the sun shines bright......

ok, so sinister minister didn't even place...but it was still a great derby with so many tear-jerking personal glimpses wrought by the nbc folks between 5 and 6:15 when the race finally went off....including how mike matz saved a threesome of siblings heading to visit a grandma somewhere in the east.....and when the plane crash-landed in iowa....mike matz saved them....and they were on hand for his first-ever derby-win......surely hosted by nbc...but that is ok...because i needed a good cry...and isn't manufactured catharsis better than none at all?.......and now we have ribs on the grill and sweet corn....and cole slaw.....and a lovely evening with dinner on the newly swept deck.....our daughter tried to get out of it....but i AM the meanest mamma out there so, so she had no chance in escape............

ok, so this from the washington post..... In January last year, a prosperous man with a posh English accent boarded a ferry in Calais, France, for the quick run across the channel to Dover. Immigration officials did a computer check on his passport and discovered something startling: The man's particulars matched those of an infant who had died in August 1963.

He was arrested in Dover on suspicion of false identity. From there his tale grew ever more intriguing: He had passed himself off as Lord Buckingham in British society for close to 20 years, marrying, fathering two children, writing notes on stationery bearing a family coat of arms.


The mystery man's passport bears the name of a baby who died in 1963. The man pleaded guilty to passport fraud.
The mystery man's passport bears the name of a baby who died in 1963. The man pleaded guilty to passport fraud. (Kent Police Via Associated Press)

Last October, he pleaded guilty to lying to obtain a passport under a false name. But if he is not Lord Buckingham, who is he? Held in British jail cells for close to a year, he has refused to say.

Now British authorities think they probably have the answer: He is Charlie Stopford, an American from Orlando. Stopford family members in Florida have come forward to say that Charlie disappeared 23 years ago, remembered for his large collection of Beatles records and ability to perfectly mimic British speech.

"I am 100 percent sure" of the identification, based on photographs of the man in prison, said a Stopford family member, who was interviewed by telephone from Florida on condition that he not be identified. There is so far no independent confirmation, but police in Kent, a county south of London where the man is being held, are in touch with the family in an effort to confirm the identity through DNA, fingerprints and military records. 

wild turkey......

ok, so on this derby weekend, one might assume that a blog about wild turkey would involve......wild turkey bourbon....tied into the making of juleps......but i care for neither bourbon or juleps.......which leaves only an authentically....wild turkey.......yesterday, i dutifully devoted the greater part of my day off to completing the clearing of the bushes that have grown up so high down the hill that we can no longer see the dock on a frquently changing lake level.......dock management involved moving the dock up or down.....now we can see what needs done from our bedroom window.....which saves a trip down to the dock if nothing need be changed.......but i digress from the taks at hand, which required to cut down bushes highly adapted as groundcover...... honeysuckle, like the rest, grown not on one central stem....but on twenty separate stems that grow woodier with age.......a young honeysuckle can bepulled up with bare hands...but a mature specimen takes at the very least a pair of heavyduty shears......and sometimes a handsaw....to take it down.......and thus i spent my morning.....in systematic destruction.......when i glimpsed the most unusual sight......a wild turkey flying across the creek....landing just below where i was working, and then flying back from whence it had come.......i had never seen such a thing....a wild turkey in flight....and i stared at it long and hard to be sure that it wasn't a vulture......when the bird finally landed...it stood for a long while on a rock just out in the water.......and i was anxiously awaiting the possibility that it planned to fish....imagine....a fishing turkey!....but the bird simply managed to get a drink or two of lake water before heading back to the uncleared brush on the other side of the creek......a place where no person has yet opted for the empty-bank look........essentially i spent my morning destroying potential turkey habitat, and i should be ashamed, i suppose.......but.......i only cleared the part in direct line of vision with the house....and the remainder of the bank is still in a tangled web ...........

