A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
An evening pause: William Butler Yeats’ poem, The Stolen Child, set to song.
Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breat,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping
than he can understand.
An evening pause: In 1969 the lowly New York Mets, doormats in the National League from the moment the team was created in 1962, came out of nowhere to win the pennant and the World Championship of baseball. Forty-two years ago tonight I and my friend Lloyd attended the game in which the Mets clinched first place in the National League Eastern Division. Below is video showing highlights of the game plus the final out, with the crowd pouring onto the field. Though you can’t see me, I am in that crowd, jumping for joy at this most unlikely sports miracle. There was no rioting, only happy fans chanting “We’re number one!” in exuberant disbelief.
And I still have that small piece of turf from Shea Stadium, collected on that night, proof that the unexpected and improbable is always possible.
An evening pause: Words by Shakespeare, one of Feste the clown’s songs from Twelfth Night, Act 2, scene 4. Music by Clark Jaman, done, as he says, “for a school project.” Very nice.
An evening pause: Walking on water. As the youtube website explained, “They filled a pool with a mix of cornstarch and water made on a concrete mixer truck. It becomes a non-newtonian fluid. When stress is applied to the liquid it exhibits properties of a solid.”
An evening pause:
You can take everything I have
You can break everything I am
Like I’m made of glass
Like I’m made of paper.
And go on and try to tear me down
I will be rising from the ground
Like a skyscraper.
An evening pause: I dare anyone to watch these guys perform this song and still claim that rock stars aren’t talented musicians.
An evening pause: From the Abbott and Costello film Buck Privates (1941).
To me, the word that best describes this is exuberance. Faced with war and threatened with destruction, the American nation responded with defiant humor.
An evening pause: Words and music by Connie Dover. With this video, it is the words that matter.
In this fair land, I’ll stay no more
Here labor is in vain
I’ll seek the mountains far away
And leave the fertile plainWhere waves of grass in oceans roll
Into infinity
I stand ready on the shore
To cross the inland sea
I am going to the WestChorus
You say you will not go with me
You turn your eyes away
You say you will not follow me
No matter what I say
I am going to the West
I am going to the West.I will journey to the place
That was shaped by heaven’s hand
I will build for me a bower
Where angels’ footprints mark the landWhere castle rocks in towers high
Kneel to valleys wide and green
All my thoughts are turned to you
My waking hope, my sleeping dream
I am going to the WestAnd when sun gives way to moon
And silver starlight fills the sky
In the arms of these last hills
Is where I’m bound to lieWind my blanket, earth my bed
My canopy a tree
Willows by the river’s edge
Will whisper me to sleep
I am going to the West
An evening pause:
Ah, for just one time
I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin
Reaching for the Beaufort Sea
Tracing one warm line
Through a land so wide and savage
And make a northwest passage to the sea.
An evening pause: To quote from the youtube page: “A live session from the 1991/92 BBC Scotland broadcast, featuring the Cunningham brothers from Silly Wizard, Charlie MacKerron and Donald Shaw from Capercaillie, Ian MAcDonald from Ossian and various members of the Rankin Family, from Canada.”
It’s all good, but stay with it for the Irish dancing near the end.
An evening pause: In Glacier National Park in August 2011. From Mark “Indy” Kochte.
