One of the disadvantages of living in this current age of decline, it seems to me, is the shoddy quality of our suffering. Back in the Great Depression, which my parents remembered well, they at least came up with a few amusing songs to cheer them up. My favorite is the one above, “Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee,” written by Irving Berlin for a musical comedy called “Face the Music,” which opened in 1932. It was sung in an automat (self-service restaurant) by a group of former society types, now down on their luck. The topical references should be fairly understandable to anyone who knows a modicum of American history. I refuse to believe we have any readers who won’t get them.
I wanted a nice live performance video to share with you, but couldn’t find one that satisfied my exacting requirements. So this one has a picture of the original record label.
Above is a song for the new month — “Try to Remember,” from the musical, “The Fantasticks.” It’s been covered many, many times, but I chose this reunion performance by The Brothers Four (in spite of the fact that some of the old singers have trouble hitting some of the notes) because it’s my kind of music from Back In the Day, blast it.
I’ve never seen “The Fantasticks,” but I know it ran forever on Broadway, breaking records. And in my theater days, people used to joke about the “R*pe Ballet” scene, which was a hoot back then. Not so much anymore.
Anyway, I have lots of labor to do this Labor Day weekend, both volunteer and paid. And I’m feeling remarkably lazy. So you’ll have to be satisfied with what you get. Have a good Labor Day weekend, and happy September.
Because you doubtless need more American folk music in your life, here’s a choral arrangement of an 1852 hymn, “The Eternal Gates,” by Cecil Frances Alexander.
This goes without saying when it comes to my emotional health, but the malaise has spread to my mortal coil.
I’m at an age when digestive complaints are more the rule than the exception. But when my latest discomfort turned out to be the equal and opposite problem from my usual torments, I grew concerned. Once I’d dosed myself and, shall we say, eliminated the problem, I was left utterly enervated. No energy. Even more alarmingly, I had little appetite.
I did a web search for DELTA VARIANT SYMPTOMS, of course. But whatever I’ve got doesn’t sound like that. I’m hoping things will be better tomorrow. I had a reasonable supper tonight, and enjoyed it, but found in my heart no desire for further snacks. That’s not normal. I’m running out of groceries and need to go to the store, but I lack motivation.
It would be nice if the indifference to food lingered on, became my new normal. As long as the stomach cramps don’t come back.
I’ve shared the clip above before. It’s Motown group The Toys, singing A Lover’s Concerto, from 1965. I just like it. Driving around in my loaner car, which has no working radio, I’ve been reduced to singing to myself for entertainment. Last Sunday on the trip to Kenyon, I was working on this one. I’ve always been good at remembering song lyrics and poems, but if I neglect them for a while, bits of the lines slough off. But I went over them enough times to reconstruct them, pretty close. It gave me something to do besides pondering my mortality.
Being a protestant, maybe I live a general lifestyle of protest. Maybe I’m so protestant I don’t see the protest. Heh. I don’t know about that. Are “Come, Thou Fount” or “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks” protest songs? Maybe they are.
The incredibly well-versed Arsenio Orteza writes music reviews for World News Group. In “Not so pop(ular) music,” he describes two new protest albums, Van Morrison’s Latest Record Project Volume 1 and Zuby’s Word of Zuby.
Is Van Morrison too big to fail or does he publisher think he’s now in the old man ranting on the porch category? Orteza writes, “The many songs with ‘the media’ in their crosshairs cohere into one big pushback against the contemporary groupthink that Morrison says plagues his industry after lockdowns halted live performances.”
Zuby is young and independent. His current album was crowd sourced. He represents a generation of Christian rappers who see the world from well-grounded, biblical lens and say things that are truly counter-cultural. Listen to the song above to hear how Big Tech doesn’t understand him so much that he can’t have a normal conversation.
Another week has been transferred to history’s OUT box. On balance, it won’t be remembered by future biographers as one of my better ones. But it could have been worse.
No word about the car, of course. I keep hoping the July 30 date they gave me for part delivery was only a worst-case scenario, but we live in a fallen world. (In the Garden of Eden, I’m sure, car parts always arrived on time.)
Then there was my struggle to find a new lawn guy, which I chronicled yesterday. I’ve determined to leave the final decision until Monday, because I still want to talk to the guy who put a flyer up at my church. But if he doesn’t show this weekend, I’ll go with one of the Home Advisor sharks.
Had a couple plumbers over today, to look at my water heater, which has been making disquieting banging noises. The diagnosis? Sludge build-up – no doubt due to the high mineral content of our local water. Recommendation: new water heater. Which my home warranty program should pay for, but there will be the deductible. I expect that will be in addition to the deductible I already paid for the plumber’s visit today.
What else? I just put a package in the mail to Sweden. There’s a company (I won’t say its name) that advertises Viking accouterments on Jackson Crawford’s YouTube channel. I sent away to them for a linen tunic, because I wanted a new under-tunic (the ones I’ve been wearing are getting threadbare). I ordered XXL, and got it, and it was too small. So I ordered a XXXL, and that was too small too.
