Recently Sir Michael Caine announced that he is retiring from acting. “I keep saying I’m going to retire. Well I am now,” he said. Thankfully we have all his old movies to watch (and one more new one on the way). Simon Pegg sums up his career rather well:
I read his memoir a few years ago and he is a stand up guy. So hats off to Michael Caine and a toast tonight to his illustrious career. I think I’ll watch Zulu (1964).
Sigh. We are all getting older. Think of the Rolling Stones and ol’ Mick Jagger who is 80. Good grief. Here he is in 1964 making his debut on Ed Sullivan. He was twenty-one.
O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.
What is it about Easter candy? I have a hard time resisting–especially those malted milk eggs.
I had a lovely birthday. A beautiful flower arrangement from the OM was delivered while I was on the phone with the boy, who called to say Happy Birthday.
Daughter #2 checked in with Katiebelle before daycare…
Happy Birthday, Mamu!
Daughter #1 drove in from Jeff City after lunch and we went to an event at our favorite local store where our Insta-pals the Madcaps (@madcapcottage) were the special guests.
It was great to meet Jason and John, who seem like old friends. Jason’s Mom and my Mom both went to Middlebury! OMG. Daughter #2 told them it was my birthday and Jason said, “40 is a great year!” Bingpot! Then we met Becky across the street at 19th North for some wine.
We opened presents at home and ate some of an Edible Arrangement from my old friend Denise…
What more can anyone want?
Indeed, birthdays aren’t so bad. I refuse to be depressed like most modern poets, such as Donald Hall:
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.
Heck, no. I prefer to think positive: We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16)
…and also this:
The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. 13 They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. 14 They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, 15 to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.
Today is the birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams, (1872 – 1958) English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years.
(Statue of Vaughan Williams by William Fawke, Dorking)
Vaughan Williams’s Anglican church music includes anthems; choral-orchestral works, such as Magnificat (1932), Dona Nobis Pacem (1936), and Hodie (1953); and hymn tune settings for organ. And, of course, he was music editor of the most influential British hymnal at the beginning of the twentieth century, The English Hymnal (1906), and coeditor (with Martin Shaw) of Songs of Praise (1925, 1931) and the Oxford Book of Carols (1928). He also worked intermittently on a musical treatment of John Bunyan’s allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, for forty-five years, and the 1951 “Morality” was the final result.
But you are probably more likely to be acquainted with a Fantasia on Greensleeves…
…which makes me think of our May Day program of yesteryear…
…when the senior class danced around the maypole, braiding the ribbons to the harmonious music of Vaughan Williams. (I look so serious–I must have been concentrating on not stepping on anyone’s dress.)
This backward glance in turn reminds me that the wee laddie told me on Sunday that I was “really old” while we were digging in an ant hill. A couple of weeks ago he had asked me why I had white hair and I told him it was because I am old. I guess he is trying to figure out what that means. And, indeed, it is a weird concept. Sigh. Probably he was just trying to compliment me, right?
Happily, I can still be as immature as the next person. This probably explains my current obsession with watching episodes of Brooklyn 99 on Hulu.
Anyway, that is how my brain (still) works. So let’s not forget to toast Ralph Vaughan Williams tonight! And while we’re at it, blow some bubbles…
I have officially become one of those people who has a pair of reading glasses in every room where there is a remote possibility I might want to read something. Sigh. What’s next? Wearing them around my neck on a chain?
dual personalities 