Thursday, August 14, 2014

Country Roads


Appreciation Night ~ Haldimand Norfolk Stewardship Council at Ruthven Park

 
 

 
 
 
 Bass: Mike Arnold.  Lead:  Mike Downing. Baritone: Ross Gowan.  Tenor: Bill Werner
 
 

Friday, August 8, 2014


"An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have;  the older she gets, the more interested he is in her."
~ Agatha Christie

"The truth is friendship is every bit as sacred and eternal as marriage."
~ Katherine Mansfield

"One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion."
~ Simone de Beauvoir





Thursday, August 7, 2014


"See you back in the bookshop
on Wednesday, Aug. 13."

 




24 March 1948

"The sun streams into my window, and I can just see from my bed the last span of the Pont de Grenelle.  If I get up, the Seine is there, flowing so slow it might be a lake threaded under bridges.  At night, the wide space of water is tinseled with lights and the sky immense above.

Julian* rushed off to Geneva last night, to be at the U.N. Meeting on Free Flow of Information.  No-one went hopefully, because the Russians will boycott it.  He returns tonight in the small hours.  Poor J is being so overworked, he has no private life left--unless he tears it out of the early morning and goes for a walk, looking at birds and fishermen for 10 minutes a day.  Quelle galere!
"...What a dream, to liberate Russia...We are all, they as well as us, so blinded by fear that we don't know anymore where to turn for hope.  Two years ago we had so much more hope..."

~ Juliette Huxley Leaves of the Tulip Tree, Autobiography, Oxford Letters & Memoirs. Oxford University Press, 1987

*Sir Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous Huxley, husband of Juliette. First Director of UNESCO

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

The person suddenly in front of you, you know; however, you "choke" unable to remember who it is ~

U.S. Film actor, Douglas Fairbanks was driving back to his mansion, saw an Englishman of aristocratic mien and familiar face trudging along the road in the heat.  He stopped to offer him a ride, which the stranger accepted.  Still unable to remember the man's name, Fairbanks invited him in for a drink, and in the course of conversation attempted to elicit some clues as to his visitor's identity.  The Englishman seemed to know many of Fairbanks's friends and was evidently well acquainted with the estate, for he made approving comments on some recent changes.  Eventually Fairbanks managed a whispered aside to his secretary, who had just entered the room. "Who's this Englishman?  I know he's Lord Somebody, but I just can't remember his name.

"That," replied the secretary, "is the English butler you fired last month for getting drunk."

~ THE LITTLE, BROWN BOOK OF Anecdotes, Clifton Fadiman General Editor, 1985.