A nice little verse for a boy to remember. It brought to my Norwegian uncles (one was a bachelor) telling slightly naughty jokes i norsk. We knew this only from the stifled laughs and the occasional non-norsk word that had no suitable translation. I recall “streaker” inexplicably occurring in what I presumed was the punchline.
At almost 92 I may be at least one of your oldest fans. This story about New Haven and your experience there almost made me cry. I was rector of Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven for many years during the seventies. Had a rock band every Sunday morning to sing songs
like
“What Have They Done to the Rain.” I have seven children, 14 grandchildren and three great grandchildren. So the pregnant mother hit home like a warm shower. And the song was one of my favorites- I actually sang it to my partner yesterday as we were returning from the shore. She was driving. I am nearly deaf but I began singing Oh What a
Beautiful Morning to her, (totally off key) assuming she knew it was from Carousel. She interrupted me and said no, of course it was from Oklahoma! And what a beautiful version!Sooooo many thanks for your heartwarming work. I’ve been loyal for quite a while. Craig Biddle III.
I'm doing a second show on the 7th, slightly different, with Rob Fisher playing piano. It's my birthday, but I'm at the age when birthdays deserve to be ignored. Every day is a birthday.
I checked and there is one seat left on the second show but I'm afraid $70 is a bit beyond my impoverished senior citizen budge. I'm happy for you that you are a sellout and, if you get to Guilford during your time in CT let me know, I'd love to buy you a coffee!
Nice piece. But for someone who repeatedly professes to be living beyond cares of a political nature, GK remains oddly obsessed with our most recent ex-president. Let it go already.
My daughter was born under horrible circumstances; we were homeless and stayed with a Christian family until she was born and then there was nothing to do, really, but leave and wander and rely on the kindness of strangers. Sometimes I didn’t know where the next diaper would come from.
Life was a constant battle with transience and surrounding ourselves with the wrong people. Up until eight years ago, that is how it went. And then, like Moses leading his people to the promised land, things changed. I always prayed that would come, but God’s timing is not ours, and when we suffer a day can feel like a decade, but the answer always comes and in hindsight it all makes sense.
Now we are stable and we are happy and I make up for lost lullabies by singing along with her to Beatles songs on the Beatles channel on Sirius radio. And we sing in church about the blessings of God. And we always sing the Star Spangled Banner robustly together with our hands on our hearts whenever it is called for.
But when things were hard, every single night my daughter would fall asleep to her cassettes of your Winter Spring Summer and Fall series, and it gave her a sense of stability and comfort in uncertain times, so thank you.
Oh, thank you! What a lovely piece on a gray day where I am. It's comforting to read that a new soul is making his way toward the entry chute while, at this same time, a soul I know is in hospice, taking a careful path on the exit ramp. There is a time for everything.
Wandering Sioux The joys of being “One of the Boys! Those last two lines, especially – made me feel “Left Out!” The way our society treats gender – it’s sort of like an ancient Greek procrustean bed. If you’re male – the bed is big enough for you. If you’re female – there’s an urge to cut us down so that we fit within a socially idealized view of what is “appropriate for the Gentle Sex.”
It reminds me of a visit I paid with one of my cousins on my father’s side. She had married a fellow who worked in Washington DC, and they lived in a Maryland suburb. We came in late afternoon. At that time my cousin was in the kitchen fixing supper for a party with a dozen or more guests. The women were all in the kitchen, gathered around the table, wrapping yeasty dough into torchetti pasta knots. On the other hand, the men were gathered in the hall, telling dirty jokes to each other and laughing uproariously.
I had just read Steve Mitchell’s “How to Speak Southern” – a light-hearted look at cultural differences in Dixie. Actually being in a “Southern” house hold, and observing such strict division by gender felt to me as if it were symbolic of the “Good Old Boy” Southern culture: women working their hands red, men exuberating in their privilege of being “naughty boys!” I don’t know what the situation is like down South today. All the same, sometimes it seems as if “We’ve Come A Long Way, Baby, But We Still Have A Long Way To Go!”
