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Peggy Southworth (Townley)

Forgiven!   Pretty cute clip.   For poetry - of sorts- I’ve always loved the one written by Jimmy Stewart, “A Dog Named Beau”.

David Mitchell

I suppose this is an awkward transition from my little humorous teaser post above, but I just caught a news item that bears mentioning regardless, and I thought it was interesting enough to throw in here. 

I may have mentioend this over a month ago when the story first broke in the national spotlight. If you got to the current USA TODAY website, you should see an article down the right side of the page titled;

Victims Attend Hearing for Accused California Killer (with a woman in pink in the photo)

(a cop who killed or raped between 40 and 50 women? The details of the case and his final arrest were simply amazing - and featured on a Sunday night CBS News Special about a month or two ago)

If you click that item open it is a newsreel about the women who were victoms of the "California Killer" - a case that took 42 years to solve!

The lady in pink (who speakes over most of the video) is Jane Carson-Sandler, a woman I have known for years at my church, and her husband Roger (different Roger) is a good friend. Jane is a retired Air Force Colonel and her husband Roger is a retired Air Force General - both salt of the earth nice people. I have known them a little bit for about 14 years and had no idea about this story until a few months ago.  

Mark Schweickart

I occasionally participate in an on-line screenwriting group, where we are given a challenge to write a short scene of one sort or another. Last week's challenge was to do a scene in which the main character has a conversation with himself. Given what I was just saying regarding the poem The Road Not Taken, this echoes a similar concern, and perhaps you fellow oldsters may identify with this.

