March Dance Challenge 31

Every once in a while I like to include things like this to keep people dancing~

Queenie

Well here we are then, the end of the month, so the end of my dance challenge! I must admit I have really enjoyed collecting all my favourite pieces of dance, each one of them having a personal meaning to me. I hope for those of you that are interested in dance have enjoyed my choices.

Now what next? What shall I do for April? because now I’m in the habit of posting everyday, I may as well carry on. I have noticed you get more response from photos, than videos, I suppose because it is a bit of an effort watching a whole video, unless you have a great interest in it. So I could go back to posting a photo, or I did think about posting a favourite price of music of mine everyday, I’m not sure, what do you think?

Anyway, I started the month with my…

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all those years ago

Over a month ago, on Saturday, February 8, I drank my usual cup of hot tea with honey and sugar and went to bed at around 9:00 p.m.   I know quite well that I was in Long Beach in 2014 then.    When I woke up on Sunday morning, though, I was in for quite a shock.   Somehow, upon opening my bedroom door, I appeared to have been transported back in time, precisely a half century, to Sunday, February 9, 1964.   Besides that I was in front of  the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.   At first I couldn’t possibly have known that I was so far away in the past.   After a few minutes, though, I started catching onto all the anachronisms.   Because of my having been so interested, for as far back as I can remember, with the era, I soon recognized all the then-current styles of vehicles, clothes and hair.   Billboards, taxicabs and buses advertised for the New York World’s Fair at Flushing Meadow, and the movie, “It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World”.   A few stylishly dressed teenagers were listening to the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie”, that was referred to as new, on Music Radio WABC 770 AM.   People were cussing out Lyndon Baines Johnson and Nelson A. Rockefeller, as they tried to recuperate from the recent assassination of Johnson’s immediate predecessor, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a few months earlier.   There was talk of Pope Paul VI and the Second Vatican Council.   It all really sank in when I picked up a copy of the New York Daily News at a nearby newsstand.   My suspicions were confirmed.   It was that fateful day in the winter of 1964.   All sorts of references to, and pictures of John Winston Lennon, James Paul McCartney, George Harold Harrison and Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr), were staring me in the face.   There were countless references to their upcoming appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” at 8:00 that night.   It’s quite interesting to take note of the fact that I was already alive back then.   I was a little boy in Jackson Heights, Queens, and I got a bit of a kick out of wondering if I  could come up with the nerve to go to 92 Street to say hello to my young adult parents, infant sister Mary Anne, and toddler me.   After a few minutes I looked up from the paper only to get quite a major shock.   The legendary John, Paul, George and Ringo were standing right in front of me.  In those days they were all still so very young and handsome.   Because their manager, Mr. Epstein, was still alive to keep them in check, there was none of the noticeable rampant excess that would characterize their later style.   They were quite a friendly bunch.   John greeted me with a jovial, “Well, ‘ello”, in their characteristic Liverpudlian scouse accent.   He then said, “‘Ey, Paulie, me buy, get a load o’ this fellow!”.   They were dressed quite casually, and George was wearing a bit extra because of his having recently recovered from a sore throat.   All their notorious Beatle charm shone through.   After a few minutes they invited me into the Plaza and we had a few drinks.   They told me a lot of stories about John’s wife Cynthia Powell and son Julian, Ringo’s girlfriend Maureen Cox, and Paul’s girlfriend Jane Asher.   George would meet Patti Boyd in a few months.  I ended up having to make quite a few adjustments in my attempt to explain to them my circumstances.   Never having been aware of all the etiquette of time travel- I don’t suppose there’s an official rule book that covers it- I tried ever so desperately to refrain from telling the young Fabs about what was up ahead of them.   They explained what went on, during their early days, with Klaus Voormann, Jurgen Vollmer, Astrid Kirchherr and all their other friends and family.   I tried, as they told me that they intended to sing “All My Loving”, “Till There Was You”, “She Loves You”, “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand” that night at Studio 50, to maintain some semblance of composure.    I sat there uncontrollably stunned, somewhat politely humoring them.  They talked of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and the Who, the way just anyone would refer to his friends and people at work.   All I could think of were things like the infamously nauseating sexual revolution, drugs, the war in Southeast Asia and everything else that would make such a mess of a time frame that would be forever referred to as specifically the Beatles’ era.   Besides remembering that they’d break up in April of 1970 I couldn’t help cringing over the events of December 8, 1980, when John Lennon got killed, and November 29, 2001, when George Harrison died.   Assuming I should consider myself as having been sworn to absolute silence and secrecy, I asked more than I told.  “Gentleman”, I was tempted to say, “Even you, with your seemingly infinite imaginations, couldn’t possibly begin to imagine what you’re up against!”   Knowing about Lewis Carroll’s influence on the musicians of the 1960’s I kept thinking of it all as a trip through a looking glass, down a rabbit hole, or in some other offbeat out of the way direction.   They could even be seen as a four-part variation of Robert Browning’s Pied Piper, with Liverpool standing in for Hamelin.   From the point of view of an entirely favorable interpretation of their impact on the world they most certainly got rid of quite a few metaphorical rats.  We sang a bunch of their early songs together.   They showed me some guitar tricks.   Conveniently their sense of humor turned out to be quite compatible with mine.   I kept trying to convince them to put some colorful twists, of my invention, into their songs.  We kept cracking each other up. Throughout my lifetime I’ve always considered their early songs, style and image to be their very best so I was absolutely as high as  could be.    Conveniently I managed to avoid any anachronisms and all went quite well.  Eventually the moment of truth came to pass.  It was time to get ready for their legendary appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show”.   We all went over to Studio 5o.   I somehow cajoled them into letting me join them.   They even let me hang around backstage.   When they started the show, they sang, “All My Loving”,  and “Till There Was You”.   Immediately after Ringo’s world-changing drum fill and John’, Paul’s and George’s perfect chant of “She Loves you yeah yeah yeah!”  I was back in Long Beach yet again, in 2014, sipping tea with honey and sugar.  It’s a true story.

