sweasel.com

What a lovely photo. Wish it was in color. The sand and water look so smooth and inviting.

I enjoyed an outing today, too. My first in ages. JavaMan and I went to the small-town library—signed up for library cards, and I checked out five books: two Robert Crais novels, and three on gardening. The librarian who was processing my application said, “Oh! You’re my neighbors.” We are in a small rural subdivision and she lives on a lane that dead-ends into ours. So that was neat. Picked up Thai take-out for lunch. Now I am exhausted, and need a nap 🙂

Winter not going away here, not yet. JavaMan still talks about the 22 inches of “clear to partly cloudy” that fell in the last week of March, 1987.

Are sheep wearing masks?
Maintaining proper social distance?

How about the actual sheep?

Continuing on from yesterday’s (lack of) appreciation of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a internet conversation today with an old friend stumbled into Procol Harem’s “Conquistador”, and subsequently “A Lighter Shade of Pale”. The latter has always resonated with me and it mesmerizes me with its enigmatic story.

The relevance here is that it reminds me of a argument that I had with a professor back in my college days: he insisted that, as a song lyric “A Lighter Shade Of Pale” was -not- poetry, while Ferlinghetti’s crap work was great. I argued that the delivery method, typed or hand-written, spoken or sung, did not matter. He said, “shut up kid”. I was disappointed in him.

I leave ya’all to be the judges*

We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale

* Ya’all can be judges as long as you agree with me that this is poetry and better than L Monsanto on his best day ever.

@Some Veg – that song (when I finally could figure out the lyrics, you know, back in the day when we couldn’t plop down at our PERSONAL COMPUTER! and look them up) isn’t one of my favorites, but it also is one I will let play all the way through and not change the station.

And after seeing some of Larry Spaghetti’s ‘poems’, none of which impress me, I’ll go with you, ‘…shade of Pale’ has some brilliant verbal images in it.

And it is indeed enigmatic, but sometimes that’s what makes a song, or poem, better for me. That is, left wondering what the ‘story’ is.

Examples off the top of my head:
South Side of the Sky – Yes
Brothers in Arms – Dire Straits
The Wind Cries Mary – Jimi Hendrix
Gates of Delirium – Yes

Spaghetti doesn’t leave me wondering, I can’t help but read his stuff and think he was a pretentious twerp, like so many of our ‘modern’ brilliant lights, so I don’t read a lot of his stuff.

Ms Weasel when she was a young’n?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDyNNnNxEyo&feature=youtu.be

Shades of Jean Luc Ponte: she’s got a see-through banjo with electric pickups.

This young lady has been performing since she was 11.

Here’s some Sunday Stoatiness for your idle amusement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HFSaxIsJCE

OMG Uncle Al that was total squee!! Cuteness overload.

OMG – @BMJ just prompted a memory on the Larry Spaghetti carry over post.

And I realized –

Ferlinghetti = Maynard G. Krebs.

@UncleAl – LikeButton – press press press

@durnedyankee — Yeah, that worrrrrk?!?s well!

Sun….. I remember Sun. Got another 18 inches of snow over the weekend and it’s still way below 0F here. Almost like a normal winter for us.

Drew458, I can play Salt Creek, but I ain’t that clean. For some reason, it became the serious show-offy tune of our times. It’s hard.

Uncle Al, the guy in the video is Robert E Fuller, a wildlife photographer. There’s a much longer video of his rescue stoats (among other things) on his channel.