The cannibals' song

For some reason, the lyrics (or at least the refrain) of a song popped into my head this morning.  They're from a comedy review written by John Albery, and performed at Univ in about 1970.  I don't remember much of the plot (if any) although I recall there was a dialog involving the word "bison" mistaken for "basin".  Another joke went something like this:

• (british explorer type) I see you recieved a parcel this morning.
• (cannibal) Yeah, mon.
• (british explorer type) Supplies?
• (cannibal) No, we been expectin' it for weeks.
  

The refrain of the Cannibals' song goes something like this:

• For breakfast, dinner and tea and lunch;
• We like to eat bodies, crunch, crunch, crunch;
• Munch, munch, munch,
• Slurp, slurp, slurp,
• Yummy yummy yummy yummy,
• Burp! Burp! Burp!

It's odd how the memory works.  But then I got to thinking.  Is any of this stuff written down anywhere?  I haven't been able to find it on the web.

While I was thinking about such things, I was reminded that I have forgotten the text of the grace which we scholars had to "perform" for a whole week, and reputedly the longest grace of any Oxford or Cambridge college.  Payment: one pint of beer for each reading of the grace.  I wonder if that is still the tradition.  Time to find out.

An unexpected Christmas visitor

We had a jolly and populous family Christmas: 18 humans and 7 dogs!  The humans all got along and the dogs mostly did too.

Our unexpected visitor arrived as it was getting dark.  No, it wasn't the ghost of Christmas past, present or future.  It was dog number 8!  While we were playing pass the package (we call it pass the parcel in England), cousin Scott went out with their minpin Napoleon.  Along came a somewhat bedraggled large dog with leash attached.  A quick check of her tags revealed that she was called Belle and lived on Bedford Street, about a mile and a quarter from here.  Apparently, a neighbor had been walking her while her family was away from home for the day.  Belle had been spooked by something and bolted.  She looked somewhat like a Staffordshire terrier and was very friendly and well-behaved.  An hour or two later, dog and family were happily reunited.

In parenthesis, I might add that Belle's mom is someone I hadn't met before but had corresponded with by email (re: this blog).  It's a small world as they say and our favorite corner of it is right here in Carlisle!

Yeah, is it a Chihuahua?

The best five words you can possibly hear when you report a missing dog to the police, according to Kim in her Facebook posting (see title).  Assuming that it's a Chihuahua that you've lost of course.

Looking understandably contrite now (who am I trying to kid?), here Miley is safe at home again after the Carlisle police and animal control officer did a wonderful job in recovering her.  It all started when Kim was out walking the dogs and some snow-shoers came by.  Apparently, they spooked her and off she went.  She eventually made her way back to the parking area but without running into Kim.  I arrived from my interrupted shopping trip possibly minutes after they gathered her up.  So we spent the rest of the daylight (about an hour and a half) scouring the woods and calling/whistling for her.  As you can imagine, we were pretty depressed by the time darkness fell.  That's when Kim called the police.

Lessons learned:

• don't let foster dogs off the leash unless they have a tag with our phone number;
• if a dog gets lost, go back to where you started (home, parking area, whatever) and wait for the dog to find you;

It doesn't matter too much whether it's a long-established pet family member or a foster dog we've had for a week, a runaway is always a traumatic situation.

As William Gilbert put it (the Duchess in Gondoliers):

• When I merely
•   From him parted,
• We were nearly
•   Broken-hearted,
• When in sequel
•   Reunited,
• We were equal
• -Ly delighted.
  

Many thanks to our wonderful police and animal control officer!

Everybody must get "Stoned"

My bridge partner, Len, and I have now won our direction in two successive weeks at the Newton-Wellesley bridge club, this time with a 68% game, good enough for 1st overall.  So I'm having a quiet celebration with a Stone's IPA.  Stone's is one of my favorite beers, even though it's brewed in Southern California where you wouldn't exactly expect to find good beer.  But San Diego is the home to the Stone brewery which also brews one of my other favorites: the aptly-named Arrogant Bastard.  You might find a visit to the web site amusing.

