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It’s the eve of February and the eve of a major snowstorm in Toronto. Hence the two themes in tonight’s radio program…

I devote the first hour to some Norse mythology. I briefly mentioned Thor one of their gods that we are most familiar with. Here’s more information about him, again from a very old edition of the Britannica.

“Thor, god of war, always had to fight the Frost Giants.” You might remember that he is usually pictured carrying a large hammer. The hammer was made for him by those who dwelt under the mountains–the dwarves. It seems the dwarves of Norse mythology shared a lot in common with Tolkien’s mountain dwellers. “He could kill anything with it. And whenever he threw it, it always came back to his hand. Once, in a contest with the giants, Thor drank up a good part of the ocean. Another time he hit the earth so hard with his hammer that he left a deep canyon where the blow fell. It was Thor who captured the Midgard Serpent and forced it to coil around the earth under the sea. He did this by making the snake wrap itself around the world and then swallow its tail.

“The Norse gods lived a much different existence from that of the Greek gods. Zeus, Athene, Apollo, and the others traveled among men, enjoyed their adventures and responsibilities, and lived in peace and security. But Odin and Thor and their fellow gods lived in constant fear of the Frost Giants.”

The strength of tomorrow’s storm may seem like one of Thor’s battles. Be careful on the roads. You might want to set your clock radio earlier than usual for Erin and Mike. They’ll keep you up-to-date with everything you need to know to “weather” the storm..

***

Don Jackson

There used to be an old-time radio show on the air called The Bickerson’s. If my memory serves me correctly, I’m pretty sure that Don Ameche starred in it. You can correct me if I’m wrong. It featured a comedic slant on the bickering that some long-married couples are prone to. I’ve often wondered if it’s a behaviour that is learned while growing up…

My daughter and son have had the occasion to “not” get along. I’ve even been called in to be mediator in some of these disputes. These are not major disagreements. It’s more like nit-picking than anything else. It seems they “agree to disagree” on most things, like whose turn it is on their computer, whose turn it is to set and clear the table. That sort of thing. Nothing major, just nit-picking, or bickering.

There are many things they do agree on. They both have the same tastes in music, TV shows and the games they play on their game systems. It’s not like they have a quarrel about everything. They just like to challenge each other, and I believe that it’s just a normal part of growing up.

We spend a lot of time at hockey games over the fall and winter months. We’re in the second-round of our playoffs right now. My daughter has always claimed she’s not a fan of the game and yet, on occasion, I’ve caught her secretly watching the game unfold when it’s her brother’s turn to be in the net. She’s always been known to help him carry his equipment into and out of the arenas, and all the while they’re squabbling about something or other.

I have this feeling that my wife and I are not alone as parents in facing this very common behaviour between siblings. I’m sure there are just as many ways to deal with the constant feuding as there are parents who seem to get stuck in the middle of their disputes. There are no classes you can take in school to prepare you for this job as parental mediator. I believe it’s simply trial and error, and it comes with the territory of being a parent. If you’re a new parent, you’d better brush up on your negotiating skills because you’ll need them. If you’re a grandparent, then I’m sure you’ve had to smile when one of your grown children has come to you seeking advice on how to deal with some minor irritant with your grandchildren. It might help you to remember a time when you handled the same problem between your sons and/or daughters.

There are plenty of self-help books on the market that claim to have all the answers for parenting in the 21st century, but who has the time to read them all? Besides, each situation demands a personal approach. It’s my job to read lots of books for this program and rarely, if ever, have I found a solution that perfectly suited a dilemma I’ve been faced with.

…until this one. The book is called The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Life.

I ran across a very interesting item in yesterday’s Social Studies column in The Globe and Mail newspaper. Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht wrote this advice for when one sibling complains about something the other was supposed to have done. This is theiradvice–not for parents–but for those involved in the dispute itself. “Accept full responsibility for whatever you are being accused of. Grant that the sibling is right on every count and that you are truly sorry. Later, as your stunned parents try to decide your punishment, pull them aside and calmly explain that you had nothing to do with the incident and simply acted to avoid a loud, messy conflict. Suggest that your sibling’s troublemaking behaviour might be a desperate cry for parental attention.”

I hope neither one of my children read today’s blog. I have a feeling that it will make my work, as a parent, that much more difficult.

***

Don Jackson

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, / Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore– / While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, / As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. / ”Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, ‘Tapping at my chamber door– / Only this, and nothing more.’

“Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; / And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. / Eagerly, I wished the morrow;–vainly I had sought to borrow / From my books surcease of sorrow–sorrow for the lost Lenore– / For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore– / Nameless here forevermore.