MI-III

ok, so i won't be going to see MI-III, just like i never bothered to see MI-II...because somewhere along the line it became clear to me that tcruise is an idiot, and that by watching his films i am supporting his public voice......his well-chronicled feud with brooke shield over post-partum depresssion just sealed the deal i had already made re: a tcruise boycott........imagine my glee when i read the salon.com's review of the film that i won't be seeing........Mission: Impossible III" works quite well as a glossy surface to skate on for two hours. And, like "Serenity," it suggests that directors who have made their mark on TV can have a sense of how to make their stories work on the bigger screen. And yet, watching "Mission: Impossible III," I kept wishing I was at home watching episodes of "Alias" instead. The movie is at least as good as an average episode of the show -- and considering how carelessly made most action thrillers are today, that's admirable. But Abrams hasn't quite figured out how to make his visuals work on the big screen......yep.....might as well stay home and watch episodes of Alias, instead.........that is precisely what i intend to do..........

a day off.......

ok, so......i am taking back time spent working monday evening...as well as some sick timewhile i get my eyes examined.......which basically keeps me out of my office all day.......life is so good......or it was until i mentioned that i had the day off......and that is when the chores started piling up......if i have the day off surely i can find time to get the oil changed on the honda.......and maybe clean out the old paint cans underneath the garage work bench where the possum mamma and her babies appear to be nesting......and maybe finish cutting back the brush over the hill.....and with these assignments....just how and when will my leisure fit into this scheme......my sittingonthedeckreadingthepaperwithcoffeeinhand........not just the funnies...the whole friday edition.....?.......and what about my naptime?.......frankly, with laying awake at night worrying about how the middle child will manage to get his room packed up and stored before flying home i am tempted to go back to bed right now in hopes of a bit of restful sleep........at least to catch up.....now isn't that the best ever use of a day off?.........

TNYIH........

ok,so to those of you who don't subscribe to the new yorker......the new yorker is here..........thursdays are a redletter day in these parts because i know the new yorker awaits after my thursday trip to the aldi......and this week's installment did not disappoint...not with an original david sedaris........or as the wb network describes such things....a fresh david sedaris...........and just what i was thinking...about how mother's day is coming up...and how every year the troups rally around to ask just what i would like...to which i respond in kind....if you knew me you wouldn't have to ask.......not put as eloquently as david.......but the sentiment is the same..........david seems to be able to put into words things i only think...except for this cartoon.....which says exactly what i have said to me spouse over the years...mostly when he goes out for a run in unfamiliar territory.......ah well........must read the rest of my only weekly magazine......i dropped time because....i had already read most of the pieces online ahead of time.....no pun intended......

ok, so a Picasso portrait of his lover Dora Maar has been sold for $95.2m (?51.8m), the second highest amount ever paid for a painting at auction.

The 1941 masterpiece Dora Maar With Cat was sold to an anonymous buyer at Sotheby's in New York on Wednesday.

Sotheby's said Dora's "sculptural presence" and the "gorgeous palate of colours" made it worth so much. too bad picasso put so little effort into painting the cat.....i would have enjoyed seeing a picasso-fied feline......  

neil young....

ok, so neil young is so upset about about the war and the dismal bush presidency that he has posted his entire new album life living with war on his website neilyoung.com i am listening to after the garden is gone as i type.....classic neil......reminds me somewhat of his anti-vietnam era songs like ohio......

dylan dj's the weather....

ok, so....today bob dylan debuted as a dj....and while i cannot wait to read what david has to say about all of this...here is an online review.....

Bob Dylan the DJ proves he has just the voice for radio
From James Bone in New York
THAT drawling, raspy voice was unmistakable. But this time it was introducing songs, not singing them.

The once-reclusive Bob Dylan made his debut yesterday as a radio DJ in the latest twist of his long career.

For fans accustomed to his terse, mumbled comments at concerts, the singer-songwriter was positively chatty — revealing a wry humour and even quoting Stevie Wonder in broken Italian.

Hard on the heels of the revelations in his bestselling Chronicles autobiography and the Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home on BBC Two, Dylan’s weekly radio show promises new insight into the music legend.

Introducing Slim Harpo’s Raining in My Heart, for instance, the twice-divorced Dylan opines: “Slim wrote a bunch of songs with his wife, Lovelle. Boy, I wish I had a wife like that, help me write songs!” The playlist for Dylan’s hour-long show on America’s XM Satellite Radio — only available to British listeners on the web at www.xmradio.com — offered clues to the master’s musical roots.

