Friday, March 14, 2008

Thursday Thursday

First off, it was raining.
Soon as I'm over this cold or tuberculosis or pellagra or what ever you want to callit.
Soon as I get a little energy back so maybe I could get back on the bike, the weather screws with me.
Two weeks of looking out the window to nice sunny days.........pfaugh!

So anyway somebody crashed into a pole and knocked the trolley lines out of commission and a shuttle took me out of the valley, the valley so low, to the other side of the electrical contretemps.
Didn't really add up to much of a impediment to the trip.
I don't know why I bothered to bring it up.

When I got to Caffe Ladro. I noticed that they had gotten some new chairs upholstered in some leather like fabric and sporting stylish high backs that made hanging an arm across seem like a cool pose.
Phooey!

So anyway I sat, I drank, I ate a cookie (they had peanut butter ones this time)and I watched the NY Times headlines flash by on the TV screen on the kiosk.
The NY Times doesn't have a cartoon section, so what's the point there.
Walked up the hill, got some insights as to how to improve the cello duet, grabbed a bus, went home.
Some time during the evening, I resumed reading "Churchill" by Roy Jenkins, found this wonderful quote.
It's from a letter by the Marquess of Linlithgow concerning Winston's stance on India's independence.
On May 19 1934 he wrote;
"You envision...an approaching period of red tooth and claw, a struggle for the means to live. I doubt it, Winston! I wonder whether you take sufficient cognizance of two basic changes of tendency. (a) Falling birthrates, (b) enormously enhanced production, actual and potential, both of primary and manufactured products?
I think it is difficult to overestimate the significance of (b)...Forgive me, then, if I say that it is not, it seems to me, so much I who am mouthing the bland platitudes of an age that has passed away, twenty years behind the times, but rather you who are hanging, hairy, from a branch, while you splutter atavistic shibboleths of an age destined by some to retreat into some forgotten past.
In conclusion, let me as one Tory to another, beseech you to see in time the errors of your mind, and to retract them, lest irretrievably you miss the bus."

This Marquess is almost (was, I guess, by now) as funny as Jeremy Denk.

1936, a time of accumulating prosperity and jolly times for all.
Ask your grandparents about it.
Or your great grandparents.
Or, ask Pete Seeger.
Or Joe hill.
Look up the concept of "work ethic"
From where and whence does it come?

Discuss.

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4 Comments:

Blogger Glenn Buttkus said...

For reasons only your computer seems to understand, there is no date over your title. So was it done on Thursday about Wednesday, or Friday morning about Wednesday? We are under the impression that your "Go Downtown Day", your music class day, and Caffe Ladro day, is on Wednesdays. Confusing as hell for most of us, sir.

You told us a lot about the new upholstery on the chairs at Caffe Ladro, but what is the color? Red, orange, yellow, puse? I can see you sitting cool with your armed drape, see it very well; what a visualization. Were there any wimmen around to be impressed by your actions? Bout time they restocked the peanut butter cookies. If you only were watching the NY Times headlines flash by, why in duece would you be searching for toons? And I think that the NY Times does have a comics section; certainly they hire political cartoonists to decorate their pages.

1936

A time of
accumulating prosperity
and jolly times
for all.

Ask your grandparents,
or your great grandparents
about it,
or ask Pete Seeger
or Joe Hill.

Look up
the concept of
"work ethic";
from where
and whence
does it come?

Discuss

Doug Palmer 2008

I just went out to FFTR and posted this comment for you, with the title: THE DECADE, NOT THE CONDITION. Significant, enit?

I wonder how History will treat the Bush years, Senior and Junior? Will we still be around to give a crap?

Glenn

12:41 PM  
Blogger Lane Savant said...

No..Thursdays
Brown
Half of the people who work or come in to or pass by are are of the chromosomally deprived sex.
I don't think I've ever been able to impress any one of them.
Maybe Meighan.
We had the NYT delivered for a while.
I don't remember any toons

2:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hallo, Lane!
I got lost in the Marquess's verbiage. I prefer Jeremy's prose. You also write readable stuff. "Butch" writes too much stuff; I haven't finished one of his comments in ages.
Tschüß,
(illiterate) Anonomann

3:34 AM  
Blogger Lane Savant said...

It's the thought picture of Winston all hairy and hanging from a tree limb,banana in hand that I found amusing.
He was acute little bugger.

10:55 AM  

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