“And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain / Thrilled me–filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; / So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, /”Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door– / Some late night visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;– / This it is and nothing more.’”

Of all the poetry he wrote this is the one that we tend to remember most. January 29th, 1845, Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, The Raven was published under a pseudonym in the New York Evening Mirror.

“And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting / On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; / And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming, / And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; / And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor / Shall be lifted–nevermore.”

Aphrodite promised the shepherd boy, Paris, who was to be a judge in a beauty contest between the goddesses, that the world’s most beautiful mortal woman, Helen, would leave her husband and become his wife if Aphrodite was chosen the winner. Needless to say, she won–and so did he. Helen and Paris fell in love and she ran away with him to Troy. A great war resulted called the Trojan War. She eventually returned to her husband, Menelaus, but not before a great toll was exacted on the battlefield. Even though this  is only a legend, and the search for Troy continues to this very day, the poet William Butler Yeats wrote a simple truth that comes almost as a moral to the story: “What were all the world’s alarms / To mighty Paris when he found / Sleep upon a golden bed / That first dawn in Helen’s arms.”

January 29th, 1939, Irish poet-dramatist William Butler Yeats died in France. “Everything that man esteems / Endures a moment or a day. / Love’s pleasure drives his love away, / The painter’s brush consumes his dreams.”

William Butler Yeats also wrote: “But I, being poor, have only my dreams; / I have spread my dreams under your feet; / Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

This is an excerpt from a love letter from Napoleon Bonaparte to Josephine Beauharnois. Within a few days of their wedding he had to take his leave for the Italian campaign. At first she was detached in her feelings about him, but later came to love him very much. Theirs was a marriage destined to end, because he eventually had to divorce her in order to marry someone who could give him an heir. There was no doubt that he loved her very much from the beginning. Here is an excerpt from one of the many letters he inundated her with. It seems she wrote him very few in return. This was dated Paris, December, 1795.

“I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil. Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart! Are you angry? Do I see you looking sad? Are you worried? My soul aches with sorrow, and there can be no rest for your lover; but is there still more in store for me when, yielding to the profound feelings which overwhelm me, I draw from your lips, from your heart a love which consumes me with fire? Ah! It was last night that I fully realized how false an image of you your portrait gives! You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours. Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.”

January 29th, 1853 was the eve of the wedding of Napoleon and Josephine.

***

Don Jackson

Eileen Caddy wrote: “It is important from time to time, to slow down, to go away by yourself, and simply Be.” But what if you stumbled onto a place that time seems to have overlooked. Would you stay for a while and let the rest of the world pass you by? Now think about it. It’s not a question to answer without careful thought tonight…

A long time before the Internet was made available to the general public and the personal computer was still a dream, I heard tell of a climbing team in the Himalayas that had taken tapes of my show along for the trip. I felt so honored to be “invited” along for the climb. It intrigued me to know that my show was able to be heard on the “Rooftop of the World.”

Now with satellites aimed down to every region of the world, a show like mine is heard in some of the most remote places on the planet. The Internet takes me to the rest of the world. No longer do I need a team of climbers carrying cassette tapes in their backpacks. All they need is a small satellite receiver and they can hear the show in real time…

One of my favorite books is Lost Horizon, the James Hiltonnovel that was made into a black-and-white movie starring Ronald Coleman in 1937. It is the story of a member of the British Diplomatic service who, along with three other people, are hijacked on a plane that crosses the Himalayas and eventually crash-lands in a remote region of Tibet. The party is rescued by the inhabitants of a lost valley called Blue Moon and a lamasery called Shangri-La. There they learn that the flowing river of time has been altered somewhat.

Have you seen the film The Beach that starred Leonardo DiCaprio? It was his follow-up to the success he garnered in Titanic. The film did not garner many favorable reviews. The premise is somewhat similar to Lost Horizon. In The Beach, DiCaprio’s character doesn’t stumble onto this secluded paradise but hears an urban legend about it and seeks it out after acquiring a map. But there’s trouble in paradise. It, too, asks the question what will happen to this pristine contemporary version of Shangri-La after these strangers arrive to disrupt the flow of the community that lives along its spectacular but secluded beach. Who wouldn’t yearn for a place like Shangri-La or a deserted island to let this world pass us by for a time. There is a downside though, especially if you find your island not as deserted as you thought. What if you discover it is also inhabited by a group called the “Others”? Their purpose is clouded in mystery.

