an attempt to hide a $1.8 Million Dollar loss operating group homes in another state. Somehow, for their information summary, Google picked a phone number which had been assigned to a social worker who left the concern a few years ago. I've had the number for close to three years now.  Not long ago, I found out whose number it had been; amusingly enough, the gentleman in question sought out a show on the community radio station as an adjunct to the new position he took working with young fathers. I trained him. And his replacement. I believe the position has vanished due to budget cuts. I've complained many times about the problem, but no one seemed to know how to get Google to change their display. This has been the first week in months without calls for the agency. I looked them up using Google. Their number has finally been corrected. One down, and fourthousandthreehundredtwentysix to go.

Where was I? Oh, yes, I was about to devote a few words to the garden. As I've wasted this much time, I'll just post a few pictures instead.

The summer version od the garden begins to take shape.

The trail to the 'back 40' shade portion of the garden.

A visitor to one of the daylilies.

This was a scrimp and save addition last year. There's a post here somewhere about a trip to the daylily garden.

May was very dry and hot, requiring constant watering. June has been very wet and hot. A couple of rainstorms played havoc with the peas. On Sunday, I was able to harvest a handful - enough to put in that night's dinner. On Wednesday there were so may snow peas and sugar snaps that the large paper bag I brought was over 1/3 full when I finished picking.

Saturday's radio show was again "off format", continuing the "summer series" of shows. This edition selected its playlist from records and broadcasts of the week's birthday celebrants, Billy Eckstine, Della Reese, Louis Jordan, Jimmy McHugh, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Dorothy Fields. Someone at the station changed a few settings on our equipment, which resulted in the show's recording being a tad over modulated. Luckily it's not too bad and is listenable. As always, I hope any listeners enjoy the show.

Plymouth Notch and the 4th of July

Plymouth Notch was/is a tiny village a hour or so north of where I live in Vermont, It was/is one of the villages that make up the town of Plymouth. Once the center of a number of farms, the village had a General Store (which was also the Post Office), a church, a schoolhouse, and a cheese factory among its few buildings. John Coolidge used to own the General Store. His son Calvin was born (in the small cottage attached to the store) on the Fourth of July. After John Coolidge's wife passed, he married the local schoolmarm, and ran the cheese factory. Calvin became a layer, Governor of Massachusetts, and Vice-President of the United States. He was visiting his father at the start of August 1923 when then President Harding suddenly expired. As there was no telephone in Plymouth Notch, messengers had to be sent to tell the Vice President the news. It was early in the morning; John Coolidge had to wake his son, who dressed, said a prayer, and went downstairs where people were waiting. As the father was both a Justice of the Peace and a Notary, he was pressed into service to perform the ceremony swearing his son into office as the 30th President of the United States. After sending a telegram of condolence to Mrs. Harding, the President went back to bed. John Coolidge passed away a couple of years later. His housekeeper refused to change anything in the house. It, and the village, eventually became a historic site. It's all still there.


Plymouth Notch, VT

The General Store was bring repainted and was the scene of some confusion with a number of tourists milling around waiting for a tour to begin.  I never got a chance to take its picture.
As I don't have the time to dig out one of my old pictures of the place and scan it,
here's a friend's photo in front of the Store  - that's his 1948 Dodge in the center.  (Nice, huh?)

Upstairs, over the store, is the old meeting hall, site of dances and etc.
During the President's visit in 1924, it was the Summer White House.

At the back of the General Store is the building in which the Coolidge family lived when Calvin was born.

Next to the General Store is the village church.

The interior is all wood, milled locally. The flag denotes the Coolidge family pew.

 

Across the street from the church is the house John Coolidge purchased after he remarried.
The building just up the street is the cheese factory. (The one room schoolhouse is next to it.)



Inside the Coolidge home, the workroom contained a ball of string.
My family had one in the kitchen when I was young.

Aside from facilities in the attached barn, just inside the house was a small 'two seater'.
The reading material, emergency paper supply, are seed catalogues.
Sorry about the quality of the photo - everything is glassed in for preservation.

The dining room - everything is original and as it was.
The second Mrs. Coolidge (the President's Step-Mother) passed on the fainting couch by the windows.

A detail of the sitting room. On the table is the bible used to swear in the President.
Being a Progressive Republican Vermonter, Mr. Coolidge refused to swear on oath on the bible
and simply held his hand over it.

The village's two old barns (one rebuilt and added since I had last visited over 15 years ago) contain farm tools, carriages and the like - donated by local farmers. Everything there was used in the general vicinity.

