Freedom: the song that endures

It's late. I'm tired. Too tired to do much on this blog that could be called original.

Work work work.

So I looked into the archives in hopes of finding something that would do justice to the poignant solemnity of Veterans Day.

(Which I would never fail to recognize, no matter how late the hour or how tired the brain.)

And I found the following piece from November of 2009.

Tell you what. I'll throw in some new pictures, acquired in the last six months, of monuments large and small to the individual and collective treasure that is the glorious American war veteran.

Speaking of America ... God bless her.

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Last 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.

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.

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To fallen soldiers let us sing
Where no rockets fly nor bullets wing
Our broken brothers let us bring
To the mansions of the Lord.

No more bleeding; no more fight
No prayers pleading through the night
Just divine embrace, eternal light
in the mansions of the Lord.

Where no mothers cry and no children weep
We will stand and guard tho' the angels sleep
All through the ages safely keep the mansions of the Lord.

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Ample make this bed
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgment break
Excellent and fair.

Be its mattress straight
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this ground.

~Emily Dickinson~

Take these crumbs I offer you

Here I am! Call off the search dogs!

Allow me to explain my brief absence.

Court reporting had been a tad on the slow side in recent days.

That all changed last week.

As in, where there were practically no jobs, quite suddenly and without warning there were two pretty good jobs and one very good job.

Pretty good and very good in this context meaning, they add up to lots of pages.

(Friday was absolutely one of the worst days of my life. Maybe I'll tell you about it in another post. For now, suffice it to say, lawyerly abuse of the legal system was involved.)

Also? What has all the earmarks of another very good job requires my presence this afternoon at a chandelier law firm in downtown Columbia.

(They're a trifle snobby there but the view is fantastic. Although there's always complimentary cold Diet Coke, once the receptionist refused to validate my parking stub and boy did I ... never mind. Chant with me: tacky tacky tack-eeeee ...)

I've learned (sort of) to take the bad with the good. And vice versa.

So the upshot is that I don't have much time to play. It is with a heavy heart I convey that instead of skipping happily through all my favorite blogs (you know who you are), devouring each morsel with great relish, I am chained to my desk typing excruciatingly boring testimony.

You understand; n'est-ce pas? Baby needs shoes!

But I know I cannot neglect IHATH ... so MANY people depend upon it for entertainment!

I will thank you not to snicker!

With all my beloved cherished angelic readers in mind (and heart) I give you a few more pictures from my recent trip to Knoxville.

This here is a building where I worked many years ago. It appears to be Bank of America now but back then it was Sovran Bank, which later morphed into Regions Bank.

I wish they'd make up their minds.

At any rate, our offices were on the sixth floor.  See that church steeple reflected in the glass? The lawyer whose assistant I was fortunate enough to be occupied an office that looked directly out into the belfry. 

Here's a picture of the church with a better view of said belfry:

Several years later I worked in an upper floor of this building, which for as long as I've been aware of it has been First Tennessee Bank:

Here's another view:

And here it is ... skyscraper straight up.

I've always liked this bronze sculpture entitled Oarsman, by Oklahoma artist David Phelps. How's that for a smattering of cult-cha on an ordinary Monday? The oarsman has had a sinking feeling at Two Centre Square, corner of Gay and Church Streets, since 1989.

Audrey and I ate dinner at a pizza joint on Gay Street that evening ... the same day I visited with Donna and Jim ... and Marty! As we daintily consumed an excess of cheese and pepperoni on a thick Sicilian crust (that I do believe Marty, vegetarian tendencies notwithstanding, would've loved), this was the sunset:

The next day Javier and I headed home. Here's how the mountains looked as we made our approach:

Isn't that pretty? And here's how adorable Columbia's Finest Chihuahua looked, nestled in his little bed in the passenger side front floorboard.

When he's not sleeping, he gazes at me like this. I have to remind myself that to him, I'm not in living color. 

Note the crossed paws and pink tongue-tip. He's such a little poser. You can click to make him bigger.

And ... yes! I take pictures while I drive! Don't everybody?

That's all I got. Must go glamorize for the depo.

Later, gators ... after while, crocodiles.

You can't make this stuff up

Photo of John Maynard Keynes courtesy Liberal Democrat History GroupIt's been out for a few days and you've probably already seen it, but this little gem of a YouTube is worth watching again.

John Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Halloween Eve "Rally to Restore Sanity" -- held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in response to Glenn Beck's "Rally to Restore Honor" which took place two months ago in the same location -- brought some weirdies out of the woodwork.

Go figure. 

Not only do the majority of liberal nitwits know nothing of sanity -- or honor, for that matter -- the ones assembled here apparently can't read either.

Or if they can read, are hard pressed to comprehend.