INT. BATHROOM - MORNING
JERRY, age 70, is shaving, looking blankly at himself. He goes through the motions as he has always done these many clean-shaven years. His eyes drop from his face to the simple T-shirt he is wearing. The T-shirt proclaims, “Old Guys Rule”. The camera reverses out of the mirror so we can read the lettering.
 JERRY  (looking at the shirt)
'Yeah, right.'
The camera now views him from the side, no longer seeing the refection in the mirror. JERRY looks dejected. His head tilts down toward the sink. When he looks back up we cut to an over the shoulder shot and see in the mirror an entirely different face staring back. It is a much younger version of himself. It is AGE 30 JERRY with 1970’s long hair and beard.
AGE 30 JERRY
"At least it doesn’t say, 'Old Guys Drool'.”
Astonished, Jerry does a 360 spin, almost falling over. He steadies himself, staring down into the sink, gripping it  with both hands. His razor has fallen into the sink. He slowly, apprehensively, raises up to peer again into the mirror. But now the face he sees is just his own.
JERRY
"That was weird. What the eff?"
He looks down to retrieve his razor, and as he looks up again into the mirror, there is the other face again.
AGE 30 JERRY
"You look like shit, you know that don’t you?"
Jerry does a double take, but quickly becomes less rattled. He stares thoughtfully at the image that is smiling back at him in a somewhat goofy manner.
JERRY
"As if all that hair and beard were much of an improvement."
He looks down and then back up. His reflection is now his own again, and he finishes shaving and walks into the bedroom.
INT. BEDROOM - DAY
AGE 30 JERRY is lying fully clothed on the bed. JERRY passes by, then stops to calmly stare at him for a moment. He sighs, then turns his back to him as if he is not bothered by his presence. He sits on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes.
AGE 30 JERRY
"Seriously, what happened? Who slapped you upside the head with the ugly stick?"
JERRY   (ties his shoes, not looking at him)
"I’m not so bad."
AGE 30 JERRY
"Not so bad? Are you kidding me? Jowly cheeks, blotchy skin, flabby gut hanging over your belt."
Jerry crosses to a chair, sits to face the young man on the bed. He takes a moment before answering.
JERRY
"You want to know what happened?"
AGE 30 JERRY
"Yeah."
JERRY
"You happened."
AGE 30 JERRY
"Me? What did I do?"
JERRY
"I’d say it’s maybe what you didn’t do."
AGE 30 JERRY   (pointing at Jerry)
"Hey, I had no intention of turning into this sorry mess."
JERRY
"Intention! Hah! “Road to hell” and all that."
AGE 30 JERRY    (as if talking to a baby)
"Oh, is someone feeling a wittle sorry for his wittle self? Do you need a tissue to bwow your wittle nose?"
(back to his normal voice)  "Although that schnozz of yours ain’t so little anymore, is it? Spend a little too much time pickling it in the old W.C Field’s hooch jar?"
JERRY
"Are you surprised? As I recall, my Little Chickadee, you were already stumbling and bumbling along your, shall we say, intemperate ways, by the time all that hairiness arrived." 
AGE 30 JERRY    (offended)
"Not at all!... And, I don’t bumble."
JERRY
"My God, look at you! You’re a hairy mess, and your beard reeks of pot. Have you looked in a mirror lately?"
AGE 30 JERRY
"I don’t trust mirrors."
JERRY
"Well, we can agree on that."
AGE 30 JERRY
"Okay, so I haven’t showered today. My hair might look a bit...."  (groping for the word)
JERRY
"Bedraggled, grubby, slatternly?"
AGE 30 JERRY
"Nothing a little shampoo won’t cure? Can’t say the same for your sorry face. You only wish you looked as good...."
To verify he isn’t looking so bad, AGE 30 JERRY, slides off the bed and crosses to a dresser to peer into the mirror. JERRY comes up behind him, looking over his shoulder. We hold on the two of them seeing their reflections in the mirror.
EXT. CITY SIDEWALK - DAY
Jerry, still wearing his “Old Guys Rule” T-shirt, is walking alone, stopping occasionally to peer into shop windows. He has a newspaper tucked under his arm. When he peers into a coffee shop window, suddenly a long-haired, bearded face is looking back at him from the inside. Jerry jumps back, then looks again. He realizes the person is not AGE 30 JERRY, but rather a BARISTA waving for him to come in.
INT. COFFEE SHOP - DAY
JERRY enters and is greeted by his barista friend, 28 year old, long-haired, bearded RICHARD.
RICHARD
"Jeez, Jerry. You jumped back like you had seen a ghost. You okay?"
JERRY
"Yeah, yeah, no problem."
RICHARD
"I didn’t mean to startle you. You were planning to come in, weren’t you?"
JERRY
"Yes, of course. Can’t start the day without Richard’s special brew, now can I?"
RICHARD
"So the usual? Nitrogen-infused Vietnamese blend, with sea salt, butter oil and...."
JERRY   (laughs)
"Something like that.... Just black, Richard, just black."
RICHARD
"Café Americano, one or two espresso shots?"
JERRY
"Stop screwing with me, Richard. Plain old drip coffee."
RICHARD
"When are you going to get with the times? They are a’changing, my man, they are a’changing."
Just then AGE 30 JERRY enters which JERRY catches out of the corner of his eye. He glances at his younger self, then back to RICHARD, and gives him an enigmatic, wiser-than-thou look.
JERRY    (sings in a Dylan voice)
“But there’s something going on here, and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones.”
RICHARD stares at him uncomprehendingly.
JERRY      (back to his normal voice)
"Don’t be quoting Bob Dylan to me. You’re too young to even know who that is. And do you see this T-Shirt?"   (he puffs out his chest) "Respect your elders."
RICHARD
"Maybe that should say something about old dogs and new tricks."   (they both smile)  "One old-school, boring-as-all-hell, black coffee coming up."
JERRY
"Oh, and can you make that decaf?"
RICHARD (turns, muttering as he goes) "You’re killing me Jerry. You’re killing me."
RICHARD crosses behind the counter to get Jerry’s coffee, but as he turns to retrace his steps back to Jerry, it is suddenly AGE 30 JERRY who is carrying the cup of coffee. JERRY is looking at his newspaper, not noticing his approach. AGE 30 JERRY places the coffee on the table, and slides into an adjacent chair.
AGE 30 JERRY
"Why did Richard give you such a start? He doesn’t look anything like me."
Annoyed, Jerry rustles his newspaper, hardly looking up.
JERRY
"What do you want? Why are you here?"
AGE 30 JERRY
"What do I want? Isn’t the question, “What do you want?”
JERRY (giving him his full attention)
"Me?"
AGE 30 JERRY
"Yes, you. Whose brain are we in here anyway?"
JERRY
"Screw you, go away."
He takes a sip of coffee and turns back to his paper.
AGE 30 JERRY
"So what happened at age 30. Something go wrong?"
JERRY
"You know what happened."
AGE 30 JERRY
"No I don’t. Nothing has happened of significance that I can think of. I’ve been out of college a few years, working at a boring job, but getting by, got a smoking-hot, kind-of-wacky girlfriend."
JERRY
"Yeah you did."
AGE 30 JERRY
"Do. I do have a smoking-hot girlfriend."
JERRY
"Sorry, friend. It is did."
AGE 30 JERRY
Did?
JERRY
"You are forgetting the 'kind-of-wacky' part."
AGE 30 JERRY
"Is that what this is all about?"
JERRY folds his paper, takes a sip of coffee, sighs and looks across to his younger self, but AGE 30 JERRY is no longer there. The seat is empty.
JERRY   (to himself)
"Could be.... Could be."

