No, No, Narnia

C.S. Lewis did not like the idea of turning his "Narnia" stories into movies. See his protest letter below to BBC producer Lance Sieveking.

Disney will release a film version of "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" on 9 December, 2005.

We shall see.



The Kilns,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford
18 Dec. 1959

Dear Sieveking

(Why do you ‘Dr’ me? Had we not dropped the honorifics?) As things worked out, I wasn’t free to hear a single instalment of our serial [The Magician’s Nephew] except the first. What I did hear, I approved. I shd. be glad for the series to be given abroad. But I am absolutely opposed – adamant isn’t in it! – to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography. Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wld. be another matter. A human, pantomime, Aslan wld. be to me blasphemy.

All the best,
yours
C. S. Lewis

[Letter to BBC producer Lance Sieveking (1896-1972), who has written at the top: ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ and, after the address, the phone number “62963”.]

Source: nthposition.com

Say What?

"The long-term value of today's IT specialists will come from understanding and navigating the situations, processes and buying patterns that characterize vertical industries and cross-industry processes," Diane Morello, VP, Gartner Research, 29 November,2005

Junk English is alive and well, as evinced by Ms. Morello.

She could have delivered the gobbledygook in everyday English: "Today's businesses will increasing look to hiring IT (Information Technology) professionals with added skills. They not only specialize in IT, but also understand the business. More important, they must be able to handle assignments outside of their area."

Deep Purple

Play this MP3:
Bea Wain (1939)
- Deep Purple (De Rose & Parish)

Music: Peter De Rose (1934)
Lyrics: Mitchell Parish (1939)

Top of the Chart: Larry Clinton & His Orchestra (1939)
with Bea Wain

When the deep purple fall
Over sleepy garden wall
And the stars begin to flicker in the sky
Through the mist of a memory
You wander back to me
Breathing my name with a sigh

In the still of the night
Once again I hold you tight
Though you're gone
Your love lives on when moonlight beams
And as long as my heart will beat
Lover we'll always meet
Here in my deep purple dreams

(Instrumental interlude)

In the still of the night
Once again I hold you tight
Though you're gone
Your love lives on when moonlight beams
And as long as my heart will beat
Lover we'll always meet
Here in my deep purple dreams

First Sunday of Advent - Hope

"Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces ALREADY in DISSOLUTION. You have mistaken the hour of the night. It is already morning."
--G.K. Chesterton 'Orthodoxy'

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
-- Isaiah 9:2, KJV

Acknowledger of All Things Worthwhile

Among other usual junk mail I receive daily, two authors had recently sent invitations to my Amazon.com book reviewer's account. One appeared to be a published author. He invited me (and others I presumed) to visit his blog. The invitation read like a spam. I have filed it in the "Second Look" folder.

The second author, or want-to-be author, wrote a long resume of sorts as an introduction. He wished me to read and comment on the first ten chapters of his unpublished book.

This up-and-coming author began in his invite as follows:

'While browsing Amazon reviews I came across yours for Percy’s “The Moviegoer” and decided that I’d send this message to ask if you, as an avid reader and acknowledger of all things worthwhile, would consider reading a bit of my novel, FUTUREPROOF...'

I can see it now. I, the Book Reviewer and Acknowledger of All Things Worthwhile, walking down the Halls of the Unpublished Purgatory, and let each of these languishing souls bow and kiss my ring.

I'd expected a vote from this "Futureproof" author on my review of "The Moviegoer." Not even as a token prelude to his request, he didn't vote.

Would I excuse his insolence and condescend to read his draft, you ask?
Well, my friends, The Acknowledger of All Things Worthwhile says: Que Sera Sera.

If you are inclined to read and comment of this unpublished work, go to Futureproof.

There will be no audience with His Worthwhileness today. He will leave presently to see the new "Pride & Prejudice" movie at a theater near him. No puns please. LOL.

Thankful

This post was sent from the mobile iPAQ hx2755.

I am thankful the fullness of time has not come. God is still being patient with me - and with the world.

Thanksgiving 2005

THANKSGIVING
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1901)

We walk on starry fields of white
And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
Of pleasures sweet and tender.

Our cares are bold and push their way
Upon our thought and feeling.
They hang about us all the day,
Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives,
And conquers if we let it.

There's not a day in all the year
But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
To brim the past's wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
Who love and labor near us.

We ought to raise our notes of praise
While living hearts can hear us.

Full many a blessing wears the guise
Of worry or of trouble;
Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,
Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
To gladden every morrow.

We ought to make the moments notes
Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
As weeks and months pass o'er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
A grand Thanksgiving chorus.

Expired: Click to Listen - George Winston's "Thanksgiving"

Hoagy

Hoagy Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981)

A Hoagy sandwich is nice anytime of the day. A delicious thought no less.
That will have to wait for another time.

Today is Hoagy Carmichael's birthday .

