The song, Mary's Prayer, is very special to me. I met Daryl at the Islands Club, a little bar on Davis Islands twenty years ago. This song was on the jukebox. It was very basic, film noir kind of place. The exterior had a Moorish design with minarets and tile. It must have been built when the Islands were (I think in the 1940's). The entire island was dredged out of Tampa Bay and built into an island community.
I got into the Islands Club the first time, when I was only 17. Don't tell Mom, Dad, Eric or Chris. It was really a basic bar on the inside with only a handfull of pool tables, a big clunky bar, and a ladies' room with graffiti that rivalled that of the Hub in downtown Tampa. I'll probably never share all my adventures at the Islands Club, but I will share that today, it is a retirement home. I hope they kept the jukebox. It had Mario Lanza mixed in with the likes of Danny Wilson.
p.s. As many of you already know, when I finally retire (I mean the BIG sleep, not from work) I want to be crisply fried up and scattered in several places (don't worry, I'll leave the longitude & latitude designations) but for my send-off, I want a little party for my friends. The song, Mary's Prayer, is on my playlist.
Carpe Diem!
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Friday, June 8, 2007
High Flight
To Slip the surly bonds of Earth...
The following poem is called High Flight
by Jon Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Pilot Officer, RCAF ---- 1941
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence; hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, Up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
In December 1941, Pilot Officer John G. Magee, a nineteen year old American
serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force in England, was killed when his Spitfire
collided with another airplane inside a cloud. Several months before his death, he
composed his immortal sonnet "High Flight," a copy of which he mailed to
his mother in the United States.
The following poem is called High Flight
by Jon Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Pilot Officer, RCAF ---- 1941
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence; hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, Up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
In December 1941, Pilot Officer John G. Magee, a nineteen year old American
serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force in England, was killed when his Spitfire
collided with another airplane inside a cloud. Several months before his death, he
composed his immortal sonnet "High Flight," a copy of which he mailed to
his mother in the United States.
Atlantis slips the surly bonds of Earth
Tonight, at 7:38 p.m., Atlantis left Cape Canaveral for a little hook-up with the Space Station.
The weather was rainy here, so the cloud cover prohibited a viewing of this momentous event. Sad for me? Yes. Why? Well, I've been watching lift-offs since I was a child. John Glenn's circuit around the earth, that happened right after Sputnik's launch in 1959. John Glenn's orbit gave me a great deal of hope. Perhaps we might not be vicitms of Cubas's (and the evil USSR's plans to "bury us") Cuban Missle Crisis after all.
I begged my Dad to build us a "fall out shelter." Dad had to demonstrate the inefficiency of "going underground in Miami," by using a post-hole digger to show me that, in Miami, one could not dig beneath 6' without finding the water table. Believe me, I was a smart kid, but I was not so smart as to come up with another solution to this horrible problem. His solution? Faith. It simply wasn't going to happen. God would not reveal the "End Times"so this "so-called threat," was only that, a "threat." Dad doesn't know this, but he helped me live through months of "emergency exercises," wherein we had to find our bus (for me it was route 9), duck and cover exercices wherein I knew I would be fused to the underside of my desk like the gum already stuck there, and well, I love you, Dad, but, reality taught me that maybe it was better to exist at "ground zero" than to live on the perimeter.
The weather was rainy here, so the cloud cover prohibited a viewing of this momentous event. Sad for me? Yes. Why? Well, I've been watching lift-offs since I was a child. John Glenn's circuit around the earth, that happened right after Sputnik's launch in 1959. John Glenn's orbit gave me a great deal of hope. Perhaps we might not be vicitms of Cubas's (and the evil USSR's plans to "bury us") Cuban Missle Crisis after all.
I begged my Dad to build us a "fall out shelter." Dad had to demonstrate the inefficiency of "going underground in Miami," by using a post-hole digger to show me that, in Miami, one could not dig beneath 6' without finding the water table. Believe me, I was a smart kid, but I was not so smart as to come up with another solution to this horrible problem. His solution? Faith. It simply wasn't going to happen. God would not reveal the "End Times"so this "so-called threat," was only that, a "threat." Dad doesn't know this, but he helped me live through months of "emergency exercises," wherein we had to find our bus (for me it was route 9), duck and cover exercices wherein I knew I would be fused to the underside of my desk like the gum already stuck there, and well, I love you, Dad, but, reality taught me that maybe it was better to exist at "ground zero" than to live on the perimeter.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
OK, so as a blogger, I'm not so consistent.
OK, so as a blogger, I'm not so consistent.
But, I do like to think I'm providing quality over quantity.
I'm really proud of everything on my site so far. It's like a very slow diary. So, you must wonder, how am I coping with my life some months after my last post. Well, I am still crazy, still sweating f0r NO GOOD REASON (thank you menopause, so very much!!!) I'll try to catch you up quickly. Liz, formerly of Atlanta, is now in San Francisco. Parenthetically speaking, what a wonderful city! Daryl & I went out during spring break (Eric & Chris were supposed to go with us, but, whither Eric goest, or refuses to goest, so goest or doesn't goest Chris... you figure it out.) Right now, Eric is 17 and Chris is 14. One idolizes the other... again, you figure it out.) I didn't want to "kick against the pricks," (this, believe it or not is a Biblical reference -- thank you Constance Bartels) so, the boys stayed home, and Daryl & I went alone. Liz and Brian have a wonderful apartment and two gracious cats (Fleury and FBlanche - F1 & F2 to me) so we had a great time, sans plaintive teenage boys. The payback, you ask... Well, we have a little roadtrip planned for this summer. Two Schuette nieces are getting married and, well, we're all going.
San Francisco has the BEST CLIMATE ON EARTH FOR MENOPAUSAL WOMEN. I didn't break a sweat even ONCE. San Francisco has hills though. I like walking downhill, but uphill, well, that's what the busses are for. I'm happy that Liz is living in such a wonderful place -- great shopping, great food, great sights, totally groovy place. Plus, they pay people really well there. Unlike Florida whose pay scale is comparable to that of the tenant farmers in the Grapes of Wrath.
But, I do like to think I'm providing quality over quantity.
I'm really proud of everything on my site so far. It's like a very slow diary. So, you must wonder, how am I coping with my life some months after my last post. Well, I am still crazy, still sweating f0r NO GOOD REASON (thank you menopause, so very much!!!) I'll try to catch you up quickly. Liz, formerly of Atlanta, is now in San Francisco. Parenthetically speaking, what a wonderful city! Daryl & I went out during spring break (Eric & Chris were supposed to go with us, but, whither Eric goest, or refuses to goest, so goest or doesn't goest Chris... you figure it out.) Right now, Eric is 17 and Chris is 14. One idolizes the other... again, you figure it out.) I didn't want to "kick against the pricks," (this, believe it or not is a Biblical reference -- thank you Constance Bartels) so, the boys stayed home, and Daryl & I went alone. Liz and Brian have a wonderful apartment and two gracious cats (Fleury and FBlanche - F1 & F2 to me) so we had a great time, sans plaintive teenage boys. The payback, you ask... Well, we have a little roadtrip planned for this summer. Two Schuette nieces are getting married and, well, we're all going.
San Francisco has the BEST CLIMATE ON EARTH FOR MENOPAUSAL WOMEN. I didn't break a sweat even ONCE. San Francisco has hills though. I like walking downhill, but uphill, well, that's what the busses are for. I'm happy that Liz is living in such a wonderful place -- great shopping, great food, great sights, totally groovy place. Plus, they pay people really well there. Unlike Florida whose pay scale is comparable to that of the tenant farmers in the Grapes of Wrath.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)