I mean no offense to Swedes when I say that their definition of “large” is somewhat different from mine. And I’m well aware that Americans in general, and I in particular, are way too fat. Which is too bad, because it seems to be well-made product.
But the fact remains that these shirts aren’t suited to a large segment of the American market. To add injury to ignorance, the return postage cost almost what one of the shirts cost me.
Little shocks to the bank account; they add up. But those are the terms of my life these days – the Lord provides. And sometimes I need to make small economies.
On the plus side, I’ve made substantial progress on King of Rogaland. I feel at this point that I’m beginning to get a handle on the project. In fact, I think this could be the best book I’ve ever written. I think I’m a better artist than I was 45 years ago, which ought to be expected, or I’m doing something wrong.
The song in the video above is “Aura Lee,” an American piece sometimes attributed (wrongly) to Stephen Foster. The lyrics were in fact written by the American poet W. W. Fosdick, who died in 1862, aged 37. The melody was by an English immigrant, George R. Poulton, who died in 1867, aged 38 (according to Wikipedia, he was tarred and feathered in 1864 for having an affair with a young student).
The song was published in 1861, and became tremendously popular with soldiers on both sides of the Civil War. One can understand why. I’ve always loved it. Elvis Presley used the melody for his song “Love Me Tender,” but I prefer the original. This rendition is done in period style by the 97th Regimental String Band.
May sunshine come along with your weekend, and swallows in the air.
It was a beautiful day today in Minneapolis. Not too hot, and we had some afternoon showers, which makes three days in a row with rain. We needed the rain.
I also need my car back, but that’s not happened yet. Tomorrow is the day they said they’d get the cables; but I’ve already known so much disappointment in that regard that I’ve kind of resigned myself to a life of perpetual longing and disappointment, not unlike my erstwhile dreams of marriage.
So I’m giving you the music above – a piece from Grieg that I’m quite fond of. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson wrote a play called “Sigurd Jorsalfar” about King Sigurd the Crusader of Norway. Edvard Grieg wrote the incidental music. This is the most famous of those pieces, the “Tribute March.” I seem to recall Garrison Keillor was fond of using it for parody purposes.
Sigurd is one of the most renowned kings in Norwegian history. He was remembered not only for leading a crusade to the Holy Land (he was the first European king to lead a crusade), but for being part of the last relatively peaceful reign in Norway in the Middle Ages.
The ancient laws of Norway made all of a king’s sons – legitimate or not – eligible for the crown. In Sigurd’s case, he himself shared the monarchy with two brothers with no violence, outliving them both. But after him came a string of pretenders whose claims carried varying credibility. All they needed was a story that their mothers had slept with a king of Norway, and a willingness to undergo the Iron Ordeal (you read about it in The Year of the Warrior) in some form. The result was a long period of civil wars, picturesque in their bloodshed and cruelty.
At the end of his life, King Sigurd (according to the saga) began to lose his mental faculties. He shocked the country by asking the bishop of Bergen to give him a divorce from his queen, who was much beloved by the people, so he could marry a younger woman. The bishop of Bergen refused – painfully aware that the king was sometimes losing control these days, and could kill him. The king did not kill him, however, but did an end run on him by establishing a new diocese in Stavanger and installing a new bishop there, an Englishman named Reinald. Reinald was happy to do the king a favor in return for a large monetary contribution. The bishop paid for his simony in the end, however – King Harald Gille hanged him in 1135 on suspicion of withholding royal treasure.
I like Mumford & Sons, a British folk rock band with a hard-driving sound that will stomp a foot numb. I haven’t looked them up in a long while, but that cave song of theirs has seeded my ears. I remember it regularly.
Banjo player Winston Marshall posted a few paragraphs today on why he is leaving a group he loves. It boils down to the reaction the band got over one of his tweets. He tried to address it, only to earn more backlash. And though the reaction was both ridiculous and typical of current political foolishness, he felt he needed to step away from the band to cause the others musicians the least damage.
So why leave the band?
On the eve of his leaving to the West, Solzhenitsyn published an essay titled ‘Live Not By Lies’. I have read it many times now since the incident at the start of March. It still profoundly stirs me.
“And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.”
I gather the band has talked about it fully. I hope they support Marshall even while letting him leave. For the rest of us, let’s consider ahead of time how to defend our souls when the time comes.
From last year, a “distanced” celebration of 17 May, Norway’s Constitution Day. No doubt today’s celebrations were similar. The tall old man on the balcony is King Harald V, the little boy on the “Atlantic Crossing” miniseries.
“Ja, Vi Elsker,” the Norwegian national anthem, says this (roughly translated by me):
Yes, we love this land, as it rises, tree-covered and weather-beaten, over the water, with its thousand homes. Love it, love it, and think of our fathers and mothers, and the saga nights that descend with dreams upon the land.
Norwegians in houses and cottages, thank your great God. He will protect the land, however dark things may appear. All our fathers have fought for, our mothers have cried over, the Lord will quietly alter, so that we will have our rights.
