As it is Labor Day weekend, a thought occurs to me about a favorite song in my memory. A particular song by a certain Mr. Jimmy Buffet. A song about his anticipation on a certain Labor Day weekend road trip.
Many of us will recall such popular lyrics as "livin' on sponge cake," "booze in the blender" , and "frozen concoctions" . Those were from his most popular song.
But do you recall his "breakout song"? Long before there were "Cheeseburgers in Paradise" ?
A song to his future wife while he was coming back from a road trip.
Larry, now that the jet lag from last years move has almost worn out your artistic ability is strting to shine brightly. I want to add an artitic item, NO I didin't do it; i'm not even to the stage of stick drawings.
Everytime our roomis cleaned the "Housekeeper" makes one of these with towels and leaves it on the bed.
Mark. I attempted to respond to Dave after a vvveeerrrryyy long day. Looking back I can see where the "AI" must have tried to correct what I meant to say. Please forgive this unworthy one.
Thanks Jim. What a smooth, mellow, captivativing voice he had -- and that video to accompany the release, which he made on the cheap, captured the South Florida lifestyle of that time and place with a mellow, flip-flops, beers and tans, letter-to-the-folks-back - home innocence. Took me back in more ways than one.
It was not I who posted that Buffet video (Dave did) but I concur with your thoughts about his music and the mood that it brought to his followers. Unfortunately, probably a bit too much of the tans from those solar rays. Albeit that there are other factors that can predispose people to Merkel cell carcinoma, the sun exposure is a common one and MCC is a very aggressive form of skin cancer.
May he rest in peace and enjoy a cheeseburger in true Paradise.
Merkel's is quite rare and frequently misdiagnosed as a benign nodular lesion. Personally, I have never diagnosed one - and hopefully never missed one - in my patients. By aggressive, I mean they tend to metastasize to lymph nodes and the brain.
Yeah, they are "bad actors", right up there and possibly worse than melanomas.
Dave, when we met last year we communicated with Tatiana and the older girls in English and with Serhii and the younger children in Spanish which they were learning at school. Now that Tatiana has been studying/speaking so much Spanish she says she has forgotten her English so we all communicate mostly in Spanish.
Talk about a rough schedule: the children are in school from 9:00-5pm where all classes are given in Spanish and in Catalan. Once a week two of the boys come to me after school for English class and then on Saturday they all go to Ukrainian school. They have really enjoyed their summer vacation!!
Jim, thanks for the explanation about the Merkel skin cancer which I had never heard of it. What a shame to lose such a talented singer.
John, I loved your work as an art critic. I had no idea what a bunch of grapes represented. Very conceptual art.
Our class can be very proud of Kevin Ryan. He did a marvelous job accepting his induction into the Watterson Athletic Hall of Fame. I was sp proud of the way he handled himself. Kevin acknowledged his family, teammates, coaches, teachers, and the entire Watterson environment with dignity and class. Congratulations Kevin Ryan.
A little while ago I posted my version of Mary Chapin Carpenter's "Stones in the Road" because I felt it had a nice nostalgic appeal for people our age. But if there ever was a song that really sails up our age group's nostalgia meter, it has to be Jimmy Buffet's "Pencil Thin Mustache." If for some reason, you have never heard this song, you are in for a treat. Definitely my favorite Jimmy Buffett song. (Oh, and don't worry, this is not one of my covers, but rather the real deal.)
We're going to miss you Jimmy. RIP.
Now they make new movies in old black and white With happy endings, where nobody fights So if you find yourself in that nostalgic rage Honey, jump right up and show your age
I wish I had a pencil thin mustache The "Boston Blackie" kind A two toned Ricky Ricardo jacket And an autographed picture of Andy Devine
I remember bein' buck-toothed and skinny Writin' fan letters to Sky's niece Penny Oh I wish I had a pencil thin mustache Then I could solve some mysteries too
Then it's Bandstand, Disneyland, growin' up fast Drinkin' on a fake I.D. Yeah, and Rama of the jungle was everyone's Bawana But only jazz musicians were smokin' marijuana Yeah, I wish I had a pencil thin mustache Then I could solve some mysteries too
Then it's flat top, dirty bob, coppin' a feel Grubbin' on the livin' room floor (so sore) Yeah, they send you off to college, try to gain a little knowledge, But all you want to do is learn how to score
Yeah, but now I'm gettin' old, don't wear underwear I don't go to church and I don't cut my hair But I can go to movies and see it all there Just the way that it used to be
That's why I wish I had a pencil thin mustache The "Boston Blackie" kind A two-toned Ricky Ricardo jacket And an autographed picture of Andy Devine
Oh, I could be anyone I wanted to be Maybe suave Errol Flynn or the Sheik of Araby If I only had a pencil thin mustache Then I could do some cruisin' too
Yeah, Bryl-cream, a little dab'll do yah Oh, I could do some cruisin' too
P.S. I have to admit, I have never quite understood the two opening lines of this song. I am wondering which modern B/W movies he was thinking of. Surely not "The Last Picture Show," or "Raging Bull," or "Schindler's List" or... or... in fact I am hard presssed to think of ones that do have happy endings. It seems to me the line should be something like, "Now'days they don't make movies in old black and white / with happy endings and nobody fights."