  http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/writing-challenge-time-machine/#more-71990

ah shaddap you face

If there’s one thing I absolutely can’t stand, and quite bitterly resent, it’s any unwelcome unnecessary noise.   I can’t stand any kind of noise in general anyway but at least I’ve been able to resign myself to the kind that’s unavoidably necessary by definition.    It wouldn’t be realistic for someone to hang around an airport or construction site and to cuss people out for being too loud.    Over the course of my lifetime I’ve always had quite a razor’s edge relationship with sound.   This is also true in my dealings with language, the written and spoken word.    Nothing impresses me anywhere near as much as well written and well performed music, or when someone writes or speaks articulately.   When,however, I have to be subjected to something that’s poorly written or spoken, played or  sung, it gets me crazy.  

For as long as I can remember I’ve always been compulsively articulate and very conservative.   Whenever I either hear, or read, something that’s either inarticulate or of a left wing ideological slant it makes me cringe.   Language should be used solely as a vehicle for the conveyance of the truth and not as a means of promulgating an ideological agenda.   Besides that I’ve always been quite prone toward getting all my tenses, cases and other linguistic proprieties entirely in order.   Everyone knows about my notoriously hypersensitive nerves.   For approximately the past two decades we’ve been bombarded with cell phones.   Ever since I was a kid I’ve never been able to stand the telephone anyway.  I not only don’t like the sound of its ring, or having to talk on it.   I can’t even stand to be in the company of someone who’s talking on the phone.    Now that each and every single one of us has a phone in his possession at all times it’s quite a major chore for me to attempt to accept it.   I’ve never been able to understand why cell phones are considered acceptable in churches and libraries.   In the old days, churches and libraries were considered places where peace and quiet was mandatory.   Now phones are allowed.   A couple of months ago, Mary Anne, Steve and I went to see “Madama Butterfly” at Lincoln Center.   I couldn’t help noticing that when the people who are in charge there say cell phones aren’t allowed they really mean it, and patrons respect that fact.   In churches and libraries, though, the people in charge claim that cell phones aren’t allowed but they don’t bother to enforce it and everyone leaves his phone on, thereby subjecting the rest of us to endless unwelcome noise.     Throughout my life I’ve always been subjected to people with very loud voices, as well as bad music and flagrant misuse of language.  I can still remember, from when I worked at Citicorp Retail Services in the late 1980’s and 1990’s, a representative example of the unbearable impact that noise can have on me.   When I was working in the Sales Processing department with Sal, Carole and Yolanda, Miz Kitti, Doreen and Kimbley, there was a department within earshot of ours where the employees were unbearably loud and unruly.   They literally yelled, and even laughed hysterically for no reason, all day long.   It was quite an unbearably torturous experience for me.    Unfortunately it turned me into a nasty, anti social little creep.    I got very bitterly angry and resentful.     There appears to be something about unwelcome noise, and a poor command of language, which I truly find entirely unbearable.  I’ve always really liked to consider myself quite good natured, a jolly good fellow.   When I have to deal with noise, or with someone who’s inarticulate, though, I truly am subjected to quite a torture treatment.    My ability to accept it and to maintain my cheerful side takes quite a beating.   I’ve tried all sorts of ways to maintain my cool but it’s quite a frustrating  problem.    By now I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve learned to accept the simple facts that it’s a loud inarticulate world, and that all I can do is to try, as politely and as firmly as possible, to convince people to be a lot more respectful of others, both by being a lot quieter and by speaking and writing a lot more articulately.

