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Ingersoll

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Justice is the only worship.
Love is the only priest.
Ignorance is the only slavery.
Happiness is the only good.
The time to be happy is now,
The place to be happy is here,
The way to be happy is to make others so.
Wisdom is the science of happiness.

–Robert Green Ingersoll

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After writing yesterday about a person* with no honor whatsoever I thought I would write just a few words about a man with honor in abundance.

Most likely you don’t know his name, Robert G. Ingersoll. I know he was unknown to me. But while looking up a quote I kept coming across quotes from well known men who spoke of this man in what can only be described as glowing terms. Thomas Edison described him as being perhaps the closest thing to a perfect man on this earth. And Clarence Darrow eulogized him with these words: 

“Robert G. Ingersoll was a great man. a wonderful intellect, a great soul of matchless courage, one of the great men of the earth — and yet we have no right to bow down to his memory simply because he was great. Great orators, great soldiers, great lawyers, often use their gifts for a most unholy cause. We meet to pay a tribute of love and respect to Robert G. Ingersoll because he used his matchless power for the good of man.

And Walt Whitman said this of the living Ingersoll:

“It should not be surprising that I am drawn to Ingersoll, for he is ‘Leaves of Grass’ … He lives, embodies, the individuality, I preach. I see in Bob [Ingersoll] the noblest specimen—- American-flavored—- pure out of the soil, spreading, giving, demanding light.”

I found myself asking who the heck was this guy?

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) was perhaps the most famous American of his day. He was a lawyer who was recognized as the preeminent orator of his time. As an enlightened freethinker and pioneer of humane, rational, and agnostic views, Ingersoll was a tireless advocate of rational thought, battling superstition and hypocrisy wherever he found it. Ingersoll would regularly address huge audiences, opening their minds to ideas that often provoked guarded whispers in private. He was a man far ahead of his time, advocating such progressive causes as agnosticism, birth control, voting rights for women, the advancement of science, civil rights, and freedom of speech. He had a wide influence in his day but somehow has been overlooked in the century or so that has passed since his death in 1899.

Ingersoll was born in 1833 not too far from here, up in Dresden, near the west shore of Seneca Lake. I just discovered that there is actually a small museum there dedicated to his life and work. I look forward to visiting it at some point. He only lived there as an infant because his father, an abolitionist preacher, was often on the move. However, a collection of his works published just after his death is called the Dresden Editions, published by the Dresden Publishing Company which was formed to publish this 12 volume set and was named specifically  after his birthplace.

I am still discovering more on this interesting fellow so I am going to urge you to do so as well on your own. I would think that someone who garnered so much openly warm praise from the great men of his time deserves a few moments and has something to offer us now.

Note:

I thought his words at the top were an appropriate response to the ignorance and abhorrent behavior we have been exposed to on a daily basis for the past four years. Also, Ingersoll was a Colonel in the Union army during the Civil War and is buried at Arlington National Cememtery, not far from the Tomb of the Unknowns.

He was captured during the war which I guess, by current standards, makes him a sucker for enlisting and a loser for being captured.

However, even though Ingersoll might be considered a sucker and a loser, I sincerely doubt that the current occupant of our white house will have any of the greats of this age, save Kid Rock and Scott Baio, trumpeting his good works, his love for humanity or his good heart once he is stone cold and forever dead.

 

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“On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?

— Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, 3 September 2020

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There is a new article in The Atlantic from Jeffrey Goldberg that carries the heading Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’ that I urge you to read. It details a host of incidents over the last several years under our current president*** where this creature displayed a total lack of respect for the service and sacrifice of those who have seen duty in our military forces. The reports in this article have been subsequently corroborated and verified by multiple news agencies and their sources.

Without going into all of the details of the article here– again, please read it for yourself– he calls those American troops who were killed overseas and are buried in the military cemeteries in those places ‘losers‘ and ‘suckers.’

It aligns pretty much with his words for the late John McCain who he claimed wasn’t a war hero because he was captured.

There was another incident during talks concerning a potential military parade, one of his fixations, where he asked that the parade not include wounded veterans, particularly amputees, saying, “ Nobody wants to see that.”

This man sees everything as being transactional. You only do something for something in return. The idea of doing anything out of a sense of duty or honor is a foreign concept to this creature. After meeting one high ranking general, he is said to have remarked to aides that this general was a very smart guy and wondered why a guy with that kind of smarts went into the military. To him, if you have the ability to enrich yourself, sacrificing that ability in order to act in service to others is a sucker move.

I was watching The Godfather 2 not too long ago, having not seen it for a number of years. There a scene near the end, a  flashback to most of the members of the Corleone family along with the family attorney (Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen here but think of Michael Cohen, okay?) sitting around the dinner table before a birthday party for patriarch Don Corleone. Future boss Michael ( Al Pacino) reveals that he has enlisted in the Marines in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.

The responses from his brother, Sonny, and Hagen were illuminating. People who do something for strangers were ‘saps.’

You only do for yourself and family.

Sound familiar? It has been said that this president*** operates in much this same way as a mob family, right down to the attitude that you only help those who can help you in some way. The others are all saps and suckers and losers.

You might ask why this matters. It is important because it shows that he sees everything around him in terms of how it serves him. The military and its veterans are seen as props and pawns to be used. I believe that if he had to sacrifice dozens or hundreds or even thousands of troops in an action that would help him stay in power.

And this extends to law enforcement, as well. He sees cops as a tool to be employed on his behalf. And even then, he only sees cops who are willing to compromise their oath or break the very laws they are charged to enforce as being capable of helping him. A good cop, someone who entered a dangerous field with relatively little financial return, would fall under the category of sap or sucker. Or even loser if they were to call out the bad cops among them.

You may not care.

You may not give a shit ( excuse me for my plain language here) about his constant lies and deceptions. Or maybe you don’t give a crow’s fart for his total refusal to accept any responsibility whatsoever for the citizens that he is supposed to represent during a worldwide pandemic. You may not give a tinker’s damn for the 190,000 dead from covid19 and find these numbers, no matter how high they climb, somehow ‘acceptable.’ You may not care about the damage being done to our future economies by his fiscal policies. You may not care about weakened position in the world, one that makes the world much more dangerous for all.

You just might not care. You got your stupid red hats and your confederate flags and Fox News. And your own beliefs, however misguided and misinformed they might be.

But make no mistake about it, this creature is the ultimate looter and he’ll burn down this whole shitshow to stay in power and to keep from ever being held accountable. If you or me or a million other saps, suckers, and losers have to die, it won’t bother him one damn bit.

And unless enough of us stand up now and vote him out in numbers too large to be disputed, I believe that is exactly what he will do.

So check your voter registration. Vote early.

And vote like your life depends on it because this might be the one time in our lives when that is actually true.

In the meantime, read the article in The Atlantic. And, here’s that scene from The Godfather 2. See if it sounds familiar to you, as well.

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Wow!!

I was sent an email by a friend after last weekend’s gallery talk in which he gave some advice on improving future virtual talks. Most were very helpful and are under serious consideration if the need arises to do another such event in the future. However, it was a suggestion at the end of his email that came with an attached video that made my day and made me laugh very hard.

You see, in the run-up to the gallery talk, I had jokingly stated that I was practicing an acrobatic entrance complete with backflips and two twists with a stuck landing at the end. He said that he was disappointed that this part of the talk had not came about and suggested that if I had any song & dance skills or any other variety show talents, that I put them on display at the next talk.

He was, of course, kidding.

Gosh, I hope he was kidding.

The idea of me doing anything like that in front of a crowd of people made me laugh. It takes everything I have to simply stand stiffly up in front of people and move my lips so that words form.

But I laughed even harder when I watched the video he had enclosed.

It’s a performance of a song called Wow!! from a 1950’s group called The Goofers. It’s from a 1957 movie titled Bop Girl Goes Calypso, also known simply as Bop Girl, which I understand has become a sort of cult classic. I am not going to describe their act here. You can witness it for yourself.

But, sadly, I doubt that you will see any of their act migrate into my talks. Though it might be worth one try.

I didn’t know anything about The Goofers and there’s not a ton of info out there about them. Before setting out on their own, they were part of the band of tone of the greatest live performers, Louis Prima, in his prime years when he was performing with Keely Smith. If you have ever seen clips of Louis Prima, showman extraordinaire, you will understand where they got their ability to produce that wow!! factor.

Take a look for yourself. And next year, the whole gallery talk will be done on a trapeze.

Or a pogo stick. The Goofers also performed on pogo sticks but I can’t locate video of that.

Anyway, here’s Wow!! Now, have a good day.

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I was checking YouTube yesterday to see if the videos from last week’s Virtual Gallery Talk from the West End Gallery were being viewed. As I came to my page I saw a strange looking entry among my suggested videos. It was my name as a title appearing to overlay what I could see was my work underneath.

There was lettering above my name that appeared to me to be Korean. Clicking on it, I saw that it was a compilation of my work set to three pieces of music with photos of me along with what appeared to be biographical info, all gleaned from the internet.

It’s a strange sensation to see your work in this way, compiled and used by someone else. I am sure there are those of you out there who feel I should be upset over the unauthorized use of my imagery in this way and maybe you’re right. But I knew that once I began putting my work online as I do, it would possibly be subject to this sort of thing. I felt it was worth the risk in order to get my work out there.

I sometimes at gallery talks tell the story of the great photographer Brassai asking his best known subject and friend Pablo Picasso for advice on selling some drawings he had created. For how much should he sell them, for example. Picasso, who liked the Brassai drawings, told him to put a very low price on them because he needed them to get out into the world where they could be known and be seen. Where they could establish a name and achieve a noteworthiness that might one day make all his work valuable. Picasso claimed that had been his route.

It’s advice I still give young artists.

And that’s how I view this– a result of putting my work out into the world.

Actually, I am happy and flattered that my work has reached across the world and translates well into other cultures. You go into this hoping your work speaks to all people and to get a small bit of proof that it might doing that is gratifying.

There are worst things in this world.

Take a look, if you so desire. I could do without the photos of myself but I like the musical accompaniment’s different moods. Have a good day.

A Year of Augusts

pablopicassoskeleton******************

Your willingness to wrestle with your demons

will cause your angels to sing.

August Wilson

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Aah, September 1, 2020.

In most years, this would be a day where I begin to feel some sort of relief from the grim cruelty of August, my least favorite month. That is putting it mildly because, truth be known, I hate August. It’s something I’ve written about before here on the blog, as seen in the enclosed posts below. It seems to seep out every five years and since its last appearance there have been several more other awful Augusts to further make my case against it.

The funny thing is that this year I wasn’t even cognizant of my deep hatred for August. Oh, it was as difficult and stressful as all Augusts are for me. Instead, I realized that my recognition of it was hampered by the fact that this entire year has been comprised of Augusts. Every month has been filled with the same sort of tension and uncertainty that normally mark Augusts for me.

March was an August, April was an August and so on.

So, though we have passed the threshold into September, I don’t feel the same sort of relief it might bring in a normal year. This is obviously no normal year. It might say September on the calendar, but this year it’s just another goddamn August.

Man, what I would give for a year with one August. Or better yet, none.

From August 12, 2015:

As the post below from back in August of 2010 points out, most years I struggle with the month of August and this particular one is no different.  The doldrums set in and I am filled with an anxiety and a stifling restlessness that combine to create a sense of desperation within me. If I hadn’t experienced this before, this feeling would seem unbearable.

But it’s not something new so I realize that it’s just a matter of hanging on and letting it pass, all the while trying to pull something from it that will show itself in my work. I have found that such keen desperation is often the source of great work, much as playwright August Wilson a fitting first name!— points out so eloquently in the quote above. So, while I find myself fighting through the cruel days and demons of August, I do so as I listen for the song of angels to begin.

And from experience, I know they will begin soon enough. Sing, angels, sing!

From August 18, 2010:

This print from Picasso [ Above] very much sums up my feelings for the month of August. 

I have never been a fan of August. Memories of the so-called dog days of summer spent as a child. Hot from a relentless sun. Bored. Burnt grass crunching underfoot. The coming school year hanging overhead like the sword of Damocles.

August has always had a faint aura of death around it for me. I remember the death of my grandfather in ’68. My beloved dog Maggie years later. Several friends over the years, from a variety of causes. Elvis. The bright glare of the August sun seeming to taunt the grief of the moment.

August.

We were watching something on television the other night, perhaps Mad Men– I can’t really remember. Anyway, the character in the scene that was on said, “I hate August.” 

It made my ears prick up and I couldn’t help but mutter, “I’m with you there, brother.”

August.

Well, I’ve got a lot to do this August  morning. It takes a lot of work to keep busy to ward off the cruelty of  August…

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“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

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I have things that have to be attended to this morning so this will be short. I have watched the first three episodes of HBO’s Lovecraft Country and am still trying to decide whether I like it or not. I am not a horror aficionado nor a big reader of H.P. Lovecraft so I don’t look at it from that aspect. But it has been interesting enough to keep me coming back thus far. So we’ll see, I guess.

That brings me to the snip above from Lovecraft. It sort of reinforces my own belief that most things– civilizations, technologies, movements, etc– eventually evolve and grow until they reach an untenable point, Basically, that comes down to meaning that there is a beginning and an end to everything.

Nothing lasts forever.

Lately this thought fills me with dread and it may be that this feeling comes about because my fear of our desire as a people to enter into, as Lovecraft put it above: flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

I was hoping to not be around when that happened again. Bad timing, I guess.

Anyway, this is just a prelude to sharing a song from Shilpa Ray, who I introduced here last week singing Pirate Jenny with Nick Cave. Here’s her song, Morning Terrors Nights of Dread. It caught my ear and the video has a cheesy appeal for me. I have caught myself humming the tune every so often this past week so I figured it must be worth sharing. Give a listen and have a good day. Got to run  now. Bye!

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The Big Music

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I have heard the big music
And I’ll never be the same

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I was looking for a song to play this morning and I thought about a favorite track from an album, A Pagan Place, from back in the 1980’s from the Irish group The Waterboys. I was surprised to discover that in the nearly 12 years I’ve been doing this blog that the song hasn’t somehow surfaced.

The song is The Big Music and it’s about hearing a song or piece of music that just opens you up. Shakes up your whole world and changes how you see everything in it. Maybe even alters your whole life path.

It’s a song that really speaks to me. Growing up in the country at a time before digital broadcasts, satellite television and streaming services, we had two TV channels so reading and listening to music filled the void for a kid who was eager to learn about the world.

We had a big box of singles from the late 50’s and early 60’s that had by a cousin and somehow ended up with us. It had tons of good stuff including early rock from Elvis, lots of surf music from the likes of Jan and Dean and the Surfaris, goofy novelty songs and lots of pop chart hits that feel pretty dated today, such as Heart from Kenny Chandler, a song I listened to hundreds of time back then.

Plus, my sister was an avid music fan so there were always plenty of early Beatles, Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan singles on the record player. That first ringing chord of A Hard Day’s Night still thrills me in the same visceral way that I remember feeling as a kid.

Through those formative years, there were plenty of songs that hit me hard and opened up the world for me in small ways. Too many to list, actually. But I don’t know that I can mark one song that was that single defining moment. The Big Music for me.

Well, maybe it was from the first time I saw Springsteen back in 1977. The show and sound was unlike any other rock show I had seen up to that point. I wrote about that show in one of my favorite blog entries and mentioned his performance of It’s My Life,a song that was originally recorded by The Animals. That song and performance changed a lot of things with repercussions that echo through my whole life.

When I think about it, I doubt that I would be writing this today without that song at that moment.

So, I guess that would be my Big Music moment. Do you have a Big Music moment or one big song that just does it for you?

Here’s the song, The Big Music, from The Waterboys. Have a good Sunday.

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I came across the post below earlier this morning. It was posted several years back, just a couple of weeks after my father was admitted to to a local nursing facility, suffering from Alzheimer’s dementia. Four years have passed now and his condition has, unsurprisingly, deteriorated. He is now among the folks I describe in the the last paragraphs below. I visited this past week and basically just sat across from him, an enforced six feet away for safety’s sake, and looked at him as he lulled in his padded reclining wheelchair.

I called across to him several times throughout the visit, Basically, a hello in there kind of thing. But there was no response, not even a flutter of his closed eyes. He was there but he certainly was not there, as well. I wonder what part of his memories his mind was moving through at that time, what form of reality it was taking.

Anyway, here’s that post from several years back, including another great song from the late John Prine:

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GC Myers Early Work 1994I have a square cardboard box in one of the rooms of my studio. It’s not much to look at it and it certainly doesn’t have any significance attached to its exterior appearance.  But for me it’s a treasure chest, my secret bounty. You see, this rather plain box holds hundreds of small pieces from my earliest forays in paint from twenty some years ago.

They are not significant to anyone other than me. If you were to look in it you might not feel anything more than you would from looking at the old buttons, matchbooks and other tiny souvenirs of times past in someone else’s dresser drawers.

Many are clumsy attempts and most are deeply flawed in some way. But for me, they hold so much more deep meaning than is apparent from a first look. They are my artifacts, my history, my ponderings, my inner thoughts and my memory.

They are me.

There’s always a special feeling when I delve into them, like that feeling of looking at old family photos and vividly remembering moments that seem to have happened eons ago. I sometimes marvel at the brightness of my youth at that point and sometimes frown at the foolishness of it. I see where I thought I was going and can compare it to where I finally landed. There are ideas there that are dismal failures that make me smile now and make me wonder if I should have pursued them further.

And there are some that make me happier now than when they were done. Time has added a completeness to them that was lacking then.

And there are pieces like the untitled one above from back in 1994 that make me just stop and wonder where they came from. They seem like lost memories. I know I made this piece up in my mind but can’t remember why. I have skimmed over it a hundred times and never given it more than a shrug. But today I find myself looking intently at it as though it holds something for me that I can’t just pull out of it.

There’s a frustration in that but since I know that it is mine, I don’t really mind. I will have it for years to come and can question it again and again. Maybe my mind will release the secret or at least form a substitute reality at some point, one that brings me closure of some kind.

Who knows?

Today’s Sunday Morning music deals a bit with some of the same feelings. Well, I think it does.  It’s Hello In There from John Prine. Visiting my father in the nursing home has been hard, not just for the visits with him which still leave me shaken a little after each visit, but for the sight of the other older folks in even deeper states of dementia as they sit in their chairs in the hallways and dining rooms. There is a lonely blankness in their eyes that is heart-breaking.  You wish you could reach into them and pull their old self out in the open if only for a moment. But all you can do is say hello and hope they hear the words and the feeling in it.

Anyway, this is a great old song from John Prine. I hope you’ll give it a listen and have a great day.
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2 + 2

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In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.

George Orwell, 1984

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Two plus two still adds up to four.

But just barely.

There is ample evidence that there are some out there right now who are most likely thinking, “Why shouldn’t 2 plus 2 equal 5? If our great leader say that it is 5 and I feel that it is 5, who has the right to tell me that I am wrong?

Based on what I have seen over the past four nights from DC, the world of George Orwell‘s 1984 is just a little too close for comfort.

There is already the embrace of its concept of Doublethink. That’s where one holds two contradictory beliefs to be true at the same time. For example, there are people out there who believe that it was our government who actually flew the planes into the World Trade Center in 2001. Or they might also believe that the current pandemic is the result of a huge Deep State conspiracy.

These same people believe at the same time that this same government, one that is capable of a huge, complicated conspiracy that would require the silence and complicity of literally thousands of accomplices, is totally inept, too stupid and flawed, to do anything well.

We have become people who believe what they hear so long as it doesn’t involve critical thinking and aligns with what they want to believe. But because there is no critical thinking, most don’t even truly know what they want to believe.

They wait for The Word from some elevated other to tell them that.

The Word shall be whatever strokes their egos and stokes their fears.

It is a scary time, one that is not normal in any sense of the word, and we are rapidly descending down a very slippery slope right now. Who knows where we will be when this plummet ends?

Or if it will end.

As Orwell asks: For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?

Use your mind. Think critically. Speak out. When they say 2 plus 2 is 5, tell them they are wrong. Our world is depending on it at this moment.

The Pirate Jenny

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In the dark times / Will there also be singing? / Yes, there will also be singing. / About the dark times.

–Bertolt Brecht

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Didn’t really want to say much today. I did enough of that on Saturday, enough that I couldn’t imagine anyone would want to hear much more from more for a while. But I thought I would share the post below from over 10 years back about the song Pirate Jenny from The Threepenny Opera. I heard it early this morning and it reminded me of the story I told on Saturday about pretending to be a pirate in the woods alone. Maybe the draw in wanting to be a marauding pirate was much the same as it was for Jenny– a desire from a powerless person for control and power of some sort.

I don’t know.

But here’s the post and at the bottom are two versions of the song, one a classic theatric version from Anne Kerry Ford and then a version from Nick Cave in collaboration with punk vocalist Shilpa Ray. There are tons of great versions out there, as there always are for great songs, and I almost threw in Nina Simone’s  strong live interpretation of it. Hope you find one that works for you.

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Bea Arthur as the original Lucy Brown

It’s one of those cases of one thing reminding you of something else.  I heard Bobby Darin’s swinging version of Mack the Knife yesterday and there’s a line that ends with and Lucy Brown.  One of those parts of a song that your mind is somehow attuned to and always hears whenever the song is played.

Anyway, it immediately reminded me of  seeing Bea Arthur, of Maude and Golden Girls fame, a number of years back in a one-woman show on Broadway of personal stories and song.   Going in, I knew only a little of her career outside the TV roles so I didn’t have high expectations.  I was pleasantly surprised by a great show.

I didn’t know much of her Broadway career and didn’t know she originated the role of Lucy Brown in the original Broadway version of The Threepenny Opera back in the ’50’s.  She told several great tales about the show and then did a stirring version of the The Pirate Jenny.

I’m embarassed to say that I didn’t know much at that time about The Threepenny Opera or Brecht or Kurt Weill.  Had never heard the song  Pirate Jenny and it’s story of a cleaning woman who daydreams of rising from her life of powerless drudgery to become a powerful and cruel pirate.  Great song with great imagery and Bea Arthur’s version was wonderful.  Angry.  You could feel her desire for retribution for every time she was wronged by those who simply overlooked her and  took her for granted.  It was a very powerful song and one that became and remains a personal favorite.

Anyway, here’s a very good version of The Pirate Jenny from singer Anne Kerry Ford:

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