Old Dog Addled by New Tricks

The layout of this here blog thing is all screwed up when viewed by my Internet Explorer, and it looks like I'm going to have to use Google Chrome. There are other things that really demand it too, but I don't like Google Chrome, and I am going to pout about it. It isn't comfy, and I have never leaped gleefully into new technology, or new anything, for that matter. At work in 1993 they dragged me kicking and screaming into Windows 3.1. I didn't want to leave DOS.  I still occasionally go to the command prompt to deal with files when I need to do something you can't do in Windows.

And speaking of learning new tricks, I sent my partner off this morning to her last day of work, ever. She is now officially a senior citizen on social security just like me, and she will learn, as I have over the last two and a half years, that the most exquisite benefit of being retired is never again having to get up in the morning and go to work.

With both of us retired, one possible difficulty will be remembering what day it is. While she was still working, I could keep track of the week's progress, but now there will be no reference point to reckon the days. Like the Dowager Countess of Grantham, we won't know what a weekend is.

And it will be sublime.

Congratulations, JB!

Sing a Song of Something Else

I was about 11 years old when I discovered for myself a basic truth of popular songs.  I had been sitting on the couch in our living room for quite a long time, listening to the songs playing on the radio in the kitchen when I suddenly popped up, dashed into the kitchen and announced to my mother, who was preparing supper, "All songs are about love."  She agreed with me.

I love you, you love me, I love you, you don't love me, thought I lost you, 'fraid I will, you love somebody else, I'll never love another, I want to hold your hand.  The number of popular songs with a love theme is so overwhelmingly large that there is a special category for songs not about love, the "novelty" song:  Doggie in the Window, Purple People Eaters, Monster Mash.

There are a some other categories that have or have had their day, of course -- Christmas songs, old folk songs, plus the folk songs of protest, and songs that musicals need to move the story along -- My Favorite Things, Whistle a Happy Tune, O, What a Beautiful Mornin'.

I'm noticing something here.  Of the tunes I've mentioned, the most recent is from 1963.  I guess that's to be expected from an old woman.

Le Petite Prince

It's a boy!  Darn it.

I wish Kate and Will and the little prince all the best, of course, but I really was hoping my new 22nd cousin (thrice removed) would be a girl.  Now, barring untimely deaths or abdications, it will probably be 100 years before England has another queen regnant. 

There was a rumor that his great-grandma would "retire" (as Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and King Albert of Belgium have recently done) once the new heir was born, but I think that's extremely unlikely.  A monarch who takes the job as seriously as Queen Elizabeth II is going to see it as a duty to remain on the throne until she dies.  And if she takes after her mother, she's got at least 14 years to go.

Now we wait to hear what they'll name His Royal Totness.  I'm for Arthur, as I said previously, but I would not be surprised if we are going to have a future King George VII instead.

One Enchanted Evening

Like most young children, I asked my mother more than once to tell me where she had met Daddy.  She always told me they met in a bowling alley, and it wasn’t until I was in college that she finally admitted that wasn’t quite true.  Actually, he picked her up in a bar.

In was 1942, and the place was Charlie’s Tavern in Cicero, the near-west suburb of Chicago made famous by Al Capone.  Lending a little credence to the story, there were actually two bowling lanes in a back room at Charlie’s, but they weren’t bowling on the night in question.

My mother had left her small hometown in downstate Illinois to get a job at a defense plant in Chicago.  She was 20 years old and divorced, and when that news got around the workplace, she got hit on by a lot of men who believed divorced women were easy.

She did agree to go out with one of her co-workers, and they ended up at Charlie’s Tavern.  My father was there that night too, and, according to his own statement, when he saw her from across the room, it was love at first sight.

My father knew the man she was with and knew too that the guy was married.  He took him aside and threatened to tell his wife if he didn’t make up an excuse and leave.  The guy introduced the two of them, vouched for my dad’s character, and left.  My father then offered to drive her home.

When he saw her to her door, this conversation ensued:

"Do you like to go to the movies?" asked he.
"Oh, yes, I love to go to the movies," replied she.
"I like to go to the movies too, but I don't have anybody to go with."
"I would go to the movies with you."
"You would?"

Smooth, Dad.  Really smooth.

Royal Watch

I admit to being a Royal Watcher.  Maybe being related to the Queen has something to do with it.  Right now I am anxiously awaiting the birth of my 22nd cousin removed three times.  Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, predicts it will be this week.  Nobody knows if she really knows something or is just guessing.

