Isolated Blurt Thread

[trysail]

I watched Pirates of the Carribean again this week.

Jack Sparrow is stil funny.

Recognize this place?



https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3699/10967327173_a154f840b3_c.jpg


https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5525/10967259574_f69bc870e7_c.jpg​

It's Wallilabou Bay, on the island of St. Vincent.

The top image is the rock that Captain Jack sails past in the opening sequence (where the remains of a pirate are exhibited in a gibbet).

The second image is the movie set for the mythical Port Royal.

We sailed into the bay a couple of years ago without knowing that it was the location for the movie. I couldn't have been more amazed. The rock is unmistakable.





​

 

[Learin]

Recognize this place?



https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3699/10967327173_a154f840b3_c.jpg


https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5525/10967259574_f69bc870e7_c.jpg​

It's Wallilabou Bay, on the island of St. Vincent.

The top image is the rock that Captain Jack sails past in the opening sequence (where the remains of a pirate are exhibited in a gibbet).

The second image is the movie set for the mythical Port Royal.

We sailed into the bay a couple of years ago without knowing that it was the location for the movie. I couldn't have been more amazed. The rock is unmistakable.





​

The first one was easy to recognise, but I had a hard time with the second one. I find it difficult to imagine the work they must've put into Wallilabou Bay to make it look like another world from the 18th century.

Thanks for the pics.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Jack Sparrow is stil funny.

He is really great
(Nice pictures Trysail!)

You have my Sympathy; if the Dragon can be of help ?

Aww, thank you.
Sadly she has gone off on one. I shouldn't have been so grumpy with her, I ought to have remembered she would go off and that it's about the kids. I should've choked her shit up for their sake

Maybe a homemade honey bun and milk ...

Can I help at all there? <snerk>

 

[Handley_Page]

Well, I got my PC working (new PSU, Hard Drive, re-load Win XP, etc., etc..)
Of course, I've lost all my photos and music. . . .

Groan

 

[TxRad]

Can I help at all there? <snerk>

Anytime, anytime. I'll bring the honey, you bring the uh.... Yeah.

On a different note. With all the rain of late, I got three trick or treaters. Two ducks and a porpoise.

 

[trysail]

The first one was easy to recognise, but I had a hard time with the second one. I find it difficult to imagine the work they must've put into Wallilabou Bay to make it look like another world from the 18th century.

Thanks for the pics.

St. Vincent is desperately and depressingly poor. If you've never been to a "third world" area, it is impossible to imagine. A couple of its bays and harbors have developed a bad reputation among cruising sailors because there have been incidents of night-time robberies of anchored vessels. As a result, many cruising guides advise sailors to avoid the island.

There are no jobs and there is nothing to do. The only reason the residents survive is because it's warm and fruit grows all over the place. The island is largely undeveloped due to its rugged, mountainous terrain. There is no tourism because the island has no white sand beaches (it's volcanic and all the beaches are black sand)— and precious few beaches at that.

The movie set was intentionally left in place by the filmmakers and is promoted as a tourist attraction.



​

 

[trysail]

http://www.loa.org/images/volumecovers/153x195/1598533088.jpg

http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=407


​

In 1936, at the age of fifty-five, H. L. Mencken published a reminiscence of his Baltimore boyhood in The New Yorker. With this modest beginning, Mencken embarked on what would become the Days trilogy, a long and magnificent adventure in autobiography by America’s greatest journalist. Finding it “always agreeable to ponder upon the adventures of childhood” (as he wrote in his diary), Mencken created more of these masterful novelistic evocations of a bygone era, eventually collected in Happy Days (1940). The book was an immediate critical and popular success, surprising many of its readers with its glimpses of a less curmudgeonly Mencken.

Urged by New Yorker editor Harold Ross to send yet more pieces, Mencken moved on from his childhood to revisit the beginnings of his legendary career. Newspaper Days (1941) charts the rise of the brilliant, ambitious young newspaperman, in an astonishingly short time, from cub reporter to managing editor of the Baltimore Herald. Among the book’s memorable episodes are the display of Mencken’s “talent for faking” in his invented dispatches of the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War—accounts that largely turned out to be accurate—and his riveting narrative of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. “In my day a reporter who took an assignment was wholly on his own until he got back to the office, . . . today he tends to become only a homunculus at the end of a telephone wire.”