Calvin Coolidge is, to this day, the only President of the United States born on the Fourth of July - the date on which the Colonies declared their Independence from Great Britain. My third visit to the site (over 20 years time) was this past Thursday. The first time I was there, it took me a good 20 minutes to figure out why things felt different walking through the village. Then I suddenly realized that there were no utility poles to be seen. There have been changes since my last visit, which include electric lights illuminating exhibits in the barns, a videotape in the Summer White House, etc. It's a shame in a way, as visiting used to be such a step back in time.

My radio show this week took note of some of the other people born on the Fourth of July - lyricist Irving Caesar, songwriter Stephen Foster, songwriter/bandleader John Phillip Sousa, and Louis Armstrong. (Throughout his life, Armstrong thought he was born on the Fourth of July. Later research turned up his baptismal certificate which showed his birthdate as August 4th.) The show also notes George M. Cohan, who was born on July 3rd. As always, I hope any listeners enjoy the show.

Curiouser and curiouser

It's been another one of 'those weeks'. You know, the weeks where you are constantly busy but seem to get nothing done. Well. that's not quite true. I did get the laundry done. The second washer full did stop part way through the cycle... I'd had this vision when I started that particular load of opening the lid and seeing my clothes floating in water. I would hope the universe didn't assume that I was attempting some sort of visualization or affirmation which it decided to honor. Couldn't it let my vision of winning the lottery come true instead? And there aren't any dishes piled up in the sink. It's not like I've been cooking up a storm, but just the same, I have attained the status of near elderly bachelorhood and leaving a few dishes in the sink is no longer a sin against man and nature. It's been another rainy week, so once again many garden chores have simply been left undone. The flower garden is in that awkward but somehow amusing adolescent stage after the flush of triumphant springtime youth, pausing for awhile to grow and be difficult before once again rewarding the senses and spirit as it prepares to come into its summer young adult own. We won't discuss the vegetable garden. There was that dream I had this morning - a slender middle aged man in flapper drag, all 1920's jazz baby sequins, wearing one of those hats that resembles a bathing cap (with dangling strands of rhinestones) sat at a piano in some existential café and began to perform. His voice had a feminine quality, one redolent of a proper amount of booze and 4am smoky huskiness. Something distracted my attention for a second,. When I looked back, his head was floating a few feet away from his body. I can not recall the song which he was singing, but the sequined tassels of his cap swayed in time to the rhythm.

Last Saturday's radio show celebrated the birthday of one of the great "characters" of the music business. Harry Raab grew up in Harlem during the time it was transitioning from being primarily Jewish to an area hospitable to African Americans. He came from a musical family - to bring in extra money, they repaired player pianos in the basement of their building. By the age of 13, Harry was playing ragtime in the local speakeasies. After the repeal of prohibition, Harry's expertise on the 88's got him admission to the jazz clubs which replaced the speaks. As he left his teenage years, he became enamored with the piano barrelhouse-stride style of Fats Waller. Soon there began to be rumors of a white kid who could play Waller's songs without missing any of the notes. One night, Waller stopped by to hear him, sat by the piano and asked for a couple of Waller songs putting $5.00 in the kitty for each one Harry played. In an era when the new minimum wage was twenty-five cents an hour, it was more money than Harry had ever earned. By the end of the evening, Waller had introduced himself and hired Harry to be his intermission pianist. One night, someone told Harry that he didn't have an appropriate name for a performer. He changed his last name to Gibson, which he took from a gin bottle. During the day. Harry was a fellow at Julliard. By night, he played boogie-woogie in the jazz joints on 52nd Street. Harry had grown up speaking the jive of black musicians; he became convinced that "hep" had become common and was being used by the squares. He began using "hip" instead. He'd start a set by urging, "All you hip cats gather 'round now....". Soon the musicians began calling him Harry the Hipster. He not only adopted the name, he wrote a song using it. His act was outrageous and over the top - he even started playing a chord or two with a foot. One night he accidentally knocked the piano into a roll toward the audience. The club owner went right out and found a beat up piano Harry could use to keep it in the act. His songs weren't the stuff of sentimental war time balladry, but Harry caught on. He eventually pushed the envelope too far. "Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine", along with a bust in Florida with Billie Holiday (he was her accompanist for several years), followed by an almost bust with Charlie Parker outside a club in Los Angeles got him blackballed from recordings and radio. He spent most of the next 20 years driving a cab, reemerging in the late 1970's when the Dr. Demento radio show discovered Mrs. Murphy and her ovaltine and someone tracked him down.



