Toiling and Moiling

Posted on February 9, 2014 by J L tagged.

“Why not come and sing with me,” said the Grasshopper “instead of toiling and moiling in that way?”

You’ll be toiling and moiling just to get through this. If things become tedious, just scroll down to the jokes at the end.

Samuel Johnson defined moil as “to labour in the mire.”

Moiling in the mire, toiling in the muck.

Singing for your supper.

In the art of glassmaking, a moil is a superfluous piece of glass which is formed during blowing and removed in the finishing operation.

Cut that moil, Jack, and put it in your pocket till I get back.

A moil to a miner is a short hand tool with a polygonal point, used for breaking or prying out rock.

Especially in the beginning of its life, the word moil had connotations of wetness. Her tears moiled the letter.

In Spanish, as in English, moil can be a noun or a verb: trabajo duro or esforzarse.

A moil is definitely not a mohel, although the words are homophones, at least in the US. In the UK, mohel and mole have the same sound.

Toiling and Moiling is a pleonasm, really.

Greek πλεονασμός pleonasmos from πλέον pleon ”more, too much” is the use of more words or word parts than is necessary for clear expression. You know, like black darkness, or burning fire. ”Tuna fish” is a pleonasm. So is “safe haven.”

A pleonasm is a tautology. A tautology or a pleonasm can be used to reinforce an idea, an observation, a statement by making writing clearer and easier to understand. Legal documents are studded with pleonasms in order to make absolutely clear the intent of the wording.

Here is how a lawyer would phrase a poem that we all know: Whereas, on or about the night prior to Christmas, there did occur at a certain improved piece of real property (hereinafter “the House”) a general lack of stirring by all creatures therein, including, but not limited to, a mouse.

Pleonastic devices were so often used by the epic poets, Homer, Virgil, Luís Vaz de Camões , Milton. Epic poets once sang all of their lines, and pleonasms helped with the memorizing.

How many times is the phrase ‘rosy fingered dawn’ (rododactylos) used in the Iliad? There are many of these set epithets in the poem. And each of them helps in the memorization of the whole work.

Samantha Leoni

In French, you can say Il est possible que. Or Il peut arriver que. Or Il peut se passer que. They all mean roughly the same thing, they are often said in sequence and they are all more or less pleonastic. Not really necessary to the sense of what follows.

Toiling and moiling mean more or less the same thing and are only joined in this old cliché because they rhyme.

She needed a respite from the moil of the modern world.

A calot is that kepi you see on a gendarme’s head in Paris.

A calotte is that skullcap you see on the rabbi’s head in Villejuif.

Does the Pope wear a yarmulke? Calotte can also mean the vault of heaven, or, the clergy.

This is an example of metonymy, substituting the part (a priest’s cap) for the whole, the clergy.

Men who moil for gold.

The audience moiled around the stage.

Middle English mollen from French mouillir, Old French moillier, Vulgar Latin *molliare, Latin mollia, the soft part of the bread, Indo European *mel-

The angry mob moiled around the ticket counter.

From this same word mollia comes mojado, Spanish for ‘wet’ and slang for ‘wetback.’

Extreme manual labor: the kind of moiling work that was done by farmers before the age of mechanization.

Some words that mean more or less the same as moiling are: arduous, Augean, backbreaking, demanding, difficult, formidable, grueling, heavy, herculean, hard, murderous, severe, strenuous, toilsome, tough.

Mental moiling can be occupied with matters that are abstruse, complex, complicated, elusive, insoluble, intricate, involved, knotty, opaque, recondite, spiny, thorny, stubborn, onerous, taxing, irksome, vexatious, stringent.

I’m beginning to think that there is something to this -oiled sound.

Let’s see, oiled, annoyed, boiled, boisterous, broiled, coiled, foiled, moiled, roiled, soiled, spoiled, toiled, there’s a kind of common meaning that emerges here from the mere sound -oiled.

A kind of confusion and turmoil.

During the counterculture period, there was a certain roiling instability in our town.

She was calm and happy as the equipment managers toiled and moiled at their tasks.

The roiling surf excited her and stirred her hopes.

Moil: Alarums and excursions, ballyhoo, blather, bobbery, foofaraw, helter-skelter, hurry-scurry. kerfuffle, pother, ruction, welter, williwaw.

Fracas, mêlée, lather, tizzy.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic Trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake LeBarge I cremated Sam McGee.

Her maiden name is Moil.

Mollify: 14th century CE ”to soften (a substance),” from Old French mollifier or directly from Late Latin mollificare ”make soft, mollify” from mollificus ”softening,” from Latin mollis ”soft” (see melt (v.)) + root of facere ”to make.” Transferred sense of “soften in temper, appease, pacify” is recorded from early 15th century.

Proto Indo European root *mel

In Latin a tudicula was a machine for crushing olives. Tudiculare meant ‘stir around.’ In Norman French this word had become toiler.

The Romans called a hammer a tudes and tundere meant ‘to beat.’ Both of these words are related to that olive bruising machine, the tudicula.

The happily named Thomas Crapper was one of the early makers of toilets in England.

His name is, amazingly enough, sheer coincidence, and not related to ‘crap’ or ‘crapper.’

Diseases, including cholera which still affects some three million people each year, can be largely prevented when effective sanitation and water treatment prevents fecal matter from contaminating waterways, groundwater and drinking water supplies.

Infected water supplies can be treated to make the water safe for consumption and use.

There have been five main cholera outbreaks and pandemics since 1825, during one of which 10,000 people died in 1849 in London alone.

Macon Georgia Telegraph microfilm Feb 1839-Apr 1842 to 1 Oct 1839 We give below, the names of the persons who died in Augusta, of the prevailing epidemic, from its commencement up to the 26th ult: John Abbott, Frederick Selleck, James U. Jackson, Wm. Thompson, Henry E. Parmelee, Thomas Allen, Welcome Allen, Wiley Hargroves, Allen Andrew.

My ancestor Allen Andrew, a physician, died in an Atlanta, Georgia, cholera epidemic about 1839. I like to think that he died helping people, but I don’t really know that.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursèd cold, and it’s got right hold, till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ’tain’t being dead — it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”

A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you, to cremate those last remains.”

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows — Oh God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared — such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked”; … then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and said: “Please close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear, you’ll let in the cold and storm —
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now, isn’t that a heartwarming tale?

Robert Service, the Bard of the Yukon wrote that.

I love the meter and the rhyme scheme.

Service wrote other such immortal odes. One was The Shooting of Dan McGrew.

Service wrote his first poem when he was six.

God bless the cakes and bless the jam; Bless the cheese and the cold boiled ham: Bless the scones Aunt Jeannie makes, And save us all from bellyaches. Amen

OK, back to moiling. Hey, these men aren’t moiling.

These men did with the hermits toil, With their hands in daily moil.

Moil first meant to moisten. Later, the meaning became to work hard in unpleasantly wet conditions, from Old French moillier, ultimately from Latin mollis soft.

“Fun dein moil tsu gots oyerin,” is Yiddish for, “From your mouth to god’s ears,” which means something like “Let’s hope god hears you say that and that she will grant your request. This “moil” comes from German Maul, mouth, and has nothing to do with our word moil.

… and moylynge in their gaye manoures and mansions (1548 Latimer)

And moyleth for no more than their hyre. (1559 Mirror for Magistrates)

To toyle and moyle for worldly dross. (1580 Gillflowers Poems)

Here was labour, drudge and moyle. 1593

… molestation or moyle, miserie 1612

But moile not too much under Ground. 1625 Bacon

Vega hath spent 20 chapters wherein he moyles in sweate and dust. 1629 Burton

The Masters say not what excesse of toile and moile servants undergoe. 1642

Their life for that space was hard travail or moyle. 1659

This night his weekly moil is at end. 1785

Enduring moil and toil in the trenches before Troy. 1856

It is for love of me that he comes on foot and with all that moil. 1881

Edith Piaf Django Reinhardt

That with the madding moil the waves themselves Inflamed. 1855

It is laughable after I have got out of the moil to think how miserably it affected me for the moment. 1864 Hawthorne

Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill. 1885 Stevenson

The moil of death upon them. 1856 Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Mwile, mire. ‘A’s a-gettin’ vurder in the mwile, i.e., he’s going from bad to worse 1888 Berkshire Glossary

1582 Thee seas, thee skies so sprightfulye moyling

1600 Much moiled they were all and sore toiled in this untoward.

1604 Who is moyled with heavinesse…

1640 This while Alcidamant and Griolanis were no less moiled, for the great knight of the Sun so stoutly withstood them.

1653 We had been miserably moiled and our hurts that were great but ill looked unto.

1823 He seemed sadly moiled with matrimonial miseries.

1560 We moiled and turmoiled ourselues in studying and deuising howe we maye come by giftes of glassy fortune.

1881 They moile themselues sore with the manners and condition of the nurse.

1600 Hakluyt To moyle themselves with abject and base works.

1611 Chapman Iliad No more tug one another thus, nor moyle yourselves.

1673 Marvell He moyles himself with tumbling and tossing it that he is in danger of melting his Sperma Ceti.

1869 Tennyson But ‘e tued an’ moil’d ‘issen deäd.

1567 Golding They moyled why others myght not geve like gift as wele as shee.

1889 He’s tewin’ an’ moilin’ aboot for iver.

If I died and went straight to hell, it would take me a week to realize I wasn’t at work anymore.

To All Employees: New Incentive Plan Work — or get fired.

Men At Work Women work all the time. Men have to put up signs when they work.

Why is Monday so far from Friday but Friday so close to Monday?

Why aren’t you working? I didn’t see you coming.

Por fin es VIERNES. Finally it’s FRIDAY.

When the coffee stops working it is probably the right time to get drunk.

Three drunks get in a cab. The driver thinks he’ll play a trick on them, so he starts his engine, then turns it off. “We’re there,” he announces. The first drunk pays him. The second says “Thank you,” and the third hits him. “Hey, what was that for?” ”Next time go a little slower. You almost killed us.”

If you’re going to wish for impossible things, here’s a starting list. 1. earn money without working, 2. be smart without studying, 3. love without getting hurt, and 4. eat without getting fat.

I would be more inclined to grow up if I saw that it worked out for anyone else.

A lot of sleep can not only lengthen your life, it can make work hours shorter.

I could be the world’s laziest man if I applied myself.

You’re tired because you’re overworked. The population of this country is 237 million. 104 million are retired. That leaves 133 million to do the work. There are 85 million in school, which leaves 48 million to do the work. Of this there are 29 million employed by the federal government, leaving 19 million to do the work. 2.8 million are in the Armed Forces, which leaves 16.2 million to do the work. Take from the total the 14,800,000 people who work for State and City Governments and that leaves 1.4 million to do the work. At any given time there are 188,000 people in hospitals, leaving 1,212,000 to do the work. Now, there are 1,211,998 people in prisons. That leaves just two people to do the work. You and me. And I’m sitting here writing work jokes.

VACATION DAYS: All employees will take their vacation at the same time every year. The vacation days are as follows: Jan. 1, July 4 & Dec. 25

One way to keep a healthy level of insanity in the workplace: In the memo field of all your checks, write “for sexual favors.”

The fact that no one understands you doesn’t mean you’re an artist.

OK, all right, I’m going to have a positive attitude about my self destructive habits.

“I have an idea, boss,” Einstein’s chauffeur said. “I’ve heard you give this speech so many times. I’ll bet I could give it for you.” Einstein donned the chauffeur’s cap and jacket. The chauffeur gave a beautiful rendition of Einstein’s speech and even answered a few questions expertly. Then a professor asked an extremely esoteric question. Without missing a beat, the chauffeur fixed the professor with a steely stare and said, “Sir, the answer to that question is so simple that I will let my chauffeur, who is sitting in the back, answer it for me.”

Someday, we’ll look back on this, laugh nervously, and change the subject.

CASUAL WORK ATMOSPHERE in a help wanted ad means: We don’t pay enough to expect that you’ll dress up. A couple of the real daring guys wear earrings.

A vaudeville joke: Boss: You should have been here at 9.30 a.m. Employee: Why what happened?

The boss says, “do you believe in life after death and the supernatural?” ”Not really,” I replied. ”I was wondering” he said. “Because yesterday after you left to go to your grandmother’s funeral, she came by to see you.”

I quit my job at the post office. They handed me a letter to deliver and I thought, “This isn’t for me.”

The trouble with being punctual is that there’s never anybody there to appreciate it.

A musical director stands in front of the band and says, ”When a musician just can’t handle his instrument and doesn’t improve when given help, they take away the instrument, and give him two sticks, and make him a drummer.” So the drummer says, ”And if he can’t handle even that, they take away one of his sticks and make him a conductor.”

You sound reasonable. God, I probably should be taking more drugs.

Why can’t you play hide-and-seek with mountains? Because they peak.

The devil visited a lawyer’s office and made him an offer. “I can arrange some things for you, ” the devil said. “I’ll increase your income five-fold. Your partners will love you; your clients will respect you; you’ll have four months of vacation each year and live to be a hundred. All I require in return is that your wife’s soul, your children’s souls, and their children’s souls rot in hell for eternity.” The lawyer thought for a moment. “What’s the catch?” he asked.

Charles Dickens: He wrote continuously. In the middle of parties, crowded rooms, there would be twenty people in the room all talking and he talked the most, and kept on writing through it all. He would take a twenty mile walk in the afternoon and come home and write while all around him were chattering and carrying on. Moil and toil? He didn’t know what those words meant. He wrote as he breathed, always and constantly. Driving his pen as a madman would. He was a happy man despite one of the worst childhoods that anyone could have, a childhood which he expertly chronicled, writing ceaselessly in the middle of the party. His energy and humor never flagged. If you love it, it’s not work.

Q: Have you lived in this town all your life? A: Not yet.

See you next week?

Ben Nieves Sam Andrew It might look like I’m doing nothing, but at the cellular level I’m really quite busy.

____________________________________________

Vaudeville

Posted on February 2, 2014 by J L tagged.

Vaudeville

SANDERSON: My friend has been elected mayor.
BOWMAN: Honestly?
SANDERSON: What does that matter?

Acting drama was seriously curtailed with the onset of the Revolutionary War when the Continental Congress convened and passed a recommendation that the colonists “discountenance and discourage all horse racing and all kinds of gaming, cock fighting, exhibitions of shows, plays and other expensive diversions and entertainments.” The staging of plays all but ceased in the colonies.

DUMMY: My father killed a hundred men in the war.
VENTRILOQUIST: What was he? A Gunner?
DUMMY: Nope, a cook.

With the coming of peace, the feeling against plays began to lessen, but it wasn’t until 1787 that the American theatre began to flourish. Philadelphia and New York City became the twin hubs of the theatre, vying for supremacy up through the period of the Civil War when other forms of entertainment began to emerge on the American dramatic landscape.

YOUNG MAN: I want to ask for the hand of your daughter in marriage.
OLD MAN: You’re an idiot!
YOUNG MAN: I know it. But I didn’t suppose you’d object to another one in the family.

The Cherry Sisters were considered the worst vaudeville act of all time. Ranging in number from five to two, their songs and recitations were so awful that audiences threw vegetables to show their disgust.

Managers saw the possibilities and encouraged audiences to hurl produce. The ladies drew huge cackling crowds, performed behind a net curtain to avoid injury, and they unsuccessfully sued complaining critics.

