Dear Friends,

I'm off for five days to celebrate the 70th birthdays of my dad and step-mother. Their names are Phil and Barbara. They are both retired and extremely active: world travel, a lot of theatre (writing, directing, acting). Barbara is an artist (painting, sculpture); my dad is a pianist and composer. They live in Albuquerque and they love the Southwest. They've been married and really in love for nearly 30 years.

While I'm at their house, I'll be showing them some things on their computer. I will invite them to visit eMule with me.

Gee, I wonder what we'll find on this thread?

MARIAN

A poem to Phil and Barbara
I'm glad you came this farbara
your birthdays you'll enjoybara
and many many morebara !

Here's a couple to read while you're in New Mexico:

Sun Up to Sun Down

It’s another mornin gettin dressed
In amber skirts and pinks
Distant peaks and mountaintops
And canyon folds in inks

High noon comes to pause a bit
And refresh the tired horses
In the meager shade of tamarisk
‘N shallow spring that courses

The midday sun bears down hot
Slowin life to a standstill
Herdin the doggie strays to water
On a trail toward the windmill

A faint silhouette on the horizon
Beckons thirsty horse and rider
A grassy spot near the drippin tank
Makes hearts a little lighter

The timber mill comes into view
An ‘ol faithful desert beacon
Weatherworn by windswept years
Lifts the spirits with its squeakin

Then the sun sets on a plateau easel
Colors amber rust and fawn
Above shear cliffs of terra cotta
Becoming ocher in the dawn

Sundown sculpts the shadowed crags
In shades of mauve and indigo
Where distant peaks of serrate loom
And fluorescent mountains glow

With smell of saddle sweat and leather
And dove weed on the ground
The stirrup squeaks to clinkin spurs
And nighthawk’s evenin sound

Into sky views of a thousand vistas
Whipped by worlds unknown
He rides west toward beddin ground
Enjoyin evenin all alone

Ed Keenan © 0 2-02


Evening Oasis

Rusted hinges of copper tinges
Reflect colors of evenin orb
Burnin sand and bendin shadows
Smearin paint on artist board

On the easel of desert twilight
Outlinin the shape of time
Earth chapped by summer sunset
Stain horizons arid wine

And echoes drift reflect the gold
Of dust storms on the fly
Calendars carved in sand dunes
Winds across a canvas sky

When beddin down at desert edge
Under a bluish tamarisk
The oasis finds a tired cowboy
Beneath heavens silver disc

Ed Keenan © 4-02


Les



Post Edited (07-20-04 13:11)

Happy birthdays, Phil and Barbara. I hope you enjoyed the above Father Guido Sarducci (aka Opera Man) poem from Johnny. :)

A Birthday
by Christina Georgina Rossetti. 1830–1894

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.



Post Edited (07-20-04 14:56)

To Phil and Barbara:

Your daughter's a very fine writer,
And a veritable poetry citer,
Though quite intellectual,
She's always "effectual,"
And on emule there's no one politer.

joet

To Phil and Barbara:

Marian's a very fine writer,
And a veritable poetry citer,
Though quite intellectual,
She's always "effectual,"
And on this site there's no one politer.

joet

Joseph he wrote a poem twice
cause your daughters especially nice

For Phil and Barbara:

As I look at you today
I cannot help but reminisce
About the days from my past
That I will surely miss

Oh, the places we have been
The adventures we have had
Have made the years fly by
And it wasn't all that bad

So have a toast with me
I'm the one you helped to raise
I will cherish time with you
Til the end of all my days


Les



Post Edited (07-21-04 00:57)

three score and ten
let's do it again !

Marion,

How lucky you are to have such artistic parents and they like to travel too! My parents are in their late-40's and believe that the world drops off at the edge of town. I think we all would love to hear from the interesting people that raised you.

I found a nice little poem on my computer that proves Marian does not take after her parents. They must have gone wrong somewhere, education technically ;-)

Two roads diverged in a yellow road
and sorry I could not travel both
and be one traveler, long I stood,
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it vanished in the undergrowth.

Then looked down the other.
Then looked down the first one again.
Then went home and got back in bed.

