Saturday, April 30, 2011

Royal Wedding


We stumbled into the Royal Wedding yesterday morning. I mean the TV broadcast, of course - not the real thing. (My sister told me today that she has determined via ancestry.com that we are 40th generation descendants from Henry III - but thank God we didn't get invited as really I had nothing to wear).

The kids and I had somehow failed to register that the wedding was scheduled for yesterday, but we were all excited to find that the usual local morning news team from Plattsburgh had been displaced by K & W. I got ready for work and school to the sound of prayers and hymns and vows, stealing looks at K & W, and Elton John, and the Queen and the top, bottom, sides of Westminster Abbey while I brushed my hair and teeth and packed Shack's backpack.

And wasn't it all lovely? When we talked about it at work, everyone was smiling. The newscasters were smiling when they reported it all. I stopped for coffee at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and the staff had a handwritten sign on the counter extending best wishes to "our friends Will and Kate."

I am sure that the usual too-smart, too-cool, too-egalitarian bores are taking all this adulation as evidence that the rest of us are even stupider, more gullible and more venal than they had previously believed. But screw them. Some of them are boors, all of them are tedious, and that is worse than almost anything they can say about us.

Anyway, it got me thinking again about the Queen. (Sorry, I'll try to be brief!) With my Canadian legal education, I was more or less forced to learn about the centrality to the common law of the English monarch. She is - among other things, of course - a stand-in for the whole country. She is them. They are her. (Sort of like, you know, the Jesus model). I don't think this is a notion that gets a lot of official reinforcement these days, but it is bred in the bone over there and it will out. Like when the Heir Apparent gets married to a beautiful young woman. Hurray for all of us! Even all of us who just wish them well from afar.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Now We Are 46...



There's an A.A. Milne joke in there somewhere. I am feeling sort of decrepit.

In the background today I have been playing (though not really watching) a Gregory Peck retrospective on Turner Classic Movies. Great Cold War stuff. I remember the Cold War - or at least a big chunk of it toward the end. Sigh. Well, my recollections do not go so far back as the last horrible movie (Gregory miscast as a hard-boiled smart-aleck army officer who keeps referring to "dames" and calling a nurse "nursey"). It was somewhat redeemed by the hats and the haircuts. And GP's perfect posture.

I have stolen an hour to post a new picture or two and just to say hello. The banner is fresh from today - taken when Maisy and I stole a walk to the river to look at how it has changed in the last few days into a sinister brown lake. The first warm days of spring have just arrived here in the far north, along with floods. Nothing like the weather disasters in the deep south, though. (The older I get the more I feel the horror of natural disasters. Maybe that's progress?)

It's strange here after this punishing winter to feel a wind blowing soft instead of with a knife edge. Here's another picture from the back field that I took today. I fiddled with the greenness a bit but it is morally correct if not completely photographically correct. See you soon. Thanks for looking in.

Friday, April 22, 2011

What Have You Been Doing?

I made a resolution this year to see more live entertainment. So far, I have seen Cloris Leachman do her one-woman show at the new Performing Arts Center in Stowe. (In a word, Fabulous). I have seen David Sedaris do a reading in the a restored Vaudeville palace in my hometown of Schenectady (also Fabulous). I won tickets to see Janis Ian (remember that song "17"?) with Tom Paxton (I knew the name but wasn't sure why), also in Stowe. I won two tickets so I invited (well, "dragged") the Understudy (now 13) along. I told her to imagine she was going to see Lady Gaga but Tom Paxton and Janis were both closing on 70 and Tom, in particular, had arrived apparently arrived in Stowe via teleporter from 1969 (complete with Greek Fisherman's Cap) singing songs (for example) about the depridations of mountain top mining. "Oh they took off the top of the mountain and it will never be the same, oh for shame, do si do" variety. I was slightly charmed by the throwback nature of this and his apparent sincerity. Also, Janis was a surprisingly impressive blues guitarist. She also sang a funny song for openers about her Canadian wedding with her long-time partner and got heckled by a drunk (Not done in Vermont!). So, that gave the concert a bit of a fear factor/civil rights uplift as the audience clapped down the drunk.
So, I was enjoying the show, but at intermission, the Understudy made it clear she would never forgive me if I made her miss Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock to see the end of the concert, so we had to go. (OK, I also wanted to see those TV shows but I would have stayed if she hadn't moved me on).

Next month it's Adele in Montreal. I am the biggest Adele nerd in the state of Vermont and I bought these tickets at the pre-sale event for Adele nerds. I see they are now up to $200 apiece on Ebay but of course nobody is getting mine. I'll let you know how it goes.

Monday, April 11, 2011

It's Here...



I haven't been writing much because I have been working on my "blook."

It's as done as it is going to get. I think the widget above makes it possible to order a copy. You may need to cash in a mutual fund or something but they are nicely printed. Or come visit and I'll show you the ones I bought.

XXOO