All evidence suggests that the sisters believed their act was really good. Commanding a hefty $1,000 a week, they toured for decades.

I just got back from a pleasure trip. I took my mother-in-law to the train station.

Vaudeville was variety. All the variety shows on television and onstage are descended from vaudeville which was popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s.

Each vaudeville show was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts.

Vaudeville included such acts as popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, female and male impersonators, acrobats, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels and films.

A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a vaudevillian.

Yiddish vaudeville joke: In Jewish tradition, the fetus is not considered viable until it graduates from medical school.

Vaudeville evolved out of the concert saloon, minstrel shows, freaks and geeks, dime museums and literary burlesque.

Vaudeville was “the heart of American show business,” for several decades.

The newest Jewish-American-Princess horror movie? It’s called, “Debbie Does Dishes.”

Many show business terms originated in vaudeville. When a performer’s name appeared on the top of the billboard listing each week’s acts, they were at the “top of the bill.”

Headliners got the best dressing rooms and the highest salaries, up to $4000 a week in the big time.

Imagine being ‘on’ for two to five shows a day! That’s difficult, I can tell you.

The performers didn’t necessarily have to have a lot of talent, but they made up for that with personality and extraordinary stamina.

Since many of these longtime audience favorites predated the age of talking film, their names are now forgotten, but a few are still with us.

They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.

Keith and Albee were self elected censors of vaudeville and the standards they imposed on all vaudeville acts were hard on comedians.

Working clean was difficult but people like Bert Williams pulled it off.

Any good clean joke was a diamond and was likely to be stolen.

Many a comic found that other performers had done his material in various towns.

Early radio and television would rely on the same jokes.

Indeed, you still hear some of those jokes today.

I know how you sleep . . . like a baby. You cry a little, then wet the bed a little.

The Duncan Sisters did a musical act as “Topsy and Eva,” characters from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. They sang and played various instruments with limited skill but tremendous charm, pleasing fans for decades.

He hands out color photographs of two bottles of well-known household products, asking, “Have you seen my Pride and Joy?”

Elsie Janis sang and clowned her way to stardom in vaudeville and musical comedy before winding up a successful Hollywood screenwriter and lyricist.

That’s the last time I steal a joke from Berle.

Nora Bayes was the well dressed soprano who made “Shine On Harvest Moon” a hit.

Her fans followed her scandalous marriages, most memorably to songwriter Jack Norworth (composer of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”)

Nora Bayes was one of America’s first singers to attain national popularity.

I saw a man lying in the street. I said, “Can I help you?” He said, “No, I found this parking place and I sent my wife out to buy a car.

Smith and Dale were one of vaudeville’s most popular comedy teams.

They were together for seventy-five years and they supposedly hated each other the whole time. This is not that difficult to believe.

Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys was based on Smith and Dale’s relationship.

Their routines were corny but funny, relying on slapstick gags and carefully timed dialogue.

I don’t want to say that business was bad at the last place I played, but when a fellow called up and asked what time is the next show, I said, “When can you make it?”

Julian Eltinge was vaudeville’s most famous female impersonator.

Eltinge’s lavish gowns and deft mimicry of feminine behavior made him a longtime favorite.

His fame faded with vaudeville, and he found few engagements in his later years.

Julian Eltinge was in The Fascinating Widow (1911).

He was the only drag performer to have a Broadway theatre named after him. The Eltinge later became the Empire, and its old façade and lobby are now part of the AMC Multiplex on 42nd Street.

Other female impersonators with outstanding vaudeville careers include the campy Bert Savoy.

There was also Karyl Norman.

My brother-in-law saw a sign that said ‘Drink Canada Dry,’ so he did.

Bert Williams was the first black performer to gain national stardom in the US, with comic gems like the song “Nobody.”

After partnering with George Walker in vaudeville and musical comedy, Williams went on to solo success in vaudeville and starred in several editions of the Ziegfeld Follies.

Despite his tremendous popularity, Williams was often subjected to blind bigotry. When a bartender in a first class Chicago hotel told him that drinks for “coloreds” were $50 each, Williams pulled out a wad of fifties and ordered the man to pour a round for everyone at the bar.

Doc, it hurts when I go like that. Doc: Don’t go like that.

Leslie Townes Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003), was an English-born American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer, dancer, author, and athlete who appeared on Broadway, in vaudeville.

What do you get when you cross a rooster and a duck?

A bird who gets up at the quack of dawn.

Hope’s English father, William Henry Hope, was a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and his Welsh mother, Avis Townes, was a light-opera singer from Barry who later worked as a cleaning woman. She married William Hope in April 1891 and the couple lived at 12 Greenwood Street in the town, then moved to Whitehall and St George in Bristol.

In 1908 the Hope family emigrated to the United States aboard the SS Philadelphia, and passed inspection at Ellis Island on March 30, 1908, before moving to Cleveland, Ohio.

From the age of 12, Bob Hope earned pocket money by busking (frequently on the streetcar to Luna Park), singing, dancing, and performing comedy patter.

He entered many dancing and amateur talent contests (as Lester Hope), and won a prize in 1915 for his impersonation of Charlie Chaplin.

Hope worked as a butcher’s assistant and a lineman in his teens and early twenties.

He and his girlfriend, Millie Rosequist, signed up for dance lessons.

Encouraged after they performed in a three-day engagement at a club, Hope then formed a partnership with Lloyd Durbin, a fellow pupil from the dance school.

Silent film comedian Fatty Arbuckle saw them perform in 1925 and obtained them steady work with a touring troupe called Hurley’s Jolly Follies.

Within a year, Hope had formed an act called the Dancemedians with George Byrne and the Hilton Sisters, conjoined twins who performed a tap dancing routine on the vaudeville circuit.

Hope and Byrne had an act as a pair of Siamese twins as well, and danced and sang while wearing blackface, before friends advised Hope that he was funnier as himself.

In 1929, he changed his first name to “Bob”. In one version of the story, he named himself after racecar driver Bob Burman. In another, he said he chose Bob because he wanted a name with a friendly “Hiya, fellas!” sound to it.

After five years doing vaudeville, Hope was very surprised when he failed a 1930 screen test for the French film production company Pathé at Culver City, California.

Bob Hope began performing on the radio in 1934 and switched to television when that medium became popular in the 1950s. He began doing regular TV specials in 1954, and hosted the Academy Awards fourteen times in the period from 1941 to 1978.

Bob’s first film was the comedy, Going Spanish (1934). He was not happy with the film, and told Walter Winchell, “When they catch John Dillinger, they’re going to make him sit through it twice.”

Hope moved to Hollywood when Paramount Pictures signed him for the 1938 film The Big Broadcast of 1938, also starring W.C. Fields. The song Thanks For The Memory, which later became his trademark, was introduced in this film as a duet with Shirley Ross and accompanied by Shep Fields and his orchestra.

Bob Hope was best known for comedies like My Favorite Brunette and the highly successful Road movies in which he starred with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. The series consists of seven films made between 1940 and 1962.

Hope had seen Lamour as a nightclub singer in New York, and invited her to work on his United Service Organizations (USO) tours.

Dorothy Lamour sometimes arrived for filming prepared with her lines, only to be baffled by completely re-written scripts or ad-lib dialogue between Hope and Crosby.

One is reminded here of Margaret Dumont in the Marx Brothers films. She never quite understood their routines.

Hope and Lamour were lifelong friends, and she remains the actress most associated with his film career.

On July 27, 2003, two months after his 100th birthday, Bob Hope died at his home in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles. His grandson, Zach Hope, told Soledad O’Brien that when asked on his deathbed where he wanted to be buried, Hope replied, “Surprise me.”

WOMAN: Someone is fooling with my knee. MAN: It’s me, and I’m not fooling!

Vaudeville’s audiences, as well as many of its stars, were drawn from the newly immigrated working classes.

Just as goods in the late 19th century could be manufactured in a central location and shipped throughout the country, successful vaudeville routines and tours were first established in New York and other large cities and would then be booked on a tour lasting for months.

The act would change little as it was performed throughout the United States, so vaudeville was a precursor of mass media — a means of creating and sharing a national culture.

Vaudeville’s influence on most popular entertainment forms of the 20th century — musical comedy, motion pictures, music, radio, television — was pervasive.

WOMAN: I’m not married.
MAN: Any children?
WOMAN: I told you, I’m not married.
MAN: Answer my question!

The word “vaudeville” may come from the expression voix de ville which means “voice of the city” or “songs of the town.”

Or, the term may come from a collection of fifteenth-century satirical songs by Olivier Basselin, “Vaux de Vire.”

Then again, the word vaudeville may derive from the Vau de Vire, a valley in Normandy noted for its style of satirical songs with topical themes.

Vaudeville, referring specifically to North American variety entertainment, came into common usage after 1871, with the formation of Sargent’s Great Vaudeville Company of Louisville, Kentucky.

CISSIE: She never married, did she? MARIE: No, her children wouldn’t let her.

Though the word “vaudeville” had been used in the US as early as the 1830s, most variety theatres adopted the term in the late 1880s and early 1890s for two reasons. First, they wished to distance themselves from the earlier rowdy, working-class variety halls.

Second, the supposedly French term vaudeville lent an air of sophistication.

Many people preferred the earlier term “variety” to what manager Tony Pastor called vaudeville’s “sissy and Frenchified” successor.

Thus, vaudeville was marketed as “variety” well into the 20th century.

Injured Man crosses stage in assorted bandages and casts.
Comic: What happened to you?
Injured Man: I was living the life of Riley.
Comic: And?
Injured Man: Riley came home!

A descendant of variety, (c. 1860s–1881), vaudeville was distinguished from the earlier form by its mixed-gender audience, usually alcohol-free halls, and often slavish devotion to respectability among members of the middle class.

The form gradually evolved from the concert saloon and variety hall into its mature form throughout the 1870s and 1880s.

This more genteel form was known as “Polite Vaudeville.”

Man at Desk: (picks up phone) Hello, Cohen, Cohen, Cohen and Cohen.
Caller: Let me speak to Mr. Cohen.
Man at Desk: He’s dead these six years. We keep his name on the door out of respect.
Caller: Then let me speak to Mr. Cohen.
Man: He’s on vacation.
Caller: (Exasperated) Well then, let me speak to Mr. Cohen.
Man: He’s out to lunch.
Caller: (Yells) Then let me speak to Mr. Cohen!
Man: Speaking.

In the years before the American Civil War, entertainment existed on a different scale.

Variety theatre existed before 1860 in Europe and elsewhere.

In the US, as early as the first decades of the 19th century, theatregoers could enjoy a performance consisting of Shakespeare plays, acrobatics, singing, dancing, and comedy.

There were even Chataquas where people could enjoy a slide presentation and lectures by eminent authorities on various subjects.

Indeed, Mark Twain was a part of this circuit.

When Big Brother and the Holding Company played the Infinity Hall in Connecticut, Ben Nieves and I visited the little room where Twain waited to go on.

Vaudeville was characterized by traveling companies touring through cities and towns.

Jerk – audience member
Yock – a belly laugh
Skull – make a funny face
Talking woman – delivers lines in comedy skits
Cover – perform someone’s scenes for them
The asbestos is down – the audience is ignoring the jokes
From hunger – a lousy performer
Mountaineer – a new comic, fresh from the Catskill resort circuit
Boston version – a cleaned-up routine
Blisters – a stripper’s breasts
Cheeks – a stripper’s backside
Gadget – a G-string
Trailer – the strut taken before a strip
Quiver – shake the bust
Shimmy – Shake the posterior
Bump – swing the hips forward
Grind – full circle swing of the pelvis
Milk it – get an audience to demand encores
Brush your teeth! – comedian’s response to a Bronx cheer

Circuses regularly toured the country, dime museums appealed to the curious, amusement parks, riverboats, and town halls often featured “cleaner” presentations of variety entertainment, and saloons, music halls and burlesque houses catered to those with a taste for the risqué.

In the 1840s, the minstrel show, another type of variety performance, and “the first emanation of a pervasive and purely American mass culture,” grew to enormous popularity and formed what Nick Tosches called “the heart of 19th-century show business.”

Blaze tripped to the microphone. Looking down at her exposed breast, she said, “What are you doing out there, you gorgeous thing?” Then she covered herself. “You got to tell them they’re pretty,” she said; “it makes them grow” . . . Then she flung herself on the couch and quickly stripped down to a transparent bra and black garter pants. She produced a power puff and asked rhetorically, “Who’s going to powder my butt?”

A significant influence also came from Dutch ministrels and comedians.

Medicine shows traveled the countryside offering programs of comedy, music, jugglers and other novelties along with displays of tonics, salves, and miracle elixirs.

“Wild West” shows provided romantic vistas of the disappearing frontier, complete with trick riding, music and drama. Vaudeville incorporated these various itinerant amusements into a stable, institutionalized form centered in America’s growing urban hubs.

WEBER: I am delightfulness to meet you! FIELDS: Der disgust is all mine!

In the early 1880s, impresario Tony Pastor, a circus ringmaster turned theatre manager, capitalized on middle class sensibilities and spending power when he began to feature “polite” variety programs in several of his Gotham City theatres.

The usual date given for the “birth” of vaudeville is October 24, 1881 at New York’s Fourteenth Street Theater, when Pastor famously staged the first bill of self-proclaimed “clean” vaudeville in New York City.

Hoping to draw a potential audience from female and family-based shopping traffic uptown, Pastor barred the sale of liquor in his theatres, eliminated bawdy material from his shows, and offered gifts of coal and hams to attendees.

Yes, folks, Fourteenth Street was uptown in the 1880s.

Pastor’s experiment proved successful, and other managers soon followed suit.

B. F. Keith took the next step, starting in Boston, where he built an empire of theatres and brought vaudeville to the US and Canada.

Later, E.F. Albee, adoptive grandfather of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, managed the chain to its greatest success.

Circuits such as those managed by Keith-Albee provided vaudeville’s greatest economic innovation and the principal source of its industrial strength.

They enabled a chain of allied vaudeville houses that remedied the chaos of the single-theatre booking system by contracting acts for regional and national tours. These could easily be lengthened from a few weeks to two years.

Albee also gave national prominence to vaudeville’s trumpeting “polite” entertainment, a commitment to entertainment equally inoffensive to men, women and children.

Acts that violated this ethos (ones which used words such as “hell”) were admonished and threatened with expulsion from the week’s remaining performances or were canceled altogether.

In spite of such threats, performers routinely flouted this censorship, often, of course, to the delight of the very audience members whose sensibilities were supposedly endangered.

E.F. Albee eventually instituted a set of guidelines for audience members at his show, and these were reinforced by the ushers working in the theater.

Thus “polite entertainment” also extended to B.F. Keith’s company members.

Albee went to extreme measures to maintain this level of modesty.

Keith even went as far as posting warnings backstage such as this: “Don’t say ‘slob’ or ‘son of a gun’ or ‘hully gee’ on the stage unless you want to be canceled peremptorily…if you are guilty of uttering anything sacrilegious or even suggestive you will be immediately closed and will never again be allowed in a theater where Mr. Keith is in authority.”

Along these same lines of discipline, Keith’s theater managers would occasionally send out blue envelopes with orders to omit certain suggestive lines of songs and possible substitutions for those words. This is the origin of the word ‘blue’ to describe off color material.

If actors chose to ignore these orders or quit, they would get “a black mark” on their name and would never again be allowed to work on the Keith Circuit.

