Twenty Years Ago Today

On Facebook a Facebook Friend wants to know what people were doing twenty years ago today.  Since 1987, twelve years, I had been on the third floor of a brick apartment building.  I wrote a first diary entry in a new blank book that begins November 30, 1999.  The entry was a very first entry in a new blank book diary. 

Tuesday  November 30, 1999

Oh, I am weary of skipping my mind through the arbitrary days events to guess how to start off some entry again – all of it feels like I can begin anywhere.

An old 5-year diary with almost no entries is about watching television programs at Grandma’s.  The whole just did not go too far.

In Seattle are marches against the World Trade Organization.

I am steaming sweet potato (diced) in my nice revereware steamer.  (Now this reminds me of some of the letters from Scandinavia.  How the news information is distracted – in the letter – with up to the minute household descriptions.)  I am making Sweet Potato Vinaigrette.  Somehow all the historical domestic recollections are so –

(I also noted down the day elsewhere, and that day I delivered newspapers for an hour and a quarter.  I spent just a quarter of an hour writing the diary entry.  And I worked from two to four at the hourly library worker job I had found at the University of Washington Tacoma Branch. Both jobs started about six months before, I delived newspapers for five and nearly one-half years.)

The Record Album: Entertainment Drought 1964 and "State Fair" (from July 2019 Spice Drawer Mouse)

The Record Album:  Entertainment Drought 1964 And “State Fair”:

          A 1995 Review, Love is in the air (mail)

by Michael J. Vaughn, from the Internet

          The Anxiety of Influence   by Harold Bloom

A Review

A review of two musicals “she loves me”

And “Most Happy Fella”

Refers to “The entertainment drought

That followed the Kennedy Assassination”.

Influence

In the United States that mourned

It is the swerve of Influence described by

Harold Bloom.    Along a neural pathway

A specific work of art.

Thought turns instead

To a continuum and immediacy

For that national emergency and shock.

Physically I turn off art

I would have experienced.

In State Fair 1962 the family

Reaches Dallas in the convertible.  And thought

Turns instead to the tragedy.

The Record Album

The entertainment drought

Rose from the audience.  State Fair 1962

Was set in Dallas.  On my album cover

From Andrews and Burnett,

Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall

Enormous sheepskin chaps

From Neiman Marcus – Big D,

Little A, double-L,  A,  Ess…

After, I almost never listened anymore.

The concert

While the tv stayed on with serious music

News and No commercials in 1963

She came back in the evening from

The Runeberg Lodge Choir fiftieth anniversary.

They presented their concert but cancelled

The Sunday Banquet and the people

From Canada started back.

From the backyard garage and steps

Through the back porch, into the kitchen.

She would have figured out On Friday

if we had wanted to go with her

that Saturday Evening.

The Record Album, Again

I almost never listened anymore. 

Orange cover - They have on their

Enormous Sheepskin chaps from Neiman Marcus.

On the internet:  a you tube video of What’s My Line

With Carol Burnett, February 1964.

As she shakes hands with the panel

And she hugs Buddy Hackett,

She continues to look so solemn.

I was confirmed in 1964

In school and In the front pew directly beneath

The national prayer for the bereaved

we continued into spring.   Confirmed, young

And influenced, we were bereaved.