Lazy Hazy Days

Photos by Jay Beets
End of July & Beginning of August

Ah, yes, "the winds must come" --
a poem for the passing summer days . . .

If I Could Tell You

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

Now & Then Post
Huckleberry Summertime

May the summer reverie
continue through August & September!

I hope you will enjoy the remains of summer
while I take a break from Quotidian Posts.
See you in the Fall -- sometime after Labor Day!

Before the trees change, I'll be back . . .

Thanks to my friend Jay Beets
for the heart-stopping seasonal photos,

and to my friend, author and artist Jan Donley
for reminding me that Auden's poem
is a villanelle -- not a pantoum.

You can check above
for these specific characteristics:

A villanelle = 19 lines
5 tercets (3-line stanzas) and a final quatrain (4-line stanza)

it uses two rhymes (A & B)
and two repeating lines:

the first line of the 1st stanza becomes
the last line of the 2nd and 4th stanzas;

the third line of the 1st stanza becomes
the last line of the 3rd and 5th stanzas.

These two repeated lines
form the final two lines of the concluding quatrain.

Not Older With the Years

For further thoughts on
Emily Dickinson's Poem #1055
see my recent post

Happy Birthday Anyway

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

See also:
Various Poetical Misattributions

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Channeling Emily Dickinson this week
in honor of my friend Victoria Amador:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY VICKIE!
And thanks for your unceasing
inspiration and input
into these blogposts over the years!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"We turn not older with years,
but newer every day."
~ from the letters of Emily Dickinson

Just a Girl, Just a Lad

Church of St. Thomas Becket ~ Skeffington, England

"Skeffington was Rafferty's mother's maiden name."

A charming song for a summer day . . .
Mary Skeffington

Mary Skeffington, close your eyes
And make believe that you are just a girl again
Go to sleep tonight, dream of days
When you had something there to light the way.

Remember a holiday
in a north-of-England town
You slept in a room upstairs
on a bed of eiderdown.

Mary Skeffington, when you wake
You mustn't be afraid to face another day
Think of what you have, you'll get by
You've always been a lady
so hold your head up high.

Look back on a home where you spent
the best years of your life
Remember the man who asked you
if you would be his wife.

Mary Skeffington, close your eyes
And make believe that you are just a girl again
Go to sleep tonight, dream of days
When you had something there to light the way. (1971)

Gerry Rafferty (1947 – 2011)
Scottish singer, songwriter, musician

Also sung by Oliva Newton-John

**********

And a haunting poem for a summer night . . .

to put you in the mind of Wuthering Heights
and ghosts of youth:

Sonnet #43

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)
from her collection
The Ballad of Harp-Weaver and Other Poems
More poems: QK & FN & KL

Save Thee and Me

Vintage Postcard ~ Nora Paterson

"All the world is queer save thee and me,
and even thou art a little queer."

Occasionally reduced to:
"There's nowt so queer as folk."
Robert Owen (1771 – 1858)
philanthropist, political philosopher, social reformer

All the World & Gang Aft Agley

On Facebook

Dad's Printing & Cursive

Willard Marvin Carriker

Born 102 years ago today:
July 18, 1923 - June 27, 1987

1940:
My father with his parents and siblings.
standing:
Grandma Adeline "Shug" ~ Grandpa Willard "Jack"
Rudy ~ Robert
middle: Willard ~ Frances ~ Gene
front: Don


May 1969:
50th Wedding Anniversary
of Grandma & Grandpa Carriker, seated in front.
Standing L - R: Frances, Gene, Willard, Don, Robert.
(Missing Rudy, RIP 1921 - 1944)

On Facebook

I was looking through an old text book today,
and came across a few things that Daddy had copied
from various sources for me to add to my teaching materials.

Whether it was his printing or his cursive,
Dad always had amazing penmanship!
Always impeccable!

America, Vast Confused Beauty

"America and Paul Revere"
Detail from The British Are Coming (1982)
In Oscar de Mejo's ABC
Oscar de Mejo (1911 - 1992)

The Congressional Library
[excerpt]

This is America,
This vast, confused beauty,
This staring, restless speed of loveliness,
Mighty, overwhelming, crude, of all forms,
Making grandeur out of profusion,
Afraid of no incongruities,
Sublime in its audacity,
Bizarre breaker of moulds,
Laughing with strength,
Charging down on the past,
Glorious and conquering,
Destroyer, builder,
Invincible pith and marrow of the world,
An old world remaking,
Whirling into the no-world of all-colored light.

Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925)
[See also: "Christ, what are patterns for?"]

In the spirit of Amy Lowell's America:
"vast, confused beauty . . . staring, restless,"
here is Batch Five of my awareness - raising
"living with dementia" reminders
[Also posted on The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker]

1.

Living with dementia and planning
to replace criminal justice with deportation:

" . . . many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too, you want to know the truth. So, maybe that'll be the next job that we'll work on together."

2.