 

 

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/prompt-drives-me-crazy/

 

do your best and leave the rest to fortuosity

I like always both to adhere to a strict code of conduct and to keep an interesting sense of humor about things.   Beware the false dichotomy.   The more I see of today’s leftist ‘who-am-I-to-judge’ mentality, with its permissive approach to abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, reverse discrimination and all sorts of other horrors, the more I see that we simply can’t afford to allow it to go on.   What they call diversity I call chaos.   Genuine legitimate freedom is being begrudged us in favor of a need to demand that we feel a sense of supposed indebtedness to a bunch of self-pitying, self-aggrandizing special interest groups.   Amazingly we are expected to trust the judgment of the likes of Al Sharpton, Barack Obama and television, movie and talk show personalities    People are encouraged, now more than ever, to take advantage of each other for the sake of pleasure and profit.   I like to mind my own business as much as possible but I’ve never been able to resist a good debate about these kinds of things.   As everyone knows I’ve always been quite the staunch conservative.    Liberalism, while claiming to reject censorship, presumes to censor each and every single move we make in order to affect a supposed Great Society.   Lately there are movements afoot to ban the use of the words ‘retard’ and ‘bossy’.   This is simply not permissible.   Although I’ve always been determined to be as articulate as possible I have no intention of putting up with anyone else’s controlling my speech.    Christianity (Catholicism) has always been so very important for me.   Liberals, as well as other totalitarians, manipulators and control freaks, see fanaticism and hypocrisy in this claim because it begrudges them absolute control over people’s lives.    They want a world devoid of formal or final causality because that would put them in charge.   I like to be as strict an orthodox Catholic as possible.   On an everyday basis I should really like to think that I do a reasonably good job of humoring people.   I’ve always tried to be at least fairly good natured.   Unfortunately I’ve always tended to be somewhat short tempered and I have a major problem with forgiveness.   My ability to hold a grudge is quite legendary though I’m not very happy with it.   At least I’ve learned over the years never deliberately to throw the first punch.    Hep Larry understands that people are quite a mixed bag of nuts.   Real  Larry needs quite a few lessons in patience and understanding though.  One lesson I have to keep track of is like the warning given by St. John of the Cross in his “The Living Flame of Love” about how each of us  tends to see his own character traits, both good and bad, in other people.   If I can have so hard a time dealing with a particular individual, I can just imagine how hysterical he must be over my character defects.   As I said earlier keeping a very good sense of humor about life is exceptionally important.    People can often be hard to take and I know they have the same problem with me too.    Because each of us, in his life and worldview, has such a wide variety of distinct quirks and preferences, many of which deviate from those of other people, an inability to laugh at it all can be toxic.  Because all the things I’ve been complaining about are forms of fanaticism, I really like to refrain from any sort of an extreme position about anything.   In the end it’s all about text, context and subtext.   Whenever someone pushes too hard he finds out in the end, the hard way, that things always backfire anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/30/prompt-walk-the-line/