23 “A Divided Nation!” I’m reading about Frederick Douglass, and his role, on the “other side of the street” to Abraham Lincoln, of heightening awareness of the non-white perspective leading to the Emancipation Proclamation. When I read a poem like the one above, especially the next to the last line, it almost feels as if, “gender-wise”, Americans aren’t “eMANcipated yet!” . In those jokes, I imagine, the Male is generally “The Actor – The Doer!” while the female is a passive recipient. Well. That’s the way we were biologically constructed, true.
Perhaps I’m currently over sensitized by being immersed in Frederick Douglass’s role as an advocate for equality. -But, conceptually, the “dirty jokes” I heard in the corridor hinged on the concept of “Male superiority, female inferiority!” Somehow, I don’t think that those jokes would have made the women’s panties in the kitchen “wet.”
And, frankly, on the whole, I definitely see You, Dear Host, as a current-day Frederick Douglas – someone with a wide enough audience that the President of the United States can invite you to the Washington, to the White House, to ask you if you’d be willing to become his agent for change! In Frederick’s case, he received a Pass to go into slave states and conduct runaway slaves to north of the Mason Dixon Line. Douglass looked at that pass and thought “No Way! If, as a Black man, I show up with a pass like that, 99% of the folks in the South who looked at it will think it’s a forgery! (They wouldn’t have been able to check on the Internet and make sure that that was actually Lincoln’s signature, would they?) What was so special about Frederick Douglass, was that he saw beyond “Current custom.” He saw that some sort of legislation like the 14th and 115th Amendments, and the Emancipation Proclamation, didn’t mean a thing if no one was encouraged to act on them, and to enforce them. If everyone thought “Well, That’s Life!” and just shrugged when black folks said they didn’t like being seen as “inferior beings” then all those Congressional Acts meant nothing.
I agree that the column didn’t openly cut women down. But the jokes that I heard in the corridor that day in the upper South HURT! As a man, it’s probable that you might not have had someone enter your body and physically push against you – possibly until you were quite sore! I guess I’m trying to be sort of a 21st Century Frederick Douglass. I’m saying “Until you’ve been there, until you know how “inferiority feels,” making “oppressor” jokes and saying “what’s your problem?” doesn’t quite cut it.
Sorry for the lecture – you didn’t actually “say anything.” But the acts being described in dirty jokes can certainly be one-sided in terms of their gender humor. In that Southern kitchen, that day, I FELT like a save might have , waiting on Master, when the owners belittled those bound to them.
I struggled to figure out how to love my late ex-wife for 16 years but it just wasn't meant to be. God had a way of blessing us with three wonderful children even as our relationship was doomed to fail, but I did find her to be the most attractive when she was pregnant with those children plus one that we lost on day one. I was also jealous that she was able to have and feel the development of those lives inside of her, oh how awesome could that be.
Awesome, yes, but also an unexpected responsibility! I was twenty-three when I carried my first child. Having that task laid upon you for nine months can get - well, "humdrum." So, in my eighth month or so, I rode up a ski lift - in the summer - in the Angeles Mountains that rim the Los Angeles Basin. I was in the company of two teenaged girls. Just being with them made me feel so "Free!" We decided to "hike" down rather than just get back on the lift chairs. Soon we were taking ten-foot strides, as the mountain fell away from our feet. Finally, we reached a cross road, and stopped to get our breaths back. Suddenly my daughter was kicking absolutely frantically inside me! "Let Me Out of Here! I Don't Like Bouncing Around Like this AT ALL!"
Of course, there was nothing I could do, and after a while she settled down again. But if you read old novels, by Jane Austen or other female authors, they'll sometimes talk about the dangers of women riding horseback. They caution against it especially at a "Hunt" where they're jumping fences on horseback and such. The "elders" among the women will caution pregnant women not to partake of such physical excitement, for the child in the womb's sake.
Our reality was, my daughter who got jostled around has turned out to be easily frightened and over cautious about trying new things. Her younger sister - never challenged like that in the womb, turned out to be a sunny butterfly. She was a "fairy godmother" who would take baskets of candy Easter eggs to school to cheer her classmates up and "adopt" any of her classmates who seemed to be having a harder time adjusting to school.