Drawing by Banksy

Living with dementia and repeatedly repeating
misinformation like a broken record:

April 20:
We had many murderers, 11,888, they think."
["they" = Trump]

"July 1 [and July 3]:

"Every day, our brave law enforcement officers are hunting down and deporting migrant criminals who have committed heinous crimes, including more than 13,000 murderers -- 11,888 to be exact, but I'd probably say the 13,000 is right also."

Well, which is it?
First of all, neither number is correct;
and second of all 11,888 is NOT more than 13,000.

Trump has been obsessing stupidly about this, since mid - April; he has repeated these fake figures at least 17 times since then, even though it has been fact - checked numerous times and shown to be a wildly inaccurate and "gross misreading of the available data."

3.

Living with dementia and self - fulfilling prophecy:

"We had a man as president who shouldn't have been there.
You know that. He shouldn't have been there."

4.

Guess what? Not the path to a Nobel Peace Prize:

"But I hate them too. You know that.
So, it's sort of, I hate, I really do. I hate them..."

5.

Living with dementia and making preposterous comparisons:

"I said -- they said, you know, sir, you're gonna go down as one of the greatest presidents ever. I said, really? No. I said, really? I said, better than Washington. They said, yes, sir. I said, better than honest, Abe Lincoln. They said, yes, sir."

6.

Illustration from SpongeBob Square Pants

Living with dementia and can't read charts:

"And I think, uh, I can say very proudly, and I don't have to quote the polls, that our country is more proud right now than it's been in many, many years. We have pride. We have dignity."

Oh really? Is it Opposite Day?

7.

Living with dementia and can't stop harping about old news:

Obsessing stupidly about this
since at least 2019

"You have a shower head, the shower doesn't -- you think it's not working, it is working, the water is dripping out and that's no good for me, I like this hair nice and -- I like that hair nice and wet. Takes you -- you have to stand in the shower for 20 minutes before you get the soap out of your hair. And I put a thing in, and it sounds funny, but it's really not -- it's horrible. And when you wash your hands, you turn on the faucet and no water comes out. You're washing and the water barely comes out, it's ridiculous. This was done by crazy people, and I wrote it all off and got it approved in Congress so that they can't just change it because I did it in my first term. Everyone was so happy."

8.

Living with dementia and ignoring the EPA:

"Do you have any problems with water?
No, we have so much, we don't know what to do with it.
You know, it comes down from heaven, right?"

9.

Living with dementia or whatever:

"obviously . . . usually, mostly, I think probably exclusively."

10.

Yet another lie:
"I would say they were fully funded
within minutes of hearing about this."

Best Reddit Response:
"He's not lying if you say
it was funded within minutes, 4,320 minutes."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Click here for FIRST batch:
"I Didn't Even Know Anything"
QK & FN

SECOND batch:
"A Very Much Different Country"
QK & FN

THIRD batch:
No Kings Day
QK & FN

FOURTH batch
Living With Dementia
QK & FN

FIFTH batch
America
QK & FN

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mother America (1973)
Oscar de Mejo (1911 - 1992)

Art Imitates Nature

Edward Julius Detmold (1883-1957)
Illustration from
Fabre's Book of Insects

Praying Mantis ~ 10 - 03 - 2011
On blog before & on facebook (again)

A few more mantis pics, but none as good as above!
This is one of my best!
I could swear that she is posing for the camera!

Such a classic pose -- how does she know?

In "The Summer Day," Mary Oliver says "grasshopper" --
but I think she should have said "praying mantis,"
especially in a poem about "prayer":

Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is. . . .

Life Imitates Art,
Art Imitates Life,
and so forth!

Books and Watermelon

Summery Book Blogs

Ken Kielty
Talking About Things That Matter

Matthew Arnold & Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Forgotten Mermen

Greg Pizzoli
Books With Ellie

@Kitti's List

American Specialties

Animated Cards by Jacquie Lawson

Pets on Parade

&

Patriotic Pastry

If all else fails, bake a cake!

Or, as D. H. Lawrence wrote in 1923,
fix the plumbing!

Listen to the States asserting: "The hour has struck! Americans shall be American. The U.S.A. is now grown up artistically. It is time we ceased to hang on to the skirts of Europe, or to behave like schoolboys let loose from European schoolmasters—"

All right, Americans, let's see you set about it. Go on then . . . Where is this new bird called the true American?

. . . Heaven knows what we mean by reality. Telephone, tinned meat, Charlie Chaplin, water-taps, and World-Salvation, presumably. Some insisting on the plumbing, and some on saving the world: these being the two great American specialties. Why not?

from Studies in Classic American Literature

P.S.
We're also good at Currier & Ives!
"The Star Spangled Banner"
Color lithograph, c. 1860
by Currier and Ives
active 1857 - 1907

Thanks to my artistic & literary friends:
Etta for the lithograph
and Jim for the D. H. Lawrence essay

The Freedom Capital of the World

"How selfish to risk everything and for what?
'Freedom?' she almost screamed to herself. 'Freedom!'
Her mind raced as the word crossed her mind repeatedly.
She was in the freedom capital of the world"
-- New York, New York! (432)

Kenneth M. Kielty
from his 2011 novel
Visiting Brooklyn (432)

Photo: Christmas 2015
MetLife, Chrysler Bldg., and Grand Central Station

See also Facebook,
KL & Facebook

~ The Freedom Capital of the World ~
May it always remain so.
Happy Independence Day Eve!