Had I been able to attend the recent NABC (bridge championship) in San Diego, you can be sure that I would have found time for a brewery tour.  Who knows, it might even have improved my bridge.

I mention all this because I've recently realized that beer has been woefully unrepresented in this blog heretofore.  So let me jump right in and give you my top ten beers (not necessarily in this order):

1. Smuttynose IPA (Smuttynose Brewing Co, Portsmouth, NH)
2. Stone IPA (Stone Brewing Co, San Diego, CA)
3. Wachusett IPA (Wachusett Brewing Co, Westiminster, MA)
4. Ipswich IPA (Mercury Brewing Co, Ipswich, MA)
5. Arrogant Bastard (Stone Brewing Co, San Diego, CA)
6. Harpoon IPA (Harpoon Brewery, Boston, MA)
7. Copper Ale (Otter Creek, VT)
8. Martinsbrau (Carlisle, MA) -- no this isn't actually a commercial brewery
9. Fuller's ESB (Fuller's Brewery, Chiswick, England)
10. Guinness Stout (Guiness, Dublin, Ireland, celebrating their 250th anniversary).

You might be surprised, knowing me, how few English beers are on this list.  That's because they don't travel well and of course most draft beers are better than most bottled beers (which are in turn better than most canned beers).  But the main reason is that the heyday of British beer is well and truly over.

When I was growing up, and either thinking about pubs or sneaking into them underage, probably 80% of pubs were "tied" houses.  They sold beer only from one brewery.  The beer came regularly, and it was always fresh!  Then came the era of "free" houses.  No, the beer wasn't free to buy.  But the licensee could buy beer from more than one brewery.  This coincided more or less with the era of carbonated alcohol (typified by such as Double Diamond).  CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale) emerged and fortunately, the tide of such beer-drinkers anathema was stemmed.  But in recent years, all things American have visited the homeland.  In particular, the obsession with choice.  The result is that half of the beer the typical pub sells has gone off!  And the sad part is that they don't seem to notice!

When I first came to these shores 30 years ago, it was like stepping into a beer desert.  It was impossible to find good beer anywhere.  Now, good local beer abounds.  And, although I have to wash my mouth out with soap and water, it's actually better than the stuff they try to sell you in England!

Smiling Miley

Miley, our current foster dog, is making really good progress here at Camp Carlisle.  When we picked her up she was literally sick as a dog on the way here.  She hates being in the car and caused quite a mess that day.  She was also having frequent "accidents" at home.  The trouble was we didn't know how old she was because while normally we know everything about these foster dogs before we pick them up, this time we knew next to nothing.  She behaved like a puppy but we really didn't know if she was.

Well, all that has changed :) She is just a puppy (9 months) and she's learning really fast.  She's much better in the car now – she's been on many short trips and is getting much more comfortable.  We've got her on to a good puppy-type bathroom schedule too and she's really doing well.  No more accidents.

She's a really sweet dog how just loves to be loved.  In tail-wagging she rivals even Puga!

Meanwhile, we're getting to that season of the year (i.e. snow) where the other dog-walkers in the woods hereabouts seem to think that it's perfectly OK to let their dogs do their business on the trail and not pick it up!  I suppose they think that the snow will somehow deal with it.  Note to such dog-walkers: it doesn't.   I'll leave my other pet rant re: trails until a future blog.

Aimez-vous Puccini?

What is it about Puccini that sets him apart from other opera composers?  First, we might observe that, like Newton, he stood on the shoulders of giants, in particular those of Verdi.  Certainly, Puccini had a wonderful gift for melody and his mastery of orchestration is unsurpassed.  He also had a highly developed sense of poetry, holding his librettists to very exacting standards, and he had a tremendous feeling for drama.  But I think there's more.