That's not to say that that "bummer" occurrence in the womb was the only factor in the differences in my daughters' personalities. But, yes. Bearing children in the womb is a unique experience, in itself!
I have seen you "live" at Mizzou, and twice at the Sheldon Theatre. I am currently reading "That Time of Year". Thank you for your unique style of humor. When you describe Minnesotans, you remind me of my college friend, Ms. Uldbjerg.
Garrison, have u tasted the pizza in New Haven? It's unlike anything I have ever consumed in New York. My brother in law used to work for ADP and he had clients in CT, RI, and MA. He bought a pie from one of the famous names. It's been awhile since I first whetted my appetite for this Italian dream cuisine. Thanks for clarifying on the story of the balloon illustrations for Cheerfulness. My Jewish friend Karina would consider you a mensch. Good luck in Peekskill. I would tell you to break a leg in theatre speak but that might be too foreboding.
btw Will Cheerfulness be available in print copy someday? I do not own a Kindle. How is the wounded knee these daze? Yes, even me has to exercise my mind sometimes. Perhaps one day we can swap poetry and conversation in a local cafe. You definitely affected me in my formative college years with the sardonic wit and casual verbalisms.
You can get the Kindle app for your computer and/or phone and/or tablet and read books on them. If you buy the Kindle books on Amazon you can have them sent to all of your devices.
A nice little verse for a boy to remember. It brought to my Norwegian uncles (one was a bachelor) telling slightly naughty jokes i norsk. We knew this only from the stifled laughs and the occasional non-norsk word that had no suitable translation. I recall “streaker” inexplicably occurring in what I presumed was the punchline.
Brought to mind...not my. Autocorrect strikes again.
At almost 92 I may be at least one of your oldest fans. This story about New Haven and your experience there almost made me cry. I was rector of Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven for many years during the seventies. Had a rock band every Sunday morning to sing songs
like
“What Have They Done to the Rain.” I have seven children, 14 grandchildren and three great grandchildren. So the pregnant mother hit home like a warm shower. And the song was one of my favorites- I actually sang it to my partner yesterday as we were returning from the shore. She was driving. I am nearly deaf but I began singing Oh What a
Beautiful Morning to her, (totally off key) assuming she knew it was from Carousel. She interrupted me and said no, of course it was from Oklahoma! And what a beautiful version!Sooooo many thanks for your heartwarming work. I’ve been loyal for quite a while. Craig Biddle III.
Always good to hear from a priest and especially one from the distingished Biddle family.
Thanks
Garrison. With my
Significant Other I’ll be sitting near the stage when you come to Annapolis. Looking forward to it. Craig Biddle
I'm sad to hear you're sold out at The Kate in Old Saybrook. I found out you were coming too late. I love the naked ex-emperor!
I'm doing a second show on the 7th, slightly different, with Rob Fisher playing piano. It's my birthday, but I'm at the age when birthdays deserve to be ignored. Every day is a birthday.
I checked and there is one seat left on the second show but I'm afraid $70 is a bit beyond my impoverished senior citizen budge. I'm happy for you that you are a sellout and, if you get to Guilford during your time in CT let me know, I'd love to buy you a coffee!
Sorry, I didn't know tickets were that expensive. If I have a comp, I'll get in touch.
Have you played The Kate before? It's a lovely theatre and a perfect venue for you. Break a leg!
What a lovely, lovely piece.
A pleasant June morning here in the woods of southern Vermont. Who could have thought it could have been made even better?
Thank you, Garrison.
Nice piece. But for someone who repeatedly professes to be living beyond cares of a political nature, GK remains oddly obsessed with our most recent ex-president. Let it go already.
If he lets go, I will too.
My daughter was born under horrible circumstances; we were homeless and stayed with a Christian family until she was born and then there was nothing to do, really, but leave and wander and rely on the kindness of strangers. Sometimes I didn’t know where the next diaper would come from.