This was my theory about the hit TV series Lost.  It was my theory until the final episode of the last season. I was beginning to think that they were allin that institution that Hurley took us to in a flashback in an early episode. You might remember that we saw another of the survivors as a patient near the end of the episode. I thought that maybe the leader of the “Others”, Ben, was a psychiatrist in this institution. You might remember that he told John that he had to bury his past in order to move forward. He seemed to be giving advice that a doctor might employ to help those affected by a traumatic event. He’s trying to help them get past the lingering emotional effects of the plane crash, in my theory. There is one nagging secret that has not been revealed. John was in a wheelchair at the time of the crash. As soon as he woke up on the beach, he was miraculously cured. We’ve never been told how this miracle was achieved. It gives a certain amount of credence to what I thought might really be going on in the hit TV series Lost, that returns with a new season later this week. You can poke all kinds of holes in my theory. It may have been an idea you toyed with for a while. I’d be interested in hearing what you think is really going on in Lost.

Whatever the real secret behind the TV series Lost, there is no doubt that time has been altered there, too.

So, is a place like Shangri-La only a myth? It probably is… We’ve mapped just about every inch of this planet using sophisticated satellite imaging technologies. That said, there are still some mysteries about time we have yet to understand…

In the 1989 edition of The Friendship Book of Francis Gaypublished by D.C Thomson and Company, was this spooky story. He writes: “The former master of that great liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, once described a strange happening. Apparently, a few years ago, she was cruising in the Pacific, when one of the wireless operators picked up a message sent out over 40 years before from the liner Queen Mary. I suppose scientists can explain how this can sometimes happen, but to me that message, coming from goodness knows where, after all those years, is just another reminder that we live in a wonderful and mysterious world, about which truly wise men and women never believe they know all the answers.”

Some  answers are better left…..lost.

***

Don Jackson

Exploring an attic, you came across a chest in a darkened corner, with its lid closed tight. Upon opening it, with a rusted key that was left in the lock, you stumbled across a packet of old love letters, written in the hand of one of your grandparents, there is no greater joy than a discovery that proves that you are descended from people who truly loved  each other. Not all of us are as lucky to have found these hidden treasures. Sometimes, the intent was there to send one written affirmation of love, only to have the letter lost, and never reach the person it was intended for. Years can go by, the letter writer wonders why he never received a reply to his candid admissions, and sometimes love disappears along with that letter. Granted, these are some rather dated statistics, but you can get an idea why sometimes a piece of mail is lost in the process.

I read this item in the column Offbeat Sun Flashes in the Saturday December 15th, 2007 issue of the Toronto Sun. “A Christmas card mailed in 1914 just arrived in Northwest Kansas. It was dated December 23rd, 1914, and mailed to Ethel Martin of Oberlin, apparently from her cousin in Alma, Nebraska. It’s a mystery where it spent most of the last century.”

Just a few decades back, it was estimated that the U.S. Postal Service handled 369-million pieces of mail a day, weighing 66 1/2 tons. That statistic was found in a short piece in the November 22nd, 1983 issue of the entertainment weekly, Star. You can just imagine how that number has risen over the years. But since we’re dealing with long-lost mail, I thought an earlier figure was appropriate.

It can be a very upsetting experience to receive a letter long thought to be lost, especially if the sender is no longer alive or no longer a part of your life. This first example, fortunately, was not one that contained earth-shaking news. Back in 1994, a letter that was addressed to Senator William Borah of Idaho, eventually found its was three-quarters of a century late. The letter was written on February 26th, 1917 by a Clement Freeman looking for a copy of a report on Diseases of Cattle and Horses, which, at the time, was probably something needed. The letter was discovered by workers as they were laying cable under the floor in a Senate office building. At the time, Senator Larry Craig held Borah’s old seat, and promised a reply if he could ever find Freeman’s family.

That same year, Ellen Lunsford in Northeast Georgia, went to her mail box and found a small white box. When she opened it, she said she almost had a heart attack, for inside was a wallet she had lost more that forty years ago. Apparently, she had misplaced the wallet in California, and it was recently found by a man sorting through some lost and found items in a box. Among more personal items not for our ears was a pay stub with a 55-cent deduction for Federal tax, and 37-cents for State tax.

Back in 1990, a mother’s letter to her daughter complaining about slow mail service, had been delivered 20 years after it was written. Her mother’s name was Martha Leowski, the daughter Ellen Wallace, who at the time of the receipt of the letter was 62. This piece was printed in the December 18th, 1990 issue of the entertainment weekly, Star. The postmark on the letter was January 30th, 1971, Magdeburg, Germany. The piece stated that “[Ellen] Wallace got dizzy when she recognized the handwriting.” The reason being that her mother died in 1982, and it was the only thing she had in her mothers own handwriting. She lived in White Rock, Texas, and the post master didn’t have an explanation why it took a letter-about slow mail delivery-two decades to reach Wallace.