Oh, I saved them both for another day,
but knowing me...

by Marian Bock

'Ever Since'
By Archibald MacLeish

What do you remember thinking back?
What do you think of at dusk in the slack
Evening when the mind refills
With the cool past as a well fills in
Darkness from forgotten rains?

Do you think of waking in the all-night train,
The curtains drawn, the Mediterranean
Blue, blue, and the sellers of oranges
Holding heaped up morning toward you?

Do you think of Kuomoto-Ken
And the clogs going by in the night and the scent of
Clean mats, the sound of the peepers
The wind in the pines, the dark sleep?

Do you think how Santiago stands at
Night under its stars, under the Andes:
Its bells like heavy birds that climb
Widening circles out of time?

I saw them too. I know those places.
There are no mountains – scarcely a face
Of all the faces you have seen,
Or a town or a room, but I have seen it.

Even at dusk in the deep chair
Letting the long past take you, bear you –

Even then you never leave me, never can.
Your eyes close, your small hands
Keep their secrets in your lap:
Wherever you are we two were happy.

I wonder what those changing lovers do,
Watching each other in the darkening room,
Whose world together is the night they’ve shared:
Whose past is parting: strangers side by side.

Diggety - Ziggety
Philip and Barbara
Answering invites from
Marian Bock

Likely will tell her quite
Oxymoronically
All of Hugh's verses are
Genuine schlock.

yOU'LL GET HER GOAT WITH THAT ONE (obviously an advertisement for bock beer)

Dear Friends of Poetry,

Thank you, friends, for all your verse.
(Some is better, some is worse.)'
I count myself a poet, too,
not in the class of some of you,
but since you bid me have my say,
I'll wish you happiness this day.

P.s. Marian didn't mention that, two days after our party on
7/24, Barbara had a partial hip replacement. She's doing well:
at home and getting out some with a walker. I'm learning a
log about doing laundry.

Sincerely, Phil

Dear Phil,

Glad to hear Barbara is recovering well.

By the way, you don't do laundry with a log...you take it to the stream and use a rock.....a log will float away on you !

Phil:

I hope Barbara's partial hip replacement turns out to be as successful as my wife's total hip replacement was two years ago. Modern medicine has returned us both to a world we hadn't been able to experience for the past twenty years. I hope the same for you and Barbara.

PS: Be careful with the bleach....I've ruined more of my shirts from the backsplash while leaning too far over the machine while pouring.

joet

Phil, your daughter is a cornerstone of this website. I hope you had a nice birthday party.

Marilyn is always advising us to write poems for special occasions because the personal touch overcomes the expertise in making a poem right for the occasion. I hope she followed her own advice here and put her thoughts down on paper for you.

Best wishes.

Les

Thanks, everyone!

Because my stepmother was in pain from a fractured hip, I didn't ask her to sit at the computer and read this thread while I was in town. Thanks for your patience.

I didn't write a poem for my folks' 70th birthdays, but I did a little comedy sketch in the form of "a few announcement to make before we cut the cake," which went over very well. A splendid time was had by all, despite impending surgery.

MARIAN

still wondering who Marilyn is !

MARILYN is a name my father wanted to give me, but my mother vetoed it because when she was eight years old, a girl named Marilyn stole her lunch money.

They wanted to give me an "M" name after my great-grandmother Masha, and MARIAN was agreeable to both of them. "The Music Man" opened on Broadway a year because I was born--that might have something to do with the appeal of the name.

For years I hated being called "Marian the Librarian." Recently, given the trouble people have with the name MARIAN, I started saying "like Marian the Librarian" to help people remember it. More recently than that, I noticed I was getting blank stares; most people have NO IDEA what "Marian the Librarian" refers to. So I've had to resort to an earlier and more contemporary reference: "Like Robin Hood and Maid Marian."

My cousin Marilyn was supposedly named after Marilyn Monroe but during the 60's people started calling her Marilyn Munster, which I guess isnt too bad as she was the best looking of the bunch !


For more info...see the below:
[ths.gardenweb.com]

Any name can be used as a weapon if children want to be mean.

