My favorite Thanksgiving poem (excerpt)

Hasten not; the feast will wait.

This is a master-night without a morrow.

No chill and haggard dawn, with after-sorrow,

Will snuff the spluttering candle out,

Or blanch the revellers homeward straggling late.

Before the rout

Wearies or wanes, will come a calmer trance.

Lulled by the poppied fragrance of this bower,

We'll cheat the lapsing hour,

And close our eyes, still smiling,

on the dance.

~George Santayana~

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! 

A song that endures

Bark BirdLast Sunday morning around eight thirty I was perched on the edge of my bed, peering into a makeup mirror, applying cosmetics.

You know ... getting ready for church.

Although very cool and rainy weather conditions had been forecast, the morning was actually mild and half-heartedly sunny.

Consequently I had thrown open a window to enjoy the day.

Because I also like to keep avenues of inspiration wide open, I was listening (notice I didn't say "watching" ... I cannot watch television while simultaneously doing justice to the application of pirate eyeliner; that requires enormous skill and perhaps even the presence of Ve Neill, which was not an option) to my favorite cable television station: Turner Classic Movies.

Al Jolson is no Cary Grant.

(If my TV's not tuned to that station, invariably it's on Fox News, but I'd reached DEFCON 3 on the discouraging-events-combined-with-mindless-fluff-o-meter while watching Fox & Friends earlier that morning.)

TCM's flick-of-the-mo was an Al Jolson musical from 1933: Hallelujah, I'm A Bum!

Yeah. Sometimes anything beats harking to the perky purveyors of pessimism peopling the only news outlet I consider nominally useful.

The upside to Hallelujah, I'm a Bum! being the featured film was the fact that I was not even vaguely tempted to look away from the serious business of appearance-augmentation to the TV screen across the room.

Unlike, say, if Cary Grant had been the leading man instead of Al Jolson.

(Although I love it when he sings My Mammy in blackface, Al Jolson is no Cary Grant.  Al Jolson's not even Claude Rains, and I'm not compelled to gander at him either.)

But I shamelessly digress, and I didn't even get to mention Johnny Depp.*

There's a point to this whole thing, and here it comes.

During one of the many (quite good) musical numbers punctuating the snappy Depression-era dialog of Hallelujah, I'm A Bum! (which was disturbingly germane to current events, but that's another subject) there came the loudly insistent song of an unusually energetic songbird.

One that had spent zero time in soup lines or on hobo trains. One that was still well-shod and full of youthful enthusiasm.

He sang and sang and sang his little heart out, until seriously I was about to adjust the volume because his voice was that piercing.

And then it happened.

Another hyperactive bird began singing ... from the leafy confines of an autumn-flowering bush just outside my window.

I almost dropped my brand-new shu uemura eyelash curler.

(The one that, should push come to shove, I would not trade for the last loaf of bread on earth unless my grandchildren were hollow-eyed with starvation and beseeching me to feed them.)

It sounded for all the world as though the real-live bird outside my window was attempting to communicate with the bird whose voice was no more than a digitally-remastered soundtrack emanating from my television set.

The birds retreated to wherever they go to ride out cold, dark, wet days, and fell silent.

The movie bird sang; the real bird answered. Then they sang in unison before repeating the cycle.

A song issuing from the tiny beak, the minuscule throat, of a three-ounce ball of feathers that has been dust for more than three-quarters of a century, was inspiring all-out joyous cacophony by a very-much-alive avian citizen perched a few feet away in my yard.

It was touching and cute and special, but it was more than that. It was beautiful.

And I was reminded that although earthly voices are often stilled with terrifying suddenness, the song we sing during the brief time we are here will be heard and continued by someone, in some way -- often poignantly and unexpectedly -- long after we are gone.

Long after we have lost either the ability to hear or the wherewithal to respond.

Which means that our duties, our obligations, our goals, our each and every quotidian pursuit -- no matter how banal, how seemingly insignificant -- should be carried out not only with eternity in view, but with future generations constantly in mind.

The rain arrived as promised, deluge-style, a few hours later. The birds retreated to wherever they go to ride out cold, dark, wet days, and fell silent. A gloomy pall persisted all the afternoon and into the night.

Droplets of wind-driven rain were still being hurled relentlessly against the now-closed window as my own eyes closed in sleep.

But the last thing I thought about before drifting away was that long-ago happy birdcall and the present-day hopeful reply.

And I considered once more the amazing resilience and time-transcending relevance of a message carried abroad via the strong, sweet, ineffable force of a song that endures.

*No link required. 

Racist? Nah.

Although this singing turkey reminds me of someone ... it's on the tip of my tongue ... hmmm ...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Swish

Bwaaaahaha.I visited my dentist's office on Monday for a routine teeth cleaning.