In 1992, William Sidler in Pennsylvania received a birthday card mailed in Italy in 1955. 37 years later, it finally arrived. His daughter had mailed it from the American Embassy in Rome where she worked at the time. The postmark was stamped at an army Air Force post office in Italy, and again after it had arrived in Northern Virginia. The card arrived in mint condition. There was only one problem. Sidler died 37 years before the letter arrived.

Finally, the Reuter’s News Servicein 1994 reported then, that a 74-year-old British man, Walter Mason, received a love letter from his wife, Vera. The letter was written and sent 52 yars before. He served on a few warships during the war, and apparently, the letter followed him from one warship to the next. It never found him, and was returned to a Naval Sorting Office where it remained untouched for all those 52 years. Even though he has finally received it, it remains unopened. He knows that it contains, “Vera’s usual expressions of love and kisses..” That made a tough time easier for a young sailor while he was away at war. You see, Vera died in 1986, and he says it would be “heart-breaking” to open the letter now. So, it remained close to his heart, …but unopened, at the time.

Where do all these letters go for such long periods of time? Some, like the one Walter Mason received, can be traced, to find out exactly where they rested for all those years. Others, seem to get lost in a twilight-like zone, for lost mail, only to show up unexpectedly years later, and either change or affect lives. It’s now possible for us to use our computers to e-mail friends and family, or fax them almost instantaneously across great distances. There’s text-messaging on your cellphone, and even videophone technology…wouldn’t it be strange if, some years down the road, a fax machine that turns on mysteriously in the middle of the night, prints out a love letter that was originally sent many years before? Or a text-message that mysteriously appears on a cellphone? I wonder how many lives that might change?

We may not discover where some letters disappeared for years, but we’ll be there when they mysteriously turn up, sometimes decades later, with all the ramifications that come when a lost letter is finally delivered.

***

Don Jackson

In the film The Lake House is a connection to an earlier blog of mine…A blog about a famous actor who just may have been a spy during World War II. There are sequences from an old movie that gave me a pleasant surprise when I watched the film released in 2006 that starred Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. The film is Notorious that starred Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. If you missed reading the blog that I devoted to debonair actor of many a romantic fantasy, go back to an earlier writing called The Spy.

“Post-WW II story of a beautiful playgirl sent by the U.S. government to marry a suspected spy living in Brazil. Grant is the agent assigned to watch her. Duplicity and guilt are important factors in this brooding, romantic spy thriller. Suspenseful throughout, with a surprise ending. Hitchcock makes certain that suspense is maintained throughout this classy and complex thriller.” A review of the 1946 classic film, Notorious from Videohounds’ Golden Movie Retriever. It might be worth renting a copy from your local Rogers Video store if it’s been a while since you saw it. The laser-disc features bonus footage as well as the original trailer.

“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older - the natural sequence of an unnatural beginning.” - Jane Austen

Also in the film The Lake House, is mention of a book that plays a very pivotal role in the love story. The book is Persuasion by Jane Austen. “…published posthumously in 1817. Unlike her novel Northanger Abbey, with which it was published, Persuasion (written 1815-16) was a work of Austen’s maturity.

“Persuasion tells the story of a second chance, the reawakening of love between Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth, whom eight years earlier she had been persuaded not to marry. Wentworth returns from the Napoleonic wars with prize money and the social acceptability of naval rank. He is now an eligible suitor acceptable to Anne’s snobbish father and his circle, and Anne discovers the continuing strength of her love for him.” A review from Merriam Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature.

The Lake House is a film worth seeing. It’s a great idea and I must tell you that I’m really impressed by the acting talents of Keanu Reeves. This role is a pleasant diversion from his brooding character in The Matrix.

Finally, The Lake of The Dismal Swamp by Thomas Moore:

“‘They made her grave too cold and damp / For a soul so warm and true; / And she’s gone to the lake of the dismal swamp, / Where all night long, by a firefly lamp, / she paddles her white canoe. / And her firefly lamp I soon shall see, / And her paddle I soon shall hear; / Long and loving our life shall be, / And I’ll hide the maid in a cypress tree, / When the footstep of death is near.’

Away to the dismal swamp he speeds, - / His path was rugged and sore, / Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds, / Through many a fen where the serpent feeds, / And man never trod before.