The final volume of the published trilogy, Heathen Days (1943), recounts his varied excursions as one of America’s most famous men, and one who, by his own account, “enjoyed himself immensely,” including his bibulous adventures during Prohibition and his reporting of the 1925 Scopes trial over the teaching of evolution.

Until now, however, the story told in Mencken’s beloved Days books has been incomplete. In the 1940s, Mencken began making extensive notes about the published books, commenting on what he had written and adding new material—but stipulating that these writings were not to be made public until twenty-five years after his death. Days Revisited presents more than two hundred pages of this material for the first time. Commentaries are keyed to the main text they gloss with subtle marks in the margin (the volume includes two ribbons to allow readers to flip back to the notes), and they are supplemented by rare photographs, many taken by Mencken himself. Here is Mencken’s classic autobiography as it has never been seen before. - See more at: http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=407#sthash.rKv0muli.dpuf

If you have never read H. L. Mencken's semi-autobiographical "Days" trilogy, you're lucky and I envy you— you've got a treat in store.

Library of America books are lovely. They're beautifully crafted, small enough to be held comfortably in one hand and printed on acid-free paper.

Mencken was the best prose writer of the 20th century. These stories are laced with intelligence, erudition and rollicking humor. There are stories that left me convulsed in laughter when I first encountered them many decades ago.


Table of Contents:

Happy Days 1880–1892
Preface
I.Introduction to the Universe
II.The Caves of Learning
III.Recollections of Academic Orgies
IV.The Baltimore of the Eighties
V.Rural Delights
VI.The Head of the House
VII.Memorials of Gormandizing
VIII.The Training of a Gangster
IX.Cops and Their Ways
X.Larval Stage of a Bookworm
XI.First Steps in Divinity
XII.The Ruin of an Artist
XIII.In the Footsteps of Gutenberg
XIV.From the Records of an Athlete
XV.The Capital of the Republic
XVI.Recreations of a Reactionary
XVII.Brief Gust of Glory
XVIII.The Career of a Philosopher
XIX.Innocence in a Wicked World
XX.Strange Scenes and Far Places 


Newspaper Days 1899–1906
Preface
I.Allegro Con Brio
II.Drill for a Rookie
III.Sergeant’s Stripes
IV.Approach to Lovely Letters
V.Fruits of Diligence
VI.The Gospel of Service
VII.Scent of the Theatre
VIII.Command
IX.Three Managing Editors
X.Slaves of Beauty
XI.The Days of the Giants
XII.The Judicial Arm
XIII.Recollections of Notable Cops
XIV.A Genial Restauranteur
XV.A Girl from Red Lion, P.A.
XVI.Scions of the Bogus Nobility
XVII.Aliens, but Not Yet Enemies
XVIII.The Synthesis of News
XIX.Fire Alarm
XX.Sold Down the River


Heathen Days 1890–1936
Preface
I.Downfall of a Revolutionary [1890]
II.Memoirs of the Stable [1891]
III.Adventures of a Y.M.C.A. Lad [1894]
IV.The Educational Process [1896]
V.Finale to the Rogue’s March [1900]
VI.Notes on Palaeozoic Publicists [1902]
VII.The Tone Art [1903]
VIII.A Master of Gladiators [1907]
IX.A Dip into Statecraft [1912]
X.Court of Honor [1913]
XI.A Roman Holiday [1914]
XII.Winter Voyage [1916]
XIII.Gore in the Caribbees [1917]
XIV.Romantic Intermezzo [1920]
XV.Old Home Day [1922]
XVI.The Noble Experiment [1924]
XVII.Inquisition [1925]
XVIII.Vanishing Act [1934]
XIX.Pilgrimage [1934]
XX.Beaters of Breasts [1936]


Days Revisited: Mencken’s Unpublished Commentary
Preface
Notes on Happy Days
Notes on Newspaper Days
Notes on Heathen Days

Chronology
Note on the Texts
Note on the Illustrations
Notes
Index
 - See more at: http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=407&section=toc#sthash.EWzk6fFI.dpuf

​

 

[oggbashan]

Late last night three young men were sitting in their car alongside my house. It is a spot often used by young drivers because it has a view of the sea.