people let me tell you about my best friend

For some reason I haven’t had a best friend since I was I kid and I still don’t have a soul mate.    When I lived in Jackson Heights Earl was my best friend.   Then I moved to Lindenhurst around the time I turned twelve years old.   For my first few years over there Jimmy was my best friend.   After a couple of years he and his family moved to Arizona, and eventually ended up in California.   Both Earl’s and Jimmy’s birthdays are on Halloween.   In case anyone’s interested in filling either of those positions I’m quite free.  It would help if any prospective best friend could provide guaranteed proof of a Halloween birthday.   Best friends are supposed always to be available for each other’s various adventures, both serious and casual, happy and sad.   Having read Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quijote” a few times by now,  I can see that it’s the obvious prototype for all sorts of best friend stories.   On Facebook I’m a member of a page for fans of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” and one for  fans of “The Honeymooners”.    Best friends get to have a lot of lopsided adventures, like the Don and Sancho, Felix and Oscar, and Ralph and his pal Norton.   Best friends get to have a lot of stupid obnoxious misadventures in common and to blame each other for everything.   They have inside jokes and a language of their own.   Although each of them gets to have other friends and connections in general their specific relationship at all times must take precedence.   In each of the specific friendships I’ve referred to here, there’s a horrendously lopsided kind and degree of dysfunctionality in each individual that is incessantly forced to do battle with all the quirks of the other.    Best friends get to rankle incessantly upon each other’s nerves.   Norton, to Ralph’s undying chagrin, always plays “Swanee River” at the beginning of each song.   Felix torments Oscar with incessant whining whenever his socks and underwear aren’t precisely alphabetized.    Don Quijote nudges Sancho about his precise duties as a squire.   Everyone should get to have a best friend.   Ever since “Laverne and Shirley”, I’ve always thought that Lenny and Squiggy were the title characters’ masculine counterparts.     That made for such a very interesting contrast.    It’s too bad I don’t have a best friend now.  I most certainly appear to have quite a significantly lopsided enough approach to life for some unsuspecting good natured character to be able to play off of so very well.

 

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/prompt-born/

the further adventures of albert & clara

Albert fell in love with Clara at first sight. He wanted to say hello to her but was too shy. Weeks went by and finally he talked to her. It turned out that they had so much in common. He read her the poems of Robert Frost. She read him the poems of Emily Dickinson. Every day they went out for a long walk & got to know each other. His Homburg hat complemented her bonnet so well. A saxophone player serenaded them in the background as true love blossomed in New York.