And when on the earth he sank to sleep, / If slumber his eyelids knew, / He lay where the deadly vine doth weep / Its venomous tear, and nightly steep / The flesh with blistering dew!

And near him the she-wolf stirr’d the brake, / And the copper-snake breathed in his ear, / till he starting cried, from his dream awake, / ‘Oh when shall I see the dusky lake, / And the white canoe of my dear?’

He saw the lake, and a meteor bright / Quick over its surface play’d, - / ‘Welcome’, he said, ‘My dear one’s light!’ / And the dim shore echo’d for many a night / The name of the death-cold maid.

Till he hollow’d a boat of the birchen bark, / Which carried him off from shore; / Far, far he follow’d the meteor spark, / The wind was high and the clouds were dark, / And the boat return’d no more.

But oft, from the Indian hunter’s camp, / This lover and maid so true / Are seen at the hour of midnight damp / To cross the lake by a firefly lamp, / And paddle their white canoe!”

***

Don Jackson                                                    

“Pile high the hickory and the light / Log of chestnut struck by blight. / Welcome in the winter night.

“The day has gone in hewing and felling, / Sawing and drawing wood to the dwelling / For the night of talk and story-telling.

“These are the hours that give the edge / To the blunted axe and the bent wedge, / Straighten the saw and lighten the sledge.

“Here are question and reply, / And the fire reflected in the thinking eye. / So peace, and let the bob-cat cry.” Winter Night by Edna St. Vincent Millay from Collected Lyrics published by Harper and Row.

According to Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia by Carol Rose, and published in 1966 by W. W. Norton and Company, the author talks about wood imps: “These supernaturals … inhabit objects that are wooden, and are particularly malevolent beings. They may be inadvertently brought into the home with firewood…”

I’ve had a few fires in the fireplace already this winter and if I’m not careful to close the flue after the ashes cool, the cold night air comes right down the chimney into our family room. It looks for any way in. It reminds me to bring in more wood. I’m also careful where I buy the wood, for fear of wood imps…

We had a fire going the other night and one of the logs hissed for a few moments. My dog perked up and seemed to listen from her cozy little spot near the hearth. Maybe there’s something to hear in the fire if we listen closely … a secret, maybe?

There is another interesting superstition concerning fire. “The superstition about poking the fire of a friend. That one should never poke another man’s fire until one has known him for at least seven years. It supposedly took that long to integrate a stranger into the corporate body of a family. Why seven years, it may be asked? The insistence upon this particular length of time is related to the old anatomical belief that one’s whole physical body underwent a complete change every seven years, at the end of which time one became in effect a completely new person.” An excerpt from the book, Superstition And The Superstitious by Eric Maple, published in 1971 by A. S. Barnes and Co., Inc., New Jersey.

“Deep inside wood sleeps primal fire. / Set free, it kindles back to life. /If there’s no fire locked up in wood, / Where does a tinder’s spark come from?” Wood and Fire by Khuong Viet (c. 1050) translated by Hyunh Sanh Thong and featured in the collection, World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse From Antiquity To Our Time published by the Quality Paperback Book Club, New York.

We know that flames have the ability to mesmerize us. We tend the fire and become engrossed in the way the flames dance and throw shadows on the wall. Fires reveal many things. Tonight, let’s stay inside where it’s warm and dry, maybe light a fire to melt the chill from our bones from being out in the deep cold, and see what this night will bring to Lovers and Other Strangers…

***

Don Jackson

She’s known in the Catholic religion as the patron saint of young women. She is St. Agnes, who died in A. D. 304. On January 21st, her life is celebrated and remembered. But legend has it that on the eve of St. Agnes, January 20th, in medieval Europe, women were able to do a little magic that would help them to see the face of their intended. The magic is described in a poem by John Keats. The gist of the poem is about two lovers who elope on the night before St. Agnes Day, “The Eve of St. Agnes.” Some excerpts from the poem in this blog, including the magic you need to do on this night to apparently see your intended.

“St. Agnes’ Eve–ah, bitter chill it was! / The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; / The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass, / And silent was the flock in woolly fold: / Numb were the beadsman’s fingers, while he told / His rosary, and while his frosted breath, / Like pious incense from a censer old, / Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death…”

It sets a scene just like tonight.. Bitterly cold and snowy. A patient, holy man goes about his prayers, but in those halls comes the music of celebrations..

“Northward he turneth through a little door, / And scarce three steps, ere music’s golden tongue / Flatter’d to tears this aged man and poor; / But no–already had his deathbell rung; / The joys of all his life were said and sung: / His was harsh penance on St. Agnes’ Eve: / Another way he went, and soon among / Rough ashes sat he for his soul’s reprieve, / And all night kept awake, for sinners’ sake to grieve.

