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On the surface, it's meh, but I like the woman's expression and her use of "afore." It's not super hilarious, but I liked it at the time.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife, Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne, were staying in Ralph ("Waldo") Emerson's mansion for three years. It was near Boston. Maybe IN Boston. Definitely Massachussettes.
(There are images below, so you dont have to pay close attention to the text here but the images will mean more if you read this.)
Emerson was gone, so Hawthorne and Sophia had the big house for three years.
During that stint, both of them, at different times for days or maybe as much as a month, would travel independently to take care of stuff in the city or wherever, and during these alone-times, they'd write love-notes etc to the other. Rather than use precious paper and waste ink, they used Sophia's diamond ring, and scratched the notes on the windows. Glass was precious, too, but once they got into this habit, they kept it going.
Marc Elliot, friend and Rivendell rider from the earliest mid-'90s and even before that, in the Bstone days, still living in Massachussettes--he and his wife, Kit, came by on Dec 13 for a visit, and that's how we heard about this story. Marc says:
"In 1842, the Hawthornes moved into the Old Manse. Writer Henry David Thoreau, who also spent time there, planted an heirloom vegetable garden at the home as a wedding gift for the Hawthornes. That garden has been recreated by the Trustees of Reservations, which preserves and takes care of the property.
Hawthorne did a lot of writing at the Manse, which resulted in a collection of short stories and essays called Mosses from an Old Manse, published in 1846. The poetic etchings can be seen today, and read, in part:
Man’s accidents are God’s purposes. Sophia A. Hawthorne 1843
The smallest twig leans clear against the sky
Composed by my wife and written with her diamond
Inscribed by my husband at sunset, April 3 1843. In the Gold light.
After three years, the Hawthornes moved to Salem, where Nathaniel would write The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables."
I asked for photographic proof, and he sent me these photos he took. Mark may be among the top four greatest living photographers. He'd think that was ridiculous, but he gets what he sets out to get, and they're all on film:
That is one damn fine grandfather's clock, isn't it?
The Shot Heard 'round the World (started the Revolutionary War) was fired on the other side of the hedge, and the bullet hole in the widow is from that time. It must have been a smallish bb from a musket or something, because it has that conical fracture-impact, familiar to anybody who's ever seen the results of a bb hitting a window.
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There are hundreds of great lines in it. It is the most lyrically intelligible songs ever recorded, and one of least likely songs to ever have been written. I was released in 1968, and didn't fit any of the popsong patterns of the day, of course.
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There's a guy named David Godine. He is the last of his kind, in publishing. If you LOVE good and beautiful books, not just like them, and you haven't heard of David Godine, that's like saying you love lullabies but haven't hear of Brahms, or you love thick, scratcy sportcoats but you haven't heard of Harris Tweed.
There are some great people still living and active and doing good things, and who won't be replaced or duplicated when they die, and David Godine is one of those.
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I know the political risks of saying "Christmas" around this time of year, but I'm not among the "We can finally say 'Christmas' again" crowd. I'm not an "O Little Town of Bethlehem" type, either. I don't know what type I am. We do-up the house for Christmas--nothing against Chanukah, Kwanza, or Festivus. I think many C-mas songs are on the corny side of the spectrum, but I've always liked this once because of something I found out only in the early '80s.
This is the best version of it of all time, yes, seriously.
My favorite part of it, the ONLY thing that saves it from being unbearable, is the line about oranges and about
who they could pretend the snowman is. Even when I was a little kid, that line jumped out at me, and I thought, "WHAAAAT??!!"
Then sometime in the '70s I think, Bing Crosby did a bunch of commercials for Minute Maid. In the
commercial, in an offhand way as though he's telling us things we already know, he rattles off a variety of oranges that go into Floridian oranges. The link isn't the commercial I remember, but it'll do. He mentions the breed in question in more than one commercial referencing this variety.
On my browser or computer, when i googled Bing Crosby orange juice commercial, I got this one, and then when I kept it running, what followed was a 4-minute Bing Crosby David Bowie interview-snippet.
Decades ago I used to go to grocery stores hoping they'd have this variety, but those days are long gone. I wonder if anybody in Florida has access to them. Readers? This is the kind of thing that obsesses me and my wife doesn't exactly understand. Both of my daughters know about the orange variety in question, and are probably unique among their peers in this regard. Proud Papa, u-bet.
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From NYT Dec 20:
This is the kind of thing that makes being 70 more interesting. I remember when this would have gotten him kicked out and maybe jailed. As one of my brothers-in-law has said, in reference, as I remember it, to the first MAGA campaign," For Blacks, Gays, and Women, there were no 'good old days.'" Anyway, good for him (and him).
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This came from the same issue Dec 20 NYT, and is also worth reading, and there's one hilarious quote in it, beginning with, "It would take me..."
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A "funny" thing is happening out there. Because I or we have spoken out in favor, funny way to say it, of certain either minorities or oppressed people, and donated here and there to certain causes...well, there are people, good people, Rivendell riders (and in four cases, former Rivendelll riders) who either get enraged or offended or who think it's inappropriate ("I don't come here for that," "If I want to read about that I'll (go read about it elsewhere.) Bikes are my escape.")...or who far more aggressively, want us to take a stand on a cause of their choosing. Why don't we raise money for X? Why don't we speak out FOR these guys and AGAINST their enemies?
You'd be sane to think, well, that's what you get for saying anything. But the thing of it is, we can pick our own causes. Any business can. Most opt out for a few reasonable reasons. Because they have customers on both sides. They have Trump and Harris customers. They have Jewish and Palestinian customers. Or because they can't spread themselves too thin. Because statin an opinion isn't the same as being able to help whatever side.
Bob Dylan said, "Everybody is shouting, 'which side are you on'" It's more true now than when he sang it in 1967. The song is Desolation Row, and it's 12 minutes long and worth hearing, even during the busy holidays. Maybe especially during the busy holidays! If you are not familiar, click on that link and you're welcome in advance, to borrow a line from the Blue Chew commercials that seem to run on repeat on MSNBC. The first line is a grabber. Every line after that is just as much of a grabber.
And YET in the current issue of The Atlantic, critic James Parker calls Bob Dylan a phoney, a fraudster. There are many who don't think he was worthy of the Nobel Prize for literature, but they don't think poetry can be literature, which is fine, a harmless opinion.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/01/a-complete-unknown-bob-dylan-biopic/680761/
Bob Dylan's work speaks for itself, but it takes a desperate-for-attention writer to say what he says. It takes an unfamiliarity with his work, which is hard to imagine for somebody who writes about (Bob). He seems to imply that if Bob Dylan was a potato famer when he was six, he should have contrinued farming potatoes his whole life...instead of getting his fingers into other pies and refreshing himself a few times along the way. He wrote songs, poetry, painted, and welded beaatiful metal sculptures out of scrap. A lot of this was before James Parker was born. Yikes. A song kind of related:
Idiot Wind
and this one even more"
I Contain Multitudes
Don't we all contain multitudes, and aren't we allowed to?
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From now on our owner cards go out with every bike. THey're letterpress and on fine paper and look something along the lines of this, as mentioned in an earlier Blahg before we actually got them, which we now have:
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Really? Is that what it's the season for?
Have good times the rest of the year. Sorry about this Blahg, disjointed and all.
G