Expired: Click to Listen - Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust"

Stardust
Music: Hoagy Carmichael (1923)
Words: Mitchell Parris
Vocal: Denny Dennis (World War II reocording)

And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we’re apart

You wandered down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The story of the years gone by

Sometimes I wonder why I spend
The lonely nights dreaming of a song
That melody haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you

When our love was new
And each kiss an inspiration
But that was long ago
Now my consolation
Is in the stardust of a song

Beside the garden wall
When stars are bright
You were in my arms
The nightingale tells his fairy tale
Of paradise where roses grew

Though I dream in vain
In my heart it will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of love's refrain

Elvira Madigan

It's not nice to fool mother nature. Just don't do it again.

Click sur le lien pour entendre:

Fin: le concerto 21 de Mozart, l'andante "Elvira Madigan"

Now Thank We All Our God

This post was sent from the mobile iPAQ hx2755.

Benediction: "Therefore , since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken , let us show gratitude , by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe." (Hebrews 12:28, KJV)

Being one of the greeters for this Sunday's 11 AM service, I got to listen to the Hallelujah Brass played Saint-Saint's Third Symphony "Maestoso" in the Prelude to worship - again. (I heard it at the 8:30 AM service.)

Fools Rush in Where Angels Fear to Tread - Redux

I wrote this post almost a year ago. I was hoping someone could rise up to the task of solving these three riddles, matrimony minded or not. No takers.

At last, someone I know is very close in coming up with the answers. Here is the original post from 23 December, 2004:

'Love's function is to fabricate unknownness. That known is being wishless, but love, is all of wishing.' She wishes. He wishes.

To seperate the wheat from the chaff, the female in wish of a "good" husband could start by asking the suitors three riddles as follows:

1. What phantom dies each dawn but each night is reborn in the heart?

2. What blazes up when you think of great deeds, is hot in love, and grows cold when you die?

3. What is the ice that sets you on fire?

If there are males wanting to take on riddles such as these, then at the very least, they possess a much wished but often lacking mental faculty in a man-woman relationship. Imagination.

To love and to sustain love, it requires imagination.

The Last Picture Show, Fall, 2005

Grace M Davis High School

This is the last fall color photo for the year.

The Graffiti Bowl

Mrs. Heacock's husband had won four tickets for tomorrow's community college football championship game. They Graffiti Bowl. They couldn't go. I became the beneficiary and holders of these tickets.

I gave them to Patty (my neighbor Natalie's sister) and her 9-year old nephew, Sebastian. They should have oodles of fun tomorrow watching the playoff.

A Failure to Communicate

In Paul Newman's classic role as 'Cool Hand Luke (1967)', the chain gang captain said to him in front of other prisoners, "What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men."

Without getting into what my livelihood is, I was a failure to communicate, of sorts. I recall one of my earliest instructors in my field said to me after a test, "You are the only one in the class the test failed to profile. You acted the same if you were happy, sad, or whatever." I thought that was an odd commentary then.

Over the years, I have learned when doing reading, writing and even listening to words or music, my mind goes into a data-processing mode. In most instances, it is voiding emotions and mental images. In other words, my brain is suppressing these sensations unless it is told otherwise.

Take the words Three Oranges. I know what these words meant and what they represented. I just don't "naturally, normally" see the images of oranges when I read or write them on paper, or via the computer screen. As for listening to music, say, Ravel's Piece En Forme D'habanera, I hear the quiet or pensive notes, sans images. Emotions with conjured images are filtered, for the expediency of getting me from Point A to Point B.

Recently, I wrote some very scintillating proses packed with vivid images on another blog. But I did not tell myself (the mind) to convert what I wrote into images or probable emotions. Only after receiving some emotionally charged proses written in response, then I had to re-read what I wrote. This time in technicolor.

Here is a way to explain how my mind works. Let me use this Shakespearean verse, as an illustration:

The liquid drops of tears that you have shed
Shall come again, transform'd to orient pearl

- Richard III, Act IV, Sc. 4

A beautiful verse indeed. Full of meanings. There were no mental images per se associated with this verse when I typed it. From within my mind, these words were supposed to be understood, and need not be visualized. As a matter of fact, that's what I'd expected when others read my blog - until now. Others don't see or hear things as I do.

Anyway, someone could very well write a comment to this post like:

"L'Envoi, you give off all the brilliance of a room full of pictures of the stars and the moon, and as much as warmth and heat."

Now, that's cold.

The Love for Three Oranges

Three oranges.

Okay. You have read these two words.

If you would, could you leave a comment and tell me if at the moment you read these words "three oranges", you immediately "saw" oranges in your mind. And, if some of you had to pause and convert these two words into a mental picture. Lastly, if Prokofiev came to mind, plesse leave a note also.

This little experment has to do with me, more than you, how I process sensory perceptions in my brain. I'll write a post on this presently.

Thanks.

Never Again

I have made my exit from playing a poet with an altered persona. It was a fascinating experience on one hand, and unsettling on the other. There were people who actually thought I was for real, or they forgot I was role playing.