They were eating McDonalds. They threw some of the wrapping out of the car's windows as they finished each item. This morning there was McDonalds debris blowing around, far more than three young men could have eaten in a single session. They had obviously emptied their car of the accumulated pile.

That street is visited by street cleaners once every six weeks and they had cleaned on Monday, so the McDonalds debris would be blowing around for nearly six weeks.

This morning I took my trusty litter picker and collected it all. It filled three supermarket carrier bags.

It would have been easy for them to take their litter home, or unload it into a McDonalds litter bin on their next visit, OR use the litter bin in full view fifty feet ahead of them. That litter bin is emptied daily.

I won't blame 'the younger generation' because people as old as their parents or even as old as me behave exactly the same with fast food containers. They throw their litter out of their cars without caring who will have to pick it up.

During the summer months I expect to collect a full carrier bag of litter during a week, but three carrier bags in November is excessive.

 

[trysail]

Late last night three young men were sitting in their car alongside my house. It is a spot often used by young drivers because it has a view of the sea.

They were eating McDonalds. They threw some of the wrapping out of the car's windows as they finished each item. This morning there was McDonalds debris blowing around, far more than three young men could have eaten in a single session. They had obviously emptied their car of the accumulated pile.

That street is visited by street cleaners once every six weeks and they had cleaned on Monday, so the McDonalds debris would be blowing around for nearly six weeks.

This morning I took my trusty litter picker and collected it all. It filled three supermarket carrier bags.

It would have been easy for them to take their litter home, or unload it into a McDonalds litter bin on their next visit, OR use the litter bin in full view fifty feet ahead of them. That litter bin is emptied daily.

I won't blame 'the younger generation' because people as old as their parents or even as old as me behave exactly the same with fast food containers. They throw their litter out of their cars without caring who will have to pick it up.

During the summer months I expect to collect a full carrier bag of litter during a week, but three carrier bags in November is excessive.

You are a good person, a good citizen and a good neighbor, Og (but we already knew that).

If only there were more like you.



​

 

[oggbashan]

I had an email and phone call today from my sister-in-law and my eldest niece.

My older brother was admitted to hospital on Monday, not expected to survive Tuesday. He did, and now he might be discharged to go home with visiting nurses, or to a hospice for the short time he has left. He has had cancer for a couple of years and gave up chemotherapy before last Christmas. He has had nearly a year of a reasonable quality of life.

Yes, even ancient Og can have an older brother! He is eight years older than me, and before the cancer was fitter and more active.

When he passes on, which is likely to be within days, apart from a disabled cousin who has been in a wheelchair for years, Og will be the oldest member of the extended family. She, the cousin, and I have been 'creaking gates' suffering from multiple conditions, for years. Apart from my brother, the fit and active ones have already gone.

My brother and sister-in-law have been happily married for 54 years and now have adult grandchildren.

It has always been difficult for my brother and I to express how much we care for each other. It may be a generational thing. Men of our ages don't say much about our feelings. What we did know is that we fought as siblings do when living in the same house, but appreciated each other more when there was 100 miles between us and visits were infrequent.

 

[trysail]

...They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them...

-Robert Laurence Binyon​

​

 

[Handley_Page]

Sympathy, Ogg.

 

[loquere]

They should have more respect for the environment than that.

 

[MagicaPractica]

I had an email and phone call today from my sister-in-law and my eldest niece.

My older brother was admitted to hospital on Monday, not expected to survive Tuesday. He did, and now he might be discharged to go home with visiting nurses, or to a hospice for the short time he has left. He has had cancer for a couple of years and gave up chemotherapy before last Christmas. He has had nearly a year of a reasonable quality of life.

Yes, even ancient Og can have an older brother! He is eight years older than me, and before the cancer was fitter and more active.

When he passes on, which is likely to be within days, apart from a disabled cousin who has been in a wheelchair for years, Og will be the oldest member of the extended family. She, the cousin, and I have been 'creaking gates' suffering from multiple conditions, for years. Apart from my brother, the fit and active ones have already gone.

My brother and sister-in-law have been happily married for 54 years and now have adult grandchildren.

