Larry’s Comments (group member since Nov 23, 2020)

Larry’s comments from the Nonfiction Reading - Only the Best group.

Carol wrote: "There are suggestions that Lockdown has caused this proliferance of ghastly illnesses but I suspect that they have just emerged and are not related. Unfortunately there appears to be a lack of anti..."

Carol,

You give some examples of how bad things are in Britain, and I totally believe it. The link is from a Substack article that is similar but more extended in its examples. I hope you can read it ( I don;t understand what is behind Substack paywals and what isn't!)

https://eand.co/this-is-how-bad-brita...

But much more telling is a two page article in the current (12/17/2022) edition of the Economist. Titled "Declinism and Data: Britain's economic record since 2007 ranks near the bottom among peer countries." In those two pages, there are a number of charts and tables they tell a woeful record of the economy. Reducing to one measure over the time period, per person GDP, Britain has actually done better than Canada and France, but much worse than the U.S., Germany, and Australia. For Britain, Brexit is an important part of the problem (the article doesn;t say that, but it doesn't need to.)

John, I think you’re smart to be more careful at this time … good article by Katherine Wu in The Atlantic about how Covid still is worse than flu. And then there is RSV, which is overwhelming pediatric facilities in our hospitals.

Beetgoven’s birthday today, John. A perfect poem for that.

Jeffrey wrote: "Carol wrote: "The Football World Cup Final between France and Argentina is on Sunday. Have found most of the games very exciting. Am rooting for France- I very much like their team, particularly Mb..."

Jeffrey, the Beaton book looks great. I just bought a copy.

"Griezmann joined Atletico on a two-year loan deal with an obligatory purchase option of €40m in the event he played over 45 minutes in 50% of the games for which he was available.
Athletico manages his minutes so they don't have to pay the 40m euros. "

Some NFL and MLB have similar clauses ... sometimes what teams to avoid paying do seems reasonable, if it is still aimed at achieving wins. Sometimes it doesn't.

Well, Carol, two days ago, we watched four episodes of the first season, wrapping it up. And then we watched the first episode of the second season yesterday ... and right now, the second episode. We're limiting ourselves to one episode a day now!

The Journey of the Magi
By T. S. Eliot

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Great poem … and I hope and pray for a saner world.

Carol, we have the second series available also. We’ll go right into it next.

Carol, we have been captivated by THE CAPTURE. Watched the first two episodes yesterday. About to start the third episode in a moment.

I asked the AI program Chat GPT to create a poem about Emily Dickinson, and about 30 seconds later, it had generated this. Not too impressive ... but I wonder in ten years, what the AI program may come up with ...

Here is a short poem about Emily Dickinson:

Emily Dickinson, poet of the soul,
Whose words still resonate and make us whole,
A mistress of the written word,
She captured feelings never heard.

Her verses, sharp and poignant, cut
Through all the noise, and leave us mute,
A testament to her enduring art,
A legacy that will never part.

In her poems, we find a truth
That speaks to us, and feels uncouth,
A window into her inner world,
A glimpse of her thoughts, unfurled.

So let us honor Emily Dickinson,
And all the beauty that she's brought,
With every word, she's shown us how
To capture life, and hold it now.

Carol wrote: "We write 'grey' over here but I gather that both versions are correct and derive from the Old English Graeg."

My youngest granddaughter's middle name is Grey. She is named after her great-grandfather, who flew fighters in World War 2 in Europe until they started running out of bomber pilots. He volunteered to be retrained in the States and then came back to England as a bomber pilot. He switched back to fighters for Korea and for a few days held the world air speed record. (He joked that a number of pilots, including Chuck Yeager traded that record by just breaking it by mile per hour or so, setting it up to be broken by another pilot the next day.) At his funeral service at Arlington, the Air Force had a flyover of several planes. I sort of like "Grey."

Here birthday was yesterday, but the poem is just as good today.

A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
BY EMILY DICKINSON

A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides -
You may have met him? Did you not
His notice instant is -

The Grass divides as with a Comb,
A spotted Shaft is seen,
And then it closes at your Feet
And opens further on -

He likes a Boggy Acre -
A Floor too cool for Corn -
But when a Boy and Barefoot
I more than once at Noon

Have passed I thought a Whip Lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled And was gone -

Several of Nature’s People
I know, and they know me
I feel for them a transport
Of Cordiality

But never met this Fellow
Attended or alone
Without a tighter Breathing
And Zero at the Bone.

In recent times, we started with closed captions for British movies and shows and then just decided that it's good for everything. We actually both have pretty good hearing, but we also like glancing at what was said. I can still remember the first movie where we just couldn't understand what was being said. It was Robert Altman's 1971 film McCabe & Mrs. Miller. I wish that that film had had closed captioning when it was released to the theaters.

John, I don't think I could watch it without closed captioning turned on.

My wife and I both found that it was hard to follow at times, both with the accents and the intel slang.

I have quoted that last line on more than one occasion ... without knowing where it came from.

Happy Birthday to John Milton, poetic giant.

Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent
BY JOHN MILTON
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

John, if anything Season 2 is even more interesting than Season 1. We’re two episodes in.

John, you’ll discover that he really is not mediocre so much as idiosyncratic and amazingly abrasive.