"DREAM  -  IT'S THE THING TO DO"

Before I tell you about a remarkable dream:

WORDLE REPORT

Well, today it took me the whole six tries to solve the puzzle.  Another tricky rarely used word. (IMHO) This almost was the first time I missed, and I was very nervous.

Tallywacker, Uterus, and Adam's Rib

Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse writes about responses from three critical Supreme Court nominee questioners when reporters asked them to define their own definitions of "woman."  

Check it out!

By the way, Judge Jackson has now been confirmed as the first black female Supreme Court Justice!

DREAMS

Shakespeare (Hamlet Act III):

"To sleep! perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause."

Someone has written that we should think of our dream-time as a "vacation."

As a youngster I was always scared to go to sleep because of the prayer that I was encouraged to say every night:

"Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray to God my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray to God my soul to take!"

Why do parents teach their kids to say such a scary thing before they get covered with a blanket and have the lights turned off?

During my working life, I tried to live on just four or five hours of sleep at night.  This probably messed with my brain and it certainly did not give me enough REM time to have memorable dreams.

Now, I get over eight hours of sleep at night and have lots of dreams that I remember, such as the one I had last night: 

A group of overweight ladies were having a meeting around the kitchen table in the West Elm Street house in New Bedford, Massachusetts where I spent my adolescence.

I came bounding down the narrow staircase and interrupted the meeting.

The ladies did not like the way I was dressed and insisted that I buy different clothes.  So off I went to a five-and-ten-cent store in Baltimore, Maryland with Elaine driving.

I grabbed some tee-shirts and Elaine and I escaped out of the back door without paying.

Outside, we were suddenly in the middle of Baltimore's tall downtown buildings. I decided to try for an appointment with a prominent Baltimore "shrink," but I canceled it because he seemed so dumb when I met him.

We thought that we would travel back to Massachusetts, but we got lost along the way.

We thought we might be in Virginia and we stopped at a tiny village to find out.  The natives were not friendly.  While we were trying to decide what to do, the car stopped running and we had to push it into the village's gas station.

While there we struck up an interesting conversation with the mechanic who had been a "quiz kid" from the Bronx, New York.  

Our car now fixed, we started out, only to be stopped by my co-worker, Ed who just happened to spot us and who insisted on wiping my foggy glasses with a pair of his undershorts, "Yuk!" I exclaimed as I woke from my very vivid dream "vacation."

A "shrink" might learn a lot about me from this dream, but I don't care.  As boring as it probably seems to almost everybody, it was fun for me to experience it.

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 MORE "STUFF"

1. WORDLE

Another tough one today.

Hint:  Remember what I said yesterday.

Almost all English words have at least one vowel.

Some words have repeated letters.

2.  Seymor

My spider neighbor sits there on his reconstructed little web, smiling smugly because he escaped detection the other day and is back in the hunting business.

That reminds me of a quote which I will change a bit:  

"Does a man pursue a woman?

Does a fly pursue a spider web?"

 Oh, and by the way, the boy's name Seymor comes from Seymore, or Seymour, which means "Saint-Maur.

Saint-Maur-des-Fosses is a suburb of Paris on the River Marne.  But who was Saint Maur?

The name Saint'maur comes from "the old French name Maurice, meaning Moor, which was borne by several third century saints." Or, from Saint Maurus, a sixth century saint.

Since the fourteenth century, English peerage has included a "Baron St Maur."

There is a famous Seymour family in England.

I could go on and on about this, but TMI!

Sidenote: In 2020, there was a "Conference de Michael Langlois sur les origines de L'Islam" in Saint-Maur.  (One of my in-laws is named Michael Langlois.)

3.  Peter, Paul and Mary

No, that's not a group of Catholic saints.  It's a marvelous trio that sang folk songs in the 1960's, probably before most of you were born.

Last night, Elaine and I watched the trio's 25th anniversary show on TV.  It was filmed in the 1980's.