It's often been said that Puccini loved his heroines.  That is certainly true.  But I'm going to argue that it's his love for all his characters that really makes him unique.  The first and perhaps most obvious example is Scarpia.  Evil he may be, but at the same time, we are drawn to his character likes moths to a flame.  Why?  Because Puccini loved him too. Why else would he bare his soul to us in the dramatic conclusion to act one of Tosca? And what is more obvious than the initial contrast between Liu and Turandot and the love that almost instantly flows from the suicide Liu to her nemesis Turandot.

However, I think it's in Il Trittico where this love of characters shines the brightest.  I was fortunate to see the production at the Met last Saturday and the three operas have been in my head ever since.  In Gianni Schicchi, his only comic opera, it's not surprising to find that he loves all of the characters.  However naughty we know them all to be, the music wraps them all in loving affection, especially Lauretta's famous O mio Babbino Caro.  Even the flawed doctor (from the school of Bologna) and lawyer are treated with gentleness and kindness.

In Suor Angelica, Puccini gives singing parts to no less than ten of the nuns, not including Angelica herself and the Abbess.  He wouldn't do that if if he didn't love his characters so much.  Instead he could have had just a few parts to cover all of the back story.  The music of course is exquisite and how can we not all love the pure and oppressed Angelica and want to share in her salvation?

But I contend that it is Il Tabarro that demonstrates this love Puccini had for his creations most forcefully.  In this opera, there are only six parts, apart from the ballad-seller and other ambient characters.  But the music for each character is crafted with extra loving care -- in direct contrast to the awfulness of the situation that they find themselves in.  Indeed, the participants in this rather gritty example of verismo are suffering life rather than enjoying it.  They make the best, or worst, of their situation without any hope of an improvement in the squalor.  These are the kinds of protagonists that Bob Dylan describes in Only a pawn in their game.

But Puccini's music lifts them right out of their hopelessness, none more so perhaps than la Frugola (the rummager, or ferret), with her dream of a little retirement house with their cat at her feet.  The style of this aria is not lyrical, nor dramatic.  It is in fact more like a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song.  But its upbeat jollity and the high call of the oboe help transform it from the mundane to the sublime.

No character is more poignantly set, however, than Michele, who in the scene with Giorgetta (before all hell breaks loose and he murders Luigi), sings some of the loveliest music ever written for an operatic bass.

Yet, the crowning glory of this opera is the duet sung by the ill-fated Giorgetta and Luigi about their roots in the Paris suburb of Belleville.  How could Puccini takes such pedestrian, banal thoughts and elevate them to one of the most glorious duets in the whole of opera?  Simply because he loved his characters.  Not only his heroines but their lovers too, and their friends and hangers-on too.

Not only did Puccini endow all his characters with love, but it is love that is the foundation on which all of his operas are built.

Forty words for snow

It's "well known" that Eskimos have many words for snow.  I seem to recall the number forty but, apparently, the New York Times quoted "one hundred" in a 1984 editorial.  Note that I'm not using the word Inuit because the original context used the word Eskimo and of course that helps generalize the whole notion of snow-words.  In reality, of course, they don't have an unreasonable number of words.  See the Wikipedia entry Eskimo Words for Snow.

I needed a word for the kind of snow that fell overnight.  To describe it, it's like one of Santa's elves just opened a huge packing box and all of the little white styrofoam bits fell out over Carlisle.  You know the type: they're tiny and impossible to pick up because static electricity is so strong compared with our feeble fingers.  The thickness of the layer that fell is essentially one "nugget", that's to say about a millimeter or so.

Pictured with a background of little white snow nuggets, is our latest foster dog, Miley.  She's a sweet little Chihuahua mix (excuse the quality: I had to use my cellphone).  We don't know how old she is but she behaves somewhat like a puppy.  She weighs about 12 pounds.  She was adopted but then returned because she was "too much of a lap dog".  Duh!