Life was a constant battle with transience and surrounding ourselves with the wrong people. Up until eight years ago, that is how it went. And then, like Moses leading his people to the promised land, things changed. I always prayed that would come, but God’s timing is not ours, and when we suffer a day can feel like a decade, but the answer always comes and in hindsight it all makes sense.
Now we are stable and we are happy and I make up for lost lullabies by singing along with her to Beatles songs on the Beatles channel on Sirius radio. And we sing in church about the blessings of God. And we always sing the Star Spangled Banner robustly together with our hands on our hearts whenever it is called for.
But when things were hard, every single night my daughter would fall asleep to her cassettes of your Winter Spring Summer and Fall series, and it gave her a sense of stability and comfort in uncertain times, so thank you.
Awesome story!
The blessed child: a gift - life as well.
Now I know the “balloon story” on the cover of your book, “Cheerfulness”, which I have. Thank you! 😇
The child will be so lucky to have you in its life! This piece brings me much needed joy.
Thank you!
PS If you want to refer to the former naked Emperor, go right ahead!
Oh, thank you! What a lovely piece on a gray day where I am. It's comforting to read that a new soul is making his way toward the entry chute while, at this same time, a soul I know is in hospice, taking a careful path on the exit ramp. There is a time for everything.
Wandering Sioux The joys of being “One of the Boys! Those last two lines, especially – made me feel “Left Out!” The way our society treats gender – it’s sort of like an ancient Greek procrustean bed. If you’re male – the bed is big enough for you. If you’re female – there’s an urge to cut us down so that we fit within a socially idealized view of what is “appropriate for the Gentle Sex.”
It reminds me of a visit I paid with one of my cousins on my father’s side. She had married a fellow who worked in Washington DC, and they lived in a Maryland suburb. We came in late afternoon. At that time my cousin was in the kitchen fixing supper for a party with a dozen or more guests. The women were all in the kitchen, gathered around the table, wrapping yeasty dough into torchetti pasta knots. On the other hand, the men were gathered in the hall, telling dirty jokes to each other and laughing uproariously.
I had just read Steve Mitchell’s “How to Speak Southern” – a light-hearted look at cultural differences in Dixie. Actually being in a “Southern” house hold, and observing such strict division by gender felt to me as if it were symbolic of the “Good Old Boy” Southern culture: women working their hands red, men exuberating in their privilege of being “naughty boys!” I don’t know what the situation is like down South today. All the same, sometimes it seems as if “We’ve Come A Long Way, Baby, But We Still Have A Long Way To Go!”
I don't recall cutting women down in the piece.
23 “A Divided Nation!” I’m reading about Frederick Douglass, and his role, on the “other side of the street” to Abraham Lincoln, of heightening awareness of the non-white perspective leading to the Emancipation Proclamation. When I read a poem like the one above, especially the next to the last line, it almost feels as if, “gender-wise”, Americans aren’t “eMANcipated yet!” . In those jokes, I imagine, the Male is generally “The Actor – The Doer!” while the female is a passive recipient. Well. That’s the way we were biologically constructed, true.
Perhaps I’m currently over sensitized by being immersed in Frederick Douglass’s role as an advocate for equality. -But, conceptually, the “dirty jokes” I heard in the corridor hinged on the concept of “Male superiority, female inferiority!” Somehow, I don’t think that those jokes would have made the women’s panties in the kitchen “wet.”
And, frankly, on the whole, I definitely see You, Dear Host, as a current-day Frederick Douglas – someone with a wide enough audience that the President of the United States can invite you to the Washington, to the White House, to ask you if you’d be willing to become his agent for change! In Frederick’s case, he received a Pass to go into slave states and conduct runaway slaves to north of the Mason Dixon Line. Douglass looked at that pass and thought “No Way! If, as a Black man, I show up with a pass like that, 99% of the folks in the South who looked at it will think it’s a forgery! (They wouldn’t have been able to check on the Internet and make sure that that was actually Lincoln’s signature, would they?) What was so special about Frederick Douglass, was that he saw beyond “Current custom.” He saw that some sort of legislation like the 14th and 115th Amendments, and the Emancipation Proclamation, didn’t mean a thing if no one was encouraged to act on them, and to enforce them. If everyone thought “Well, That’s Life!” and just shrugged when black folks said they didn’t like being seen as “inferior beings” then all those Congressional Acts meant nothing.
I agree that the column didn’t openly cut women down. But the jokes that I heard in the corridor that day in the upper South HURT! As a man, it’s probable that you might not have had someone enter your body and physically push against you – possibly until you were quite sore! I guess I’m trying to be sort of a 21st Century Frederick Douglass. I’m saying “Until you’ve been there, until you know how “inferiority feels,” making “oppressor” jokes and saying “what’s your problem?” doesn’t quite cut it.
Sorry for the lecture – you didn’t actually “say anything.” But the acts being described in dirty jokes can certainly be one-sided in terms of their gender humor. In that Southern kitchen, that day, I FELT like a save might have , waiting on Master, when the owners belittled those bound to them.
I struggled to figure out how to love my late ex-wife for 16 years but it just wasn't meant to be. God had a way of blessing us with three wonderful children even as our relationship was doomed to fail, but I did find her to be the most attractive when she was pregnant with those children plus one that we lost on day one. I was also jealous that she was able to have and feel the development of those lives inside of her, oh how awesome could that be.
Awesome, yes, but also an unexpected responsibility! I was twenty-three when I carried my first child. Having that task laid upon you for nine months can get - well, "humdrum." So, in my eighth month or so, I rode up a ski lift - in the summer - in the Angeles Mountains that rim the Los Angeles Basin. I was in the company of two teenaged girls. Just being with them made me feel so "Free!" We decided to "hike" down rather than just get back on the lift chairs. Soon we were taking ten-foot strides, as the mountain fell away from our feet. Finally, we reached a cross road, and stopped to get our breaths back. Suddenly my daughter was kicking absolutely frantically inside me! "Let Me Out of Here! I Don't Like Bouncing Around Like this AT ALL!"
Of course, there was nothing I could do, and after a while she settled down again. But if you read old novels, by Jane Austen or other female authors, they'll sometimes talk about the dangers of women riding horseback. They caution against it especially at a "Hunt" where they're jumping fences on horseback and such. The "elders" among the women will caution pregnant women not to partake of such physical excitement, for the child in the womb's sake.
Our reality was, my daughter who got jostled around has turned out to be easily frightened and over cautious about trying new things. Her younger sister - never challenged like that in the womb, turned out to be a sunny butterfly. She was a "fairy godmother" who would take baskets of candy Easter eggs to school to cheer her classmates up and "adopt" any of her classmates who seemed to be having a harder time adjusting to school.
That's not to say that that "bummer" occurrence in the womb was the only factor in the differences in my daughters' personalities. But, yes. Bearing children in the womb is a unique experience, in itself!
Perfect in all ways. Thank you.
I have seen you "live" at Mizzou, and twice at the Sheldon Theatre. I am currently reading "That Time of Year". Thank you for your unique style of humor. When you describe Minnesotans, you remind me of my college friend, Ms. Uldbjerg.
Garrison, have u tasted the pizza in New Haven? It's unlike anything I have ever consumed in New York. My brother in law used to work for ADP and he had clients in CT, RI, and MA. He bought a pie from one of the famous names. It's been awhile since I first whetted my appetite for this Italian dream cuisine. Thanks for clarifying on the story of the balloon illustrations for Cheerfulness. My Jewish friend Karina would consider you a mensch. Good luck in Peekskill. I would tell you to break a leg in theatre speak but that might be too foreboding.
I've heard about New Haven's pizza but haven't ventured into a shop yet. One of these days. There is a time for everything under heaven.
btw Will Cheerfulness be available in print copy someday? I do not own a Kindle. How is the wounded knee these daze? Yes, even me has to exercise my mind sometimes. Perhaps one day we can swap poetry and conversation in a local cafe. You definitely affected me in my formative college years with the sardonic wit and casual verbalisms.
You can get the Kindle app for your computer and/or phone and/or tablet and read books on them. If you buy the Kindle books on Amazon you can have them sent to all of your devices.