March 13, 2009

  • Loss and Futility

    My friend is part of this incredible organization in Boston: Read the Poem and go to the bottom of the post for information.  If you are anywhere near Boston, MA you need to go and see this

    How still this quiet cornfield is to-night!
    By an intenser glow the evening falls,
    Bringing, not darkness, but a deeper light;
    Among the stooks a partridge covey calls.       [stooks=sheaves standing in the field]

    The windows glitter on the distant hill;
    Beyond the hedge the sheep-bells in the fold
    Stumble on sudden music and are still;
    The forlorn pinewoods droop above the wold.      [wold=woods]

    An endless quiet valley reaches out
    Pat the blue hills into the evening sky;
    Over the stubble, cawing, goes a rout
    Of rooks from harvest, flagging as they fly.

    So beautiful it is, I never saw
    So great a beauty on these English fields,
    Touched by the twilight’s coming into awe,
    Ripe to the soul and rich with summer’s yields.

    These homes, this valley spread below me here,
    The rooks, the tilted stacks, the beasts in pen,
    Have been the heartfelt things, past-speaking dear
    To unknown generations of dead men,

    Who, century after century, held these farms,
    And, looking out to watch the changing sky,
    Heard, as we hear, the rumours and alarms
    Of war at hand and danger pressing nigh.

    And knew, as we know, that the message meant
    The breaking off of ties, the loss of friends,
    Death, like a miser getting in his rent,
    And no new stones laid where the trackway ends.
    [... ]
    Yet heard the news, and went discouraged home,
    And brooded by the fire with heavy mind,
    With such dumb loving of the Berkshire loam
    As breaks the dumb hearts of the English kind,
    [ ...  ]

    **********

    Only a man harrowing clods
    In a slow silent walk
    With an old horse that stumbles and nods
    Half asleep as they stalk.

    Only thin smoke without flame
    From the heaps of couch-grass;
    Yet this will go onward the same
    Though Dynasties pass.

    Yonder a maid and her wight              [wight=man]
    Come whispering by:
    War’s annals will cloud into night
    Ere their story die.

    *******

    We who are left, how shall we look again
    Happily on the sun or feel the rain
    Without remembering how they who went
    Ungrudgingly and spent
    Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?

    A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings –
    But we, how shall we turn to little things
    And listen to the birds and winds and streams
    Made holy by their dreams,
    Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?

    ============

    Composer Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) set this poetry* from the Great War to music in the early 1920s, but it took nearly 70 years before it was first performed.

    Poetry by John Masefield (1878-1967), Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), and Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962).

    The Back Bay Chorale presents:

    MOZART|FINZI: Remembrance and Celebration

    Mozart: Coronation Mass
    Finzi: Requiem da camera
    Mozart: Exsultate Jubilate, Ave Verum Corpus
    Britten: Psalm 70 – ³Deus in adjutorium meum…²
    Bach: O Jesu Christ, mein’s Lebens Licht

    Saturday, March 21, 2009    8:00 p.m.
    Free Parking at the Broadway Garage
    Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Cambridge
    http://bbcboston.org/directions/index.php

    Music has an unparalleled power to speak to the human condition.  This concert brings together works that sing of both the loss  and futility of war as well as the joyful experiences of life. Featuring Mozart¹s beloved Coronation Mass and a rare performance of Gerald Finzi¹s achingly beautiful Requiem da Camera, the concert explores the spectrum of human emotion. Mozart¹s dazzling Exsultate Jubilo and Ave Verum Corpus are also featured, along with Benjamin Britten¹s Deus in Adjutorium Meum and Bach¹s redemptive O Jesu Christ, mein’s Lebens Licht.

    Tickets: order online http://bbcboston.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=159288
       or call me and I’ll purchase them for you.  Cindy: (617) 325-9967

    There is a 35th anniversary party afterwards. All are invited.
    Trata
    in Harvard Square  (49 Mt Auburn Street)

  • Annual Laugh Ski Eat Drink Friend Fest

      We left for our annual pilgrimage to the mount – The Eagle Mountain House in Jackson, NH Friday and returned Sunday with a head full of chuckles (I guess that makes me a chuckle-head!) and stomachs disturbingly distended.  And that’s how we felt: happy but distended or maybe we should say distorted.

    As we wandered up to Jackson we stopped in Merrideth and went to our favorite set of shops and saw a sign for an open jam at Guisseppie’s to benefit a music scholarship.  We returned there on the Sunday rebound trip and heard a couple of hours (it went all night) of really great performers who donated their time to the event.  Do unusual things and events you find along the way; it adds to the flavor of life!  Sitting in the lounge we met a couple of interesting characters as only you can in upcountry New Hampshire – if I ever moved there I would seriously have to grow some additional facial hair; beards are in in the Lakes Region.

