Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

Welcome to ABC Wednesday, Round 14

Bloggers, consider giving ABC Wednesday a try

 

Don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before six months ago, but consider this my now semiannual plug for something called ABC Wednesday, in which people, literally from around the world, post an item – pictures, poems, essays that in someway describe each letter of the alphabet, in turn. I’ve been participating since the letter K in Round 5.The meme was started about six and a half years ago by Denise Nesbitt from England.

At some point, she recruited a team of her followers to do some of the intro writing and visiting, which eventually included me.

Then three rounds ago, she was getting a little burned out. So I became the administrator, assigning who reads which posts, making sure somebody is writing the introductions (and writing them myself, when necessary) and inserting the link that allows everyone to participate. The team is pretty good at noting when someone grossly violates the simple rules.

Read about the significance of this round’ logo by Troy here. He’s designed the logos for eight or nine rounds now.

The Netiquette for the site is this:

1. Post something on your non-commercial blog/webpage having something to do with the letter of the week. Use your imagination. Put a link to ABC Wednesday in your post and/or put up the logo.

2. Come to the ABC Wednesday site and link the SPECIFIC link to the Linky thing. It’ll be available around 4 p.m., Greenwich Mean Time each Tuesday, which is 11 a.m. or noon in the Eastern part of the United States.

3. Try and visit at least 5 other participants…and comment on their posts. The more sites you do visit, the more comments you will probably get.

Bloggers, consider giving it a try if this sounds interesting. We’ll be starting with A again in a couple of weeks. And I actually will have a theme for the posts this time through, which will become quite evident soon.

The Lydster, Part 117: The Tattooed Lady

The Daughter now LOVES the Muppet version of Lydia the Tattooed Lady.

I was having an e-mail chat with Jaquandor; either he was correcting one of my typos or I was fixing one of his. That’s what we bloggers do.

He asked: “Hey, have you ever played the song ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady’ for your daughter? The Muppets did a great version. But then, the Muppets are always great.” I had, but she seemed unaffected by it. It WAS possibly a couple of years ago.

Jaquandor: “And for future reference, here’s Kermit and Lydia! So I played it for The Daughter and The Wife, and also the Marx Brothers original from the movie At The Circus.

Those of you who have been around a while may remember the rules I had for naming The Daughter. So I was initially annoyed that the very first comment from one friend after announcing her name was a reference to this song. I have long gotten past that.

The Daughter now LOVES the Muppet version! She’s probably seen it thrice a week for the last couple months. While my wife and I like it too, we prefer the original, with those extra verses. (I especially like the table dancing.)

Here’s a Rudy Vallee recording from 1939.

I believe in Christmas

As John Lennon wrote, “the Word is love.”

The day after Thanksgiving, I found myself at the flagship Macy’s store in Manhattan with The Wife, The Daughter, my eldest niece, her husband, and a couple of their friends. I also saw a guy I knew from Albany walk by.

The Macy’s windows are great because they’re so imaginative. On one set of windows was the retelling of Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, that famous New York Sun editorial from 1897, complete with a backstory about the girl and her family. It’s certainly why I know there’s a Saint Nick, who’s black and white and Hispanic and Asian and all sorts of colors.

I believe in the love of Jesus, too, who almost certainly wasn’t born in December, but rather under the sign of Aries or Pisces, not that it much matters. Got into a debate recently about how Christianity has led to lots of wars, and such – I’ve had that conversation a LOT, as you might imagine – but, for me, that comes from people misconstruing the Word. And, as John Lennon wrote, “the Word is love.”

You can call it magic, or hoodoo, or myth, and I’m all right with that. Faith is kind of like that. Like the love that the Pope showed to immigrants recently.

Merry Christmas.

In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.
I realized, through it all, that…
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
~ Albert Camus

Last-minute gift ideas

so this lady walks up at a traffic light, and. . .

Levitacious

levitacious (adj)– being filled with joy, levity

I think this is how it happened, though neither of us can remember for sure.

I walked by a colleague’s desk, in a reasonably good mood. Maybe I made a light joke.

C: My, you seem levitacious today.

R: Wow, that’s a great word you’ve coined!

More banter commending the word.

C (in e-mail): Which spelling doth thou prefereth? Levitacious or levitatious?

R (in e-mail): Think I like the C, avoiding 2 Ts. How about you?

C (in e-mail): I agree!

R (in e-mail): levitacious (adj)– being filled with joy, levity

C (in e-mail): Excellent!

So, are you feeling levitacious today? Tell me some of the word coinage you’ve done.

X is for Xylophone

I loved my xylophone, and think it’d be a nifty Christmas gift for SOMEONE ELSE’S little child.

Wikipedia says: “The xylophone (from the Greek words ξύλον—xylon, ‘wood’ + φωνή—phonē, ‘sound, voice’, meaning ‘wooden sound’) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets.”

When I was a kid, I had a xylophone, very much like this one pictured, with an octave and a half. It was good for Mary Had a Little Lamb, or for Chopsticks, if you had two mallets.

But I was always disappointed that certain seemingly simple songs often had ONE note (or more) that wasn’t in the standard scale. I figured “Do-Re-Mi” from “The Sound of Music” [LISTEN] certainly would be able to be played on a keyboard [PLAY!], using only the white keys of a piano, which is all most kids’ xylophones had. After all, the very basis of the song is that DO-RE-MI, etc, were the building blocks of singing. Alas, at LA (A in the key of C), it goes A down to D-E-F#-G-A-B. Then at TI, it goes B down to E-F#-G#-A-B-C.

Likewise, Dominique by The Singing Nun [LISTEN], a big hit in my childhood, just before the return of the chorus, went (in C) E-D-E-F#-G. In other words, again, one needed an equivalent of a black note on a keyboard, missing on this simple instrument.

Still, I loved my xylophone. I think this would be a nifty Christmas gift for SOMEONE ELSE’S little child.

ABC Wednesday – Round 13

Ramblin' with Roger
Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial