PeaceBang

"Didn’t It Rain?"

PeaceBangers, you in your infinite wisdom can help me.

I am singing some of the old gospel song “Didn’t It Rain” (sometimes called “Oh! Didn’t It Rain”) in my sermon on Sunday. I have been haunted by it lately and humming it all the while I’m drafting, so it clearly wants to get in there. I have the Mahalia Jackson version and although she sings like an angel, I can’t understand a derned word she’s singing in the middle verses. Many Google searches yield nothing helpful. I know that Paul Robeson recorded it, as did Sister Rosetta Tharpe, but no luck on finding lyric printouts.

I don’t really NEED to know the whole thing, but I WANT to know.

Many of you have scads of music. Does anyone perchance have this beautiful song in a collection? If so, would you be ever so kind as to transcribe the lyrics for little ole moi?

I would be eternally grateful, but you knew that.

P.S. If you even remotely like old time gospel, you just have to have to have to get the Columbia recording called, “The Essential Gospel Sampler.” This can get you through more bad times than anything. It should be prescribed along with pharmaceuticals. If you can listen to the Dixie Hummingbirds sing, “Hide Me In Thy Bosom” and still feel down in the dumps, child, you are truly suffering and should go immediately to “What Could I Do” by the rockin’ Marion Wiliams. That should help some. I swear by it.

The Goat Ate My Emmys Review

PeaceBangers, please do not think that I would have let a major celebrity-oriented cultural event go by without commenting on it!

I did watch the last 45 minutes of the Emmys on Sunday night. I did have witty, trenchant observations. I did hold my hand over my mouth in horror over Patricia Arquette’s bad Andrew Sisters hair-do: http://static.flickr.com/27/45297485_bc2ae77e8b_o.jpg

I did throw my shoe at the screen when “Everybody Loves Mediocrity” won Best Comedy for the squillionth time in a row, leaving such comic gems as “Arrested Development” in the dust.

I did root for Zach Braff, ’cause we’re fellow Wildcats. He didn’t win.

I did think that Hugh Jackman’s alarming Wolverine sideburns were hilarious, and that he was adorable and Whoopi Goldberg as thoroughly unfunny as ever.

I did find Felicity Huffman’s speech the most endearing of the lot.

And I did write this all up and experience AN ERROR, according to blogspot. And I did lose it all. Quelle dommage.

Derby Street Shoppes Gaffe

So I get this flier in the mail today from the local swanky outdoor mall

(http://peacebang.blogspot.com/2005/08/she-took-words-right-outta-my-mouth.html)

announcing “Suffrage Days” when we get to “pamper ourselves” and shop ’til we drop. There will be gift bags, samples, and little events like wine tastings.
5% of the proceeds from these days (Sept. 19-September 22) will go to hurricane relief if you bring your receipts to S.R. Weiner & Associates: 781.749.7800 or Carolyn.Kennedy@SRWeiner.com

Sound nice?
Wait, there’s more.

Here’s what it says on the front flap of the brochure, which pictures a woman carrying TEN shopping bags and swinging along in an attitude of utmost joy and liberation:

Webster defines the word “suffrage” as “the right to vote in a political election.
WE DEFINE ‘SUFFRAGE” AS THE RIGHT TO SHOP WITHOUT THE KIDS TAGGING ALONG!

The whole thing would have been a really nice idea if they hadn’t gone and perverted the idea of suffrage in such an egregiously materialistic manner.

I mean, the whole point of the suffrage movement was to empower women to have a voice in society. I take serious offense in the notion that all we need to be empowered is a working credit card and the desire to own a lot of new stuff. And to dump those damn kinder at home.

Susan B. Anthony must be sitting stark upright in her grave.

What I suggest is that South Shore PeaceBangers boycott the Derby Street Shoppes for those three days or longer and send what you would have spent directly to the hurricane relief organization of your choice.

May I also recommend that you write to Ms. Kennedy and explain that “suffrage” and “pamper” are not synonymous? And that she ought to fire her development person or at least send her to a Woman’s Studies class somewhere, and pronto?

Gads.

When Book Stores Die

I went to Harvard Square today paspifically to shop at The Globe bookstore, a treasure-trove of travel books that was a delight to browse in for hours.
I was going to plunk myself down in the Spain and Portugal section and just fantasize away about the Prado and Dali museums and tapas and flamenco. I’m gonna get to see those Hieronymous Bosches at the Prado this January if it kills me.

But The Globe ain’t there. And just as I was blinking hard and trying to get over my ridiculous sense of loss, I got to the corner of JFK and Brattle Streets and found that Wordsworth Books was also gone. Empty. Not even taken over by an Abercrombie & Fitch or GAP or anything.

I’m just sick inside. Did we cause this by shopping at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com?

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Voices

I keep hearing Uncle Marvin’s voice in my head. He and his brother Dick (and my dad, less so their brother Mark) have/had the deepest, most elegant radio-announcer voices (but with way more soul, humor, anger and power) you ever heard. I just can’t stand that’s there’s only one such voice left in the world. Those voices were, to me, the rumblings of God himself. When we were kids and spending every weekend at Uncle Dick’s beautiful mansion on the coast of Connecticut, my eleven cousins would be wilding around and I would be in the room with the men, literally sitting at their feet while they debated politics and threw affectionate insults at each other. Tempers rose easily. My Uncle Dick, the lawyer, thundered the loudest. Marvin was the best at curt dismissal, and my father, Carl, the most cuttingly funny. When they laughed, it was a roar.

That they took seriously what I had to say was the highest compliment a child could be paid.

I just feel so tired and like I can’t concentrate. I can’t imagine what a loser I’ll be at church today. I could cry just thinking about how much energy it will take just to get through the opening words and call to celebration, let along my 20-minute sermon.

I have a headache already and I slept well and long.

Grief is the worst.

Yuks From NYC

I was talking to Little Flava today :
http://peacebang.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_peacebang_archive.html

who called to tell me that she had just had this great New York City morning of eating left-over Korean for breakfast (that’s Korean food, not an actual left-over Korean), blasting salsa music and tanking down java.

I told her about Uncle Marvin and how I hate that feeling you get after you cry so hard you feel like every nutrient is totally gone from your body, and she said, “I know. They should make Visine with Gatorade in it.”

I laughed so hard my eyeball popped out, so that one doesn’t even need any Visine.

PeaceBang In Mourning

We were just talking about the good death, weren’t we?

My beloved Uncle Marvin died in his sleep last night.

If I could only express what a titan this man was. He was a sexy, vibrant, wine-quaffing, world-traveling babe at 82 and he would have so hated to have become old and infirm. I have no complaints there. Neither would he have. The night before he died he was at a fabulous party in Utah, and was reportedly the belle of the ball. When I say he was a babe, I mean he was a babe. See what I mean? Paul Newman-level babe, with a great golf handicap. Here he is a few weeks ago, wearing the family uniform of navy blue blazer and khaki pants (that’s vacation. In winter you get a tie and some other kind of trousers, and Bali loafers).

He also, ironically enough, had just had a full check-up and had received an A+ stellar clean bill of health. Cholesterol low. Arteries terrific. Etc. His doctor will plotz.

Domineering Jewish papa, patriarch of us all (his younger brother, my dear Uncle Dick, joked with him days before he died that he was tired of being the “Patriarch-In-Waiting”) the whole clan of us twelve cousins, and our seventeen children. Husband of Mae for sixty years, Army colonel (he will be buried at West Point) and absolutely no nonsense.

He thought this war with Iraq was a despicable, cowardly mess and no excuse for it.

The world felt safer with Uncle Marvin in it.

Uncle Marv and I exchanged e-mails on September 8th on msn.com. If anyone knows how I might retrieve a deleted e-mail, I sure would like to know. I have found my letter to him, but I don’t have his to me and it would be lovely to have it.

Hold to your loved ones real tight tonight. As the poet Mary Oliver would say (or I may be paraphrasing), “Let the small, soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Friday Cat Blogging

Dignity, Always Dignity
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

She’s watching CNN. And it occurs to me that she has more dignity than Michael Brown.

Ermengarde for FEMA chief!

Muppets Wizard of Oz

muppets of oz
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

I have mixed feelings about this one. I laughed a lot — especially at Toto, who in this production was played by a king prawn muppet named Pepe, who has one of those outrageous Latino accents popularized by Hank Azaria in “The Birdcage.” If this character is offensive to Latinos, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. I hope they found it an endearing shout-out.

The casting is precious, especially Kermit as the Scarecrow. Miss Piggy is hilarious in the first scene as Glinda, smothering the munchkin (rats) to her bosom and singing out, “CUDDLES! CUDDLES, Munchiekins!”

Mother of PeaceBang always adored Piggy, and I am beginning to see why.

There’s an overly-frightening, very dark number called “The Witch Is In the House” during which Miss Piggy tears around her lair as the Wicked Witch, and her minions (the flying monkeys in this version are a motorcycle gang — a truly motley crew of muppets!) tear apart the Scarecrow and the Tin Thing (played by Gonzo). Yikes! Not for the littlest kiddies.

Even as I laughed at the many truly charming moments, I found it disappointing that the Dorothy character (played by winsome black pop tart, Ashanti) was sexed-up so much, wearing a bare midriff throughout (although to be fair, she had a gingham apron on over it) and then given a make-over into full super-slutty-fab Beyonce mode once she gets to Emerald City. We’re talking glittery eyeshadow and major cleavage to go with the 4″ high magical slippers.

I personally found it hilarious that the magic slippers were silver-encrusted Manolo Blahniks, but I have to guess that if I was the mother of a 12-year old, I would have probably been exasperated. When Ashanti says, “If the magic slippers are supposed to make a girl feel sexy and confident, then these are definitely magical!” I groaned. We can’t just achieve wisdom through our journey now, we also have to feel “sexy and confident.” This is Frank Baum by way of Helen Gurley Brown.

For those of us who hold the torch of adoration aloft for Miss Judy Garland, and who consider her Dorothy Gale a monumental achievement of beauty and honesty, Ashanti just can’t begin to compete. It’s not her fault that her Dorothy was written and directed to be a pouting Material Girl; she is obviously talented enough to have played it with more tenderness.

I’m disappointed that the writers failed to recognize that Dorothy’s journey is not just individual but archetypal. She doesn’t want to get out of Kanas in order to be Something, she wants to get out of Kansas in order to Be. All the focus on the “I gotta be a star” totally demolished the archetypal power of the story for me.

Originally uploaded by Peacebang. WHY God…

Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

WHY God, WHY?

If an emaciated, neurotic, workaholic Hollywood star can’t make it work with a diminutive, bald, reportedly gay country singer after a relationship of about five minutes, WHAT CHANCE IS THERE FOR ME?