Always Had More Dogs Than Bones

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Nature everywhere
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we need just stop to see it
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in this whirling world





About a year and a half ago Treppenwitz posted about about sad lyrics set to happy tunes. Copacabana just came on. That's got to be top of the list, although it never hit me till now:

Still in the dress she used to wear/
faded feathers in her hair/
She sits there so refined/
and drinks herself half-blind/
She lost her youth and she lost her Tony/
Now she's lost her mind/
At the Copa/Copacabana.../
Don't fall in love (Copa!)/
Don't fall in love.

Pictured is my backyard, a park/forest area with a river and a view. Yesterday I walked by and took a few photos. Last night my colleague Andrew mentioned that he was struck by the moment at the start of An Inconvenient Truth when you see a nature scene and Al Gore speaks about the basic beautiful nature of life and how we too seldom enjoy it.

I have my computer's music on shuffle. Himmelman is now singing Seven Circles ("I love you in circles, seven times around my soul") on the Heels of Chaim David's Lema'an Shemo... Now Tom Petty's gentle Square One plays on.

Recently I got a call to perform for a lovely group set up by and for widows (Rachmanah Litzlan) that's headed by a dear friend's mother who is also my friend. I committed. I just got a call from a young Talmid Chacham who's running a Shabaton for about 20 college boys and wants me to speak on Humor in Judaism at their Melavah Malka. I struggle with the joy I bring people with the these presentatons along with the fulfilment I get from doing them ("more than the calf needs to drink, the mother needs to nurse") as well as the major schlepping, modest pay, and large amount of time that they take up. Sigh.

I wonder if my friend with the short attention span who has deemed my postings of late to be schvach is enjoying this or other recent ones. I wonder about many things. I forget who it was but once saw a comedian pause mid-act and say - "I think about these things so you don't have to." On a similar note David Brenner once stopped and told the audience that they were lucky because "You have to live with my brain for 45 minutes but I have to live with it all the time."

Poor Peter Otoole. The star of one of my favorite movies ever (My Favorite Year) is most likely going to lose his chance at winning best actor for the eighth time. He has had the bad luck of being up against unbeatable performances which portayed legendary characters. In order, he lost to Atticus Finch, Henry Higgins, Charly, Rooster Cogburn, Don Corleone, Jake LaMotta, and Gandhi. These losses were pretty inevitable, except for Charly who defeated O'Toole's Lawrence of Arabia in an upset.

Hopefully I will soon post on the parsha. Enough of this free associating, for the moment. There's laundry to be done, calls to be made, lessons to be prepared, Torah to learn, travelling to do, emails to send, tests to grade, straightening and sorting to do, plus eating and other basic needs like writing (privately),breathing, growing...