The practice charges $119 for one of their excellent hygienists to perform this service.

So naturally, when the ordeal procedure was over and I went up front to pay, clutching my plastic goody bag of two extra-soft toothbrushes, a quarter-sized disc of dental floss, and a runt tube of toothpaste, I expected the receptionist/cashier to say: "The charge is one hundred nineteen dollars today, Mrs. Weber."

Or, "That'll be one hundred nineteen today."

Or, "A hundred and nineteen dollars, please."

Or at the very least, "One nineteen."

But she didn't say any of those things.

Cool as a seldom-used cavitron she enunciated, and I quote: "That will be two-oh-three."

Two-oh-three what? Dollars? For a one-hundred-nineteen-dollar cleaning?

Something seemed to have gone awry. I looked behind me to see if perhaps I had inadvertently volunteered to pay for someone else's dental services in addition to my own. Seeing no one, I asked the extortionist receptionist to explain.

"You had a fluoride rinse and an exam today too," she said.

At $72 an ounce, I might as well swish with Chanel Number Five.

Well, yes. Yes, I suppose I did enjoy a fluoride rinse. My, was it ever tasty. Following my cleaning, I was instructed to swish for sixty seconds with a half-ounce of blue mouthwash that the hygienist dispensed into a plastic thimble from a gallon jug with a pump on the top.

Turns out that half-ounce swish cost me $36.

In case you do not have a calculator handy, allow me to do the math.

The gallon jug contained 128 ounces of fluoride mouthwash. Each dose measures one-half ounce, so that means that there are 256 swigs in the jug.

At $36 per dose, that comes out to $9,216.

I do believe Kryptonite is much cheaper, and makes your teeth look better, and gives you superpowers to boot.

By the way, I checked out some dental supply web sites. The jug of mouthwash cost the dentist about $60.

Who said capitalism is dead?

Forget gold coin! The smart money is on fluoride rinse! It's recession-proof and you get an eight thousand percent return on your investment!

On second thought, is there a dental mafia in Columbia that nobody is telling us about?

When I picked my jaw up off the floor, being careful not to sully my very clean, very expensive teeth, I asked what -- and why -- the "exam" cost me extra.

(See, I was under the impression that the dentist moseying by after your cleaning -- and swishing -- and peering around inside your mouth and asking the hygienist for the lowdown on the happy-camper quotient of your gums and teeth, was all part of the deal. Silly me.)

"That was $48," replied the book-cooker cashier coolly. "He examined your teeth."

Again I was agog and attempted to argue. "He looked inside my mouth for all of ninety seconds," I spluttered. "For the rest of the four minutes he was in the room, we talked about the weather! He must make, like, $3,000 an hour!"

She shrugged and recited automatically: "I think you'll find our prices are competitive."

I don't know about that, but it certainly all added up ... $119 plus $48 plus $36 equals $203.

Still, at $72 an ounce, I might as well swish with Chanel Number Five.

And I can't help but wonder about the street value of that $9,216 bottle of mouthwash.

I'll have to ask the Caped Crusader to look into it ... next time I see him.

Smile! 

There really is a river

The Crown QuartetSomeone once said, in marveling about the miracle of music, that it is the only thing on Earth -- besides the saints of God, that is -- that will also be in Heaven.

(Some think their pets will be there too, but sadly there's no Scripture to back that up. I hope Javier understands because he's trying so hard to live a good life.)

Music -- like man -- was created by God to glorify God. That doesn't mean that all secular music is necessarily sinful, although it certainly can be and much of it undeniably is.

But even among sacred songs, there are some that seem to have a special anointing. One such song is There Is A River, words and music by Max and David Sapp.

When these songs are sung, one is never sure whether the power is due to the writer of the message, or the message itself, or the one who brings the message, or the heart condition of the hearer.

I suspect that in every case, it is a supernatural synergy created by any or all of the above.

Last weekend our family were able to hear our son sing with his group, the Crown Quartet. The guys traveled from Bible college in Tennessee especially to provide the music for a weekend of festivities at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Hickory, North Carolina.

Come to this water ~ There is a vast supply  There is a river ~ That never shall run dry

There Is A River is one of the boys' best numbers, and clearly one of their favorites.  I heard them sing it via live streaming video a few weeks ago in a chapel service, but the first time I experienced it in person was last Saturday. They sang it again on Sunday and it was even better. Of course I cried! You might have too.

In the absence of a good-quality video of the Crown Quartet singing There Is A River, which unfortunately is not available, I turned to YouTube. Here's the Gaither Vocal Band performing There Is A River live, with David Phelps doing the solo work.

I love it when the audience sings with them at the end.

And he shewed me a pure river of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. (Revelation 22:1)