Frank Ganley

Thanks Dave for the video as i could not get it out of my mind all day even into my music hours, pick up a guitar, plged it and a mucrophone and belted out in my mind an incredible rendition, lol. I did live all if the great movies that were used, my favorite, guide to a married man. 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Michael McLeod

Whoa I turn around and this place suddenly turns into the Algonquin Round Table. For 20 point which are worth absolutely nothing, who can guess what famous Columbus-born humorist and cartoonist -- yeah, I made it a lot easier for you by adding that second avocation -- was on the fringes of that early 20th-century New York City literary and show biz assemblage, which included Dorothy Parker and Groucho Marx?

David Mitchell

James Thurber!

(whew! I think I beat Fred to it for once.)

David Mitchell

And my mother's maiden name was Dorothy Parker!  

And Dad's mother's married name was Margaret Mitchell. 

Do I get any extra credit for those Mike?

Just imagine those lunches at the old Algonquin Hotel in Manhatten in the 20's. 

David Mitchell

Frank,

If you were paying close attention to the video, did you - or anyone -  notice that classic terry-cloth lined blue beach jacket thst Jimmy Stewart was wearing? I don't think my dad was enough of a "fashionista" to be that "hip", but I can remember those in old famiy movies of my father-in-law. 

Mark Schweickart

This one's for Jim--- Last week my wife and I hosted a young South Korean bicyclist for a few days. He is hoping to make a transcontinental bike trip. We did our best to convince not to go through the desert in this ungodly heat we are having, and he promised to opt for a train or a bus if it got too dangerous. Actually, our efforts to convince him of the wisdom of taking a train is a frustrating and lengthy story, but I will spare you that. I just wanted to say that in the course of our discussions, we asked him why it was so important for him to go to Denver. This twenty-one year old, barely English-speaking, first time in the U.S.'s answer was --what else, because of John Denver, of course, his favorite singer of all time. And, his favorite film of all time --what else, West Side Story, followed closely by Tim Burton's Big Fish. All of these mighty influences happening long before he was born.  It certainly gave me pause to see the weird, eclectic influence our cultural outpourings have throughout the world.

James Hamilton, M. D.

David Mitchell

Jim and Mark,

I think I mentioned many posts ago how much my first wife and I enjoyed two John Denver concerts at "Red Rocks" amphitheater. Those were golden days. "Red Rocks" is something special to behold especially at night - "Almost Heaven". If you sit high enough, you can see the lights of Denver behind th stage. And his music was so full of the spirit of us "newcomers to the mountians" in those days. ( "Rocky Mountain High"  -  "I Think I'd Rather Be a Cowboy"  ) And he would tell such interesting stories about his own life and career. Yes he was a little corny, but he was good.

We could have seen him live at a downtown (Denver) "room" called the "Exodus". It had been thee "in" place for local music talent for years but they had a cover charge of $5.00 in those days and we were on a tight budget (I was still in school). One of my older sisters (the one who spent a year at Lorretto Heights College in Denver) went there a few years before to see a young local girl who was just getting started for only $3.00. Her name was Judy Collins.  

Acually, John Denver was sort of a local. Though rasied mostly in Fort Worth (his dad was in the Air Force and they moved around), They - Mr. and Mrs. Dutchendorf - were next door neighbors of a couple we knew pretty well. They kept insisting they would take us next door sometime and introduce us but that never happened. 

I could look it up but J.D. must have changed his name to Denver around the time they moved there. I still have an "Album" of the "Chad Mitchell Trio" after John replaced Chad Mitchell when Chad was sent to prison for selling cocaine out of his van at a concert. Sources on You Tube say Chad went to "pursue a solo Career". I still think my story is correct. The other two guys in tht trio were at the U. of Minnesota (I think?) and needed a new partner. They had heard John sing locally and invited him to join them. He sang with them for a while before going it alone. The album cover I have has the three of them in sport coats and ties, and John sings a long solo of "Mr. Tambourine Man" that still gets me.  I actually like it better than Dylan's original version.

"To dance beneath a diamond sky with one hand waving free"

Frank Ganley

James thurber

Frank Ganley

Sorry for the late answer as i read the question and answered without see dave’s oost. My dad had me read his essays fir many differentreasons. Somehow i developed the habit of saying “you  know”. After he got tired of of correcting me he assigned me to read thurber’s essay on that very phrase. I was cured of the habit. Funny read. An idium of today i absolutely abhor is “ back in the day” .  What day? Friday, it gives no clue as to what period of time it happened, wish thurber had written an essay in that subject

James Hamilton, M. D.

Fawn Flashback

We interrupt this fawn series to bring you a flashback from last year!

I don't think I have used this photo on the Forum before but I apologize if I have. The current crop of fawns continue to grow (quite quickly) and are straying further from their mothers at times. This image was made in July, 2017 when twin fawns encountered what was, perhaps, their first rabbit encounter. It remains one of my favorite "backyard wildlife" captures. I recently submitted it to  Outdoor Photographer Magazine for their "Last Frame" contest. It probably won't be chosen but we'll see...!