    Back in the car we wandered in to the ‘Ol hotel.  The Grand Old Hotel has been around since before the turn of the last century in one form or another.  Fires, the bane of the great old wooden structures has caused this one to be rebuilt several times.  The fun of it is the massive porch overlooking the valley where we will ski the next day.  Looking left from the porch gives a view of Black Mountain and I think at the right angle you can see Mt. Washington as well.

    And the rest of the weekend was …

    Triptych

    T.H.E.
    Thompson House Eatery
    A dozen friends and much laughter and wine (you know there had to be wine)

    Morning breakfast.
    Fortification for a day of skiing

    The Wave; twice!
    A hilly XC ski course beautiful as it is challenging … my quads are still screaming.

    Saturday dinner – yummy
    The Eagle Mountain House puts on a hell of a feast.  Part of the ‘meal’ plan …

    Sunday Champagne brunch
    If you haven’t got it yet there was much eating and eating, and eating.  Some of us, who will be nameless, went straight to the desert table!

    Diana’s Baths
    We made a short side trip to this normally flowing waterfall; ice and pools…

    Guiseppies
    As mentioned above

    Couch Crashing
    After this kind of weekend we unloaded, dropped our gear, and hit the soft horizontal!

March 1, 2009

  • Disturbed Movies, Twisted Themes and Taxes

    I’ve noticed there are set of movies out there involving Nazis: Valkyrie, The Reader, Defiance.

    In addition there are a lot of issues out there that investigate twisted themes involving personal choices, oppressive regimes and frightening times.

    And now I need to do my taxes … coincidence? I think NOT!

February 26, 2009

  • She’s a Brick House

    Has anyone else noticed that we are seriously going back to the 70′s?

    At the gym, in the mall, I’m hearing more funk-a-delic bump’n the hips,

    staying alive, thriller beats than I’d care to hear … AGAIN!  So, this begs

    the question – is the replay because every thirty years or so we decide

    what is old is new?  I will not go back to the powder blue leisure suit

    and I did own platform shoes – both not to be revisited!!!

    I have to ask; do we go back to the “bad old music” when we hit

    the “bad old times?”  Is it better in the hips to grind the horizontal or

    should we hold out for the higher life?  Pink Floyd, Steely Dan …

    Eagles or Casey and The Sunshine Band, BEE GEES, Linda Rhondstat?

    The only good thing about the 70′s was it led to the 80′s and we climbed

    out of the dismal decades of glitter and no substance … but we never had

    such fun music, now did we?  And music got, unfortunately more bland.

    The 90′s’ progromed rock and fed it to ClearChannel Communications;

    Where would Peter Gabriel, Genisis (when he was still in the band), Frank

    Zappa be slotted now?  And man I miss the off the main stream beats of

    Talking Heads (yes I listened before they were classic rock), Violent Femmes,

    Adam Ant, Black Flag …

    Whatever you do, Ricky, Don’t Loose That Number!

February 14, 2009

  • To My Wife On Valentine’s Day

    You have disappeared upstairs to get ready,

    and I have a few moments to reflect on us,

    that’s easy because there’s nothing but us,

    and I am taken to my memory’s fondest places,

    the mirrors reflecting faces and all of them are yours!

    Shortly you will breeze down the stairs looking absolutely

    gorgeous!

    Words I said to you on our wedding day come rushing back to me.

    And I will promise you this: I will try to show you every minute,
    of every hour, of every day,
    for the rest of my life just how much I love you.


    Since then I am because you are,
    Since then you are, I am, we are,
    and through love I will be, you will be, we will be.

    Carol, I love you very much,

    Happy Valentine’s Day!!!

January 20, 2009

January 19, 2009

  • Winter Solace

    bWe had twelve inches of snow one night
    and then six inches
    of snow the next
    this weekend. 

    Nice fluffy powdery stuff. 

    Everything captured and dusted in white.

    The old house boat trapped in the river waiting for spring.

    But we ventured out on shoes fit for the time

    And had a tough time slogging through the stuff

    The bench was waiting for spring which seems a long time away.

    Enjoy the winter!

January 4, 2009

  • Thinking of a Dog

    Friend Dog;

    follow his nose,

    follow his tail

    as it bounds

    through the fells,

    through the wood,

    the stream. 

    The dog,

    ancient,

    stalwart,

    companion


    who knows
    his tall
    ambling friend
     
    needs be shown

    the mossy tree,

    the still rabbit

    chased,


    the deer in the field. 


    And when the moon is high,

    to sing our lonely song.

January 3, 2009

  • Winter River Lock Out

    The River has its fill of snow.  She is filled to the brim

    Like us, after a bawdy New Years Eve

     

    Our feeders stand empty – the birds sleep late even!

    And how our pulse slows in this early Winter day.  Even

    the touch of our loved ones may not make us smile and glow.

    Inside and through out our windows the  River still rolls, sill

    coldly rolls.