“That ancient beadsman heard the prelude soft; / And so it chanc’d, for many a door was wide / From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft, / The silver, snarling trumpets ‘gan to chide: / The level chambers, ready with their pride, / Were glowing to receive a thousand guests: / The carv’d angels, ever eager-eyed, / Star’d, where upon their heads the cornice rests, / With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their breasts.

“At length burst in the argent revelry, / With plume, tiara, and all rich array, / Numerous as shadows haunting fairly / The brain, new stuff’d, in youth, with triumphs gay / Of old romance. These let us wish away, / And turn, sole-thoughted, to one lady there, / Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day, / On loved, and winged St. Agnes’ saintly care, …”

 Women of the time had heard tell of the magic that could be performed on January 20th, the Eve of St. Agnes Day… That they might have “…visions of delight, / And soft adorings from their loves receive / Upon the honeyed middle of the night, / If ceremonies due they did aright; / As, supperless to bed they must retire, / And couch supine… / Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require / Of heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

“Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline: / The music, yearning like a god in pain, / She scarcely heard: her maiden eyes divine, / Fix’d on the floor, she saw many a sweeping train / Pass by–she heeded not at all: in vain / Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier, / And back retir’d; not cool’d by high disdain, / But she saw not: her heart was otherwhere: / She sigh’d for Agnes’ dreams, the sweetest of the year.

“She danc’d along with vague, regardless eyes, / Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short: / The hallowed hour was near at hand: she sighs / Amid timbrels, and the thronged resort / Of whisperers in anger, or in sport; / ‘Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn, / Hoodwink’d with fairy fancy; all amort, / Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn, / And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn.

“So, purposing each moment to retire, / She linger’d still. Meantime, across the moors, / Had come young Porphyro, withn heart on fire / For Madeline. Beside the portal doors, / Buttress’d from moonlight, stands he, and implores / All saints give to him sight of Madeline, / But for one moment in the tedious hours, / That he might gaze and worship all unseen; / Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss–in sooth such things have been.

“He ventures in: let no buzzed whisper tell: / All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords / Will storm his heart, love’s fev’rous citadel; …”

He hopes that no one will see him but he knows there is one who will help him in his quest. She is an elderly woman who is startled by his presence. She fears for his safety in this place. He and his family were cursed by one of the guests to the celebration. She leads him away from the jubilant party.

“He follow’d through a lowly arched way, / Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume; / And as she mutter’d ‘Well-a-well-a-day!’ / He found him in a little moonlight room, / Pale, lattic’d, chill, and silent as a tomb. / ‘Now tell me where is Madeline,’ said he, / ‘O tell me Angela, by the holy loom / Which none but secret sisterhood may see, / When they St. Agnes’ wool are weaving piously.’

“St. Agnes! Ah! It is St. Agnes’ Eve– / Yet men will murder upon holy days: / Thou must hold water in a witch’s sieve, / And be liege-lord of all the elves and fays, / To venture so: It fills me with amaze / To see thee, Porphyro!–St. Agnes’ Eve! / God’s help! My lady fair the conjurer plays / This very night: good angels her deceive! / But let me laugh awhile, I’ve mickle time to grieve!’”

 Some lines later…

“But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she told / His lady’s purpose; and he scarce could brook / Years, at the thought of those enchantments cold, / And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old.

“Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose, / Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart / Made purple riot; then doth he propose / A strategem, ..” …that gave the old woman a start..

He asks that she spirit him into her quarters that he might be the first face she sees upon waking, so as to fulfill the magic of this special night..

“‘I will not harm her, by all saints I swear,’ / Quoth Prophyro: ‘O may I ne’er find grace / When my weak voice shall whisper its last prayer, / If one of her soft ringlets I displace, / Or look with ruffian passion in her face: / Good Angela, believe me by these tears; / Or I will, even in a moment’s space, / Awake with horrid shout, my foeman’s ears, / And beard them, though they be more fang’d than wolves and bears.’”

 Again, some lines later…

“–thus plaining, doth she bring / A gentler speech from burning Porphyro; / So woeful, and of such deep sorrowing, / That Angela gives promise she will do / Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or woe.”

Angela takes him to Madeline’s quarters that he might try to help the magic of this special night along…

…She stirs from her enchanted dreams…

“Awakening up, he took her hollow lute, – / Tumultuous,– and, in chords that tenderest be, / He play’d an ancient ditty, long since mute, / In Provence called, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci,’ / Close to her ear touching the melody; — / Wherewith disturb’d, she uttered a soft moan: / He ceased–and suddenly / Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone: / Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured stone.