Jim

Mark Schweickart

Dave-- Back in my younger days when I often battled depreson, I took some solace in the lines of Mr. Tamborine Man that come just before the line you quoted at the end of your last post.

Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted frightened trees
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

The important line being the last one. I most definitley needed to get far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.

Peggy Southworth (Townley)

Jim - the twin fawns photo is magnificent!   It most certainly SHOULD win a photo contest.  If not, the judges are daft.

Mary Clare Hummer (Bauer)

Mike,

How many points do I get if my Mom’s cousin, Elliott Nugent, co-wrote The Male Animal with the famed Mr. Thurber? Elliott had a fairly successful career in writing, acting, and producing in both New York and Hollywood. Columbus was not a place he visited often even though he graduated from Ohio State so I only met him once or twice. Despite his success, he was burdened by manic depression and alcoholism throughout his adult life.  His father, J.C. Nugent, was also a writer and actor of sorts after touring as a youth in a vaudeville show with his parents and sister. Wonder what they did. And for Mary Margaret, Fr. Andy recited Casey at the Bat for some Irish gathering (maybe at the Athletic Club??) every St. Patrick’s Day even into his 90’s! 

Clare

David Mitchell

Clare ad Mike,

I find this talk of Thurber to be be very interesting. A Columbus legend, though almost unknown to the current generation. I remember my dad explaining to me (years ago) that one of the ladies named in one of his stories - HELP ME HERE ANYBODY - was it "The Day the Damn Burst" - and which story is that in?  A scene is described with all kinds of people running with strange possessions in their arms to be saved from the flood (could that have been the flood of 1913 that flooded the "bottoms" over on the near west side of the river?).

Anyway, Thurber gives the people in the story real names and one old lady who was comically desrcribed in the story is a real person whom Dad said his mother knew.

----------

Mark,

I am familiar with that same "Twisted Reach of Crazy Sorrow", which I believe, hovers close bye in our lives and is allowed to devour us when we turn inward and focus on ourselves and our own selfish worries. I think the greatest "treatment" for this malady is to find something or someone more important than ourselves to live for. Inevidably, love is the neccessary catalyst if the "treatment" is to be successful. And of course, it's my opinion that the highest form of love is that which is offered by the ONE who "came not to be served, but to serve". 

Until I discovered this gift, I think I may have spent half my life wrestling with that same "Crazy Sorrow".  But once found, we get to "dance ............with one hand waving free" - and it's sweet ! 

At any rate, I still am moved by that song - some terriffic word-smithing by Dylan. And John Denver's version lifts me to another level.

*** (Nina, is "wordsmithing" even a word?)

Donna Kelley (Velazquez)

Jim, I hope your entry wins because the photo is really beautiful. Keep us posted!

Last year Mike was kind enough to introduce us to his good friend Billy Collins via email before he came to Barcelona as one of eight international guest poets reading their work at the Palau de la Musica. We had great fun getting to know him as we spent the following day together. He is an incredibly talented and unassuming man with a wicked sense of humor. Here are a few examples of his work. The first one is for those of you who have already turned 70.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrEPJh14mcU    Forgetfulness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZSIYQeF7FE   To My Favorite 17 Year Old Girl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddw1_3ZVjTE    Daily Moments, Captured in Time

....and now back to the World Cup!

Michael McLeod

Nice choices Donna.

Love the 17 year old "tribute."

It's a joy hearing Billy read those poems. He's hilarious and also extremely pithy and observant and unpredictable.

Here is his most popular poem. He hates reading it, just because people ask him for it so often.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EjB7rB3sWc&t=96s

Mary Clare: You win the 20 points in the Thurber competition even though Dave was the first to answer it. Tough titties, Dave. And Clare: Your prize is a framed picture of a fawn. Contact Jim to collect it. And while you are at it you will have to explain the whole thing to him since the organizer of the thurber carnival competition never got around to clearing it with him first.

Michael McLeod

Um sure Mark. Whenever I get depressed what I really want to do is to be around haunted trees.

David Mitchell

Okay Mike - rigged!  

The whole thing was rigged!  I'm filing a protest! 

Don't tell me you are going to invoke rule # 473a-129m.I.C.'66CC !!!!  

(the one that states that "In the case of an absolutley clear and uncontested finish, the cute chick from I.C. wins anyway".)

REALLY?

See if I try to answer any of your dumb quizzes again in the future!

David Mitchell

And Donna,

Thanks so much for sending us those wonderful poems, (which some other jerk in our class claims to have discoverd first and introduced you to - but I'm not giving him any credit because he cheated me out of my prize! No Siree!) 

p.s. Loved "Favorite 17 year old girl"

James Hamilton, M. D.