Month: January 2022

If you live in a big city then chances are the rich and famous hang out there too. Some may be passing through, some may live there.

As you all know I spent the first 44 years of my life in New York City – can’t imagine any place with more rich and famous people of all stripes – and it was a point of pride amongst us natives that we never hassled those folks. Hey, they’re just neighbors. You could shout out a ‘Hey, how ya doin’?’ even a ‘Love the new movie/play/song/book ‘ but then you just kept walking.

Hanging around the stage door waiting for a sighting and an autograph – that was ok because that was expected. Before the days of smartphones there were indeed folks who brought their cameras so old time selfies were not unknown. BUT – there was a time and place for autographs and photos and a restaurant or the dry cleaner wasn’t  it. Making a fuss was never a cool thing to do.

Celebrity sightings were common as dirt and most hardly registered unless you were a super fan. Only once did I do the super fan screech.

A friend and I had been bopping around one night and between stops the need for a bathroom became urgent. So we popped into the Waldorf Astoria to use the bathrooms there. As we were walking through the lobby who comes floating through – coming right towards me? Peggy Lee! I stopped in my tracks, did the whole “OMG – It’s Peggy Lee. I love you! Her two bodyguards shifted her out of my path and as she passed she nodded and gave me that wonderful half smile of hers. I think I peed right there in the lobby.

But other than that…it was all just ho-hum.  I gotta tell ya tho – people who you have only seen on tv? In person they are WAY taller.  I know you are laughing but – you see someone on tv and people all look basically the same size and you probably don’t think about how tall (or short) they really are. The you see them in real life and it’s “OMG – he’s tall!” And Alan Alda’s eyes really are that squinty and I don’t know how they hell he sees out of them.

A lot of names I could drop would be meaningless to most of you because I am old and you are not. And most of them are dead now anyway.

Jackie Gleason? When I say I bumped into him, I mean that literally. I was mad dashing down 5th Avenue, late to the office after lunch and BOOM I hit a human brick wall, went down on my ass, my glasses when flying….as the human wall that I bumped into was picking me up, handing me my glasses and I was apologizing – I hear “That’s all right, girlie, you ok?” “Oh, Mr. Gleason, I’m sorry” – He just laughed and walked on. I got back to the office and did the whole “You’ll never guess who I bumped into…”

Oh yes, we were all very happy to lose the cool amongst ourselves – but never in public. We were way too cool for that.

It’s one thing to have a weird dream one night but to continue that same weird dream the NEXT night – a little disconcerting. Since you didn’t ask, I’ll tell you about it –

I’m sitting at the head of a long wooden table, I don’t know why that is important but it is, to my right sits a person I don’t know in reality but I can still see them so clearly that I would recognize them if I passed them on the street. I am seeing all of this as if I am standing behind the seated me – it’s like I am watching and listening to myself interacting with this person. The person is saying that everytime they transform they can’t remember who they used to be and they are puzzled by that. I SEE, not say, or hear, the word “Vampyre”, yes, spelled in the old way, and it hangs there in the air, in bold type, I think the font is Book Antiqua Bold. The person says “No, I’m not a vampyre”.

That was Sunday night.

Last night, Monday, the dream repeats only this time the person is saying “I’m transforming more often now and some memories are seeping through”

I’m half awake and half asleep, and thinking why am I dreaming this two nights in a row. Does it have anything to do with that tv show we are watching. I’m also processing, in my semi-consciousness, the spelling of vampyre and John Polidori and mentally writing this all out. (And here I am 8 hours later actually doing that…writing it all out.)

OTHER STUFF – In 2011 I started a blog called “Today’s Conversation” and it was the verbatim conversations my husband and I had – there is one entry marked 2010 but the next year entries picked up, 28 in 2011, and continued apace until 2015 with 22 entries that year.  2016 had only 8, after that – Pfft – just a few a year.

One of the problems with continuing the series was that so many of our conversations, while most often hilarious, required backstory, or video because I talk with my hands and often that is the funniest and most eloquent part of any conversation with me. By 2016 my husband and I had been living in a fairly socially isolated manner for 8 years, after 2016, the social isolation became pretty much complete. Conversations became even more, how should I put it, insular. Conversations were self-referential. We still laughed about them but they were impossible to convert to mere words and make any sense to anyone who was not there; or even any person who was not us.