Coincidentally, today is Camilla's birthday.  She's 66.  I like Camilla, always have.  I think she has handled her elevation to consort of the future King of England with dignity and grace.  I know a lot of people don't like her, having cast her as the other woman in the Charles-Diana breakup.  I blame Diana, myself.  That loveless marriage was bound to be unhappy for both of them, but like many royal marriages over the centuries, it could have survived if Diana had held her end up.  Charles was not the first prince with a mistress, but Diana was the first princess to make a public stink about it.  She knew going into it what was expected of her -- produce an heir and maintain the pretense -- and she only managed half of it.

Perhaps Camilla's prediction about the baby was prompted by a hope that the child would be born on her birthday.  Well, let's see, it's just after 3:00 in the afternoon over there right now, so there's still time.

Come on, Kate.  Get on with it.

What to my wondering eyes should appear ...

Saturday we took a little drive and ended up in a small town less than an hour away.  As we came into town, a man and woman came clopping toward us in a horse-drawn wagon.  We recalled there were Amish in the area, and these people looked so typical in their plain clothes, she in white head covering, he with beard and straw hat.

We pulled into a gas station to fill up, and when I got out of the car, I noticed the Amish couple had pulled in as well.  It was an odd juxtaposition, their rig parked off to one side at a gas station.  I thought they had probably come there to buy something in the associated convenience store.

While I filled the tank, I became aware of activity on the other side of the pump I was using,  but there was no car there.  Curious, I took a few steps so I could peer around the pump and see what was happening, and there was the Amish man filling two large gasoline cans.  When he finished, he carried them to his wagon, then went inside to pay.

I can only assume their community allows the use of some sort of equipment that runs on gasoline, because if it was for his Harley, he would have ridden his Hog into town.

New Royal Due Soon

When Buckingham Palace announced that William and Kate were expecting, all they said about the due date was "in July."  Well, it's July, and anticipation in Britain is reaching fever pitch.

British bookmakers, as usual, are taking bets on anything related to it, from mundane things like sex, weight, and time of birth to whether it will be William or Kate who is holding the baby when they leave the hospital.

As to the child's name, James and Victoria are the most popular choices.  If it's a boy, I'd like them to call him Arthur.  It's about time England had a real King Arthur.  They almost did in the 16th Century, but Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII, died before his father, so the next son succeeded him, as Henry VIII.  I like Arthur William Henry Albert George myself.

The law of succession was changed in 2011 to allow the first-born child to be heir to the throne regardless of gender, so I hope it is a girl to take advantage of it.  And I hope they name her Elizabeth Victoria Catherine Alexandra Mary, but I have a sneaky suspicion they're going to work Diana in there somewhere.

News for today

My postings in this here blog thing are sometimes inspired by something I hear on the radio or see in the paper, and since I couldn't think of anything to write about today, I thought I'd hunt around at Google News.  Nothing.

So I checked today's birthdays and came up with Robert the Bruce (King of Scotland), John Quincy Adams (President), Yul Brynner (bald guy), and Tab Hunter, who is now 92.   Nothing inspiring there. 

There are also a bunch of people, living and dead, born on this date of whom I have never heard. It's a shame too, because I really think somebody ought to be celebrating the 187th anniversary of the birth of the English dude who invented the steam-hauled plow (John Fowler, 1826-1864).

Historical events of July 11 didn't help either.  Henry VIII was excommunicated on this date in 1533, the U.S. Marine Corps was created in 1798, Babe Ruth made his major league debut in 1914 (as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox).  Yawn.

However, that does remind me that last week a headline in the New York Times' sports section was, "Red Sox are a Monster."  I've been working on that.  Red Sox is a Monster?  Red Sox are Monsters?  I can't make it work.

Where are they now?

In an upstairs bedroom at my maternal grandparents' house, there hung on one wall photographs of my grandmother's parents, Turner Hefley and Anna Conley.  They were large portraits in gilt oval frames with curved glass.  As they appeared to be in their twenties -- and judging by his handle-bar mustache and her high collar -- I would say they were taken in the 1890's.

They both wore sober expressions, but a sort of benignity came through, and I always thought that Anna, in particular, looked like she would have been a very kind person.

I loved to sit and study those photographs of my great-grandparents.  More than once when I was young I let it be known how much I would like to have them some day.  My grandmother's house and its contents were disposed of by other relatives when the time came, so I never got the chance to try to obtain them.

Although I have no idea what became of those photographs, I have the awfullest feeling that they are now hanging in a Cracker Barrel restaurant somewhere in Kansas.