12.9.2023 – God rest you merry!

God rest you merry
qualifying the object
mispunctuated

“God rest you merry, sir.” so says William to Touchstone in As You Like It, Act 5, Scene 1 by Big Bill.

That is how the first line of the song by the same name should read.

God rest you merry, Gentleman.

Kind of like saying, GO BLUE, Gentleman.

We are not saying God Rest You, Merry Gentleman, in the same way we would not be saying, GO, Blue Gentleman.

Wikipedia has much to say on the subject.

The historic meaning of the phrase “God rest you merry” is ‘may God grant you peace and happiness’; the Oxford English Dictionary records uses of this phrase from 1534 onwards. It appears in Shakespeare’s play As You Like It and the phrase “rest you merry” appears in Romeo and Juliet; both plays date from the 1590s.

The transitive use of the verb rest in the sense “to keep, cause to continue, to remain” is typical of 16th- to 17th-century language.

However, in the present day, merry is often misinterpreted as an adjective modifying gentlemen.

Etymonline.com notes that the first line “often is mispunctuated” as “God rest you, merry gentlemen” because in contemporary language, rest has lost its use “with a predicate adjective following and qualifying the object” (Century Dictionary).

This is the case already in the 1775 variant, and is also reflected by Dickens’s replacement of the verb rest by bless in A Christmas Carol.

How often do we get to use that wonderful phrase, often is mispunctuated.

And don’t lets leave out Ye and You.

Again Wikipedia, “Some variants give the pronoun in the first line as ye instead of you, in a pseudo-archaism. In fact, ye would never have been correct, because ye is a subjective (nominative) pronoun only, never an objective (accusative) pronoun.“

How will I ever sing this Christmas Carol again?

In truth I can’t wait to pass by some choral group singing outside next to a Salvation Army Red Bucket and hear them sing, “God Rest YE Merry Gentleman.”

I will have to get their attention and stop their singing so I can say that while I appreciate their effort at a pseudo-archaism, they cannot sing YE because use of the word is not correct, because ye is a subjective (nominative) pronoun only, never an objective (accusative) pronoun.

God rest you merry, y’all!

12.7.2023 – piled ice, snow, every

piled ice, snow, every
thing looked raw except when
you knew what it meant

There wasn’t even a trace of green in the landscape but then it smelled like spring in the fifty-degree temperature and the sight of the mounds of snow on the north sides of houses, shacks, and log cabins, and the drifts along fence rows, and the glistening drift ice far out on Lake Michigan and the ice piled on shore on the westerly sides of the forested peninsulas out into the lake.

It was more the contrasts in the present that attracted me to this paragraph.

Its a line from the fifth Brown Dog Novella, He Dog, by Jim Harrison.

I grew up in Michigan.

I grew up in West Michigan when the Lake Michigan was a 45 minute drive away and more times than I can remember, I made the drive out to see Lake Michigan covered in ice.

Trips to the ice do stand out though.

Once when my wife, then girl friend, said to me that I was going to get her out on the ice.

Then I pointed out to her that we had been walking out on the ice for a couple hundred yards.

There was also the time I went through the ice when I was about 12.

I yelled HELP, I’M THROUGH THE ICE and my brother Jack, who had driven us out to the lake so was nominally in charge yelled IS HE KIDDING.

My brother Pete got to a place where he could see me and his eyes bugged out and he yelled NO!

My point being that when I read, “the glistening drift ice far out on Lake Michigan and the ice piled on shore on the westerly sides.”

But that isn’t exactly accurate.

I mean I wasn’t reading.

I was listening.

I was listening to the audio book as I took a lunch time walk at work.

In my head, I was along the frozen shoreline of Lake Michigan.

My feet were making their way towards the Atlantic Ocean.

Both places were about 55 degrees.

I heard “… the sight of the mounds of snow on the north sides of houses, shacks, and log cabins, and the drifts along fence rows, and the glistening drift ice far out on Lake Michigan.”
I saw the December empty streets of a summer Resort and then the glint of the sun off the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

The beach was almost empty.

I don’t know what Kings and Presidents get paid or how much money those billionaires have, but I don’t think they get to walk along an empty beach at lunch time too often.

It was quiet.

I could see forever out past Tybee Island.

I could hear the waves.

I could hear the putt putt of a shrimper going past not too far off shore.

I could hear the gulls.

It all sounded a but raw except when you knew what it meant.

12.7.2023 – in small rooms, offices

in small rooms, offices
hallways, elevators, buildings
never knew existed …

Due to a medical crisis of no little impact that landed one of my children in the hospital for five weeks I found myself making many trips to the city of Charleston, SC and while in Charleston I have found myself in many small rooms, offices, elevators and buildings that I never knew existed let alone thought I would ever be in.

I was sitting in a large, sunlit waiting room yesterday and I looked around.

There were other people like me who were there because they had to be there to get something fixed or were waiting while other people got something fixed.

There were, like me, in a new place.

