There Is A Time: Favorite Songs

There Is A Time

There is a time for love and laughter

The days will pass like summer storms
The winter winds will follow after
But there is love, and love is warm

(Chorus) There is a time for us to wander

When time is young and so are we
The woods are greener over yonder

The path is new, the world is free

There is a time when leaves are falling

The woods are gray, the paths are old

Snow will come and geese are calling

You need a fire agianst the cold

(Chorus)

So do your roaming in the springtime

Find your love in the summer sun

Frost will come and bring the harvest

You can sleep when day is done

(Chorus)

There is a time for love and laughter

The days will pass like summer storms

The woods are greener over yonder

The path is new, the world is free

The path is new, the world is free

I first heard this song on The Andy Griffith Show, where it was sung by the Darling clan when they came into town to find somebody to betroth to their little baby girl and settled on Opie. The Darling boys (the actual musicians) were played by a folk band called The Dillards, who had produced and recorded the song. After they finish playing it Andy says that was just about the prettiest song he ever heard, and I had to agree. I'd been thinking about posting it for a while because I thought it's wistfulness made it a good autumn song, and just yesterday it was actually on TV. You can see it on YouTube if you pop "Andy Griffith there is a time" into the search.

On Belief: Quotations

"I can't believe that!" said Alice.

"Can't you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again; draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."

"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

--from Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"I would." She sounded angry now. He wondered if bringing the wine to the dinner had been a wise idea. Life was certainly not a cabernet now.

"It's not easy to believe."

"I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe."

"Really?"

"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marylin Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen--I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually be just two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath.

Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud. Instead he said, "Okay. So if I tell you what I've learned you won't think that I'm a nut."

"Maybe," she said. "Try me."

--from American Gods, by Neil Gaiman.

"Mrs. Franklin, do you really and truly believe in God with no doubts at all?"

"Oh, Una, I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts."

--from A Circle of Quiet, by Madeleine L'Engle.

The Magian World View: Quotations

"You have read Spengler? No: it is not so fashionable as it once was. But Spengler talks a great deal about what he calls the Magian World View, which he says we have lost, but which was part of the Weltanschauung--you know, the world outlook--of the Middle Ages. It was a sense of the unfathomable wonder of the invisible world that existed side by side with a hard recognition of the roughness and cruelty and day-to-day demands of the tangible world. It was a readiness to see demons where nowadays we see neuroses, and to see the hand of a guardian angel in what we are apt to shrug off ungratefully as a stroke of luck. It was religion, but religion with a thousand gods, none of them all-powerful and most of them ambiguous in their attitude toward man. It was poetry and wonder which might reveal themselves in the dunghill, and it was an understanding of the dunghill that lurks in poetry and wonder. It was a sense of living in what Spengler called a quivering cave-light which is always in danger of being swallowed up in the surrounding, impenetrable darkness."

--from World of Wonders, by Robertson Davies.

Miss Tick: Favorite Quotations

"Well, I must go. I hope we shall meet again. I will give you some free advice, though."

"Will it cost me anything?"

"What? I just said it was free!" said Miss Tick.

"Yes, but my father said that free advice often turns out to be expensive," said Tiffany.

Miss Tick sniffed. "You could say this advice is priceless." she said. "Are you listening?"

"Yes," said Tiffany.

"Good. Now...if you trust in yourself..."

"Yes?"

"...and believe in your dreams..."

"Yes?"

"...and follow your star..." Miss Tick went on.

"Yes?"

"...you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. Good-bye."

--from The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett.

Yaddle and Evan Piell

I swore I would never buy another Star Wars figure, but while I was passing through HEB to get some eggnog (only 40 more noggin' days left in the year!) I saw this two figure pack down the toy aisle--I always check--and my eye was drawn to the name "Yaddle". I read the back: "Jedi Master Yaddle is a member of the Jedi Council and is the same unknown species as Yoda. In contrast to the quiet and thoughtful Yaddle, Jedi Council member Evan Piell is known for his humorless and fierce demeanor." Another member of whatever-the-heck species as Yoda? I had to have it. And for $7.98, I did.

A quick run on the internet and I found out several things. Yaddle appeared in The Phantom Menace, and -surprise!- she's a female. Not established in the movie but in "secondary sources" is she is 477 years old, which is young for her kind. The character was designed as a young version of Yoda, but ultimately was utilized as a separate person. The name sounds to me like a conflation of Yoda and raddle, and she does indeed look like a raddled Yoda.

The grouchy Evan Piell and and the right leg of 5D6-RA7 (part of a build-a-robot offer) are simply bonuses.

Gran'ma Ben

The Sunday before last, I, my brother, and his family went on a shopping expedition to San Antonio. Along the way we stopped in at the Heros and Fantasies store in Universal City. This is one of our old hunting grounds for action figures, which we hadn't visited for some time, so we decided to drop in and see what was being offered these days.

What was being offered these days turned out to be what had been offered in those days. I couldn't identify any new product, and what was there was covered with dust. Apparently the store gets along on its comics and gaming. And to be honest, the action figure boom has almost died out; I blame the gyott-dang vidya games. Soon I fear it will all dwindle down to super-hero movie tie-ins and expensive action models.

Anyway, I am still going to buy action figures, the same way I buy real paper books. I was determined not to leave the store without at least one figure. I found Gran'ma Ben cast down on an end-cap amidst a jumble of oddments. I've always been interested in this figure, because while action figures of women are rare, and of old men even rarer, a figure of an old woman is extremely rare. I can only think of two others: Mulan's Grandmother and Granny Gross from Ghostbusters. I'd seen Gran'ma Ben all over the place: in Florida, at Bussey's Flea Market, at other comics shops. The thin film of dust on her plastic blister decided me; today she would go home with me. I was barely able to make out the faded price tag: $17.95.

Gran'ma Ben is a great figure. She's seven inches tall and comes with a coin on a necklace and "The Mystery Cow" costume. This rubbery shell is designed for another figure in the Bone line, Smiley Bone, and is connected with a story in the graphic novel Bone. Her defining characteristics are her big meaty arms, squinting eyes, and a chin that would make Mammy Yoakum jealous. All in all she looks like a friendly giantess in a fairy tale.

Getting this figure finally made me look into Bone is all about. We had been aware of it for years, and been vaguely annoyed by it's obvious indebtedness in style to Walt Kelly's Pogo; I think that that prejudice in me has been worn away. What I read about it interests me, and the fact that a complete edition of the entire run of the comic book exists make me more likely to get into it. I have once more identified a facet of my personality, that occurs to me and then is forgotten; I hate to take something a little bit at a time over a span of time. Some things have to be around in a large quantity to take in all at once so I can see how they develop.

Separated At Birth?

The "Butterball" Cenobite from Hellraiser, and Boy George on his way to or from one of his many legal entanglements. Separated at Birth?