Last Saturday's show also played a few for other birthdays of that weekend - songwriter Doc Pomus, early yodeling country-western star Elton Britt, composer and arranger Jimmy Mundy, and composer Richard Rodgers. Sorry this took me so long to post. As always, I hope anyone who listens enjoys the show.

Summer is a Comin' In

Today is a day of Solstice. (Well, it was when this was written - I was almost done when the power went out for an hour. It took until the next morning to get back to finish this up.) Summer arrives early this afternoon (yesterday). It has been raining most of the night and most of the morning. Rains during the week pummeled the garden once again, all but ending the peony season. Of course, if it lasted for several months, peony season would still be too short.

Peonies in the garden...

Peonies from the garden in a vase at home...

One of my old roses, Koenig von Danemark has had a hard time of it during the last many years. It hasn't been happy since it was moved more than ten years ago. (My original garden at Solar Hill became part of an expanded playground for the experimental Neighborhood School House, whose young students are a delight. I picked the page for the link above solely because it has a picture of a friend's daughter, Zawadi.) After giving the rose much attention over two garden seasons, this year it finally began growing and blooming again. One of the week's rainstorms destroyed this year's (heavily fragrant) blossoms; I don't think it is yet back to a size for repeat blossoming. It's show is mainly in June. I think I may chance moving it again for next year's garden. Of course, it will likely take a couple more years after that to prove whether or not the move was worth it. I have a spot in mind, near a couple of other old roses which were new this year. That will mean moving the blue globe thistle again, but I've been disappointed in the variety since I got it. It's taller than one I used to have and quite liked. The blooms on it were only so-so last year. Depending on what it does this year, it may be looking for a home.  I moved it in front of a very tall goats-beard thinking they would look great together. It responded by growing taller still, and blooming later.


The spring's flowers along this path are fading - but that burst of pink on the lower right is the rose I'm talking about, :

 

This is just a reference shot for myself, but see that big mass of white in the back? That's the goats-beard.
In case anyone is wondering, the path in the photo above is just out of camera range on the right.

As the Spring garden fades, the Summer version begins. One of the daylilies has started blooming. The foxglove is shooting up  to begin its' display. The cemetery rose (taken form a friend's family cemetery which goes back to the mid 1700's or so) has begun perfuming the air around it. I don't have much in the way of photos to choose from for this post - between the rains, the cleanup, and a good part of one day dealing with a hugely engorged tick which found its nirvana on my back....

 



One of the cemetery roses found a forgotten foxglove at one edge of the garden.
The cemetery rose (below) left behind in the old part of my garden has spread and seems quite happy too.

 

Blogger is giving me much trouble at the moment, so I'm going to wrap this up and go to the garden..

This week's radio show observed Father's Day and the arrival of Summer, before paying a visit to June the 23rd, 1942 to listen in that night's Glenn Miller Moonlight Serenade. I hope anyone who listens enjoys the show!

Time of the year....

Thanks to another rainy day I've managed to get several things done, including the shopping. I've been catching up on the laundry all afternoon. The building in which I live has one washer and one dryer. There isn't a Laundromat within walking distance. Every time I've tried to do the laundry over the last several days, the machines have been in use; that includes Sunday evening when there was a pile in front of the washer, plus a hamper, in waiting. The washer quits mid-cycle every now and then, leaving clothes in a inch or two of water in it's tub. The dryer requires guess work - will it stop working after a half an hour, an hour, or will it go for two hours or longer? I do like adventures, but I must admit that there are some things in life which are easier to deal with when they are predictable.

The rainy days are badly needed, but they have played havoc with the garden. Over the last few years, the changes in the weather have taken a toll. The peonies bloom weeks earlier than they used to, and lose their blossoms so quickly now due to increased and unseasonal heat, pounding by rainstorms, or the steam effect one two punch of both in combination. The garden can be overwhelmingly beautiful one day, only to find the next day filled with the sad task of removing too many spent blooms. But as I work, the air is perfumed with peonies, the old Iris that smells like grapes, and the old roses.

Saturday's radio show (June 13th) played a few for the month of June, played a lot for the birthday of Cole Porter (June 9th), and paid a brief visit to June 13th, 1940 to tune in that night's Glenn Miller Moonlight Serenade, 75 years ago to the night.

As always, I hope any listeners enjoy the show.