Sinclair Lewis warned his readers -- 90 years ago --
to be careful -- because freedom can be lost . . .

“Why, America’s, the only free nation on earth.
Besides! Country’s too big for a revolution.
No, no! Couldn’t happen here!”

Sinclair Lewis (1885 - 1951)
It Can't Happen Here (1935)


William O. Douglas advises further . . .

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
(1898 - 1980)

“Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet. . . .[A]t the constitutional level, speech need not be a sedative; it can be disruptive . . . [A] function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.”

Or as Mark Twain said:
"Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any . . . "

And Walt Whitman:
" . . . take off your hat to nothing known or unknown . . . "
Kneel not "to another
nor to [your] kind that lived thousands of years ago . . . "

Living With Dementia

The MoCA Test
[Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test]

Steve Benen: "We’re talking about an exam that’s used to identify evidence of dementia, mental deterioration and neurodegenerative diseases. . . . Trump somehow convinced himself, however, that it was akin to a Mensa exam and that his ability to get a perfect score was proof of his genius. It was not."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

American writers continue to express concern
that our current president is living with dementia:
News anchor Lawrence O'Donnell: “If we grow weary of making the point of how singularly stupid and possibly clinically demented Donald Trump’s statements are, then we will become part of the normalization process of those statements, which most of the American news media has unwittingly participated in and 14 year olds in this country will think it’s perfectly normal for a president to say those things.” (MSNBC ~ 18 June)

Historian Heather Cox Richardson: "It seems to me long past time to question the 79-year-old president’s mental health."

Columnist Rex Huppke: "Is Trump in mental decline? He sounds far worse than Biden ever did. . . . If Biden's 'mental decline' was concerning, Trump's should be alarming."

I share their dismay. We cannot normalize political inanity.
So here is Batch Four of my awareness - raising
"living with dementia" reminders
[Also posted on The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker]

These perception - checkers may be non - ceremonious, non - likeable, non - literary, devoid of charm -- but not without irony. I have tried to pick examples that emphasize the irony of the pot calling the kettle black -- or the old calling the old old. How ironic that one candidate living with dementia was eliminated, only to be replaced by another candidate living with dementia. We need upward age limits for President, Senate, Congress, and Supreme Court. It is not only embarrassing but also dangerous and wrong to see the world being so badly run by elders way past their prime.

1.

Living with dementia, compounded by sheer cruelty:

Q: Have you called the governor yet or been able to speak to any of them?

A: Um, I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out, I'm not calling him. Why would I call him? I could call him. Say, "Hi, how you doing?" Uh the guy doesn't have a clue so, he's a mess. So you know, I could be nice and call him but, why waste time?

2.

Thinks he's a hero but really a bully, living with dementia:

"The UK is very well protected.
You know why, because I like them, that's why.
That's their ultimate protection."

3.

Living with dementia & The Dunning-Kruger Effect:

"It's a shame, this guy -- I have a guy -- do you ever have a guy that's not a smart person and you're dealing with him and he's not a smart guy."

Yeah, we have that guy.
He is frighteningly unfit to lead the U.S.A.
But there he is, up on Mount Stupid.

4.

A strategy when living with dementia:

"I like to make the final decision
one second before it’s due . . .

5.

Living with dementia and prone to warfare:

" . . . a very bloody war.
They're all bloody,
but this was a really bloody one."

6.

Living with dementia and losing distinction
between the Revolutionary War & the Civil War:

"A lot of wars there was no reason for. You look right up there. I don't know. See the Declaration of Independence. And I say I wonder if you, you know the Civil War always seemed to me maybe that could have been solved without losing 600,000 plus people."

7.

Living with dementia, right down there
at the bottom of the logical reasoning pyramid:

"Stupid AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
one of the ‘dumbest’ people in Congress"

8.

Living with dementia and commenting
inappropriately on people's appearance:

"I actually had breakfast today with a king and a queen
who were beautiful, beautiful people,
central casting I must say, very nice."

9.

Living with dementia and leering:

"I will never say good looking waitress because looks don't matter anymore. You know, in our modern society. She happened to be beautiful, but I won't say that. I won't mention that, but nevertheless a waitress came over. . . . So I want to thank that young, beautiful waitress."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Click here for FIRST batch:
"I Didn't Even Know Anything"
QK & FN

SECOND batch:
"A Very Much Different Country"
QK & FN

THIRD batch:
No Kings Day
QK & FN

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like Butterscotch

Melting our way through the Heat Dome!

“And the light poured in like butterscotch
And stuck to all my senses
Oh, won't you stay?
We'll put on the day
And we'll talk in present tenses . . . ”

~ Joni Mitchell ~

Photos by Jay Beets