C I V I L    M A R R I A G E    I S    A    C I V I L    R I G H T.

A N D N O W I T ' S T H E L A W O F T H E L A N D.


Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Forty Years of Sunday Morning

The celebrated TV newsmagazine CBS News Sunday Morning first aired on January 28, 1979, so Wikipedia tells me.  My, how time flies; seems to me as if it's just been around forever.  I can't say I've been a devoted fan of the program - even in 1979, when I was still struggling and starving my way through college, I was rarely up early enough on Sundays to watch it. I'm afraid that age has not improved my aversion to early rising, and now that I am retired, I rise or sleep at all hours, quite impartially, according to mere whimsy.

But when I have caught the show, here and there through the years, I have nearly always enjoyed it: a kinder, gentler news program, with a light, thoughtful touch that is sorely needed in the frantic, ranting world of today. Here are a few short clips to remind us of what television has been, and still can be.









And be it said to the show's renown, Sunday Morning has been the last, the very last refuge of the spirit of Poesie - a dead, despised, and forgotten art. For many years, the inimitable Charles Osgood valiantly led the arrière-garde; and now the distinguished Ted Koppel takes up the faded banner:




Sunday, January 27, 2019

Sunday Drive: Waldteufel, The Skaters Waltz

I think we can all use a bit of midwinter drollery about now, as provided by Andre Rieu and his orchestra, playing an old familiar tune:




By the way, does anyone besides me recall the wonderful story of Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates? I loved it when I saw it as a kid on the Walt Disney program.


Saturday, January 26, 2019

Waitin' for the Weekend






Friday, January 18, 2019

Waitin' for the Weekend






Sunday, January 13, 2019

Sunday Drive: Stardust

The unforgettable Hoagy Carmichael standard, as sung by Nat King Cole in 1956:




Saturday, January 12, 2019

Waitin' for the Weekend







Thursday, January 10, 2019

An Epigraph for the New Year


The world is in a sorry state, and does not seem likely to improve itself anytime soon. The American government is shut down, and the British government is tearing itself apart. This does not bode well for the peace or security of the human race, but what can anyone do about it? The population in both countries seems hopelessly polarized, and the center cannot hold, it seems, for much longer. The dawn of the new year is clouded with uncertainty, and who knows what sort of future will come lurching out of the mists and gloom?

I have no answers. All I know is that as long as we have strength and hope, we should do what we can to make our own corner of the world sane and safe, and that begins with loving our neighbors - or if that is too much to ask, then loving our nearest and dearest - whom we are most likely to take for granted. It is good sometimes to stop and consider the true meaning of the much-parodied, much-derided phrase "Charity begins at home."

While we cannot choose our families, we can choose our friends - and regardless of how many or few of either there are in our life at any given time, the thing that really matters, beyond all social and political questions, is how we treat one another. Life is a passing thing - but love endures and propagates itself in countless untold ways down the years, from heart to heart and from soul to soul, parent to child and friend to friend.

So in this uncertain world, let us love while we can and whom we can, for we are all of us merely creatures of a day.  We all know what we would like to get from this transitory life - but what do we have to give?

The dear old Queen, God bless her, said something in one of her recent Christmas messages that I keep reflecting upon. I offer it here to my truckbuddies as an epigraph for the new year before us:

Not all of us can do great things; but we can do small things with great love.


Sunday, January 6, 2019

Sunday Drive: Bach, Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor

Lovely sounds and lovely sights for all my truckbuddies as we begin this new year.






Friday, January 4, 2019

Waitin' for the Weekend







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