Thus, actors learned to follow the instructions given them by B.F. Keith for fear of losing their careers forever.

By the late 1890s, vaudeville had large circuits, houses (small and large) in almost every sizable location, standardized booking, broad pools of skilled acts, and a loyal national following.

One of the biggest circuits was Martin Beck’s Orpheum Circuit. It incorporated in 1919 and brought together 45 vaudeville theaters in 36 cities throughout the US and Canada and a large interest in two vaudeville circuits.

Another major circuit was that of Alexander Pantages. At its hey-day Pantages owned more than 30 vaudeville theaters and controlled, through management contracts, perhaps 60 more in both the US and Canada.

Vaudeville was truly democratic. It played across multiple strata of economic class and auditorium size. On the vaudeville circuit, it was said that if an act would succeed in Peoria, Illinois, it would work anywhere. The question “Will it play in Peoria?” has now become a metaphor for whether something appeals to the American mainstream public.

The three most common levels were the “small time” (lower-paying contracts for more frequent performances in rougher, often converted theatres), the “medium time” (moderate wages for two performances each day in purpose-built theatres), and the “big time” (possible remuneration of several thousand dollars per week in large, urban theatres largely patronized by the middle and upper-middle classes).

As performers rose in renown and established regional and national followings, they worked their way into the less arduous working conditions and better pay of the big time.

The capitol of the big time was New York City’s Palace Theatre (or just “The Palace” in vaudevillian slang), built by Martin Beck in 1913 and operated by B.F. Keith.

The Palace had many inventive novelty acts, national celebrities, and acknowledged masters of vaudeville performance, such as writer, comedian and trick roper Will Rogers.

The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that the money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.

Andrew Erdman’s book Blue Vaudeville notes that the Vaudeville stage was marked with descriptions like, “a highly sexualized space…where unclad bodies, provocative dancers, and singers of ‘blue’ lyrics all vied for attention.”

I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat.

The Palace was the career apex f0r many a vaudevillian.

When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those signs on gravestones, is going to read: “I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I dident (sic) like.” I am so proud of that, I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved.

A vaudeville show at the Palace would begin with a sketch, follow with a single – an individual male or female performer, next would be an alley oop – an acrobatic act, then another single, followed by yet another sketch such as a blackface comedy.

The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back.

What followed for the rest of the show would vary from musicals to jugglers to song and dance singles and end with a final extravaganza – either musical or drama – with the full company.

Lord, the money we spend on Government! And it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.

These shows would feature such stars as Eubie Blake – the piano player, the famous and magical Harry Houdini and child star, Baby Rose Marie.

Democrats never agree on anything, that’s why they’re Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans.

It is said that at any given time, Vaudeville was employing over twelve thousand different people throughout its entire industry. Each entertainer would be on the road 42 weeks at a time while working a particular “Circuit” – or an individual theatre chain of a major company.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

Vaudeville showed an increasing interest in the female figure.

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

Vaudeville highlighted and objectified the female body as a “sexual delight,” a phenomenon that historians believe emerged in the mid-19th century.

I can remember way back when a liberal was generous with his own money.

Vaudeville marked a time in which the female body became its own “sexual spectacle” more than it ever had before.

You can’t tell what a man is like or what he is thinking when you’re looking at him. You must get around behind him and see what he’s been looking at.

Even acts that were as innocent as a sister act were higher sellers than a good brother act.

It isn’t what we know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.

Vaudeville performers such as Julie Mackey and Gibson’s Bathing Girls began to focus less on talent and more on physical appeal through their figure, tight gowns, and other revealing attire.

This would be a great world to dance in if we didn’t have to pay the fiddler.

It eventually came as a surprise to audience members when such beautiful women actually possessed talent in addition to their appealing looks. This element of surprise colored much of the reaction to the female entertainment of this time.

A remeark generally hurts in proportion to its truth.

The continued growth of the lower-priced cinema in the early 1910s dealt the heaviest blow to vaudeville.

A difference of opinion is what makes horse races and missionaries.

The same thing happened to cinema when television came along.

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

Cinema was first regularly commercially presented in the US in vaudeville halls. The first public showing of movies projected on a screen took place at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in 1896.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

Al Jolson, W.C. Fields, Mae West, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Jimmy Durante, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Edgar Bergen, Fanny Brice, Burns and Allen and Eddie Cantor, to name a few, used their vaudeville status to vault into the new medium of cinema.

I have a scheme for stopping war. It’s this– no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one.

These former vaudeville performers often exhausted in a few moments of screen time the novelty of an act that might have kept them on tour for several years.

If you find the right job, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.

Jack Benny, Abbot and Costelle, Kate Smith, Cary Grant, Milton Berle, Judy Garland, Rose Marie, Sammy Davis, Jr. Red Skelton and The Three Stooges used vaudeville only as a launching pad for later careers. They left live performance before achieving the national celebrity of earlier vaudeville stars, and found fame in new venues.

Why go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is.

The line between live and filmed performances was blurred by the number of vaudeville entrepreneurs who made more or less successful forays into the movie business.

I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him father.

Alexander Pantages quickly realized the importance of motion pictures as a form of entertainment. He incorporated them in his shows as early as 1902. Later, he entered into partnership with the Famous Players-Lasky, a major Hollywood production company and an affiliate of Paramount Pictures.

If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?

By the late 1920s, almost no vaudeville bill failed to include a healthy selection of cinema.

Top vaudeville stars filmed their acts for one-time pay-offs, inadvertently helping to speed the death of vaudeville.

After all, when “small time” theatres could offer “big time” performers on screen at a nickel a seat, who could ask audiences to pay higher amounts for less impressive live talent?

The newly-formed RKO studios took over the famed Orpheum vaudeville circuit and swiftly turned it into a chain of full-time movie theaters.

The half-century tradition of vaudeville was effectively wiped out within less than four years.

Managers further trimmed costs by eliminating the last of the live performances.

Following the greater availability of inexpensive receiver sets later in the decade, radio contributed to vaudeville’s swift decline.

Even the most optimistic people in vaudeville could see the writing, or rather the motion picture, on the wall. The perceptive knew that the death rattle was terminal.

Standardized film distribution and talking pictures of the 1930s were the end of vaudeville.

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.

By 1930, the vast majority of formerly live theatres had been wired for sound, and none of the major studios was producing silent pictures.

For a time, the most luxurious theatres continued to offer live entertainment, but most theatres were forced by the hard times in the 1930s to economize.

There was no abrupt end to vaudeville, though the form was clearly sagging by the late 1920s.

The Palace Theatre in New York changed to an exclusively cinematic format on November 16, 1932. No other single event was more of a death knell for vaudeville.

Though talk of vaudeville’s resurrection was heard during the 1930s and later, the demise of the supporting apparatus of the circuits and the higher cost of live performance made any large-scale renewal of vaudeville unrealistic.

The most striking examples of Gilded Age theatre architecture were commissioned by the big time vaudeville magnates and stood as monuments of their wealth and ambition. Examples of such architecture are the theaters built by impresario Alexander Pantages, who often used architect B. Marcus Priteca (1881–1971), who in turn regularly worked with muralist Anthony Heinsbergen. Priteca devised an exotic, neo-classical style that his employer called “Pantages Greek”.

Though classic vaudeville reached a zenith of capitalization and sophistication in urban areas dominated by national chains and commodious theatres, small-time vaudeville included countless more intimate and locally controlled houses. Small-time houses were often converted saloons, rough-hewn theatres or multi-purpose halls, together catering to a wide range of clientele. Many small towns had purpose-built theatres.

Vaudeville was not wiped out by silent films. Many managers featured “flickers” at the end of their bills, finding them cheaper than the live closing acts that audiences walked out on anyway.

Top screen stars made lucrative personal appearance tours on the big time circuits. So what killed vaudeville? The most truthful answer is that the public’s tastes changed and vaudeville’s managers (and most of its performers) failed to adjust to those changes.

In the mid-1920s, when everyone knew vaudeville was in danger, E.F. Albee set expensive new production requirements which strained performers and made it harder for most houses to turn a profit.

When well dressed comics entertained between numbers in place of an energetic slapstick act, vaudeville lost of a lot of its verve.

Cycloramas, drapery and gorgeous scenery added to the beauty of the show, but not to its comedy.

According to Variety, by the end of 1926 only a dozen “big time” vaudeville houses remained – the rest had converted to film use.

In December 1927, no less a star than Julian Eltinge proclaimed in Variety that vaudeville was “shot to pieces,” and was no longer able to attract “big names.”

The success of talking films in the late 1920s sharpened the sense of crisis in vaudeville circles.

In 1929, Albee replaced the Orpheum circuit’s two performance-a-day format with a crushing five-a-day policy.

This only succeeded in exhausting performers and depleting the supply of fresh material.

At the same time, risqué or “blue” material was allowed in major acts, offending many in vaudeville’s family-oriented audience.

Albee hammered another nail into vaudeville’s coffin when he partnered with Joseph P. Kennedy’s Hollywood film company in 1928 to form Radio Keith Orpheum (RKO) Studios.

Kennedy wrangled control of the new organization from Albee, turning the glorious Orpheum circuit into a chain of movie houses. In October of 1929, Variety figured that there were only six full-time vaudeville houses still operating, with as many as three hundred theatres offering a bill of acts between feature films.

It was extraordinary how the public had changed. They had become very blasé about entertainment. Whereas American used to arrange to spend an evening in the theatre for a treat, now they seemed to go to the theater just to kill time.

The theaters were full of children, noted Sophie Tucker. At the first two shows in the afternoon the house would be full of boys and girls, slumped down in their seats, obviously bored with the acts and only waiting for the picture to come on. Kids and necking couples.

By the time of the last show, at 9:30 PM, when you had your best audience, you were dead tired. Too tired to care whether they liked you or not.

Sophie Tucker kept on performing. Sophie was a hero in more ways than one.

She was headlining at New York’s Palace Theater in February 1932 when a fire broke out backstage. To prevent panic, Tucker remained onstage to coax the audience out of the theatre – despite the sparks that threatened to ignite her flammable sequined gown.

The Palace soon reopened, but by that November it became a full-time movie theatre.

The Palace’s first feature film was The Kid From Spain – starring vaudeville veteran Eddie Cantor. Live acts appeared between screenings, but were dropped as of 1935.

Although many theatres still presented vaudeville acts between films, the number of available gigs kept shrinking.

A few vaudeville theaters managed to hold out. I have mentioned before that I saw a vaudeville show on Market Street in San Francisco when I was six or seven.

New York City’s State Theatre at Broadway and 45th Street continued to present four-a-day bills until December 23, 1947.

The final bill included comedian Jack Carter and Yiddish theatre legend Molly Picon. At the closing performance, veteran vaudevillian George Jessel, who eulogized many show biz greats, came on stage and said “I heard vaudeville is finished here tonight, so I thought I’d drop in and tell you folks that talent can never die.”

It’s true, talent will never die, but it can move somewhere else.

There have been numerous attempts to revive vaudeville – a hopeless task, given the changes in American popular culture.

The last live echo of vaudeville was Radio City Music Hall, which kept the presentation house format alive until economics forced it to become a concert venue in 1979.

Some lucky vaudeville singers and comics found a new home on radio, where “variety shows” offered something like audio vaudeville.

Even silent acts (jugglers, animal acts, etc.) found work on television, where variety shows remained popular for several decades.

Ed Sullivan’s television show was pure vaudeville. I was on that show with Big Brother and the Holding Company, so I can say I have done vaudeville.

Carol Burnett’s Broadway-style reviews had the family-friendly spirit of big time vaudeville.

The talk shows carried on the legacy of the Chatauqua side of vaudeville. Janis and I were on Dick Cavett. He was very fond of her, let’s put it that way.

See you next week?

Peter Albin and Sam Andrew still doing vaudeville.

_______________________________________________

San Francisco Nights in the United Kingdom

Posted on January 26, 2014 by J L tagged.

San Francisco Nights in the United Kingdom

The San Francisco Nights are:

Sam Andrew

Bruce Barthol

Roy Blumenfeld

David Bennett Cohen

Greg Douglass

Bex Marshall

We’re going to the United Kingdom this summer 2014 to play seventeen engagements.

First, a few days of rehearsal in Nantmel in the middle of Wales. In Nantmel, across the river Wye from the village of Llandwrthwl, is the Living Willow Theatre, an open air theatre constructed of living willow trees.

Nantmel is in Radnor or Radnorshire (Welsh: Sir Faesyfed) one of thirteen historic and former administrative counties of Wales.

People call the Welsh language the British tongue, Cambrian, Cambric or Cymric.

In the thirteenth century, this place was called Nantmayl, Mael’s valley, the place where the river Dulas flows.

Mael was a person and her/his name is also used in the name for Maelienydd in Radnorshire.

The local church is called St Cynllo who is supposed to have founded it in the fifth century CE. Much of the church was rebuilt in 1792.

Poor Radnorsheer, poor Radnorsheer,
Never a park, and never a deer,
Never a squire of five hundred a year,
Save Richard Fowler of Abbey-Cwm-hir

About 15% of the total population in Wales speak, read and write Welsh. At NASA’s Voyager program launched in 1977, the Welsh greeting Iechyd da i chwi yn awr ac yn oesoedd (Good health to you now and forever) was sent into space.

The Welsh Language Measure Act (1993) gave the Welsh language official status in Wales, making it the only language, besides English, that is de jure (by law) official in any part of the United Kingdom.

Neolithic colonists integrated with native people in Wales, gradually changing their lifestyles from a nomadic life of hunting and gathering, to become settled farmers about 6,000 years ago. Welsh emerged in the 6th century from Common Brittonic, the ancestor of Welsh, Breton, Cornish and the extinct language known as Cumbric.

By the time that Julius Caesar landed in Britain (55 BCE), the area of modern Wales had long been divided among the tribes of the Deceangli, Ordovices, Cornovii, Demetae and Silures.

Note that many of these names survived in the nomenclature for geologic periods, because the first minerals and stones representing these eras were found where these ancient tribes lived.

The Romans used their engineering technology in Wales to extract large amounts of gold, copper and lead, as well as modest amounts of some other metals such as zinc and silver.

Our first gig will be in Rhayader (Welsh: Rhaeadr Gwy), the first town on the banks of the River Wye 20 miles (32 km) from its source on the Plynlimon range of the Cambrian Mountains.

We will be playing in the Carad Arts Centre. Rhayader is oldest town in Mid Wales. People have lived here a long time as you can tell by the abundance of cairns and standing stones which were erected here thousands of years ago.

Rhayader is one of the principal centers of population in predominantly rural Radnorshire, and has always been a stopping point for travellers. The Romans had a stop-over camp in the Elan Valley. Monks travelled between the Abbeys of Strata Florida and Abbeycwmhir, and people drove cattle to lucrative markets in the area.

The name Rhayader is a twisting of the Welsh Rhaeadr Gwy, which means Waterfall on the Wye.

In the 1890s the rapidly expanding city of Birmingham, 70 miles east, viewed the nearby Elan Valley as the ideal source of clean, safe water. This was to change the face of Rhayader forever. Thousands of workers became involved in building a massive complex of dams and reservoirs in the area. This complex was officially opened in 1904 by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.

Founder members of The San Francisco Nights may be interested to note that Rhayader is famous for being the town with the highest concentration of pubs and drinking establishments, per capita, in the UK with one to each 173 people.