We laughed and cried and sang and applauded and had a great time listening to the familiar songs, such as:

"If I had a Hammer"

"Puff, the Magic Dragon"

"500 Miles"

"Lemon Tree"

"Leaving on a Jet Plane"

"Michael row the Boat Ashore"

There were a few people who did not like how some of their songs advocated PEACE and human equality, but they continued with their music, and even accompanied Martin Luther King at a Washington "march.".

Some even accused them of causing kids to use marijuana by listening to the lyrics of "Puff the Magic Dragon."

I wonder if their PEACE songs could be updated and used to help bring the Ukranian assault to a close. I would volunteer to translate them into Russian, if I still had that skill, and if Putin would even care.

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 INTERESTING?

Here are some things that I spent a lot of time thinking about this morning.

1. WORDLE

Yes, I know, the solution words for the last three days have been tough to solve, at least for me and my hobby is "words."  Remember that every six-letter word has a vowel or a "Y" and sometimes a letter can repeat in a word.

2.  SEYMOR SPIDER HAS REAPPEARED

He must have been hiding yesterday when a cleaning occurred. I do have some questions:

Is this really Seymor or is it his brother Sylvester?

Where is his web?  (He's perched on a cleaning brush handle.) 

Is this Seymor's ghost?

Am I seeing things?

Am I having fun with this? (yes)

This reminds me (true story):

3. Easter Message

For several years my late wife and I visited some friends at Easter-time. They lived in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

We always would accompany them to services at a local Catholic church to hear their old priest intone a fifty-minute homily related to Christ's resurrection. 

The church was rather small, and parishioners often fought over seating.  Sometimes they even came to blows. Something had to be done about the situation.

A solution was found when the church made a deal with Clemson University to hold their Easter service in one of their massive lecture halls.

As the parishioners sat restlessly in their itchy holiday finery waiting stoically for their beloved priest to deliver his usual long-winded Easter homily about Christ's resurrection, he raised up on his aging limbs, said, "HE'S BACK!" and sat down.  This was the first time I heard loud applause in a Catholic church.  

4. HYPERPOLYGLOT

Washington Post reporters wrote an interesting piece about a 46-year-old Washington, DC carpet cleaner named Vaughn Smith, who is fluent in 8 languages, can carry on conversations in 6 other languages and understands 31 other languages!

I thought that it was fun for me to learn 8 language and study a few others, but this guy has fun in 45 languages.

He could be earning a six-figure salary serving as a language expert for the CIA, NSA or the State Department, but he'd rather be doing other jobs, as long as they put him in situations where he can learn new languages, and there are many foreign embassies in DC that need their carpets cleaned.

 

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NIGHTLY ADVENTURES

Elaine is not able to travel so we spend each evening from 6:40 PM to midnight watching TV.

At first, we tried to watch network TV shows, but the sitcom plots (if you can call them that) were so dumb and the canned laughter so insulting that we gave up on that idea.

Example:

Father: "Well, son, did you have a test at school today?" (Loud laughter.)

Son: "Yeah, dad."  (Moans and Oh's)

Father:  "How did you do?"  (Raucous guffaws.) 

Son: "Not good.  That new pretty teacher doesn't like me!"  (Gasps and laughter)

Father:  "Oh really?"  (Whoops and whistles and loud guffaws)

Do you see what I mean?

If it is absolutely necessary to watch one of such shows, we will shut off the sound and enable "closed captions."

By the way, a while ago I decided to watch reruns of my one-time favorite show: "Frazier."  I was surprised to hear canned laughter.  Why hadn't I been aware of that before? 

Last night we watched two movies.

Winter Romance (I think) about the Graff Hotel in Forrest Ridge, Montana.  We found this movie to be pleasant, but not memorable, except for the jeans that the male lead wore constantly for two weeks. They clung to his skinny legs like a tight girdle, and they sported a white paint spot and raggedy edges.