“Here eyes were open, but she still beheld, / Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep: / There was a painful change, that night expell’d / The blisses of her dream so pure and deep, / At which fair Madeline began to weep, / And moan forth witless words with many a sigh; / While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep; / Who knelt with joined hands and pious eye, / Fearing to move or speak, she look’d so dreamingly.”

 He proposes a lifetime together to her.. It is her dream fulfilled.. But they need to somehow escape together… He says,

“‘Hark! ‘Tis an elfin-storm from fairy land, /Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed: / Arise–arise! The morning is at hand;– / The bloated wassailers will never heed:– / Let us away, my love, with happy speed; / There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,– / Drown’d all in … the sleepy mead: / Awake! Arise! My love, and fearless be, / For o’er the southern moors I have a home for thee.’

“She hurried at his words, beset with fears, / For there were sleeping dragons all around, / At glaring watch, perhaps with ready spears– / Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.– / In all the house was heard no human sound. / A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door; / The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound, / Fluttr’d in the beseiging wind’s uproar; / And along the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

“They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall; / Like phantoms, to the iron porch they glide; / Where lay the porter, in an uneasy sprawl, / With a huge empty flagon by his side: / The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide, / But his sagacious eye an intimate owns: / By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:– / The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;– / The key turns, and the door opens upon its hinges /  Groans.

“And they are gone: ay, ages long ago / These lovers fled away into the storm. / That night the baron dreamt of many a woe, / And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form / Of witch, and demon, …/ Were long be-nightmar’d..”

Angela has since passed.. So, too, has the beadsman, by the end of the poem.. The lovers? We can only hope they lived a wonderful life together.. A life that was made real with the help of the dreams on the “Eve of St. Agnes.”

My radio show Monday night will feature a little more about St. Agnes Day …

May you have sweet dreams tonight…

***

 Don Jackson

We’ve all heard the line used: “C’mon up and see me sometime.” Mae West uttered those famous words in the film, She Done Him Wrong. What you may not know is who she said those words to. It was none other than Cary Grant. A lot of his fans would have gladly taken her place and made the same request…

He was a newcomer to the movies at this point in time, according to Edward Lucaire in his book, Celebrity Trivia: A Collection Of Little-Known Facts About Well-Known People published in 1980 by Warner Books. Its ISBN is 0-446-95479-9. 

He was one of those movie stars who seemed to age gracefully, befitting his on-screen roles. He really only ever seemed to play one type of character. His recurring role was that of a comedic ladies’ man, but he explored it thoroughly in all his films. Here’s a list of his films:

Blonde Venus-1932; She Done Him Wrong-1933; I’m No Angel-1933; The Eagle and The Hawk-1933; Sylvia Scarlett-1935; Suzy-1936; Topper-1937; Toast of New York-1937; The Awful Truth-1937; Holiday-1938; Bringing Up Baby-1938; Only Angels Have Wings-1939; In Name Only-1939; Gunga Din-1939; The Philadelphia Story-1940; My Favorite Wife-1940; The Howards of Virginia-1940; His Girl Friday-1940; Suspicion-1941; Penny Serenade-1941; Talk of The Town-1942; Once Upon A Honeymoon-1942; Mr. Lucky-1943; Destination Tokyo-1943; None But The Lonely Heart-1944; Arsenic and Old Lace-1944; Notorious-1946; Night and Day-1946; The Bishop’s Wife-1947; The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer-1947; Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House-1948; Every Girl Should Be Married-1948; I Was A Male War Bride-1949; People Will Talk-1951; Monkey Business-1952; To Catch A Thief-1955; The Pride and the Passion-1957; An Affair to Remember-1957; Indiscreet-1958; Houseboat-1958; Operation Petticoat-1959; North by Northwest-1959; The Grass Is Greener-1961; That Touch of Mink-1962; Charade-1963; Father Goose-1964; Walk, Don’t Run-1966.

One of the most famous lines he muttered in the film His Girl Friday, was this. Cary Grant’s character refers to ‘Archie Leach’ being executed. It’s a line that I’m sure went over the heads of many of his fans unless you knew that he and ‘Leach’ were intimately acquainted in real life… Cary Grant’s real name was Archie Leach.