There is that dam that gave the town its name.

Rhayader is situated roughly midway between north and south Wales on the A470, 13 miles north of Builth Wells and 30 miles east of Aberystwyth on the A44. These are two of Wales’ most important trunk roads.

The B4574 mountain road to Aberystwyth is described by the AA as one of the ten most scenic drives in the world.

Goodbye to Rhayader. Hwyl fawr. Da bo ti.

So we travel the thirteen miles south to Builth Wells where The San Francisco Nights are to play at the 2014 Sonic Rock Solstice. Schwmae?

Where the rivers Wye and Irfon run together, there is Builth Wells (Welsh: Llanfair ym Muallt) in the county of Powys with a population of 2,352. The site of the town oversees an important ford across the Wye and the crossing point of the main north-south route in Wales and an important south-west-east route.

The Welsh name Llanfair-ym-Muallt means St Mary’s Church in Buallt. The name of the Cantref, and later the town, came from the Welsh words Bu and Allt, and could be translated as The Wild Ox of the Wooded Slope.

Builth Wells was laid out as two streets connecting a castle and a church and was protected by a hedge rather than a wall. This type of town is sometimes called a Bastide, a kind of medieval market settlement. In San Francisco where the Nights come from, the Spanish laid out the Presidio and the Mission, which was their version of a castle and church, so this town plan is familiar to us.

Builth Castle was built under King Edward I. It replaced an earlier castle built by the Marcher Baron Philip De Braose who claimed the area as a Marcher lordship. Marcher lords were substantially independent of the King of England and the Prince of Gwynedd. Such titles as marquess, marquis, marchese, marqués were given to these men who guarded the marches, that is, the lands at the edge of a country.

On a building in Builth Wells there is a 1000 feet square mural (approx 35 feet high by 30 feet wide) depicting the final days of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last native Prince of Wales. The mural shows Llywelyn and his men, a scene depicting battles and a representation of Builth Castle, where Llywelyn was turned away when trying to flee from the English.

The Hereford cattle breed, named after Hereford market where it was most prominently sold was the main breed of the Welsh borders.

Some people say that when the Bubonic plague ravaged Builth, the people living in the countryside surrounding the town left food and provisions for the townspeople on the banks of a brook about a mile west of the town.

The Builth Wells town people then threw money to pay for the goods into the brook so that the metal coins would be washed free of contamination from the plague.

Thus, this brook became known as Nant Yr Arian or Money Brook, a name which remains today.

Ffarwell Builth Wells, we are now going to drive across England to Hull.

Hull is in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and is on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles (40 km) inland from the North Sea.

The town of Hull was founded late in the 12th century. The monks of Meaux Abbey needed a port where the wool from their estates could be exported. They chose a place at the junction of the rivers Hull and Humber to build a quay.

We are going to play at The New Adelphi, which Paul Jackson, the Adelphi’s owner, says is the most famous (sometimes infamous) place in Hull, and it is an international music venue of substantial repute.

The New Adelphi, notes Mr Jackson, is also a safe, and pretty much trouble free environment. You ever notice that when you hear a sentence like this, you tend to think the opposite is the case? But Paul Jackson seems sincere, so I am going to take him at his word.

The Adelphi was an English literary journal published between 1923 and 1955. Between August 1927 and September 1930 it was renamed the New Adelphi and issued quarterly. The magazine included one or two stories per issue with contributions by Katherine Mansfield, D.H. Lawrence, H.E. Bates, Rhys Davies and Dylan Thomas. The Adelphi published George Orwell’s The Spike in 1931 and Orwell contributed regularly thereafter, particularly as a reviewer.

Hull was originally called Wyke on Hull. Renamed Kings town upon Hull by King Edward I in 1299, the town and city of Hull has served as market town, military supply port, trading hub, fishing and whaling center, and industrial metropolis.

After suffering heavy damage during the Second World War Hull Blitz, the town weathered a period of social deprivation, education and policing, but has made a strong rebound in recent years.

A true hero of humanity was born in Hull, William Wilberforce, who became one of the leading English abolitionists.

Rev. Wilberforce headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for twenty-six years until the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807.

From its medieval beginnings, Hull’s main trading links were with Scotland and northern Europe. Scandinavia, the Baltic and the Low Countries were all key trading areas for Hull’s merchants.

In addition, there was trade with France, Spain and Portugal. Hull’s trading links ultimately extended throughout the world. Docks were opened to serve trade with Australia, New Zealand and South America. Hull was also the center of a thriving inland and coastal trading network, serving the whole of the United Kingdom.

Goodbye, Hull, we’re off to Scotland.

We head north to Edinburgh, cross over the Firth of Forth, and drive up M90 to Kinross, which reminds me of motoring to Glenfarg a few years ago where we played at the Bein Inn, a lovely place. This part of Scotland reminds me of northern California.

Kinross (Gaelic: Ceann Rois) is a burgh in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. It was originally the county town of Kinross-shire.

Kinross is on the shores of Loch Leven, and there are boat trips around the loch and to Loch Leven Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was famously held prisoner in 1567.

To help Queen Mary escape, Willie Douglas stole the keys and let Mary, dressed as a servant, out of the castle. She was rowed across the lake to where George Douglas and others awaited her, and they fled to Niddry Castle in Lothian.

We’re playing at The Back Room in the Green Hotel. There are roughly 4000-5000 people living in Kinross, and I expect to see every one of them at the gig.

Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, Perth and St Andrews are all within an hour’s drive of Kinross.

The Green Hotel

Kinross is about 370 feet above sea level and the town lies at the western end of Loch Leven, the largest loch in the Scottish Lowlands.

Alexander III (medieval Gaelic: Alaxandair mac Alaxandair; modern Gaelic: Alasdair mac Alasdair) had much of his administration at Kinross.

North to Aberdeen!

This is as far north as I have been in the United Kingdom. Discovery of oil in the North Sea has brought a lot of money into Aberdeen, just as it has made nearby Norway a new European power.

How an Aberdeen surfer might react to this last statement: It’s a’ a loada shite. It’ll a’ be tae dae wi’ the oil money an’ a’ they big-piyin’ joabs. But this city is a lot mair than a’ that pish.”

Aberdeen (Scots: Aiberdeen Scottish Gaelic: Obar Dheathain) is Scotland’s third most populous city. King David (1124-1153 bestowed Royal Burgh status on Aberdeen which transformed the city.

The area around Aberdeen has been settled since at least 8,000 years ago, when prehistoric villages lay around the mouths of the rivers Dee and Don.

The city began as two separate burghs: old Aberdeen at the mouth of the river Don, and New Aberdeen, a fishing and trading settlement, where the Denburn waterway entered the river Dee estuary.

Here is where we will play: Café Drummond, the bastion of the Aberdeen alternative music scene.

In the daytime, this is a quiet, mellow public house, but it becomes a rock and roll venue at night.

In the previous two centuries, builders in Aberdeen used locally quarried gray granite which has a lot of mica in it, so that it sparkles. Thus, Aberdeen has been styled the Silver City with the Golden Sands.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, lived in Aberdeen when he was a boy.

I am excited to see the Sir Duncan Rice library which reminds me of the Guggenheim. Sir Duncan Rice himself has published widely as a professional historian, and has received honorary degrees from New York University and the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen as well as fellowships at Harvard and Yale and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Aberdeen gets fewer than seven hours of daylight in winter, but nearly 18 hours at its peak in the summer.

Aye, mebbee, but ya wouldnae wan ti live there!

I don’t understand why the English call the Scots tightwads? From personal experience the south-east English are the tightest feckers about.

I would sell now and move dooon sooth to Edinburgh or somewhere where your property will hold its value.

Awe happiness, dinnae go! As we say in Rubislaw Den, may your lum aye reek, wi some ither c_nts coal.

I’m a local Aberdeen lass, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the place, but I think a lot of people have that with their home city.

South to Hebden Bridge: The original settlement was the hilltop village of Heptonstall.

Hebden Bridge (originally Heptenbryge) started as a settlement where the Halifax to Burnley packhorse route dropped into the valley and crossed the River Hebden at the spot where the old bridge (from which Hebden Bridge gets its name) stands.

Hebden comes from the Anglo-Saxon Heopa Denu, ‘Bramble (or possibly Wild Rose) Valley’.

We are playing at the Trades Club, an old fashioned working mens club with an intimate spit and sawdust style room for bands which holds about 200 people so its a very atmospheric venue.

They have great music, great beer, and lovely staff. And its cheap. You cannot beat the locals dancing en masse to music they like.

Hebden was known as “Trouser Town” because of the large amount of clothing manufacturing.

The steep hills and access to major wool markets meant that Hebden Bridge was ideal for water-powered weaving mills and so the town developed during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Drainage of the marshland, which covered much of the Upper Calder Valley before the Industrial Revolution, enabled construction of the road which runs through the valley. Prior to this, travel was only possible via the ancient packhorse route which ran along the hilltop, dropping into the valleys wherever necessary.

During the Second World War, Hebden Bridge was designated a “reception area” and took in evacuees from industrial cities. Two bombs fell on Calderdale during the war, but they were not targeted, they were merely the emptying of a bomb load, so let’s be thankful for that.

Good’un. In a bit. Tarra.

Leicester was once an army camp.

Any town name in England that ends in -caster, -cester is derived from castrum, Latin for castle, camp, fortress. Lancaster, Rochester, , Winchester, Worcester, Chester, Chesterfield, Cheshire, Doncaster, Newcastle (castle from castellum, little camp), all were once armed camps.

Ligore castrum = camp on the Legro river = Leicester

Leicester is one of the oldest cities in England, it was the center of a bishopric from around 670, endowing it with city status.

By the middle ages, Leicester had become a town of considerable importance and mentioned in the Domesday Book as a civitas, city.

On 4 November 1530, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was arrested for treason on orders of Henry VIII. On his way south to face dubious justice at the Tower of London, Wolsey fell ill. The group escorting him was concerned enough to stop at Leicester.

There, Wolsey’s condition quickly worsened and he died on 29 November 1530 and was buried at Leicester Abbey, now Abbey Park.

We are playing in Leicester at The Musician, which is near the city center. There are many pubs in the area we thought we might want to check out later. Some of these leicester square bars like the Lost Alhambra came highly recommended by locals there.

The Musician is on a quiet back street in the middle of Leicester in the middle of England.

The University of Leicester has established itself as a leading research-led university and has consistently ranked among the top fifteen universities in the United Kingdom.

A man I greatly admire, C.P. Snow, was educated at the University of Leicester, where he read chemistry for two years and proceeded to a master’s degree in physics. From Leicester, Snow went on a scholarship to Cambridge and gained his PhD in physics (Spectroscopy). In 1930 he became a Fellow of Christ’s College. C.P. Snow writes literature and science with equal ease. His books are highly recommended.

That they may have life: motto of the University of Leicester.

Now we’ll take the fork in the road with John Spoons and drive to Sheffield.

The last time I was here I made some cutting remarks about how we were going to make a stab at playing Mack The Knife. I thought that the Sheffielders would throw daggers at me for such sharp repartee, but they actually laughed, probably out of kindness to their dull yankee guest. Of course they were probably laughing at me, rather than with me, but that’s all right.

Sheffield is in south Yorkshire and is part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city.

Sheffield’s population is 551,800 and it is one of the eight largest regional English cities that make up the Core Cities Group. Sheffield is the third largest English district by population.

Sheffield is located within the valleys of the River Don and its four tributaries, the Loxley, the Porter Brook, the Rivelin and the Sheaf.

Sheffield has the highest ratio of trees to people of any city in Europe. At first blush, you may not find this a significant fact, but I remember when I first flew over Paris, the dominant impression I had was how many trees there were along the boulevards, and it gave me a good feeling about the city before we even landed. Trees and books are civilizing influences.

We are to perform here at The Greystones, which is the principal pub for the Thornbridge Brewery.

There’s a lot going on at The Greystones, jewellery workshops, morris dancing, dog shows, psychic nights, and life drawing classes. I would love to sit in on a life drawing class or two.

Sheffield has been inhabited since at least the late upper Paleolithic period, about 12,800 years ago. The earliest evidence of human occupation in the Sheffield area was found at Creswell Crags to the east of the city. The Brigantes, whom I remember from Roman readings, are thought to have constructed several hill forts in and around Sheffield

After the Romans left, the Sheffield area may have become the southern part of the celtic kingdom of Elmet, with the rivers Sheaf and Don forming part of the boundary between this kingdom and the kingdom of Mercia.

This is the coat of arms for the University of Sheffield: To know the causes of things.

The University of Sheffield is a research institution. It received its Royal Charter in 1905 as successor to Sheffield Medical School (1828) and University College of Sheffield (1897). As one of the original red brick universities, it is also a member of the prestigious Russell Group of research intensive centers of learning.

This is Firth Court at the school. Hilary Mantel attended the University of Sheffield as did Eddie Izzard, and we all know what a genius he is.

Five Nobel Laureates have been associated with the University of Sheffield, among them Howard Florey who won the Nobel in 1945 for his work on penicillin.

The 1953 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Hans Adolf Krebs for the discovery of the citric acid cycle in cellular respiration.

From the Chemistry department at the University of Sheffield, George Porter was awarded the Nobel in 1967 for work on extremely fast chemical reactions (Flash photolysis).

The University of Sheffield Students’ Union has been rated as the best in the UK for the last five years (2009-2013). It consists of two bars (Bar One – which has a book-able function room with its own bar, The Raynor Lounge – and The Interval); three club venues (Fusion, Foundry and Studio); and coffee shops, restaurants, shops, and the student run cinema Film Unit. There is also a student radio station called Forge Radio and a newspaper called Forge Press, which are run under the umbrella of Forge Media.

Goodbye to Sheffield. We are returning to beautiful Wales.

Cardigan Bay (Welsh: Bae Ceredigion) is an inlet of the Irish Sea, indenting the west coast of Wales between Bardsey Island, Gwynedd in the north, and Strumble Head, Pembrokeshire at its southern end. It is the largest bay in Wales.

From the Ceredigion Coast path it is often possible to observe Bottlenose Dolphins, porpoises and Atlantic Grey Seals. The Bay has the largest population of bottlenose dolphins in the UK

Up until the early 20th century, Cardigan Bay supported a strong maritime industry.

Cardigan is located at the mouth of the River Teifi, hence the Welsh name, Aberteifi (Mouth of the Teifi), and at the turn of the 19th century, the heyday of the port, it was a more important port than Cardiff.

Around 1900, more than 300 ships were registered at Cardigan, seven times as many as Cardiff, and three times as many as Swansea.

The central and northern areas of the Bay are the location of the legendary Cantre’r Gwaelod, the drowned Lowland Hundred or Hundred under the Sea.

A military testing range was first established in Cardigan Bay during World War II.

The Range is controlled from a main operating base located near Aberporth. The Range has played a significant part in the development and testing of a variety of military weapons.

We are playing at The Cellar Bar on Quay Street.

Poets hold forth at The Cellar Bar. The bards are always welcome to perform their work during an evening called Word Up. Maybe some Welsh people (rhestr Cymry) like Terry Jones or John Cale or Martin Amis or Ken Follett or Peter Swales, the historian who is billed as a Freud commentator and former employee of Rolling Stone, maybe these Welsh people could show up at our gig at The Cellar Bar? One never knows. Everyone is welcome. Croeso. Croeso cynnes iawn.