it’s been a hard day’s night

No one’s life is entirely perfect.   Each of us has his share of things and circumstances he simply can’t possibly be expected to handle very well.   That happens to me occasionally too.   When I have that kind of trouble one of the very first things I try to do to alleviate the problem is to try to have as much peace and quiet as possible.    Unwelcome noise, unwelcome sound in general, has always struck me as quite difficult to take.   Especially now, in the era of cell phones, we’re incessantly bombarded with it.    Of course things most certainly don’t have always to be entirely silent.   I enjoy good music too.    Everyone knows, by now, of my notorious interest in the songs of the 1960’s, but I spend a lot of time listening to quite a wide variety of music from all eras and genres and it always helps to alleviate any troubles I may be experiencing.    I don’t like any current or recent pop music though.   I even play the guitar too.     The reason noise bothers me so much is because it’s such an unwelcome intrusion into the environment.    With me it all comes down to a question of control.    Another way I can alleviate my blue moments is by way of watching a really good television show or movie.    Since I generally tend not to enjoy any recent shows or movies either, yet again I  usually go to those of previous eras.    I have quite a large collection of records and tapes, CD’s and DVD’s to keep me occupied.   Besides the fact that these provide me with a perfect means of lifting my spirits, they can also be quite an endless supply of conversation pieces.     I also enjoy solitude.    Other people’s company can be very interesting and beneficial but when I’m having a very hard time I frequently enjoy being left alone.      It helps, once in a while, not to have to deal with all the entirely ordinary predictable circumstances that transpire when others are around.    Lately because of problems with my car insurance, I walk back and forth each morning to 9:00 a.m. Mass at St. Mary of the Isle Parish.    Although it’s quite frustrating to be without transportation, the walk each day, with all its attendant peace and quiet, does me quite a lot of good.    Another way I can alleviate my troubles is by reading.    As I’ve said before I have such exceptionally discerning tastes in reading material and tend to be a bit of a literary snob.    I read things ranging from Sir Thomas Malory’s  “Le Morte D’Arthur” to Sigrid Undset’s “Kristin Lavransdatter”.     My taste in literature, besides being quite a nice antidote for the blues, can also lead to some especially interesting conversations every once in a while.    Food and drink, including coffee and tea, can do wonders for putting up a fight against life’s troubles.    Over the course of the past few months I’ve gotten into the habit, especially when I’m alone, of having a cup of hot tea with a fluffernutter.   Everyone knows how good marshmallow Fluff is.    I’ve also gotten into the equally predictable habit of going to the Coffee Nut Cafe, on Park Avenue, immediately  after Mass six days a week,  and on Saturdays too, to have a hot flavored espresso or cappuccino.   By now I’ve become quite a familiar character there and all the ladies who work there have gotten used to seeing me each day.   They have a variety of international coffees available.   Unfortunately the only foreign country I’ve been to is Canada and they have nothing Canadian.   They have a flavor named Queens Madness, though, and I’ve most certainly been to Queens.    Life is frequently overwhelmingly tough but these kinds of things can do each of us a lot of good in the never ending battle to avoid being discouraged.

 

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/prompt-singing-the-blues/

 

he’s so shy

To my chagrin I haven’t always been very confident.    I can remember  always having been quite a shy kid, especially with new experiences and in the company of strangers.     That problem has remained with me, at least slightly, throughout my entire lifetime.   I have no way of knowing, with any certitude, whether it technically qualifies as impostor syndrome but it has been known to lead to quite unfortunate consequences.   Over the course of my lifetime I’ve never been conventionally popular.   After a while though, I arrived at the conclusion that I seem to be a sort of underground cult popular, with an offbeat appeal somewhat similar to that of the kind of  bands and movies whose fans hang around in weird head shops.   Once I figured that out I stopped letting that kind of insecurity bother me.    During my late adolescence, right around the time I graduated from high school, I first began to succumb to the simply irresistible appeal of the demon coffee.   I even presumed to drink it black with caffeine.    I have no idea whether the black coffee started all my troubles or whether it may have provoked my already extant troubles into even further flights of frenzy but I started getting anxiety attacks, migraines and a sick stomach.   Eventually  I started decreasing my coffee intake and my troubles abated.    Since I honestly can’t say I specifically expect the worst possible consequences of each thing I do  I can’t explain all my anxiety.   Especially during my young adulthood I was prone toward being overwhelmingly frustrated before having to go on any kind of  significant trip, especially when I was forced to fly someplace.    I’ve never minded, and I’ve always enjoyed, specifically being on a plane but I used to have a lot of trouble with anxiety on the morning of a flight, before I boarded the plane.   I still have trouble, to a lesser degree, with anxiety before any long trip.   I assume that most of my current and recent anxiety, that is only slight, can be attributed to a kind of nervous energy and restlessness.    As an adult I’ve always been compulsively punctual.   I seem to have a lot of trouble, when I have either to go someplace or to do something, merely getting ready for it, and then waiting for a significant length of time until it’s time for it to happen.   None of my insecurity seems to come from a lack of confidence in my intelligence or competence, or from the expectation that someone will deliberately try to thwart my attempts to get things done.   It all simply appears to be the result of some kind of an unresolved tendency to feel inordinately uncomfortable under pressure.   Hep Larry always knows that there isn’t any reason for things to go wrong.   Real Larry, however, always tends to cringe with frustration even when it’s not entirely necessary.   I’ve always seen myself as a  combination of Charlie Brown and  the kind of character Woody Allen has typically played in his movies.    Like Charlie Brown,  who is constantly frustrated in his attempt to win the heart of the little red haired girl, I always seem to have lots of trouble dealing with life’s entirely typical problems .    Like Woody Allen’s movie persona, I’m a bespectacled intellectually inclined neurotic New Yorker stuck in one frustrating misadventure right after the other.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/prompt-the-great-pretender/