And as for John's notebook, we OLPers have long known how he struggled artistically and academically, but we have done our best - out of an abundance of Christian Charity - to keep it to ourselves. If it weren't for those hundreds of after school walks up Schreyer Place, where in Tom Litzinger and I guided and counseled him, he might never have amounted to much of anything.
As for his winning a Joyce Scholarship, and those years as a scientist at Bell Labs, Fox News has reason to beleive it was all "fake news".
(Golden Dome? - Yeah right, that and somebody claimed to land a rocket on the moon too.)
Donna and Dave, despite my pretensions, you give me too much credit as an art commentator.
The photo in my last post is a page from my second grade “art appreciation” composition book that we OLP students added to once a month. The nuns would give each of us in the class the same 4”x6” reproduction of an art work and we would paste the copy in a small composition book. The teacher would then dictate some commentary on each work of art and we would dutifully write it out next to the picture.
I have only one of these books but I assume it is from second grade because my entries for the first three months are in block letters and in month 4 the (dictated) commentary is in my (almost undecipherable) cursive.
Of the ten pictures in my second grade book, seven had religious themes, but I didn’t post this as an example of how regimented our 1950’s Catholic education was. One of the three secular pictures in my second grade book was a van Gogh and I recall in later grades the works became more and more adventuresome and the dictated commentary became longer and more sophisticated. I admit that spending time in art museums is not my thing, but from this once-a-month program throughout grade school, I still remember paintings by the Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian and the modern Spanish artist Joan Miro (unfortunately, that's it - the rest were forgotten long ago).
Thinking back on it, I assumed this had to have been a diocesan-wide effort to give us all a taste for art at a young age. Or maybe it was a program of the Dominican sisters who devoted their lives to teaching many of us – they were, after all, women who were ahead of their time in so many ways.
Does anyone else remember doing this - was it only at OLP or did other parish schools do this?
I seem to remember woody allen making movies in b and w. And he did some romantic flicks.There have been other filmmakers tinkering with that nostalgic strategy but I can't conjur up any names....
John -- Arts education being what it was (or should I say "wasn't") at St. Michael's, I am sure we didn't have the art books with our accompanying student scribble like you had, so I doubt very much that this was a diocesan-wide phenomenon.
I do recall our sixth-grade nun playing Rimsky Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" for us one day and asking us to envision, what else, a bumblebee's flight as we gave a listen. Does that count as art-ed? Or how about a nun blowing on a pitch pipe before we all did our best to warble out a church hymn?
I moved to Ohio and to OLP in 4th. grade. I don't remember doing those art journals but sure wish I had. Maybe it would have given me a clue when I had to take art appreciation in college.
I do remember that we had 2 nuns as teachers in 4th grade. Sister Mary in the am and Sister Ernestine in the pm. Neither one was in good enough shape to teach all day. They hated each other and delighted in changing our desks around just to bug each other. I never moved a desk around so much in my life.
Dave, several weeks ago you posted the beginning lines of a poem you were hoping to find. Was that the 27 stanza poem that Sister Macaria required us to recite before allowing us to get out of 8th grade? I remember I had a serious mental block about doing that and had I not gotten "help" from the kids around me, I might still be in 8th grade.
What fond memories!
Mark, I remember we had these little cards of famous art pieces. About the size John shows in his journal. I can't remember what grade we were in. Mostly I think they were religious art but I do remember we had one that was Mondrian, the artist who painted blocks of primary colors. We had to write something about each piece and I think we compiled in a book much like John's.
Any others of you from St. Michael's out there that recall that? Dan Cody? Jodelle? David Fredericks?
How well I remember those "split days" of Sister Ernestine and Sister Mary - both simply too old to endure a full day of work. And I recall one very memorable incident with Sister Mary, who I believe, had us for the afternoons.
It was my turn one day to give a talk on a subject of our own choosing. I chose a program from the previous Sunday night's Walt Disney Hour. It was about the "space program" and featured Werner von Braun. I explained how America was laying plans for manned flight to the moon. As I finished my talk, she went into a rage and slammed her blackborad "pointer" stick (about 30 inches long) across her desk and screamed at this horrible delusion they were feeding us children, and that it was foolish to believe in such nonsenese. The pointer broke in half and I was frozen with fear.
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Can you (or anyone) please tell me the name of that poem that I asked about and you commented on?
Again:
"The president was Lincoln and the year was '61. When Civil War twixt North and South in earnest had begun.
The causes of the war you know were mainly three, -----?----, -----?----, and Negro Slavery"
Dave, I will be interested in hearing from some of the many teachers in the group. Jodelle, Colleen.....?
When I began teaching private English classes to little ones here I realized that at school they were only learning cursive, not printing in first and second grades. The reasoning was that once they mastered comprehension of the cursive printing would be really easy. It seemed to work well as they now write both ways with no problems.
Telling time in Spanish is very straightforward but in Catalan it can be complicated. For example 6:32 is "dos cuarts de set i dos minuts". "Two quarters and two minutes before seven o´clock". A Catalan friend replied in this way to her little grandson who had asked her what time it was. His reaction: "Grandma, tell me in digital!" :-)