Today I posted a conversation that took place after lunch today, it was too good not to. Since no one follows that blog anymore I decided to post a link on my Facebook page so all 11 of my friends could be amused. And you know what? Facebook won’t allow you to put a link to a personal blog – it goes against community standards, or rather the blog URL goes against community standards. WTH?

At any rate, should be be so inclined to sneak a peek into the goings on at la casa di persone noiose (that translates to ‘the home of boring people’) this was Today’s Conversation.

and I’d so much rather this be an audio because I’d rather talk than type. But then, perhaps there are others, like me, who prefer to read rather than listen. I have no patience for ‘talking’ media – podcasts, audio books etc – I like to go at my own pace, skip over what bores me, the fast forward button is my second best friend (the delete button is my first best friend).

First off – common usage deems ‘thankful’ and ‘grateful’ as  interchangeable and synonyms for each other. Not in my world, but then my world is often at odds with the world at large. For me, thankful is feeling and showing appreciation for the good and nice things done for me, towards me and just as they occur in life in general. Grateful, to me, means being put in the position of supplicant. That is a position I do not like.

Church Music.  I love church music and usually have some playing in my head. The Doxology plays at odd moments, it is the first thing that passes through my mind, it is one of the songs I sing myself to sleep with.

The problem I have with listening to church music via Youtube is that it is usually professional choirs, like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or those English boys choirs or, hell just about ANY professional choir. In my head I hear all my favorite hymns as sung by an ordinary, neighborhood church congregation and choir. I hear my childhood Church congregation and that is my memory, that is what I want to hear, again and again. That is the music I hear in my head.

This is the closest I can get to real people singing the Doxology the way we sang it in Church and the way I sing it. You can find other videos of fancy choirs singing it or even those famous acapella people singing it but those aren’t what I hear in my head, in my memory, or what I myself sing.

My very most favorite hymn in the whole wide world is “Sweet Hour of Prayer”. I sing this to myself almost as often as the Doxology. Once again, searching for a version that that doesn’t sound ‘professional’, over-arranged and orchestrated, I discovered that all these versions have 3 verses! The Pilgrim Hymnal that I grew with (and have an old and much loved, beaten and battered copy of) has a version with only 2 verses –

This is as close as I could find to what the hymn sounds like in my memory, the way I hear it in my head, the way I sing it. They’ve added the third verse to the end, so you can ignore that, other versions have this errant third verse in the middle.

I’ve had many strange and wonderful jobs including ‘church secretary’ for a Methodist church. One day one of the members was helping me with a project (‘help’ from the congregation was encouraged) and we were talking about church-y things and I mentioned that I grew up in the Congregational Church. My helper said “Oh they are just the sing-iest churches!” I had to laugh, because I don’t know about other Congregational Churches but the one I grew up in was indeed a very sing-y church. We sang everything, all the time. And benedictions. No one ever said “good-bye” , whether it was just two people or 20 people,   it was, at minimum “May the Lord watch between me and thee while we are absent, one from the other.”

But the singing part – I can’t say The Lord’s Prayer, I can only sing it! Because most of the time that’s how we did in my church. I’m sure it got recited at times, certainly when Pastor was doing it alone, but when the congregation was supposed to say The Lord’s Prayer? We sang it. And singing it is all I know how to do.

Well, this has run on and it’s not finished but I’ll end here with my favorite benediction –

May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord makes his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

It’s been slow in the ole blogosphere, January blahs? The few blogs I still read, all nice people, every one, and my reactions have been total snark – which I have kept to myself.

This afternoon I’ve been able to let loose a little snark – my husband being my only audience, the subject: football.

Some sort of break in the game; announcers go to the the coach of the losing team and ask the coach: “So what do you need to do to turn this game around?” Coach says: “Well we really need to score.”  My reaction? “No, shit Sherlock! What a great idea”

Which reminded me of the weather guy, saying “The ice is slippery.” Really? I never knew that – ice is slippery. Next thing you know, someone is gonna tell me water is wet –

I know these people are being put on the spot but – your game winning strategy is to score points? The ice is slippery, the rain is wet, the snow is cold – Seriously??? You’re on national television and this is the best you can come up with?

I can’t even….

There is so much beauty in the universe; so much good, so much delight, so much to amaze, so much to take your breath away, so much to make you laugh, so many poems, so many books, and so much music. The music the universe makes and the music we make. There is so much to remember within all of that…sometimes I think my brain will explode and my heart will burst.