So sorry to leave Cardiganshire, but happy to travel to Glastonbury.

Glastonbury is a small town in Somerset, England, south of Bristol. We are playing at the Glastonbury Fringe.

The Fringe is a series of events being organized in the town by the people in Glastonbury who already promote, perform and produce events thoughout the year. It’s the fringe of the larger event, the Glastonbury Festival.

The Music and Arts Fringe, the brainchild of Sara Clay, is aimed at putting Glastonbury, the real Glastonbury, back on the map by showcasing its vibrant music and arts scene in a series of independent local events.

Glastonbury has been inhabited since neolithic times. Glastonbury Lake Village was an Iron Age community, close to the old course of the River Brue and Sharpham Park, approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Glastonbury, parts of which date back to the Bronze Age.

Glastonbury has been described as a New Age community which is notable for myths and legends often related to Glastonbury Tor concerning Joseph of Arimethea, the holy grail and King Arthur.

About nine thousand years ago, the sea level rose and flooded the valleys and low lying ground surrounding Glastonbury so the mesolithic people occupied seasonal camps on the higher ground, indicated by the flint projectile points they left.

The neolithic people continued to exploit the reedswamps for their natural resources and they began to construct wooden trackways including the Sweet Track west of Glastonbury, which was considered the oldest timber trackway in Northern Europe until the recent discovery of a 6,000 year-old trackway in Belmarsh Prison.

The Sweet Track extended across the marsh between what was then an island at Westhay, and a ridge of high ground at Shapwick, a distance close to 2,000 metres (1.2 mi). The track consisted of crossed poles of ash, oak and lime (Tilia) which were driven into the waterlogged soil to support a walkway that mainly consisted of oak planks laid end-to-end.

Glastonbury Lake Village was an iron age settlement now designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument covering an area of 400 feet (122 m) north to south by 300 feet (91 m) east to west. The village was built in about 300 BCE and occupied into the early Roman period when it was abandoned, possibly due to a rise in the water level, or possibly due to a rise in the number of Romans.

The village housed around 100 people in five to seven groups of houses, each for an extended family, with wooden sheds and barns, made of hazel and willow covered with reeds, and surrounded either permanently or at certain times by a wooden palisade.

At its maximum it may have had 15 houses with a population of up to 200 people.

As I was going to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives, Each wife had seven sacks, Each sack had seven cats, Each cat had seven kits: Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, How many were there going to St Ives?

St Ives (Cornish: Porth Ia, meaning St Ia’s cove) is a seaside town in Cornwall. St Ives is north of Penzance and west of Camborne on the coast of the Celtic Sea.

Once upon a time, a fishwife from Cornwall could talk to a basket maker from Brittany and together they could talk with a hostler from Wales. Those three could then speak to a Manx glove maker, an Irish drayman and a Scottish farmer all in the same language. They’re not speaking in English, they’re speaking in Celtic, or Gaelic, if you will. A couple of them think the others talk funny but they understand each other. They are speaking Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Breton, Scottish Gaelic and Manx (from the Isle of Man). Cornish disappeared from general use in the 18th century and these other languages have long since been pushed to the periphery of Europe, but they were once spoken everywhere on the continent, and they were all the same language.

When the French say quatre vingts rather than octante for eighty, they are remembering their Celtic ancestors who had a vigesimal (20 based) system of counting. Hey, ten toes and ten fingers. Makes sense, right? This is the way the Mayans notated their vigesimal number system.

The San Francisco Nights are to perform in The Guildhall in St Ives, which is an artists’ town. “For a few dazzling years this place was as famous as Paris, as exciting as New York and infinitely more progressive than London.”

Virginia Woolf writes, “…I could fill pages remembering one thing after another. All together made the summer at St. Ives the best beginning to life imaginable,” she who began and ended her life by the sea.

On 28 July 2007 there was a suspected sighting of a Great White Shark. The chairman of the Shark Trust said that “it was impossible to make a conclusive identification and that it could have also been either a Mako or a Porbeagle shark”. Coastguards dismissed the claims as “scaremongering.” On 14 June 2011 there was a suspected sighting of an Oceanic white tip shark after a boat was reportedly attacked. The Shark Trust said that the chances of the species being in British waters were “very small.” Does this sound the slightest bit Monty Pythonish to you?

The parish church is dedicated to Saint Ia of Cornwall, an Irish holy woman of the 5th or 6th century, and St Andrew, the patron saint of fishermen.

This is the St Ives version of the Tate Museum, which will be open in May 2014.

Californians may think of Sausalito.

Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada set up the Leach Pottery in 1920. Leach was a studio potter and art teacher, and he is known as the Father of British studio pottery. He learned pottery under the direction of Shigekichi Urano (Kenzan VI) in Japan where he also met Shoji Hamada.

We’re off to Cheltenham.

Cheltenham is a large spa town and borough in Gloucestershire, located on the edge of the Cotswolds.

Cheltenham (Chelten home) takes its name from the small river Chelt, which rises nearby at Dowdeswell and runs through the town on its way to the Severn.

Health and Learning

Cheltenham has been a health and holiday spa town resort since the discovery of mineral springs there in 1716. The visit of George III with the queen and royal princesses in 1788 set a stamp of fashion on the spa.

We will play at the Frog & Fiddle, whose main feature is its live music.

The Barn, with its original brick walls and beams has a capacity for over 200 people, and has seen everything from local acts to signed touring bands, but so far it hasn’t seen The San Francisco Nights.

The town is famous for its Regency architecture and is said to be “the most complete regency town in England.”

Many of the buildings are listed, including the Cheltenham Synagogue, judged by Nikolaus Pevsner to be one of the architecturally “best” non-Anglican ecclesiastical buildings in Britain.

The Cheltenham Synagogue congregation first met in about 1820 in a hired space at the St George’s Place entrance to Manchester Walk.

The cornerstone for the synagogue was laid on 25 July 1837. Founded when Cheltenham was a popular spa town, the synagogue declined with the town itself and closed in 1903.

The Cheltenham Synagogue reopened in 1939 to serve evacuees being housed in London, refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe and soldiers stationed in nearby bases, including a number of Americans.

Goodbye, Cheltenham. Now down to the coast, to see Pompey.

Portsmouth is the second largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire, and is notable for being the United Kingdom’s only island city, situated mainly on Portsea Island. Pompey, as many natives call the place, is situated 64 miles (103 km) south west of London and 19 miles (31 km) south east of Southampton.

The Cellars, where we will play, is at Eastney, which means east island.

There is a 140 person capacity here at this venue in Southsea, so we’re going to meet everyone in the place. One attendee notes that, “This place has been described as small, and as a public space, the only things smaller would be the changing rooms at Marks and Spencer.” This will be a chance for us to turn the volume down and get cosy.

“When I got there late once, they couldn’t let me in ‘cos it was full. I did offer to strip naked and grease myself with cookin’ oil, but they said that they couldn’t let me do that as it was a cold night.” I can’t wait to play this place. The Cellars can’t be smaller than Peri’s Silver Dollar in my home town, where I have performed many times.

As a significant naval port for centuries, Portsmouth is home to the world’s oldest dry dock still in use, and also berths some famous ships, including HMS Warrior, the Tudor carrack Mary Rose and Lord Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory.

The City of Portsmouth has a population of 209,166 and is the only city in England with a greater population density than London.

Her cwom Port on Bretene ? his .ii. suna Bieda ? Mægla mid .ii. scipum on þære stowe þe is gecueden Portesmuþa ? ofslogon anne giongne brettiscmonnan, swiþe æþelne monnan. (Here Port and his 2 sons Bieda and Mægla came to Britain with 2 ships to the place which is called Portsmouth and slew a young British man, a very noble man.) Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

In 1628, the unpopular favorite of Charles I, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, was stabbed to death by John Felton, a veteran of Villiers’ most recent military folly. The murder took place in the Greyhound public house, popularly known as The Spotted Dog, High Street, which is now a private building called Buckingham House. There is a commemorative plaque to mark the event.

Peter Sellers was born here.

In 1194 King Richard the Lionheart returned from being held captive in Austria, he began summoning a fleet and an army to Portsmouth, which Richard had taken over from John of Gisors.

The city’s nickname Pompey is thought to have derived from shipping entering Portsmouth harbour making an entry in their logs as Pom. P. in reference to Portsmouth Point. Navigational charts use this abbreviation. Another theory is that Pompey is named for La Pompée, a 74 gun French battleship captured in 1793.

And now a pleasant drive to Chislehurst.

Chislehurst is 10.5 miles (16.9 km) south east of Charing Cross.

The name Chislehurst is derived from the Saxon words cisel ‘gravel’, and hyrst ‘wooded hill’.

The Chislehurst caves are considered to be of very ancient origin. They were originally used to mine flint and chalk.

During World War II, thousands of people used the caves nightly as an air raid shelter. There is even a chapel. One child was born in the caves during the War, and was given a middle name of Cavina.

The caves have also been used as a venue for live music. Jimi Hendrix, the Who and the Rolling Stones have all played there. Wow, talk about a live room.

Camden Place in Chislehurst takes its name from the antiquary William Camden, who lived in the former house on the site from 1609 until his death in 1623.

William Camden wrote A Survey of the Country of the Iceni, which was published in 1586, and was quickly followed by his great work Britannia, a topographical and historical survey of all of Great Britain and Ireland.

Camden wanted to ‘restore antiquity to Britaine, and Britaine to its antiquity‘. In Britannia, Camden describes the country as it was at that time, but through landscape and geography and in other ways, he traces the links to the past, especially to Roman Britain.

It is remarkable that this was the first book to include a full set of English county maps. Camden continued to update and revise Britannia, and travelled widely across the country to view places, documents and materials.

A later occupant of Camden Place, from 1871 until his death there in 1873, was the exiled French Emperor, Napoleon III.

The Emperor’s widow, the Empress Eugénie, remained at Camden Place until 1885.

The Walsingham family, including Christopher Marlowe’s patron, Sir Thomas Walsingham and Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, had a home in Scadbury Park, now a nature reserve in which the ruins of the house can still be seen.

Sir Francis Walsingham had a new understanding of the role of England as a maritime power in an increasingly global economy. He oversaw operations that penetrated Spanish military preparation, gathered intelligence from across Europe, disrupted a range of plots against Elizabeth and secured the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, so we will curse him for beheading that lovely woman, but bless him for sustaining her cousin Elizabeth.

Study goes into the building of character.

We are going to play at The Beaverwood Club in Chislehurst.

I’m looking forward to doing all these shows with Bex Marshall who has a great voice, a positive attitude and a scary good guitar style.

Setting a heading for another -hurst, Hawkhurst

Hawkhurst is a village in the borough of Tunbridge Wells, Kent and is, in reality, two villages. One, the older of the two, consists mainly of cottages clustered around a large triangular green known as The Moor, and the other, farther north on the main road, called Highgate is at a crossroads and is where the shops and hotels are.

The name Hawkhurst is derived from old English heafoc hyrst, meaning a wooded hill frequented by hawks (Hawk Wood).

Hurst (Hyrst) in a place name refers to a wood or wooded area. There are several -hursts in West Kent and East Sussex.

The 11th Century Domesday Monacorum (Domesday of the Monks) refers to the village as Hawkashyrst, belonging to Battle Abbey.

In 1254, the name was recorded as Hauekehurst. In 1278, it is often shown as Haukhurst; by 1610, it had changed to Hawkherst, which then evolved into the current spelling.

We’re going to play the Summer of Love in Hawkhurst, which is about six thousand miles and forty-seven years from the last place and time we played the Summer of Love.

The village of Hawkhurst lies on the route of a Roman road which crossed the Weald here.

The oldest known settlement in Hawkhurst was the Saxon manor of Congehurst, which was burnt by the Danes in 893 CE. There is still a lane of this name to the east of the village.

The village was located at the centre of the Wealden iron industry from Roman times. The Weald produced over a third of all iron in Britain, and over 180 iron sites have been found in the area.

Ironstone was taken from clay beds, then heated with charcoal from the abundant woods in the area. The iron was used to make everything from Roman ships to medieval cannon, and many of the Roman roads in the area were built in order to transport the iron.

William Penn, founder of the state of Pennsylvania, owned ironworks at Hawkhurst. The industry eventually declined during the industrial revolution of the 18th Century, when coal became the preferred method of heating, and could not be found nearby.

By 1745 it is estimated that 20,000 people were smuggling along the Kent and Sussex coast line. An infamous group, the Holkhourst Genge, terrorized the surrounding area between 1735 and 1749.

They were the most notorious of the Kent gangs, and were feared all along the south coast of England.

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet, Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street, Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie. Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by.

I once lived with a woman in Putney, Vermont, where she went to Wyndham College, eponym of Wyndham Hill Records.

In this London Putney, we will perform at The Half Moon.

Putney appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Putelei.

The Lord General hath caused a bridge to be built upon barges and lighters over the Thames between Fulham and Putney, to convey his army and artillery over into Surrey, to follow the king’s forces; and he hath ordered that forts shall be erected at each end thereof to guard it; but for the present the seamen, with long boats and shallops full of ordnance and musketeers, lie there upon the river to secure it. 1642

In 1720 Sir Robert Walpole was returning from seeing George I at Kingston and being in a hurry to get to the House of Commons rode together with his servant to Putney to take the ferry across to Fulham. The ferry boat was on the opposite side, however and the waterman, who was drinking in the Swan, ignored the calls of Sir Robert and his servant and they were obliged to take another route. Walpole vowed that a bridge would replace the ferry.

The first permanent bridge between Fulham and Putney was completed in 1729, and was the second bridge to be built across the Thames in London (after London Bridge).

That bridge was a wooden structure and lasted for 150 years, when in 1886 it was replaced by the stone bridge that stands today.

According to Samuel Pepys, Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, used to run horses here. Charles II reviewed his forces on Putney Heath in 1684. In May 1767, George III reviewed the Guards, and the Surrey Volunteers at the same spot in 1799.

Putney Heath was for many years a noted rendezvous for highwaymen. In 1795, the notorious highwayman Jeremiah Abershaw was caught in the Green Man pub on the northside of the heath where Putney Hill meets Tibbet’s Ride. After execution his body was hung in chains on the heath as a warning to others.

And thus we take leave of Putney, one of the pleasantest of the London suburbs, as well as the most accessible. The immense increase in the number of houses in late years testifies to its popularity; but there is still an almost unlimited extent of open ground which cannot be covered; and with wood and water, common and hill, there will always be an element of freshness and openness in Putney seldom to be obtained so near London. The Fascinations of London, 1903 J. C. Geikie

We look forward to this trip. Thank you for reading.

Sam Andrew

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A Chthonic Tonic

Posted on January 19, 2014 by J L tagged.

A Chthonic Tonic

Chthonic, from Greek χθόνιος – chthonios, “in, under, or beneath the earth”, from χθών – chthōn ”earth,” pertaining to the Earth.

Earthy. Subterranean.

Apart from its literal translation meaning ‘subterranean,’ the historical definition of χθών designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld.

The Greek word χθών khthon is one of several for “earth.”

χθών typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land (as Gaia or Ge does) or the land as territory (as khora (χώρα) does). χθών evokes at once abundance and the grave.

There are connotations in the word χθών of mystery and secrecy.