The Blind Side about Michael Oher, who was helped to overcome his Ghetto background and reach his full potential as a student and a famous football player.

I have lived in the Baltimore area now for 62 (!) years but I have never followed football and didn't know that Michael played for the Ravens for eight years, Shame on me!

This was a "feel good movie!"  I highly recommend it.

At midnight Alexa nagged me to take my pills and go to bed. I did so, but I stayed awake long enough to hear Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. It got my interest with a couple of things:

Senator and Governor of South Carolina Strom Thurmond married two Miss South Carolina beauty queens - 20 years apart! 

His main claim to fame was as the Senator who conducted the longest filibuster ever given by a lone Senator. Over 24 hours.

He also voted against every Civil Rights legislation and was the Dixiecrat candidate for President in 1948,

In one of the States there is a contest to crown the "armpit queen."  I can't find anything about it, but it sounds interesting.

ENOUGH!

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 EXCITING STUFF (AT LEAST FOR ME)

FLASH!  Seymor is "no more!"

Yesterday at 3 AM, Cookie came out of her hideout to greet me.  She had proudly stretched her tiny bright black body to a length of a half inch.

However, before she could say, "Good Morning, Mr. Joe," she spotted Seymor Spider and quickly ran back into her shelter.

I had warned Seymor that someday one of our cleaners would spot him and hurry his demise.  

And so it was today.  Seymor was discovered and hurriedly deposited in a watery grave.  RIP, Seymor, we could have become great friends.

Besides Seymor, our helper also found a congregation of baby spiders conducting a meeting right under my bed.  They joined Seymor.

(Are you crazy like me and talk to creatures.  Try it.  It's fun.)

This reminds me: 

"Pierre is no more!"

(I've written about this before.)

Pierre Bourgeois was a good friend.  We both worked at the Social Security Administration headquarters in Woodlawn, Maryland, and also brewed delicious red wine together.

One year Pierre and his beautiful family went on a week-long trip to the "Outer Banks" in the Carolinas.

When the week was up, I called his house to ask him how the trip went.  A female voice answered and said, "Pierre is no more."

Pierre had died on the way home from the trip. I don't believe he was more than thirty years old.

His mother had flown in from California and was answering his calls. She was (is?) a well-known painter of nautical scenes. "To remember Pierre," she gave use a painting that I treasure.

Pierre's wife also gave us something "To remember Pierre."  She planted a small azalea bush in the middle of our yard.  That was over 25 years ago and yesterday my daughter Diane, who now lives in our earlier home, says that the azalea bush has become a massive glorious plant that is the envy of the neighborhood.

RIP Pierre, mon ami!

To end this entry on a lighter note, here are some punny definitions from Bennett Cerf (Random Books leader here in Westminster)

BIGAMIST - an Italian fog

DOGMA - a puppy's mother

GUILLOTINE - a French chopping center

HATE ORGANIZATIONS - sour groups

MOLASSES - additional girls

PASTEURIZE - something you see moving

SPECIMEN - an Italian astronaut

VIOLIN - a very bad hotel

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 STUFF  HAPPENS

1. Telephone Issues

Are you getting pestered with calls lately?  Yesterday I received over 20 cell phone calls in two hours, all from different, but similar telephone numbers.

I don't answer calls with numbers that I can't recognize.  Too many scammers out there.

But I did research a few of the calls and they all came from a new teen-age cult.  I will not mention it in writing because I don't want to give them any publicity.

I still also use a land-line phone and get about ten irritating calls a day from "Unknown Caller."  I never answer such calls. Sometimes they will leave me the "Goodby" message or try to send me a fax which I do not allow. At times, they will fill my message box with loud sounds designed, I suppose, to deafen me. Usually they hang up when they get no response.

Who are these "unknown" callers?  How do I rid myself of this irritant?

2.  A New Creature

Suddenly, without an invitation, Seymor Spider took up residence in a corner of my bathroom, not far from where Cookie lives.  He is three times her size and would probably enjoy her as a tasty repast - if he could catch her.