the way you do the things you do

Ever since the third chapter of the book of Genesis, man has been blaming others for his troubles.   When God confronted  Adam and Eve upon their having committed the Original Sin, Adam blamed both God and Eve, and she blamed a talking snake.   Throughout mankind’s history this story has been incessantly reenacted.  Life is about both self determination and the power of fate.   To separate the two would be a false dichotomy.    Jean Paul Sartre, the twentieth century existentialist philosopher,  put forth the claim that existence precedes essence.    According to his line of thought, each individual first comes into existence and then determines his specific essence.    This view presupposes that volition is all.    Someone of this mindset takes it for granted that if someone of one sex wants to be a member of the opposite sex, change is permissible.    Life, by this standard, is a bottomless pit of limitless options.   Theoretical existentialism demands a concomitant sense of responsibility, claiming that no one may blame anyone or anything else, other than himself, for his circumstances.    Our current cultural climate shares with this worldview the idea that all is possible and permissible.    In practice though, no one is willing to be held accountable for his actions.   Women, minorities, the sexually dysfunctional, among others, are told that every problem they face has discrimination as its inevitable source.    This is reflected by Garcin’s line, toward the end of Sartre’s “No Exit”:  “Hell is other people”.   In Dostoyevsky’s “The Possessed”, one of the characters reminds us that no one ever recognizes his own stink.     In his “The Brothers Karamazov”, one of his characters puts forth the the claim that suicide is the ultimate apotheosis.    Materialistic determinism, inspired by Karl Marx, claims that all is beyond anyone’s control.   According to this understanding of life, everything is dictated by environment and genetics.   Marx’s and Sartre’s worldviews are both intrinsically atheistic.    Many people claim to refer to conscience in order to defend their decisions.  Unless a conscience is carefully formed though, according to certain objective norms, such a claim is entirely meaningless.   As far as I can see, each individual’s fate is determined by many different variables, only some of which are within his control.    Each of us should react to his own behavior, and that of others, with as rightly ordered a combination of justice and mercy as possible.    Each of us is a combination of aptitude, which he can’t control, and behavior, which he can control.    All sorts of other variables, including financial concerns and the cooperation of others, must also be taken into consideration.    Western culture’s theological and philosophical vocabulary is filled with all sorts of references to mortal and venial sin, objective and subjective guilt, vincible and invincible ignorance.    These distinctions exist precisely because of all the variables that come into play in each individual’s life.     The laws that govern morality are exactly the same as those that govern destiny.   In each case, only things that are objectively morally permissible may be done.   The individual’s capacity to understand must be taken into account.   Other people’s participation must be considered.   Environment makes a difference.   In the end, though, each of us is accountable for what happens in his own life.    All possible legitimate care must be exercised in order to affect the best of possible outcomes and to avoid assigning blame to some convenient scapegoat.    Text, context and subtext must work together at all times in order to get things done the right way.    Any extremist position, that puts too much emphasis on either the power of fate, or the control asserted by the individual,  will lead to trouble.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/prompt-que-sera-sera/

Lesbian couple starves, beats, even chains 3 children

A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Don’t buy the packaged product the media is selling you, of loving, doting, oh-so-caring and, of course!, incredibly stable homosexuals who, garsh darn it, just might possess the ideal qualities to be parents.

Yeah, right:

Three children were rescued from a Monterey County home last week after deputies discovered that two women — one a former correctional officer — had starved, chained and abused the children, officials said Friday.

Sheriff’s deputies rescued the children from the couples’ residence on Russell Road near Salinas on March 14, citing horrific conditions and an 8-year-old girl who looked “like a concentration camp victim,” said Monterey County Sheriff Scott Miller.

Also in the home were two boys, ages 3 and 5.

Miller said Eraca Dawn Craig, 31, and Christian Jessica Deanda, 44, are accused of felony child cruelty, false imprisonment and other charges.

Deputies conducted a welfare check at the house after the…

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