The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the first two letters in the word χθών should be pronounced (as /k/), but the American Heritage Dictionary considers these letters as silent, /ˈ θ ɒ n ɪ k /. I would defer to the OED here, although I pronounce the ‘ch’ as a heavy breath sound. HTHonic. The way Scottish people pronounce loch, or how Germans say Ach!

The modern pronunciation of the Greek word “χθόνιος” is [ˈxθonios], although the Classical Greek pronunciation would have been [kʰtʰónios].

The words khthonie and khthonios, related to χθών, have a precise and technical meaning and they refer primarily to the manner, the way of offering sacrifices to the chthonic deity.

Some chthonic cults practiced ritual sacrifice at night time.

When a living creature was to be sacrificed, the animal was placed in a bothros (“pit”) or megaron (“sunken chamber”).

In other chthonic cults, the animal was sacrificed on a raised bomos (altar).

Offerings usually were burned whole or buried rather than being cooked and shared among the worshippers.

The chthonic deities were gods of fertility.

Demeter and Persephone both watched over aspects of the fertility of land, yet Demeter had a typically Olympian cult while Persephone had a chthonic one.

The ideas of Olympian and chthonic were not completely separate.

Some Olympian deities, such as Hermes and Zeus, also received chthonic sacrifices.

Heracles and Asclepius, for example, might be worshipped as gods or chthonic heroes, depending on the site and the time of origin of the myth.

And Hecate was usually offered young dogs at crossroads, a practice neither typical of an Olympian sacrifice nor of a chthonic sacrifice to Persephone or the heroes.

The idea of the ‘crossroads’ has played a part in mythology for a long, long time.

A crossroads can be ”between the worlds,” a site where supernatural beings can be contacted and paranormal events can happen.

The crossroads can mean a locality where two realms touch and represent a threshold, a liminality, a place “neither here nor there”, “betwixt and between”.

In the Vodou tradition, Papa Legba is the Iwa of the crossroads.

In rootwork and hoodoo, forms of African American magic spirituality, one may wait at a crossroads to acquire an artistic skill, or a “luck” in gambling. This can happen at a certain number of times, either at midnight or just before dawn, and one will meet a “black man,” who could be the Devil, who will give one the desired skills.

In the United Kingdom, there was a tradition of burying criminals and suicides at the crossroads which often marked the boundaries of the settlement.

There was a desire to bury those outside of the law outside of the settlement. People thought that many roads would confuse the dead spirits.

Mandalas and medicine wheels, such as the Christian cross, for example, are metonyms of the crossroads.

So, a long time ago, Hecate of the crossroads was generally thought of as χθών chthonic, because of her underworld activities.

The term chthonic was often used in analytical psychology to describe the unconscious earthly impulses of the Self.

Carl Jung talks about the meaning of χθών in Man and his Symbols.

“Envy, lust, sensuality, deceit, and all known vices are the negative, ‘dark’ aspect of the unconscious, which can manifest itself in two ways. In the positive sense, it appears as a ‘spirit of nature’, creatively animating Man, things, and the world. It is the ‘chthonic spirit’ that has been mentioned so often in this chapter. In the negative sense, the unconscious (that same spirit) manifests itself as a spirit of evil, as a drive to destroy.”

Chthonic (χθών) also retains some of its very physical, concrete connotations today.

In geology, for example, the word allochthon is used describe a large block of rock which has been moved from its original site of formation, usually by low angle thrust faulting.

Allochthon from allo, other, and χθών, refers to the process of the land mass being moved under the earth and connecting two horizontally stacked décollements, thus “under the earth.”

The word humus is Latin for earth and it comes from this Greek χθών. Humus = χθών.

Humilis meant low, earthy in Latin, so the word humble is also related to χθών.

These dolls were made from the earth in Germany. They came from the χθών.

This word chthon χθών was reconstructed as *dhghem in the original Indo European.

Every heard about the mole men, who live underneath the ground in tunnels?

Or the mutant alligators and cockroaches who live in the sewers? Urban χθών legends?

These are examples of chthonic creatures: beings who live under the surface of the earth, the χθών.

Chthonic beasts are more likely to be demons than angels.

Many mythologies feature chthonic creatures. Elise Wainani Piliwale comes from the χθών of Hawaii.

This sweet looking maypole has an origin far back in the mists of time when it was a link to the χθών, to the underworld.

Oh, those creatures who go bump in the night. They scare you so much and give you a fright.

Words branch out very quickly, just the way family trees do, and one word can become related to many words in many different languages with many different meanings. So it is with χθών. This word for earth has come to be the mother of many other meanings.

χθών is related to Latin homo, human. Remember that Adam was made from the dust, from the earth. Adam meant man in Hebrew as homo means human in Latin.

χθών is related to gamos in Greek which is marriage (bigamy, polygamy).

And so to groom (bridegroom) which in German is Breutigam.

Old English <brydguma> is related to the earth, to χθών.

The first letter χ of χθών became a G in later languages. The χ and the G are articulated in the same part of the mouth, the palate. They are virtually the same sound but one, the χ is not voiced and the other, the G is. So, the two sounds are very closely related.

It’s much like two people in the same family who resemble each other.

Words can begin with the same sounds and then diverge over a couple of generations. Bear (to carry a load in English) and fero (same meaning in Latin) were once exactly the same.

Allochtoon (plural: allochtonen) is a Dutch word (from Greek ἀλλόχθων, from ἄλλος (allos), other, and χθών (chthōn) earth/land), literally meaning “originating from another country,” from another earth. This is the word the Dutch use for “immigrant.”

It is the opposite of the word autochtoon (in English, “autochthonous” or “autochthone”) This Dutch word is derived from Greek αὐτόχθων, from αὐτός (autos), self and again χθών), literally meaning “originating from this country”.

In the Netherlands (and Flanders), the term allochtoon is widely used to refer to immigrants and their descendants.

Officially the term allochtoon is much more specific and refers to anyone who had at least one parent born outside the Netherlands.

Hence, third-generation immigrants are no longer considered allochtoon.

The antonym autochtoon (autochthonous) is less widely used, but it roughly corresponds to ethnic Dutch, you know, white people.

Among a number of immigrant groups living in the Netherlands, a “Dutch” person (though the immigrants themselves be Dutch citizens) usually refers to the ethnic Dutch.

In the 1950s, Dutch descent, Dutch nationality, and Dutch citizenship were in practice identical.

Dutch society almost exclusively consisted of ethnic Dutch and ethnic Frisans, with some colonial influences, and most Dutch were either Catholic, Protestant or atheists.

Decolonization and immigration from the 1960s to the present has altered the ethnic and religious composition of the country. This development has made the ‘ethnicity’ and national identity of the Dutch a political issue.

Dutch nationality law is based primarily on the principle of jus sanguinis (“right of blood”). In other words, citizenship is conferred primarily by birth to a Dutch parent, irrespective of place of birth.

A first-generation allochtoon is a person living in the Netherlands but born in a foreign country and who has at least one parent also born abroad. The ‘country of origin’ is the country in which that person is born.

A second-generation allochtoon is a person born in the Netherlands with at least one parent born in a foreign country. When both parents are born abroad, the ‘country of origin’ is taken to be that of the mother. If one parent was born in the Netherlands, the ‘country of origin’ the other parent’s country of birth.

Note that someone who is born abroad, but with both parents born in the Netherlands, is an autochtoon. Again, this chtoon is from χθόνιος, the Greek for ‘under the earth, of the earth.’ So, we are talking here about someone who is autochthonous according to Dutch law.

A further distinction is made between “Western” and “non-Western” allochtoon people, the black, the brown and the white.

A non-Western allochtoon is someone whose ‘country of origin’ is or lies in Turkey, Africa, Latin America and Asia, with the exception of Indonesia (or the former Dutch East Indies) and Japan.

This last distinction was made because the official definition of allochtoon deviates from the common use in popular speech, where people refer to someone as allochtoon only when that person is an immigrant or an asylum seeker who is clearly distinct in ethnicity, clothing or behavior from the traditional Dutch society.

In the official and strictest sense, the largest group of allochtoon people are of German ancestry.

The groups that people usually think of when they hear the word allochtoon are those of Turkish, Moroccan or Surinamese ancestry.

As of 2006, these groups comprise roughly 350,000 people each, together constituting just over 6% of the population.

So a new term was introduced that lies closer to that meaning, “niet-westers allochtoon“, which excludes allochtoon people from Europe, Japan (a developed high income country) and Indonesia (a former colony), but not those from the Netherlands Antilles and Suriname, even though the Netherlands Antilles are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and those from Suriname immigrated when that country was still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

This definition coincides better with the popular conception of the word allochtoon as signifying people of low socio-economic status who are “different from us”.

Although some Dutch people view the usage of allochtoon as a stigma, several members of the Dutch Royal Family are officially allochtoon people, as one of the parents was foreign-born.

There is a regular stream of newspaper articles reporting statistics that unfavorably distinguish allochtoon people from the rest of the Dutch.

In 2013, the city council of Amsterdam decided to stop using the term allochtoon because of its divisive effect

Chthonic – kθɒnɪk – comes from the Greek word χθόνιος – chthonios which means “in, under, or beneath the earth”, from χθών – chthōn “earth,” pertaining to the Earth.

754 BCE – The very early Greek settlement of Cuma is about 4 kilometers from Baia, Italy. Cuma was traditionally founded at this date (Pithecusa – modern Ischia – had been occupied by Greeks some time earlier).

700-600 BCE – The Greeks began to localize places where an actual descent to the underworld might be made through navels (omphalos) in the ground. In the seventh century BCE these were sought around the Ionian Sea, and in the sixth century BCE the omphalos navels were looked for in Southern Italy.

Circa 600 BCE: According to Strabo, citing Ephorus, Lake Avernus was the site of the descent to the underworld, where the oracle of the dead existed. This was destroyed by a King of Cumae and afterwards this omphalos χθόνιος was restored elsewhere.

Circa 550 BCE: Orphic mystery cults appear. In the second half of the sixth century BCE, Greece underwent a religious rift. A new concept of humans having souls became widespread and there was a reaction against the Olympian and heroic mythology and values which had rewritten the ancient stories

χθόνιος Chthonic cults, preserved among the people in the countryside, were revived and given fresh meaning.

In March 2013 a team led by Francesco D’Andria, Professor of Classic Archaeology at the University of Salento, announced the discovery of a Plutonium or Gate to Hell in the Phrygian city of Hierapolis, now known as the city of Pamukkale, in southwestern Turkey.

The root word of khanti is ksha which it shares in common with kshama, and means soil, earth, dirt, ground, χθόνιος. It is a cognate of the Greek word chthon, as well as the Latin humus;which mean earth, soil. Related words include the Greek chamai, meaning on the ground; and the Latin homin or homo, meaning human.

Several English words have a common origin with χθών, χθόνιος including humus, humble / humiliate / humiliation / humility, exhume, homicide, hominid, homage, and human / humanism / humanity / humanitarian / humane.

Home might also be a cognate of χθόνιος, but by a different, more indirect root. It traces back through a German word to the Sanskrit word kshema, which means an inhabitable location, a place of peace and safety. The Sanskrit word shanti meaning peace, might also be related.

From Proto Indo European *dʰéǵʰōm. Cognates include Sanskrit क्ष (kṣa) and Ancient Greek χθών (khthōn). This word *dʰéǵʰōm is related to homo (“human being, man”). *dʰéǵʰōm became χθόνιος.

Russian: гумус (gumus) is also related to χθόνιος and, hence, *dʰéǵʰōm.

Humus has a Cyrillic spelling ху́мус, which is also related to χθόνιος.

*dʰéǵʰōm = Dhghemon = person, all from the same Indo European root as that for chthon, χθόνιος.

Old English guma person comes from this same Indo European root.

Old Lithuanian zmuo person zmunents human, also from the same root as χθόνιος.

Celtic (Old Irish) duine person from dyn, also from dhghom-yo.

These words are all from the same mother, *dʰéǵʰōm the mother of χθόνιος.

Dheghom = *dʰéǵʰōm = humus = χθόνιος = earth

χθών, related to chamaí = on the earth.

Sanskrit ksah ksam máh = earth = χθόνιος.

Iranian (which is an Indo European language) has za zam zemo = earth = χθόνιος.

All these words in all these languages are from the same mother.

Another related word is Old Church Slavonic, zemi zemlja = earth = χθόνιος.

As is Old Prussian zeme = earth = χθόνιος.

Old Irish du = place Welsh dyn = man

Albanian dhe = earth

Tocharian tkam tkanis kem = earth

Hittite tekan tagnas = earth

I must again emphasize that these words are spread over great distances and great, long periods of time.

If you saw your own family over all that distance and time, you would be amazed at their differences too.

The reason many people have trouble accepting the idea of evolution is that they have very little understanding of the immense amount of time that we are talking about. All of these words, nearly all of them, have happened within historical time, and look how much they have differed that relatively short time.

Evolution has happened over four and a half BILLION years.

Four and a half thousand million years.

That is a long time. Longer than the mere writing of the number would suggest. An unimaginably long time.

Many fundamentalists of all stripes consider that THE CREATION happened six thousand years ago, that is, around four thousand years before the common era.

Six thousand years is the mere blink of an eye compared to four and a half thousand million years.

No wonder fundamentalists have difficulty comprehending the idea of evolution.

I hear generational differences in the pronunciation of English over my lifetime which is an infinitesimal seventy years (seventy-two, if you want to get technical).

People in their twenties pronounce the language differently from the way we do. Have you noticed?

It’s not the vocabulary that I’m talking about, although there is that too.

I can tell how old someone is just from their accent in English, and I am not talking about the age in their voice, but about their intonation, stress on the words, and especially the pronunciation of the vowels.

Just to take the most trivial and obvious difference, many young people accent their declarative sentences with a ? at the end.

As I say, this is an obvious example. There are many others, more subtle and more pervasive, but difficult to adduce, especially in writing.

So, that is one or two generations, where one can note changes in the language.

Over ten generations the differences will be quite glaring.

Over twenty generations, the language may well be a different language.

Let’s see, we are separated from Chaucer and his middle English by, oh, thirty generations (allowing twenty years per generation).

Most people today cannot understand Chaucer’s English without special training.

That’s thirty generations, which are nothing compared to the distance separating many of these cognates for ‘earth,’ χθόνιος.

ChthoniC is a band in Taiwan.

Metal musicians like the name because of its infernal underworld connotations. Fair enough.

Chthonic law is defined as a system of law centered on the sacred character of the cosmos.

According to Professor H. Patrick Glenn, the Chthonic legal tradition emerged through experience, orality and memory.

According to him it is the oldest of all traditions and can be understood as the law of a culture or tribe.

Dr. Glenn refers to the laws of indigenous people as he believes these people are in close harmony to earth, to the χθόνιος

At a broader level chthonic law is used with reference to any law which is a part of the custom or tradition of the people and in this regard is distinguishable from the traditional definition of law.

Some authors believe that modern law has evolved from a scientific comparison of different Chthonic legal traditions.

It is studied as a part of pluralism of law.

Although Chthonic law appears susceptible to confusion, any potential confusion is removed by preserving what’s important to the law over thousands of years.

Transmission of the χθόνιος law takes place with oral tradition and memory over the ages.

Chthonic law has a communal basis and aims to promote consensus.

When dissent arises about chthonic law, new rules and traditions are generated.

Although law of the χθόνιος does not lend itself to complexity, complex institutions such as councils of elders are present, and hence the highest authority is the council of elders.