Meanwhile he hangs there on his pathetic little web, waiting patiently for "no-see-ums" to get caught in his trap.

Unfortunately for him, sooner or later, one of our bathroom cleaners will notice him and he will suffer an inevitable dunking.

3.  Sleepy Time

 

"My dreams are getting better all the time."

Lately I think that my REM-time dreams are becoming more memorable.  For instance, last night I had the following dream after consuming an enormous amount of high-priced but delicious  salad:

 I dreamt that I was standing at a food counter in the Westminster mall, and a beautiful red-haired young lady was asking me what food I wanted to order.  In her hand was the largest pork chop that I had ever seen.  I told her that I would like some of it.

She asked if I wanted "fixings" too.  I said, "of course!"

When the meal arrived, "Red" handed me the bill. It was for $25.

"$25!" I yelled.  "I'm not paying that for a little meat and a few ounces of salad!"

"Put him in jail!" Said the young lady to a policeman that had just appeared, and, suddenly that pretty redhead shrunk down and turned into a "Wicked Witch" from "The Wizard of OZ."

This dream was so real, I woke up planning how I would "beat the rap."

4.  The Freytag Pyramid

No, its not like the "Klopfman Curse."  Gustav Freytag (Friday) was a 19th century German playwright who expanded on work by Aristotle to create "Freytag's Pyramid."

This is "a paradigm of dramatic structure" outlining seven key steps to successful storytelling:

Exposition - meet the characters and locale

Inciting Incident - introduce conflicts and threats

Rising Action - announce plot twists and activity

Climax - tell the rest of the story - release tension

Falling Action - tell what's left of the activity

Resolution - tie up loose ends

Denouement - explain remaining matters -  clear up plot "strands"

Most storytellers follow these steps, but some don't, according to the professor in the interesting  Great Courses Writing Class that I am monitoring.

One could consider the "pyramid" when relating personal incidents.

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 A 1939 VIEW OF THE WORLD

I have a collection of old newspapers and I thought you might like to know some of what people thought 83 years ago, during "the Great Depression."

(The Baltimore Newspost, Tues. January 10, 1939.) 

Obits

Names of the deceased are shown along with addresses.  

(Good pickings for burglars and conmen.)

House for Sale

Druid Hill Section

9 rooms; 2 baths; automatic heat -- $1,950.

($300 cash moves you in)

Dr. Haney says 

Dr. Lewis Haney, Professor of Economics at New York University reports on the perilous state of the U. S. economy, and he remarks:

"What are the rest of the President's scheme? Is he (Roosevelt) really going to get off his high horse and cooperate with Congress and business?

... How far will (Congress) go with wasteful spending? 'Old age pensions' and such stuff!" 

Oyster Bashing

(Like bringing coals to Newcastle?)  

Governor Martin of Washington State sent a shipment of his state's Olympia oysters to Maryland for the inaugural dinner of Governor O'Connor.  He made fun of Maryland suffering a shortage of its own oysters.  The gift was not very well received.

Tony the Bomber

Famous boxer Tony Galento meets a lot of tough contenders who think he is soft, but "Tony would follow any guy right in and tangle him up like boiling spaghetti."  

What fools the fancy foot workers is that Tony has no more style than a boy wearing his father's pants."

"Tony wants to do his roadwork sitting down."

"When he climbs into the ring, there will be a fight if the other fellow stays still long enough to throw a shadow."

Society

"Cotillion Gay - Debutantes Bow to Society - Lyric Scene of Brilliant Dance"

"Isabelle Barton; Mrs. J.P.W. Levering; Isabelle Kernan; Frances Hunter"

Cuba

"A steamship line to Cuba opened today."

(My Great Great Grandmother traveled to Cuba each year to seek a cure for her "tic de la rue," a chronic pain condition affecting the trigeminal nerve in the face,  It usually occurs in women over age fifty.)

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