The theme of his first show was the weather, a sly joke for the man who wrote about a dozen weather-related titles, including A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall and the protest classic Blowin’ in the Wind.

It was, after all, a line in Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues — “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” — that gave the Sixties radical group the Weathermen its name. “Curious about what the weather looks like?” the 64-year-old rock poet growled as the show began. “Just look out your window or take a walk outside.”

Dylan’s mix of pop, blues, R&B, gospel and country, ranging from Judy Garland and Fats Domino to the Staple Singers and calypso’s Lord Beginner, stopped with Jimi Hendrix. As well as lovingly reciting lyrics, Dylan also peppered his introductions with comments on his musical forbears. Presenting Dean Martin’s I Don’t Care if the Sun Don’t Shine, he noted that it was also recorded by Elvis Presley and observed: “We forget how much Elvis wanted to be Dean.” Of Hendrix’s The Wind Cries Mary, he said: “This shows his more gentle side.”

Dylan also reintroduced now forgotten bands such as the Prisonaires, formed by convicts in a Tennessee jail in the 1940s, who had a hit with Just Walkin’ in the Rain. “The Prisonaires’ lead singer, Johnny Bragg, was sentenced to 99 years for rape when he was 11 years old. But, you know, for a black man in Tennessee in the Forties, rape could have meant just looking at the wrong white woman in a wrong way,” Dylan explained.

In 1955 “Johnny Bragg, who was out on parole, was sitting in the back seat of his car with a white girl, who was his wife, which somehow violated his parole and he ended up spending six years back in the lock-up,” he said.

Dylan is the latest star to have his own radio show. The trend began with Steve Van Zandt’s Underground Garage in 2002, and artists as varied as Eminem, Tom Petty and Snoop Dogg play DJ on satellite radio.

Dylan is being deployed by the market-leading XM Satellite, which has more than 6.5 million subscribers, against rival Sirius Satellite Radio, which hired the “shock jock” Howard Stern to build an audience of four million.

THE PLAYLIST

Blow, Wind, Blow Muddy Waters

You Are My Sunshine Jimmie Davis

California Sun Joe Jones

Just Walking in the Rain Prisonaires

After the Clouds Roll Away Consolers

Let the Four Winds Blow Fats Domino

Raining in My Heart Slim Harpo

Summer Wind Frank Sinatra

The Wind Cries Mary Jimi Hendrix

Come Rain or Come Shine Judy Garland

It's Raining Irma Thomas

Stormy Weather Spaniels

Jamaica Hurricane Lord Beginner

A Place in the Sun Stevie Wonder

Uncloudy Day Staple Singers

I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine Dean Martin

Keep on the Sunny Side Carter Family

thanks so much bill clinton......

ok, so.....past president bill clinton has brokered an incredible deal with the soft drink industry as a voluntary means to curb childhood obesity.....this from the times online....

COCA-COLA, once a symbol of American youth but now retreating in the face of a childhood obesity epidemic, signed up yesterday to a voluntary agreement that will end almost all sales of high-sugar fizzy drinks in US schools.

The deal between the American Heart Association and the beverage industry, brokered by the former President Bill Clinton, will allow only unsweetened juice, low-fat milk and water in elementary and middle school vending machines and cafeterias. Low-calorie and sports drinks will still be available in high schools.

Mr Clinton, who has suffered weight problems and had a heart bypass operation since leaving the White House, said: “This is a bold step forward in the struggle to help 35 million young people lead healthier lives. This one policy can add years and years and years to the lives of a very large number of young people.”

The agreement, signed yesterday by industry giants such as Cadbury Schweppes, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, follows a wave of regulation by school districts and state legislatures.