Dispute resolution is believed to be neither confusing nor alienating.

The importance of an individual in this χθόνιος law depends on his or her knowledge of traditions and culture and hence elders are valued.

See you next week?

Narada Michael Walden Sam Andrew

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Amphibology

Posted on January 5, 2014 by J L tagged.

Amphibology (from the Greek ἀμφιβολία, amphibolia) is a phrase or sentence that is grammatically ambiguous, such as she sees more of her children than her husband.

A sentence or phrase (as “nothing is good enough for you”) that can be interpreted in more than one way.

Amphibology is syntactic ambiguity.

Syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of meanings of single words, but from the relationship between the words and clauses of a sentence, and the sentence structure implied thereby. Thus, puns, being plays on single words, don’t really belong to the category amphibol0gy, but I will make free use of them below.

When a reader can reasonably interpret the same sentence as having more than one possible structure, the text meets the definition of amphibology.

In legal disputes, courts may be asked to interpret the meaning of syntactic ambiguities in statutes or contracts. In some instances, arguments asserting highly unlikely interpretations have been deemed frivolous.

A globally ambiguous sentence is one that has at least two distinct interpretations. After one has read the entire sentence, the ambiguity is still present.

Rereading the sentence does not resolve the ambiguity. Global ambiguities are often unnoticed because the reader tends to choose the meaning he or she understands to be more probable.

“The woman played with the baby in the gray shirt.” In this example, the baby could be wearing the gray shirt or the woman could be wearing the gray shirt.

The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose. — Henry VI (1.4.30), Shakespeare

This sentence could be taken to mean that Henry will depose the duke, or that the duke will depose Henry.

Eduardum occidere nolite timere bonum est. — Edward II, Marlowe.

Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, famously plotted to murder Edward II in such a way as not to draw blame on themselves, sending a famous order in Latin which, depending on where the comma was inserted, could mean either “Do not be afraid to kill Edward; it is good” or “Do not kill Edward; it is good to fear.”

I’m glad I’m a man, and so is Lola. — Lola, Ray Davies

SURVIVOR OF SIAMESE TWINS JOINS PARENTS

John saw the man on the mountain with a telescope.

Eat every carrot and pea on your plate. (Actually this is amphibology and punning, which is a slightly different matter.)

Flying saucers can be dangerous.

Whiskey running is risky.

IRAQI HEAD SEEKS ARMS

Moses tied his ass to a tree and walked forty miles.

Fifty Yards to the Outhouse by Willy Makeit and Betty Wont.

Tiger’s Revenge by Claude Balls

Hole In The Mattress by Mr. Completely

The Yellow River by I.P. Freely

Are these amphibologies? No. They are jokes I remember from the third grade.

Amphibologies are often difficult, if not impossible, to translate. Here is one that works in Spanish and English. I bought a book called ‘Learn to speak English in 15 steps.’ I have walked 3 blocks and nothing! Swindlers!

That one works in both languages. Estafador!

If one combines the words ‘to write-while-not-writing’: for then it means, that he has the power to write and not to write at once; whereas if one does not combine them, it means that when he is not writing he has the power to write. — Aristotle, Sophistical refutations, Book I, Part 4

REAGAN WINS ON BUDGET, BUT MORE LIES AHEAD

Farmer Bill Dies in House

Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms

Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim

Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge

Infant Pulled from Wrecked Car Involved in Short Police Pursuit

French push bottles up German rear

Or, this one: Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans

British left waffles on Falklands

Stolen painting found by tree

Little Hope Given Brain-Damaged Man

Somali Tied to Militants Held on U.S. Ship for Months

I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know. Julius Marx

The peasants are revolting.

A nurse complains: He had two bowel movements on me last night.

Don’t Get Mad. Get Glad.

The woman with the dog that had the parasol was brown.

The stress accent is on the third syllable am phi BO lo gy. [ˌæmfɪˈbɒlədʒɪ]

Save rags and waste paper

SHOT OFF WOMAN’S LEG HELPS NICKLAUS TO 66

They are flying planes.

Hospitals are sued by 7 foot doctors.

Teenagers shouldn’t be allowed to drive. It’s getting too dangerous on the streets.

Giving it to the public in the same location for over forty years.

2 Sisters Reunited After 18 Years At Checkout Counter

Used cars for sale: Why go elsewhere to be cheated? Come here first!

Down through the flaming annals of history.

Eat our curry, you won’t get better!

Throw mama from the train a kiss.

From the psychiatrist’s record at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital : Patient was found lying naked in bed with a sitter.

“For goddes speken in amphibologies, And for o soth, they tellen twenty lyes.” (Chaucer Troylus iv. 1406)

Such ambiguous termes they call Amphibologia, we call it the ambiguous, or figure of sence incertaine. (Puttenham Eng. Poesie)

Late Middle English: from Old French amphibologie, from late Latin amphibologia, from Latin amphibolia, from Greek amphibolos ’ambiguous.’

Amphi’bolic or amphiboly

Reading a book while growing mushrooms would be two ways of promoting life. So, what would be the word for this, Amphibia? Amphipharmikon?

Lawmen From Mexico Barbecue Guests

In Athens men learn’d […] to resolve a sophisticall argument, and to confound the imposture and amphibologie of words, captiously enterlaced together […]. 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Folio Society 2006, vol. 1 p. 133

Dog for sale. Will eat anything. Especially fond of children.

Amphibology: 14th Century: from Late Latin amphibologia, ultimately from Greek amphibolos ambiguous

At our drugstore, we dispense with accuracy!

Professor to student, on receiving a fifty-page term paper: “I shall waste no time reading it.” (Often attributed to Disraeli.)

Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted

No food is better than our food.

Dealers Will Hear Car Talk At Noon

Does anyone else think that this guy looks like a Zombie? He looks patched together from human parts. They left out the heart.

Child’s Stool Great for Use in Garden.

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. Thomas Jefferson

Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven. Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3

Some synomyms: prevarication, ambiguity, casuistry, dissimulation, duplicity, misrepresentation, sophistry, speciousness, tergiversation, song and dance.

The anthropologists went to a remote area and took photographs of some native women, but they weren’t developed.

Man drills eighteen holes in his head and lives. (About a man who died after drilling nineteen holes in his head)

Chick accuses male colleagues of sexism.

Rangers get whiff of Colon

Ford, Reagan neck in presidential primary

Student excited Dad got head job.

Enraged Cow Injures Farmer With Ax

Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25.

Lady Jacks off to hot start in conference

Homicide victims rarely talk to police

A-Rod goes deep, Wang hurt

Porn star sues over rear-end collision

Crack found in man’s buttocks

Girls’ schools still offering ‘something special’… head

12 On Their Way To Cruise Among Dead In Plane Crash

Study Shows Frequent Sex Enhances Pregnancy Chances

Utah Poison Control Center reminds everyone not to take poison.

Condom truck tips, spills load

Deer with big rack female it turns out

City unsure why the sewer smells

Weiner Exposed

17 remain dead in morgue Shooting Spree

Puerto Rican teen named mistress of the Universe

Local child wins gun from fundraiser

Tiger Woods plays with own balls, Nike says

Keegan fills Schmeichel’s gap with Seaman

Woman in sumo wrestler suit assaulted her ex-girlfriend in gay pub after she waved at man dressed as Snickers bar.

China Ferrari sex orgy death crash

German throws puppy at Hells Angels bikers then flees on bulldozer

Jellyfish apocalypse not coming

Man Accused of Killing Lawyer Receives a New Attorney

Mayor Parris to homeless: Go home

Missippi’s literacy program shows improvement

Most earthquake damage is caused by shaking

Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons

Alton attorney accidentally sues himself

Man eats underwear to beat Breathalyzer

State prisons to replace Easy-Open locks

Best Man left bleeding after being hit in head by flying dildo

Pigs die as houses are blown down

Being Bullied? Just act less gay, advise teachers

SHE THOUGHT CYCLIST WAS A TREE BRANCH

Shakira Attacked By Sea Lion: Blackberry Mistaken For Fish

I bottle-fed my children, but I breastfeed my pug dog

Clothed man drowns at lifeguard party celebrating drowning-free summer

Brazilian man dies after cow falls through his roof on top of him

Mississippi executes deformed mentally ill man after a last meal of steak, shrimp, Texas Toast, iced tea and a pack of Twizzlers.

Gay man who tried to poison lesbian neighbors with slug pellets over three-legged cat feud walks free

Penguins Not Protests on Turkish TV Fuel Anger

Giraffe Mulling Suicide as ‘Terrorists’ Chant in Cairo

DSM’s Flirt With Red Hot Mamas Cuts Investor Love for Plastics

Brokers Go Gray as Youth Proves Unsustainable With No Cold Calls

Cold War With Soup Tempts East Europeans to Menus of HBO, Sony

DoCoMo Cash, Girl Band Help Beat Softbank on Costs: Japan Credit

Kill Your Wife While Sleepwalking or Get Goldman Touch

Forex During Birth Shows Asian Women Top Men Private Bankers

Shark Oil for HIV Shot Takes Cue From Hemingway’s Old Man

The turkey is ready to eat.

Visiting relatives can be boring.

A lady with a clipboard stopped me in the street the other day. She said, ‘Can you spare a few minutes for cancer research?’ I said, ‘All right, but we’re not going to get much done.’

Planes can go around the world, iPhones can do a zillion things, but humans have not invented a machine that can debone a cow or a chicken as efficiently as a human being.

They are cooking apples.

The old men and women sat on the bench.

John told the woman that Bill was dating a projectile point.

They fed her rat poison.

Kids make nutritious snacks.

Grandmother of eight makes hole in one.

Drunk gets nine months in violin case.

Milk drinkers are turning to powder.

I know the words to that song about the queen don’t rhyme.

Eye drops off shelf.

Prostitutes appeal to pope.

Queen Mary having bottom scraped.

Miners refuse to work after death.

Panda mating fails. Veterinarian takes over.

Complaints about NBA referees growing ugly.

MAN EATING PIRANHA MISTAKENLY SOLD AS PET FISH

ASTRONAUT TAKES BLAME FOR GAS IN SPACECRAFT

Do it in a microwave oven. Save time.

Include Your Children When Baking Cookies

Diaper market bottoms out.

Is there a ring of débris around Uranus?

LACK OF BRAINS HINDERS RESEARCH

Tiger Goes Limp! Pulls Out After Nine Holes

Library Vote Upholds Decision To OK Guns But Bans Wooden Shoes

Poll: Santorum Comes From Behind In Alabama Three-Way

Homeless Man Under House Arrest

Jolie Is Pregnant By Pitt

Students Cook & Serve Grandparents

How To Buy A $450,000 Home for Only $750,000

Man Arrested After Cops Spot Suspiciously Small Package In His Undies

Midget Sues Grocer, Cites Belittling Remarks

Acceptance of Gay Marriage Must Be Won From Bottom Up

Man On Way To Perform Circumcision Charged With Driving Drunk

See you next week?

Linda LaFlamme Sam Andrew

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Andrew, Davies, Nieves & Wall – Coast To Coast on a piece of toast….. by Andrew, Davies, Nieves, & Wall

Posted on January 2, 2014 by J L tagged.

I got together with some really talented people a while back and we recorded fifteen songs. The whole project is ready to go, and we need your help in getting it out there. Thank you so much.

Sam Andrew Big Brother and the Holding Company

Andrew, Davies, Nieves & Wall – Coast To Coast on a piece of toast….. by Andrew, Davies, Nieves, & Wall

An album of 15 tracks of original music by Sam Andrew (Big Brother & The Holding Co.), Mary Bridget Davies, Ben Nieves, & Jim Wall

Sam Andrew

The stars have aligned!

Somehow, despite a wide geographic gap and an assortment of demanding schedules, a new musical release is in sight for former Janis Joplin band-mate, Sam Andrew, Broadway’s “A night with Janis Joplin” star, Mary Bridget Davies and Big Brother & the Holding Co. alumnus Ben Nieves and Jim Wall. With a collection of original material to record, 60′s rock pioneer Sam Andrew assembled his friends and frequent band mates at Blue Buddha Music Studio in Cleveland, Ohio. The result is Coast To Coast (on a piece of toast) by Andrew, Davies, Nieves & Wall, an album which cohesively and adventurously visits a vast array of styles including rock, jazz, blues, gospel, funk, r&b, soul and country. The track list features many numbers composed by Sam and additional collaborators over a span of decades as well as works written with Davies, Nieves and Wall.

Ben Nieves, Mary Bridget Davies, Jim Wall

The songs have been recorded!

The music is, as they say, “in the can”. In addition to outrageous performances by vocalist, Mary Bridget Davies and soul stirring guitar solos throughout, the record features inspired performances by guest keyboardist Chris Hanna, Rob Williams & Jake Wynne on horns and Becky Boyd & Claudia Schieve on Backing Vocals.

With your help, we can finish and release this collection of music!

Be among the first to own our new record while helping us bring our mission to fruition. Your involvement allows you to pre-order our cd and/or digital downloads. In addition, you will help to assure that the music we’ve worked so hard to create will reach the public. You will have access to the rewards we offer that are only available through our kickstarter campaign. You will also be supporting the creation of independently made and marketed music by facilitating mixing, mastering, pressing, artwork & layout, marketing and a wide variety of other costs involved.

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We’d love for you to “SHARE” & “LIKE” and help us spread the word any way you can.YOU can take us beyond the set goal amount required to receive our kickstarter funding so we can light up your speakers ASAP! Keep in mind that, if we do not reach our kickstarter goal by our preset end date, the project goes unfunded and all contributions are refunded. THANK YOU to those who get on board early and help us build up steam!

An Awesome Gift Idea!

You can pass your rewards on to friends and family as a holiday gift, as a thank you or just to be cool. Print the gift certificate below to let them know that they are a part of this musical creation because you’ve contributed on their behalf!

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Hope to see you soon!

Whether we’re performing together or with Big Brother, A Night With Janis Joplin, The Sam Andrew Band, Color Wheel or any of our other projects, we hope to run into you at the shows. Thanks for taking the time to visit our kickstarter page and an extra special thanks to those of you who contribute. Peace & Love

For more information about Sam, Mary, Ben and Jim, open the full bio (using the icon near the top right side of this page) and explore the links below. Also, visit bbhc.com and check out Sam’s artistic and informative blog… Sundays With Sam!

http://bbhc.com

http://marybridgetdavies.com

http://anightwithjanisjoplin.com

http://jimwallmusic.com

www.rockhall.com/blog/tag/ben-nieves

Risks and challenges – Learn about accountability on Kickstarter

Unforseeable delays are a part of life. If, for any reason such a delay occurs, we would send an update with an explanation and updated delivery information. The fact that the music is recorded greatly minimizes the risk of not completing the project in a timely manner.

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Our sincere appreciation for the part you’ve played in the success of this project and a humble yet heartfelt THANK YOU email.

Estimated delivery: Mar 2014
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Digital download of the entire Andrew, Davies, Nieves & Wall record.

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7 backers

Our full length CD shipped to your door.

Estimated delivery: Mar 2014

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7 backers

Our CD signed by Sam Andrew, Mary Bridget Davies, Ben Nieves & Jim Wall and shipped to your door.

Estimated delivery: Mar 2014

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2 backers

A signed CD, a digital download of the album and poster of the albums cover art.

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2 backers

A signed CD, signed album poster, signed copy of handwritten lyrics to one song by Sam Andrew and a digital download of the full album.