First Chili Cook-Off at Church

As a conclusion of our 40 Days of Community milestone, we had our first fall chili cook-off. Seventeen small groups participated and as many varieties of chili styles.

I did my part rating the contestants with sticky-stars. Boy, was I stuffed.

One Will, Many Lessons

This Sunday marks the conclusion of our 40 Days of Community.

Hands toiling in service; hands clapsing in fellowship; hands joining in praying; hands raising in worship; and hands reaching out to the less fortunate. All new and not so new lessons for the pilgrims' progress.

Altogether one will. Altogether one priase. His will be done.

Playing Cyrano

For the last few evenings, I have had fun playing a mysterious poet of dark repute on a poetry blog. It's driving the hostess batty not knowing whence came this umbrageous bard. And yet, she is awaiting my return.

The Phantom of the What?

If you don't know what Bluegrass music is, give it a listen:

Expired: Woody Midigrass Band (Bluegrass Music) - Phantom of the Opry

Veterans' Day, 2005

11 November, 2005


Our flag is stained with the blood of the brave.
I, on this privileged perch of the present,
shout with a grateful heart:

"You have made our tomorrows free.
Our land is and will always be."

Semper Fidelis!

Today, 10 November, 2005, is the US Marine Corp's 230th birthday.

Back to the Old Blog Template

I decided the new blog template was too high maintenance. I already have several websites online. I really don't need to mess with another one . For the record, I've been there and done that. Now I am back to using the old blog template.

Carol, if you are reading this, I don't need another pretty face to divert my attention.

My New Blog Template

After reading Carol's post this evening on her wanting to a new blog template, my interest is aroused. So I hacked my own template.

This template looks way too busy with the distracting Yosemite NP background. It is too early to tell if I want to keep it, or revert back to the old one.

Don't Call Me Kim Mesabi

The name is Wasabi. Tim Wasabi.

My grocer has restocked Tim's Cascade Style Wasabi Potato Chips. For a long while, he said these potato chips were just a temporary snack. Now they are back! I hope they will stay for good this time.

Seldom Scene

The 'Seldom Scene' is one of my favorite bluegrass music artists. When I learned of their music, they have faded from the scene, as it were.

This post is on another seldom scene. Following this morning's worship service, I mentioned to our senior pastor about his reading of Revelation 5:12-13 from a modern English bible. The version he used has a questionable translation of these verses. (I forgot which version he used. It could have been the NIV. It's his customary practice to use several versions of translations to impart the message of the day.)

The question centered around the word "saying". The original Greek word for "saying" was lego. It was used in verses 12 and 13. It would be a stretch to translate this Greek word as "singing". At least, this was my opinion when I broached the subject to Pastor Steve.

The New American Standard Bible (NASB) is known for its closest literal translation of the original New Testament Greek. It rendered Rev. 5:12-13 correctly as follows (bold emphasis mine):

12 saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing."

13 And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, "To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever."

Whereas, in the New International Version (NIV), the same word, "saying", was translated incorrectly as "sang" and "singing", respectively, in verses 12 and 13. Its translation reads:

12 In a loud voice they sang: "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!"

13 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!"

We see the real Greek word "singing" in Rev. 5:9. The Greek word for singing in this verse was ado. It's derived from aeido. Both of these Greek words denoted sing, sang, or singing. The NASB and NIV had translated this verse correctly, however.

In secular music or even in hymnodies, ascribing angels the ability to sing is acceptable for a number of reasons. But scripturally to state that angels can sing creates two problems. First, it brings into question when is singing, singing, or saying, saying, in the Bible. Moreover, by distorting the original meaning of the word "singing", we are diluting if not refuting the significance in one of God's unique and solely gifts to His highest creation. Man.

Pastor Steve concurred with my concern. He said he will redeem himself in the second service.

In My Dreams

Thomas Kinkade - Autumn-3

The cavalcade of deciduous woods lined our lanes has morphed into its fall costumes for the season's finale. Plush leaves in arrays of crimson, amber, scarlet, and yellow, are flaunting their dazzling and ephemeral splendor in the autumn wind.

I like to capture some of that Thomas Kinkade fall color moments at home. If he could, why not I? Every fall past, the neighbor's poplar chortled and shook its denuded wispy branches at me, "In your dreams, dude! It ain't going to happen."

So it is to be. No Kinkade autumn scene in the front yard this year. Another season of my resigning to Verlain's de l'automne blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone.

Untitled (for C.Y.)

I was so glad we met again.

We all have regrets and hurts. Perhaps no balm can assuage your deepest hurts and foibles. Still, treasure the vibrant life with which you've been blessed. Beyond, live life more than withered petals locked within your heart.

Though crushed, the lavender florets emit a healing and soothing aroma. Will you? I know you will and can.

The past is ashes. Let not the coming days inviolate the waking eye.

Be well, my friend.