Met Diary this week ran a feature selecting the top five items for the year and picked a winner. I’m going to share one of the non-winners, though. It’s by Jane Moos Cohen, and is called “Extra Ticket.”
It was April 1992, and I had two tickets for the Chicago Symphony at Carnegie Hall.
The person I had invited to join me was unable to come, so I did something I had never done before: I stood on the sidewalk and held up the extra ticket to see if I could find a taker.
A man approached me, asked for a discount, and we completed the transaction.
We sat next to each other, and the rest is history. I had just turned 40, he was 45 and neither of us had been married. We got engaged that August and married in October, 30 years ago last month.
Happy Anniversary, my love.
Oh, my goodness — Phil Ochs is here, at 100 down today, clued as a “Joan Baez contemporary.” My heart skipped a beat. His song “Changes” was sung at my wedding by sisters-in-law Bobbie and Judy. “Sit by my side, come as close as the air.” Our cat Philly was named after him.
But the song of his I want to share in owl chatter this morning is the extraordinary “When I’m Gone.” Here are the lyrics, and you can hear him perform it while you read them via Youtube with a simple click, below:
There’s no place in this world where I’ll belong when I’m gone
And I won’t know the right from the wrong when I’m gone
And you won’t find me singin’ on this song when I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here
And I won’t feel the flowing of the time when I’m gone
All the pleasures of love will not be mine when I’m gone
My pen won’t pour a lyric line when I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here
And I won’t breathe the bracing air when I’m gone
And I can’t even worry ’bout my cares when I’m gone
Won’t be asked to do my share when I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here
And I won’t be running from the rain when I’m gone
And I can’t even suffer from the pain when I’m gone
Can’t say who’s to praise and who’s to blame when I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here
Won’t see the golden of the sun when I’m gone
And the evenings and the mornings will be one when I’m gone
Can’t be singin’ louder than the guns while I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here
All my days won’t be dances of delight when I’m gone
And the sands will be shifting from my sight when I’m gone
Can’t add my name into the fight while I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here
And I won’t be laughin’ at the lies when I’m gone
And I can’t question how or when or why when I’m gone
Can’t live proud enough to die when I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here
There’s no place in this world where I’ll belong when I’m gone
And I won’t know the right from the wrong when I’m gone
And you won’t find me singin’ on this song when I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it
I guess I’ll have to do it
Guess I’ll have to do it
While I’m here
Youtube allows for comments below the performances, and I found this one below “When I’m Gone:”
“An angelic voice, a beatific heart, a sturdy conscience, a troubled mind and addicted body. It’s no way to go through life, son. Thank you for trying as long as you did.”
That’s a tough segment to follow, but who better to try than Jennifer Aniston, or JEN, at 58D. I looked for a funny quote of Rachel’s but found a better one of Ross’s, which was probably spoken to Rachel:
“You’re over me? When were you under me?”
Sounds like Groucho.
I looked through about 100 photos of her, trying to pick the perfect one. She’s pretty even when she’s not trying. In this one, she’s trying.
It’s Rod Serling’s birthday today (1925), of The Twilight Zone. There were 172 episodes of the original show, starting in November of 1958. I remember several, including one in which a dollhouse enthusiast becomes a miniature figure in his dollhouse at the end.
Serling was born to a Jewish family in Syracuse, NY. His dad was a grocer and his mom a homemaker. He was a chatty child and once, during a two-hour car drive, his mother, father, and brother decided to stay silent to see if Serling would notice. He didn’t; he spoke nonstop for the entire ride. He smoked 3 to 4 packs of cigarettes a day and died of a heart attack when he was 50. File it under “Way Too Young,” in The Twilight Zone.
Dorothy Wordsworth, William’s sister, was also born on this day in 1771, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. (We’ll just let that sit there, and tiptoe away.) Get this — she was a poet too, filling journals with her verses, and William often stole from her work, including parts of some of his best known poems such as “I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud.” WTF Bill?!
Their parents died when William and Dorothy were young and they were separated and sent to live with different relatives. When they later reunited (when she was 23), they stayed together for the rest of their lives. Bill wrote this of her in Tintern Abbey:
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes …
My dear, dear Sister!
Everybody’s favorite clue today was at 69D: “Cut with a letter opener?” If you can think of “cut” as a cut of meat, and “letter opener” as “starting with a letter,” you can come up with T-BONE STEAK.
TIL (Today I Learned) that RAGAMUFFIN is a breed of cat, known for being friendly and having thick fur. A pair of ragamuffin kittens:
Meowy Christmas, everybody!
The Wellington Files 