More than half of American schools have vending machine contracts with soft drinks firms, many of which offered a bigger share of profits for selling fizzy drinks than for water or juice.

frankly, it takes somebody like my guy bill to take such an interest in the future of american health......today i participated in a ymca-sponsored healthy kids day for the 390 4th graders in mercer county.......we focused on water safety....and staged a relay race in which kids had to pick out the correct lifejacket for their weight, put it on....run down to the turnaround and back...and tag the next person.....i was shocked by how many children couldn't wear the 90+ pound jackets........couldn't get them around the midsection.....omg........thanks be to bill be assuring that empty calories from sugar are no longer available between the hours of 8 and 3.....too bad their parents are not likely to follow bill's lead................

last of the roosevelt liberals......

ok, so this blog is a belated ode to the passing of j.k. galbraith.......he who put into place f.d.r.'s new deal......and who dug us out of the worst of the 30's and 40's........he was a rabid critic of trickle down economics/supplyside economics or whateveryoucalltherepublicanversion of economics.......the best quote i have read so far is as follows:..On the distribution of wealth: "I don't think we should ever lose sight of the fact that the good economy is one that has a generally equitable reward for all of its participants.".......in the interview i heard on the way to work yesterday...from the 80's...galbraith lambasted the reagan era market-driven economy......and instead suggested that a government for the people needed to provide safeguards for its people against market forces.......he predicted that under the current (at the time) republican administration, the rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer.....and he was right......or left, depending on how you see things.........

roses.....

ok, so the trellis roses...city of york...are beginning to bloom......at this point there are only 2 out of 500 in bloom, but one of those is right at nose level when i make my morning walk to get the newspaper....yummmmmmmmm....vanilla laced with lemon......life is good when you can smell the rose even before you smell the coffee........

ark....

ok, so i cannot get this song out of my head.......i downloaded it sometime this spring.....maybe from salon.com......the tune is a peppy little number that could uplift the spirits were it not for the mean lyrics......

You've been watching over me
Saying you're keeping me company
I should be grateful, I suppose
and compare you to a summer's rose

You've been talking sweet to me
about peace and loving harmony
But I know what you say about me
So now I tell you cause I gotta break free

That I can't give you no false affection
I can do without your phony charm
This train ain't moving in your direction
This piece of poetry is meant to do harm

Please don't give me no warm reception
What you call peace to me is a call to arms
Some are singing to raise affection
But this piece poetry is meant to do harm

So with what shall I compare thee?
Summer's clay or winter's sleet?
You made a non-believer out of me,
Now you ask for my sympathy?

No, take your words and take your vows
Take your flake-fuelled buddhist bows
Let the cool winds roughly shake
out all darling buds of fake

I can't give you no false affection
I can do without your phony charm
This train ain't moving in your direction
This piece of poetry is meant to do harm

And don't you give me no warm reception
What you call peace to me is a call to arms
I'm not singing to raise affection
This piece of poetry is meant to do harm

pain.....

ok, so........i missed my children tearfully this day.......why today more than any other.....?......no sweet babies came my way to remind me of how my boys used to be........no trigger scents aroused an organic remembrance........but this day i sent them both mushymamma emails....for the eldest it was simply thoughts of how proud i am of his accomplishments....and for the middle...well.......i chanced to walk about my garden before work....and my garden always evokes tender images of a child who cared so deeply about positioning, bloom cycle, sunversusshade........i think of him with every plant that blooms......the evolution from meanmamma to mushymamma will be.......painful for all involved.......

wentworth miller

ok, so my current boredom is do deep/wide that i have watched random clips from ellen on youtube....and discovered that wentworth miller, who stars in some primetime tv show about a prison break.....was named by his academic parents after captain wentworth in jane asten's persuasion.........that, my friends...is bored..............

Sinister Minister

ok, so i predict Sinister Minister as the winner of the ky derby......because he won the bluegrass stakes, and because left-handed names are just too good to pass up........and the notion of a left-handed clergyman is more than hilarious..............

ok, so johnny damon...aka bobblehead in our household....premiered in his new role as a nyy this evening against his old team the boston redsox....and lost...miserably........ 

stephen colbert

ok, so on youtube.com there are three segments of stephen colbert roasting dubya at the press corps dinner.....dubya was not pleased and colbert was outrageous.........go to youtube and search for stephen colbert...and be sure to see all 3 segments...the third may be the funniest.......

elvis the cow

ok, so this from slate.com...... it's enough to make me consider being a vegetarian......

translating ones way to fortune....

ok, so this from the nytimes....for family and friends with a talent for learning languages........