Suave, debonair, a true gentleman–just some of the images that come to mind when we think of this actor who portrayed many a dashing character in the films. He was one of the few film stars who actually seemed comfortable in a tuxedo. Reuter’s said he brought a “sexy sophistication” to the films he starred in. I think he would have made a perfect James Bond in the movies. But a James Bond in real life? There is some talk that was the real deal…

Lucaire’s book was also the source for the reminder that he said Archie Leach was executed. We never knew until recently how close he might have come to meeting up with that fate if the story is true…

A biography by Graham McCann, Director of Social and Political Science at Cambridge University, that was to be published in the fall of 1996, alluded to his undercover activities during World War II. The Sunday Times newspaper leaked the revelation from McCann’sbook near the end of July 1996. Reuter’s news service picked it up and ran with it in newspapers in North America on July 28th. It seems Grant… “worked as a spy detecting wartime Nazi sympathizers in Hollywood.” The book was said to reveal that Grant was working for British security services at the time according to correspondence from Sir William Stephenson who, at the time, was head of British Security Co-operation with the U. S. government in the 1940s. Who better than an actor to play the role of a spy in real life. The Sunday Times quoted McCann as saying: “Grant was a chameleon who could change his persona and was very unruffled.” “He knew the U. S. elite, had friends at the very highest level and was implicitly trusted as a recruit for the security services.”

Cary Grant, quite possibly a spy–who would have ever thought! One of the greatest stories Cary Grant might have known remained a secret until 10 years after his death.

If you were fortunate enough to have seen him on stage later in life, you were no doubt treated to quite an evening’s entertainment. Gregory Peck borrowed the idea for a show of his own and was quoted in the press as saying: “It’s something I’ve stolen from Cary Grant. He used to go out on the road, because he enjoyed telling stories, and he said it was a wonderful way to visit America and unload stories on perfectly innocent strangers.”

He was involved in a few great love stories in real life. He was married for a time to someone who was reported to be ‘The World’s Wealthiest Woman.” (It almost sounds like the scenario in the film An Affair to Remember. The reason he was on the ocean liner was that he was traveling to New York to wed Lois Clark worth $600-million.) In real life, the world’s wealthiest woman was his second wife, Barbara Hutton. She was heiress to the Woolworth fortune. But it was his marriage to actress Dyan Cannon that I’d like to end on. Jennifer Grant was their only child and can be seen following in the footsteps of her famous parents. I wonder what he must have told his family about his possible clandestine activities during the war? Or, did he keep that part of his life a secret?

Cary Grant was born January 18th, 1904.

***

Don Jackson

I recently featured a writing that spoke of a clock that was worried about the passage of time…

“In the old McGuffrey’s Reader is a story about the clock that had been running for a long, long time on the mantelpiece.; One day the clock began to think about how many times during the year ahead it would have to tick. It counted up the seconds-31,536,000 in the year-and the old clock just got too tired and said, ‘I can’t do it,’ and stopped right there. When somebody reminded the clock that it did not have to tick the 31,536,000 seconds all at once-but rather one by one-it began to run again end everything was alright.” One By One by Nenien C. McPherson, Jr. and published in 1965 by Harper and Row, publishers.

…We’re like that clock. We look to see what lies ahead and forget that the future doesn’t come all at once. There is a reason why we experience the passage of time as a river. Each day is like a small eddy that pools for a moment, and then moves forward again. It’s the eddies we need to be concerned with, not the fast-flowing river.

This is a writing that I’ve always found to be inspirational.. It’s called Just for Today by Kenneth L Holmes, also featured in that Treasure Chest Collection.

“Just for today, I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle my whole life problem at once. I can do something for 12 hours that would appall me if I felt that I had to keep it up for a lifetime.

“Just for today, I will  be happy.. This assumes to be true what Abraham Lincoln said, that ‘Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.’

“Just for today, I will try to strengthen my mind. I will study. I will learn something useful. I will not be a mental loafer. I will read something that requires effort, thought, and concentration.

“Just for today, I will adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my ‘luck’ as it comes, and fit myself to it.

“Just for today, I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn, and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don’t want to - just for exercise. I will not show anyone that my feelings are hurt; they may be hurt, but today I will not show it.

“Just for today, I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress becomingly, talk low, act courteously, criticize not one bit, not find fault with anything and not try to improve or regulate anybody except myself.

“Just for today, I will have a program. I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it. I will save myself  from two pests: Hurry and indecision.

“Just for today, I will have a quiet half hour all by myself, and relax during this half hour, sometime, I will try to get a better perspective of my life.

“Just for today, I will be unafraid. Especially I will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful, and to believe that as I give to the world, so the world will give to me.

***                                  

Don Jackson