Even when the word is pronounced for them, they stubbornly refuse to believe what they hear.

Make up your own mind but in my opinion, the best part may be the polite, conciliatory, bespoke werewolf. 

Screeching indigni-belligerent soccer mom and bumbling, inarticulate Johnny Depp sort-of-lookalike notwithstanding.

Keynesian economics ... not quite the same thing as Kenyan citizenship.

But put the capital letters K, E, Y, N, and A in the same word on a placard at a liberal rally in today's socio-political climate, and this is what you get.

If being a knee-jerk progressiliberal were not a mental illness and therefore tragic, it would be nothing but hugely entertaining.

HAPPY FRIDAY! GOD BLESS AMERICA!

The deposition fairies were with me

Don't you love pleasant surprises?

Me too.

So imagine the flush of excitement that suffused me when, on Tuesday night, I Google-Mapped the route for my Wednesday morning deposition destination.

See, what happens is, the scheduler at our agency either hands me the paperwork for my next-day job (if I happen to be standing in front of her), or she faxes or emails it.

We are all about technology.

On Tuesday I dropped by the office and she handed over a deposition notice containing the more salient details of my assignment. I barely glanced at it, however, because she'd already told me all I really had to know: be in Summerville for an eleven o'clock start.

Can do. Summerville -- a/k/a Flowertown in the Pines -- is basically Charleston only you don't have to go quite that far. It's ninety minutes from my house and with an eleven o'clock start that meant I wouldn't need to set out until nine.

As long as I don't have to get up before six o'clock, I'm jolly. Earlier than that is just stupid.

Plus which, as is often the case, I knew the lawyer I was to be working with and he is a very kind gentleman.

All good. We are enthusiastic.

But upon Google-Mapping the location -- 125 Parsons Road 29483 -- instead of coming up and marking the spot of a law firm -- the kinds of places where ninety-nine percent of the depos I report are held -- the little red balloon marked a place identified as Woodlands Inn. 

Huh? I looked at my paperwork again. Sure enough: the depo was scheduled to happen at Woodlands Inn, the only five-star and five-diamond resort in South Carolina!

That sounded very promising indeed. I like discovering new (to me) and elegant places to eat and stay! Because then I can bribe TG to take me there for a romantic getaway.

It has worked in the past and I have no doubt it'll work again.

I have, after all, perfected my technique, which involves wheedling.

Yes, it does. I am a shameless wheedler.

Don't judge.

But if all deposition venues were like this one, everyone would want to be a court reporter. It's just more fun to work in a fully restored neo-Georgian revival plantation estate circa 1906, surrounded by antiques and oil paintings and chandeliers setting off fabulously decorated rooms.

Plus marvelous coffee service, with real china cups and saucers and real half & half.

There was gaslight flickering. Mozart, Vivaldi, and Bach wafted softly from invisible speakers. Even during the depo.

Not only that. In the early afternoon, deposition concluded, when I had packed my equipment case and was ready to leave and stepped outside onto the porch, I paused to take a few pictures.

For you!

A gentleman who works for the hotel followed me out. The man was practically on my heels ... but in a good way.

He wanted to know if there was anything he could do to help me.

I was nearly rendered speechless because I'm not used to that. I schlepp my stuff up and down and all around, various distances, on smooth and rough terrain, in all kinds of weather.

Speaking of which, it was cool outside and had begun spitting rain.

Before I could answer properly, the man suggested, "May I get your car?"

Oh yes, I said, handing over my keys and pointing to my baby, parked about a tenth of a mile away in a small lot.

He did. And when he pulled up in front of the inn, without my having to say a word he popped the trunk, dashed up the stairs, retrieved my case, and stowed it away.

Want to know what he did next? Huh, do ya?

He returned to the porch, grabbed an umbrella from a brass stand, and held it over my head as he walked beside me all the way back to my car.

Then he opened the door, saw me safely inside, and closed the door before I could touch it.

I pushed the button to lower my window.

"I'll be back, and not as a court reporter," I promised, dewy-eyed. 

He remembered my last name, for which he'd politely asked when we were still up on the porch.

"We look forward to it, Ms. Weber," he said. He sounded so sincere! And I wasn't even a paying customer.

Yet.

I called TG while still on the half-mile road out of the woods back to the main road.

And happily I didn't have to wheedle much. TG and I like the same things.

When I get to stay at Woodlands Inn as a guest, you may expect a full report from your fearless girl reporter.

Remember November

THREE FOR THE MONEY ...

 ... FOUR TO GO ... never to return.

THE OBAMA-PELOSI-REID-FRANK FREAKTRAIN IS PULLING INTO THE STATION FOR THE LAST TIME TODAY.

GOD BLESS AMERICA.