While we're on the subject of atmospheric phenomena, what are we to make of Copenhagen?  The world leaders have arrived and of course we, the United States, are as always the bad guys.  We are never going to take responsibility for our overuse of the world's resources and our unequal contribution to global warming.  We are entrenching our position as the world's climate pariah and it is not going to help with our national security one little bit.  Unless we can actually help fix the climate crisis by technology, the rest of the world is going to hate us even more than they do now.  That won't be fun.

Yet, the global warming detractors (I won't dignify them with the term skeptics) are as determined as ever to obfuscate the real situation.  Just look at the email hoopla that they kept up their collective sleeves for ten months before springing it on the world just before the climate talks.

Il Trittico

Kim and I celebrated my birthday in style with a trip to New York (and a stopover in Connecticut), staying with our friends Rob and Melissa.  The highlight was The Met performance of Puccini's Trittico, which I know so well from recordings but had never seen live.  It went way beyond my expectations.  From the moment that the curtain went up on the incredibly realistic barge on the Seine, the production was inspired and flawless.  Patricia Racette was in all three operas, as Giorgetta, Angelica and Lauretta, but her performance as the eponymous Suor Angelica was without equal in my experience.  Not just her voice, which is truly magnificent, but her acting was nothing short of amazing.  For more on this opera, see my later blog entry Aimez-vous Puccini.

After the opera we went to our first Hannukah dinner at Melissa's sister.  The food was absolutely delicious.

We also spent a little time in and around Bristol, Connecticut, staying at a very nice B&B: Chimney Crest.  We visited the nation's oldest, and New England's largest, bridge club: the Hartford Bridge Club.  It's a very interesting area around there, with the Providence, Hartford and Fishkill railroad literally winding its way through town and two museums: one for carousels, one for clocks and watches.  Bristol is also the home of ESPN of course.

Meanwhile, in news from Peru, Miranda has managed to get her image into the LAN airline magazine in (see above where she is facing us at the nearest table of Rafael's). Now we know how she spends her time there.  Just kidding :)

Winter has arrived

Looking out of the window always at our snowy yard is always pleasant.  The couple of inches that fell on Saturday are still with us, even on the tree branches.  The photo shown is actually from a couple of years ago.  Unfortunately, I'm currently unable to upload photos from my digital camera so I can't get today's image.

The temperature went significantly below freezing point for the first time this winter too.  But it's still very pleasant to be out walking the dogs.

On Sunday, we met up with Cooper (now Spenser) and his new family.  What a nice dog he is!  We were quite envious.  But he's really happy and apparently just loves his new black lab brothers, Phineas and Boodle.  In that menagerie, he's the little guy (if you don't count the cats).

This morning Kim and I went in to Westford to get our flu shots.  What a lovely morning to be out driving through Carlisle!  We came back past the cranberry bogs and through the state park, mainly to avoid the town center traffic jam (yes, we do get them at rush hour) and it was just beautiful.  We are so lucky to live in such a nice place!

News isn't all bad

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the news is generally bad news.  No news is good news, as they say.  But recently two recent items of good news have actually come to fruition this last week or so.

First, the long-awaited beer and wine department of Fern's has tastefully and appropriately transformed Carlisle from a "dry" town into a wet one.  I had a chance to check out their offerings today on my way back from the transfer station.  Excellent.

And second, WCRB, the formerly great commercial classical radio station, but which went in to a long decline with their servings of the musical equivalent of pap, has been bought by WCRB.  There are now no commercials, other than the usual public radio station type, and it appears that they have moved up at least to muesli or granola in their programming.

Meanwhile, the weather is still crazy.  It's 69F (20.5C) currently and probably will get quite a bit warmer before it's done.  The birds are still hopelessly confused.  It is rather pleasant though.

And while I'm on the subject of global warming, this year's crop of pine cones has got to be seen to be believed!  I thought the acorns were crazy.  But the pine cones are much more impressive in terms of overall volume.