Then there were these people who inhabited this place.

The office staffers.

The medical staffers.

And the people who interacted with these people on a regular basis.

It came to me that that this room was a foreign to me as if it was in another country.

More than that.

It was another world.

The directions, the locations, the habits, the customs even the language were all different.

Normal is all relative I guess.

Bizarre is where my mind goes I guess when I am physically occupied and restrained while I can give free rein to just thinking.

I started to get a handle on my surroundings by thinking of CS Lewis and the final Narnia Book, The Last Battle and the phrase, “Come further up, come further in!”

Mr. Lewis writes, “… as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different — deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know.“

We drove to the city of Charleston.

We took a new exit and parked in a new location and walked on another ramp to a new building and took an elevator to a new floor to a new room filled with new people who directed us further up and further in to another room with new who people who directed us further up and further in again and again until we were deep inside.

In a small room, an office by way of elevators and hallways in a building I never even knew existed.

We met people along the way who sat at keyboards and typed out instructions that brought up information about my son that told his medical story.

Then we met Doctors who knew more about my son’s insides than they would ever know about him.

So here is the point.

All these things, this world, it all functions and exists even now as I type this.

Parallel worlds?

Parallel universes?

Sitting in this sunlight waiting room and thinking what fresh world had I landed in?

Sitting in this sunlight waiting room, it kind of creeped me out.

Who in the world are we to think anything about ourselves.

Then I thought of quote of Mr. Churchill’s.

Mr. Churchill was speaking on the topic of prison reform when on July 20, 1910, he said in a speech in the House of Commons, that there existed … “A calm and dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused against the State, and even of convicted criminals against the State … a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment … and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every man — these are the symbols which in the treatment of crime and criminals mark and measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are the sign and proof of the living virtue in it.”

I just wrote, “Who in the world are we to think anything about ourselves.”

Yet in response, I have to answer maybe we have … an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every man.

Couple that with For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:21)

And I tell you something.

That was quite enough for sitting in a sunlit room that I had never been before let along knew existed.

12.6.2023 – in a hat, drinking

in a hat, drinking
sherry, reading poems, dream
long long dreams of youth

Daise Terry
North Brookline, Maine
14 December, 1938

Dear Miss Terry

Would you have your office order me a copy of “Last Poems” by A. E. Housman?

I want to give it to Roger for Christmas.

He asked for Housman poems, a bottle of Amontillado, and a top hat.

I can only assume that he is going to sit around in the hat, drinking the sherry, reading the poems, and dreaming the long long dreams of youth.

Yr distant friend
E. B. White

From the Letters of E.B. White by E. B. White, collected and edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth, 1976, New York : Harper & Row.

I am still dreaming the long long dreams.

Maybe I am younger than I think.

Age loses some objectivity when you move to resort town.

Here where I live in Bluffton, SC, the median age is around 32 and I am far above that.

If I drive out on the Island where I work, the median age goes up to 60 and I am once again, middle aged.

It is a miracle of youth to rival anything found by Ponce de León and not controlled by Prestor John and I can get right back into the dreaming those long long dreams.

Let’s play two!

12.5.2023 – comes quiet stirring

comes quiet stirring
a vast pulsating music
the Sun delivered

There is a neighborhood where we like to walk near our house where this group of about a half dozen families like to decorate their homes for Halloween and Christmas.

Most years it seems to be a benign competition.

This year, somehow, someway, the families involved got together and coordinated their efforts.

Each house went all out as usual.

Decorating starts before Thanksgiving and by the long weekend giving thanks, that end of the street glows.

I cannot imagine how many hours and dollars are invested in these displays.

The amount of time alone needed to put it all together would stop me from even thinking of entering the competition of individual home decoration.

Then, to show their bond of community they turned the sidewalk that spans this group of houses into one long tunnel of light.

Every 10 feet or so of sidewalk has a 7 foot high hoop of PCP pipe that is wrapped in lights.

Each hoop is connected with extension cords to the next hoop.

You can walk the length the block under an arbor of Christmas lights.

Don’t get me wrong.

It is impossible to walk down this sidewalk, under the lights, and not feel better, a little happier for doing it, for being there.

You can’t look at this lights from across the pond, with the water reflecting the lights, and not feel better, a little happier for doing it, for being there.

I cannot imagine the time and human effort that its required to put on such a show.

As I drove to work this morning the sun was about to come up out of the Atlantic Ocean.

Far into the vast the mist grows dim,
A deep and holy silence broods around,
Fire burns beyond the vaporous rim,
And crystal-like the dew bestrews the ground.

The last laggard star has fled the glowing sky,
Comes a quiet stirring and a gentle light,
A vast pulsating music, throbbing harmony,
Beyond the Sun delivered from the gloom of night!*

No human effort required.

No extension cords.

No PCP pipe.

The earth revolves daily and somewhere in the world, the Sun is coming up.

You feel better, a little happier for seeing it, for being there.

*The poem is Dawn by WH Auden.