Estimated delivery: Mar 2014

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Your Name in the CD credits, a signed CD, a digital download of the album and a poster of the album art.

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1 backer

A signed CD, a digital download of our album, a poster of the CD artwork, your name in the CD credits, a signed copy of handwritten lyrics to a song by Sam Andrew and admission for 2 to a private listening event at The Brothers’ Lounge Music Hall in Cleveland, Ohio. Date of event to be announced.

Estimated delivery: Mar 2014

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2 signed CD’s, 2 digital downloads, 2 signed posters and admission for 2 to a private CD listening event including dinner for two at The Brothers’ Lounge Music Hall in Cleveland, Ohio. Cocktails not included. Date of event to be announced.

Estimated delivery: Mar 2014

Add $10 USD to ship outside the US

Funding period

Dec 23, 2013 – Jan 22, 2014 (30 days)

Aloft and Alow

Posted on May 12, 2013 by J L tagged.

Aloft and Alow

I’m happy to be alive, I’m happy to be who I am.

We just know inside that we’re queens. And these are the crowns we wear.

These flutes are about seven thousand years old. The holes are in the same place where they are on woodwinds today.

The tallest building in the world is now in Dubai, the biggest factory in the world is in China, the largest oil refinery is in India, the largest investment fund in the world is in Abu Dhabi, the largest Ferris wheel in the world is in Singapore.

One of my favorite times in life is after we’ve played the gig and we are driving home, tired and happy and contented. Soft conversation and companionship.

I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes.

It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees, but neither one is a really a good time.

To read too many books is harmful? Typical of something Mao Zedong would say.

You can have everything you want in life if you just help other people get what they want.

Two people are inside us, the artist and the technician. You’re born an artist and then you have to grow the technician.

I cannot tell you how happy and in love with everything I am.

I play music with good people so I can be inspired and so that I can inspire them.

So, are you praying to the Jewish Jesus, the baby Jesus in golden fleece diapers, the bilingual Mexican Jesús, the grown up Jesus or the ninja Jesus?

When virtue and modesty enlighten her charms, the luster of a beautiful woman is brighter than the stars of heaven, and the influence of her power it is in vain to resist. Akhenaton

God said to the angels, “I am going to create a beautiful land watered by a silvery river, with trees full of delicious dates, and I shall call this land Egypt. ” And the angels said, “Lord, don’t you think this is a little unfair to the rest of the world?” And God said, “Just wait till you see whom I am giving them for neighbors.”

If paper beats rock, rock beats scissors and scissors beats paper, what beats everyone? A redhead.

You feel touched and honored and alive when you give to someone.

Learning is exciting and it keeps you young.

Happiness doesn’t come from applause. Happiness comes from believing that you have done something good and meaningful.

Why did the blonde smile in a lightning storm? Because she knew that god was taking her photograph.

Are you not thinking what I’m not thinking?

Humility may be the mother of all the other virtues.

Or is it courage? Is courage the mother of all virtues? Hard to say. What do you think?

Or gratitude? Is gratitude the mother of all virtues?

You have to be very courageous sometimes to have a positive attitude, because many foolish people assume that anyone with a positive attitude is naïve, uneducated, stupid, and there are a lot of foolish people, many of them rich and powerful.

I am comfortable telling people what my opinions are, but I have absolutely no need to convert them. À chacun son goût. I hope I am quoting that correctly. De gustibus non disputandum. To each his own. Suum cuique. Whatever works for you.

I’ve never felt that I needed a lot of attention, but, then, I’ve never been to a psychiatrist either, so what do I know?

Better to be wise than smart.

You have to keep on living, even if it kills you.

If we all followed the Book of Leviticus, half the people in the United States would be executed tomorrow.

If there were a god, what would she think about the phrase, “holy war in the holy land?”

Doctor, I’ve been bitten on the leg by a werewolf! Did you put anything on it? No, he seemed to like it as it was.

Geek alert: Calculus and alcohol don’t mix. Don’t drink and derive.

Why did the tomato blush? She saw the salad dressing.

How’s your millinery business going? Oh, it’s sew, sew. Berthe Morissot.

Did you hear about my favorite actress who just severed all her connections? With her knife? No, Witherspoon.

They were going to let her into Harvard, but she spelled Yale with a Six.

Elise corner.

Bachelors have consciences. Married men have wives. Samuel Johnson

Why does Snoop Doggy carry an umbrella? Fo’drizzle.

Hey… are you Jamaican? Because, JAMAICAN me crazy!

I was always too mature for my age – and not very happy. I had no young friends. I wish I could go back to those days. If I could only live it all again, how I would play and enjoy the other girls. What a fool I was. Maria Callas

Her surname is Shure. She said, “Do you think people know it?” and I said, “Are you kidding? To musicians it’s like Coca-Cola or Frigidaire or Kleenex. The thing you have to worry about is that it will become so generic that you will lose the copyright.”

Shurely there must be things that you can do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing.

Kate Russo in Ko Samui, Thailand, playing some standards on the piano.

Cat says, “I would like a Bombay…. Martini,” and the bartender says, “Why the long pause?” and she says, “Oh, I don’t know, I’m just built that way.”

Better be wronged than wrong, better be cheated than cheat.

In my family tree, depending on which day it is, I’m either the bark or the sap.

We can’t add days to our lives, but we can add life to our days.

The more corrupt the country, the more laws it will have.

What do guitar players and a terrorists have in common? They both destroy bridges.

I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results. J.S. Bach

It’s far easier to sing to 250,000 people than it is to sing to 25.

When I sing, I feel like when you’re first in love. It’s more than sex. It’s that point two people can get to they call love, when you really touch someone for the first time, but it’s gigantic, multiplied by the whole audience. I feel chills.

Be quick to pardon, quick to forgive, offer your hand as long as you live.

Being happy at home is the best happiness.

True friends, like Brutus, will stab you in the front.

We were in Glenfarg, eastern Scotland, between Edinburgh and Perth, in 2006 with our family Carla Piliwale, Edd Hart, Barbara Joy Langer, Barry Melton, Jerry Donohue… that was a good time.

All my life I have read the books I wanted to read, with very little direction and purpose. It has worked for me, but I don’t know that I would recommend it to anyone else.

You will never meet a rich person who tries to convince you that having a lot of money will make your life easier.

People in general are kind but not really just.

Everyday meet someone new, a new idea, a new beginning, a new direction.

Self confidence and ability usually go together.

To spend life with a beautiful, happy woman, is anything better?

Women naturally have so much power that for a long time every law and custom sought to subjugate them. In fact, this is still the case, but it’s never going to work, I’ll tell you that right now.

Have you ever walked into a magnificent library and thought, “Oh, my god, I will never read a fraction of these books.” It’s rather like standing on the coast of the Pacific Ocean.

Sarah with her daughter Adyson in the wilds of Florida.

If a great tragedy happens to you, it might be worth considering how much a greater tragedy you have escaped.

Let each be happy in her own way, for what better way is there?

When you choose to be a musician, an actor, a poet, you are going against the odds. As Ruth Gordon said, Success is a refusal to face facts.

Somehow we were given life. Now it is up to us to live life well.

We all have to die. Is that a tragedy? Is it a comedy? It’s OK with me. Living forever could be, well, a little repetitious, even for the most creative mind.

I always have that secret hope that somehow I am not completely ridiculous in the eyes of women.

Don’t stand back and think how scary it is. Grab the bull by the horns, not the tail.

How you treat those who are “less” than you… animals, children, the homeless, is the measure of your character.

Nothing is so good to see as the happiness of one’s wife.

When you lie in bed at night and you think of all those things from so long ago, things that you wish you could call back and improve, the chance is now. Be a better person now and pay it back. Pay it back ever so slowly. If you live long enough, maybe you can pay it back enough and forgive yourself.

Life is a big Otis Elevator. Some are going up, some are going down, some just get on to take a ride and have a look around.

If you really love what someone else has done, say so, and then you join in the beauty of it.

Music is the art of mixing pleasure with truth.

Pass quickly through your sadness. Don’t give it any power.

Don’t think too much about a new project. Begin it. Do it.

Men are loud and full of bluster. Women take care of life and give it luster.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

Women always know where things are… unless we’re talking about car keys.

Being poor is no disgrace, but it is a very inconvenient place.

A good marriage is as much about friendship as it is about love.

If you really want to remember something, try to forget it.

If you believe that people are generally kind and honest, then you are probably kind and honest.

Life is short. Read the best books you can find. Leave the trashy ones far behind.

Doing what you love is labor without weariness.

You can never be great by imitating. The best you can do is get very close to your model but you will never be better than your model by imitating.

Perhaps better to imitate many models and pull together a style of your own.

I hate zoos for the same reason that I hate jails.

If you lie to someone, you hurt yourself more than you do the person who hears the lie.

If you really want to remember something, pay attention to it, think about it, note all of its peculiarities. Sing it.

Another good measure of a person is what she would do if she knew she were never going to get caught.

Do your utmost to find your way into a world of beauty.

If you go into politics you must learn the art of entering a room and knowing who is for you and who is against you. Great way to live, right?

I watch Fox News the way I would watch The Three Stooges or some buffoon program like The Gong Show. How ridiculous are they going to be this time? In twenty years, mark my words, if they run this stuff on TV it is going to look far more ridiculous than the most corny aspects of, say, I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners. But just as entertaining.

Immortality… it just seems to go on forever.

There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.

I don’t like to go to the movies to see violence or some kind of spy thing with all kinds of information you have to assimilate to understand the plot. First of all, it’s almost always the kind of information you want nothing to do with in your real life. Shady, murky, power without purpose, might without meaning, machinelike and without soul.

I want a film that is going to entertain me, yes, but I also want that film to make me a better person.

The future comes quickly, and, before you know it, it’s the past.

Are you reading this in the bedroom?

Passionate love? When you figure out how to make that last, let me know. Otherwise, it’s a spiritual love, work, companionship, respect for the other, kindness.

We’re all going to die, so how do you want to live?

I’m not asking what the future has in store, I just take each day as a gift and enjoy it.

Praise is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don’t swallow it.

Stay on an even keel, be sharp, be wise, be real.

Nothing lasts… not even unhappiness.

Write something and then try to take as many words out of it as you can and still retain the meaning.

You learn most about yourself in hard times.

When it’s an uphill climb, stay calm, stay level in your mind.

Good health, a good conscience and a comfortable house, every now and then a delicious mouse.

A garden and friends and books… I have everything I need.

Experience is as a good a name as any for our mistakes.

Even while striving, stay calm and keep driving.

Don’t say good things about someone unless you mean them, and, if you mean them, say them all the time and loudly.

I’m so smart that I often don’t understand a word I’m saying.

People are wrong when they say pop music is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what’s wrong with it.

It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

Power without probity is pernicious.

Strength without scruple is sick.

Success is being able to do for a living that which makes you happy.

I never thought I would spend my life doing something fun. Of course I never thought at all.

Inside I am still a geek, and maybe outside too.

You can do something great not by force, or even by talent, but simply by keeping at it.

It’s hard to fake creativity and humor.

All of us should be very thankful that life is unfair.

I like it when my avocations become my vocations.

I’ll go through life either in first class or in third, but never in second.

I read my favorite books over and over. I have probably read Boswell’s Life of Johnson ten times. And it’s not a little book in any sense.

There is a lot of craft behind comedy, but if comedy is done right, you never see the craft.

You can ask me almost anything and I will answer you as best I can.

I bet people never asked Edgar Varèse, “Hey, do you ever think of doing funny music?”

I try to do what is real, not ideal.

I travel so much that I love to be at home.

There are always two or three or four sides to every story.

What’s interesting about the process of playing music is how often you have no idea what you’re doing.

There’s a hidden link between absolute discipline and absolute freedom.

The old days were the old days and they were great days, but now is now.

If you practice a bit, you can be whatever kind of person you choose, so choose well.

Wit or pleasantry or humor is always to be encouraged… even puns.

People always think that performers are extraverts which is almost never the case in my experience.

Never go anywhere where you have to wear brown shoes.

I couldn’t wait for success, so I’ve gone ahead without it.

Finding fame later in life is much healthier.

If you ever see me in a social setting wearing any kind of sportswear, you’ll know I’m in trouble.

I’m not a royal family watcher… not really a watcher of any kind of celebrity, come to think of it.

It makes me happy when musicians get rich, because the odds against it are so great.

It’s a good thing I brought my library card, because I am checking you out.

I find it hard to relax around any man who’s got the second button on his shirt undone.

What do Alexander the Great and Sam the Ham have in common? Their middle names.

I rarely leave my house.

I don’t want to associate myself with any specific group of politicians.

I did pick up a guitar once, but the strings hurt my fingers so I put it down again.

I’ve always been in the right place at the right time. I put myself there.

When she started to play, Steinway came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano.

I’m Jewish, but I’m totally not.

Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.

Of course there is other intelligent life in the universe, probably on hundreds, if not millions of planets. They are all so far away, however, that we may never find them. Space is immense. That’s a good name for it. Space.

I love to play with great guitar players. Great guitar players make everything better.

I love criticism just so long as it’s unqualified praise.

I’ve become a really honest person since I was a child, but I do have some overdue library fines.

We’ll see you next week.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

_________________________________________

The word “vaudeville” may come from the expression voix de ville which means “voice of the city” or “songs of the town.”

Or, the term may come from a collection of fifteenth-century satirical songs by Olivier Basselin, “Vaux de Vire.”

Then again, the word vaudeville may derive from the Vau de Vire, a valley in Normandy noted for its style of satirical songs with topical themes.

Vaudeville, referring specifically to North American variety entertainment, came into common usage after 1871, with the formation of Sargent’s Great Vaudeville Company of Louisville, Kentucky.

B. F. Keith took the next step, starting in Boston, where he built an empire of theatres and brought vaudeville to the US and Canada.

Later, E.F. Albee, adoptive grandfather of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, managed the chain to its greatest success.

Circuits such as those managed by Keith-Albee provided vaudeville’s greatest economic innovation and the principal source of its industrial strength.

They enabled a chain of allied vaudeville houses that remedied the chaos of the single-theatre booking system by contracting acts for regional and national tours. These could easily be lengthened from a few weeks to two years.

The continued growth of the lower-priced cinema in the early 1910s dealt the heaviest blow to vaudeville.

A difference of opinion is what makes horse races and missionaries.

The same thing happened to cinema when television came along.

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

Cinema was first regularly commercially presented in the US in vaudeville halls. The first public showing of movies projected on a screen took place at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in 1896.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

Al Jolson, W.C. Fields, Mae West, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Jimmy Durante, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Edgar Bergen, Fanny Brice, Burns and Allen and Eddie Cantor, to name a few, used their vaudeville status to vault into the new medium of cinema.

I have a scheme for stopping war. It’s this– no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one.

These former vaudeville performers often exhausted in a few moments of screen time the novelty of an act that might have kept them on tour for several years.

If you find the right job, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.

The stars have aligned!

The songs have been recorded!

With your help, we can finish and release this collection of music!

Sharing is caring!

An Awesome Gift Idea!

Hope to see you soon!

For more information about Sam, Mary, Ben and Jim, open the full bio (using the icon near the top right side of this page) and explore the links below. Also, visit bbhc.com and check out Sam’s artistic and informative blog… Sundays With Sam!

Risks and challenges – Learn about accountability on Kickstarter

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