There was an insightful sketch on "Saturday Night Live" many years back, with Nicolas Cage as a guy who kept vetoing, passionately, every baby name his wife suggested for their child.

William? No - he'd be called "Silly Willy."
Robert? No - he's be called "Bob the Blob."

At the end of the sketch it turned out that the man's own name as ASSWIPE, pronouced "Ah-swee-pay" -- "just like it's spelled!" -- and (presumably) he'd suffered terribly as a child for having such a weird name.

I remember that sketch....do you recall if that was the same show with Nick Cage as Tiny Elvis?

We made this one co-worker crazy with our similar vetoes.

Scott? SNOT!
Roy? TOY!
Justin? TIME !

There's no safe name......John like the toilet, the prostitutes customer, John the Fonn (never understood THAT one)

even my last name which is barely close to Carvel, evoked "how's your ice cream !"

Funny you mention Nicholas Cage....all this morning I've been saying "Give me the Big Knife, Chrissy, so I can kill my self and you can tell my brother Johnny that on his wedding day"

My maiden name was Crippen, so I got lots of 'Kryptonite', not to mention 'Spam.' Strange, I don't get many Addams family references.

pam

>For years I hated being called "Marian the Librarian."

I have often secretly fantacized you, attired in a black leather bustier and four-inch stiletto heels, as Marian the Disciplinarian.

Or was I the one wearing that? I forget.

Hugh, be careful. Now that Phil has our number he may still be monitoring this site. Although the thought of YOU in stilettos would definetly make me rethink a few limericks.

Les

"Marian the Disciplinarian" ... hmm...

Someone named Crippen probably wouldn't have much trouble in the U.S., where Dr. Crippen is virtually unknown (and his connection to SPAM is even less well known).

"John the Fonn" ... my only GUESS is that it was "John the Faun," a rather literary allusion to one of ambiguous sexual orientation. Not a very likely thing for kids to shout in the schoolyard.

Soylent Green is People ! and SPAM isn't (well, not Americans, anyway)

Yes, Marian, rather unlikely, unless there was a sudden outbreak of literacy, which I really thought was happening a few years back when people were going to Borders Bookstore on their lunch-hour until I figured out they were going to the coffee shop !

More in the nature of a South Park episode, where a skier dude was calling Stan Marsh ...Stan "Darsch"

"I liked her brains
more than her looks
and you're not supposed to take out
reference books"
T Yonson *obviously an alias*

When I got married I did consider hyphenating my surname. Don't you think Brown-Death is just the thing to lumber the children with?

Hey, Peter Wimsey's middle name is Death.

pam

You could have bought them some pet rats to go with the name!

The main thing I have against pets is that unlike children they don't grow up and leave home.

And he uses it as his first name in Murder Must Advertise.

But I'm told (by a semi-Brit) that Peter Wimsey's middle name, Death, is pronounced DEETH.

Can anyone confirm that?

He says it himself at least once or twice.

pam

I knew a girl who , if she hyphenated her named....would have been Koch-Roche !

I am against hyphenated names for personal and professional reasons

I quote from Murder Must Advertise:-
Its spelt Death..... Most of the people who are plagued with it make it rhyme with teeth, but personally I think it sounds more picturesque when rhymed with breath.



I regard it as rhyming with heath, but its not much of a plague. My daughter once had problems with a new teacher who thought she was making it up until she produced all her exercise books with the name and another teacher confirmed she had two siblings who had gone through the school and that I worked there. People do tend to remember contacts from us, but they do want to add an appostrophy to make us De'Ath.

I have a friend who is Dr Death - he pronounces it "deeth" - some patients look a bit worried when they see his name tag.
I also know Dr's Hurt, Savage, Commode and Killem. Great names!

r.

I know a dentist named Dr. Payne.

we really realy do have a gynecologist named Dr Finger

How about the GP my father came across in Scotland - Dr Donald Duck - I kid you not!

We have a dentist here in town named Dr. Smiley. I'd give him a try based just on his name if I ever wanted to change dentists.

joet

wondering if Dr Smiley felt obligated to become a dentist !

I knew a doctor named Paine and one named Moneymaker.

and Dr Concepcion the infertility specialist