Let's Go to Riva del Garda

It was 110 here in Texas yesterday.  It's nearly 110 again today.  And it will be 110 tomorrow.  In other words, we are living in a roasting pan.   Even with the a/c running 24/7 and all the fans going, it's about 85 degrees in the house - much better than being outside, but still, we just feel drained and torpid all the time.

I got to wondering, where in the world could a body go to get cool, if one had the dough and the energy to travel?  And somehow I chanced upon this delightful stroll through the pretty lake town of Riva del Garda, up in the Italian Alps, where the temperature is 75 degrees and there's always a refreshing breeze blowing off the lake.  It was filmed just a couple of weeks ago.  There's no annoying background music, and the narration is in the captions.  Check it out. 

You're welcome.

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Waitin' for the Weekend

Need a light?

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Life Is a Beach, 8/16/23

Live cam from Hollywood Beach, Florida, where the Broadwalk always fascinates:

Take a short, ground-level stroll on the Broadwalk here.

And listen to the rhythm of the surf at Fort Lauderdale Beach:

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Sunday Drive: Call Me / The More I See You

Craig, by EpicDigitalArtStudio on Devant Art

A couple of light, easy-breezy songs from Chris Montez in 1966, just right for a day at the beach, doing whatever you want to do.

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Waitin' for the Weekend

What's that you said?

Rodney Santiago

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Life Is a Beach, 8/10/23

Miramar Beach, Florida: 

Some people love the rocky shores and cold, dark waters of New England; some like the cold, pounding surf of California.  Fine - à chacun son goût.  But if I were choosing a beach to lie out on - a merely academic point at this stage of life - I would choose to be beside the warm, blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  

This live cam shows the sugar-white sands and endless vista of what has latterly been called the Emerald Coast.  My family stayed on the beach at Destin once, in the summer of 1963 - sixty years ago! - when there was but one motel, and nothing else for many miles but sand dunes and sea oats.  It was lovely - I've never forgotten.

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Sunday Drive: Blue Bayou

Three versions of one of your Head Trucker's favorite songs.  Take your pick.

Roy Orbison and friends:

 

Linda Rondstadt: 

 

Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Rait, and Carrie Underwood:

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Waitin' for the Weekend

"Mr. Bradford" from All American Guys -
click to enlarge.

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Life Is a Beach, 8/3/23

The people-watching at Hollywood Beach is just fascinating:

 

Listen to the rush of the waves at Ft. Lauderdale Beach:  

Here's Key West - but where are all the hot gay men?

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Poets' Corner: The World is Charged with the Grandeur of God

By English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), whose poetry is notable for unusual rhythms and alliteration.  The best approach is to read it aloud slowly, savoring each syllable, rhyme, and repetition.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

I chose this poem for today's post because it is quoted in this speech I happened upon, "Why Beauty Matters," by the American poet and essayist Dana Gioia, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, a brilliant man with deeply spiritual views.  

I'm afraid the speech is rather heavy going on a hot August afternoon - even your Head Trucker had to rewind and repeat some sentences several times - but it will repay careful attention.  

(For the record, I am not a Catholic, but as an Episcopalian I feel myself in a distributary stream of the broad current of Christian thought from apostolic times forward.)

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Sunday Drive: Turn! Turn! Turn! / Mr. Tambourine Man

A favorite of your Head Trucker's since the first time I heard it on the radio - performed here by the Byrds on the Ed Sullivan Show, December 12, 1965:

 

The lyrics are, of course, taken from the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, modified slightly for the song:

To everything turn, turn, turn

There is a season turn, turn, turn

And a time to every purpose under Heaven.

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep . . .

Encore:

 

Not my favorite group, but they had a memorable sound that calls to mind the jingle-jangle days of youth, when the endless road of life seemed to lead everywhere but the grave.

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