It has always been difficult for my brother and I to express how much we care for each other. It may be a generational thing. Men of our ages don't say much about our feelings. What we did know is that we fought as siblings do when living in the same house, but appreciated each other more when there was 100 miles between us and visits were infrequent.

 

[oggbashan]

Thanks for the replies. No news yet so he's still with us.

Tonight we went to see a live transmission from the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden with Carlos Acosta's final main stage performance, after three other short ballets.

Carlos retired with a performance of Carmen, the ballet he choreographed.

As we expected, it was a marvellous evening, with the three short ballets before Carmen showcasing different aspects of the Royal Ballet's talents.

I wish I had been at the Royal Opera House, but tickets were sold out months ago. Seeing it at a cinema was nearly as good. (and far cheaper!)

 

[NotWise]

Thanks for the replies. No news yet so he's still with us.

As we expected, it was a marvellous evening, with the three short ballets before Carmen showcasing different aspects of the Royal Ballet's talents.

I wish your brother a peaceful passage.

The show sounds great. The Bolshoi is doing Balanchine's Jewels, also in cinema. I'm interested by the idea of the quintessential Russian dance company doing an American piece. I haven't seen anything from the Royal Ballet recently. I think the last cinema I saw was the Paris Opera Ballet doing Copelia and that wasn't very recent.

 

[oggbashan]

...

The show sounds great. The Bolshoi is doing Balanchine's Jewels, also in cinema. I'm interested by the idea of the quintessential Russian dance company doing an American piece. I haven't seen anything from the Royal Ballet recently. I think the last cinema I saw was the Paris Opera Ballet doing Copelia and that wasn't very recent.

The Royal Ballet and Royal Opera are doing more and more live (and recorded) transmissions. Last night's production was seen in nearly 1000 cinemas and over 50 countries.

The Royal Ballet's Nutcracker is a classic production that should be seen if you can. This is a youtube sample:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFxwSrlUHZU

Trailer for next month's transmission:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuZ...eJ8fWJEls&annotation_id=annotation_4036444923

The Metropolitan Opera has a season of live transmissions.

The Globe Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company are transmitting live Shakespeare (and other) plays. There are other organisations also using cinemas to showcase their work.

 

[NotWise]

The Met series does play here, but the we only get Ballet through cinema providers who draw their media from a selection of sources rather than a series from a single company.

We used to have the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker on DVD, but my youngest daughter (who is professional Ballet dancer), took it with her when she moved out. I looked at the videos and it appears to be the same production.

Having raised a dancer in the US I've seen more Nutcrackers than I can even remember, so now I don't go out of my way to see more.

 

[oggbashan]

The Met series does play here, but the we only get Ballet through cinema providers who draw their media from a selection of sources rather than a series from a single company.

We used to have the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker on DVD, but my youngest daughter (who is professional Ballet dancer), took it with her when she moved out. I looked at the videos and it appears to be the same production.

Having raised a dancer in the US I've seen more Nutcrackers than I can even remember, so now I don't go out of my way to see more.

The Royal Ballet's Nutcracker IS the same production. It is a Christmas tradition.

But last night's transmission was VERY different - two of the four ballets only premiered in the last couple of years.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I don't think Goat Pigs are meant to fit into such cramped spaces...
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c65/theegoatpig/Pics%20of%20Me/20151113_0825271_zps2aigtnfe.jpg

 

[Handley_Page]

Ah, a bijou location. . . .

 

[loquere]

Haberdasher

 

[loquere]

French anthem

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bVj4KrBE26Q

 

[glynndah]

I had an email and phone call today from my sister-in-law and my eldest niece.

My older brother was admitted to hospital on Monday, not expected to survive Tuesday. He did, and now he might be discharged to go home with visiting nurses, or to a hospice for the short time he has left. He has had cancer for a couple of years and gave up chemotherapy before last Christmas. He has had nearly a year of a reasonable quality of life.

Yes, even ancient Og can have an older brother! He is eight years older than me, and before the cancer was fitter and more active.

When he passes on, which is likely to be within days, apart from a disabled cousin who has been in a wheelchair for years, Og will be the oldest member of the extended family. She, the cousin, and I have been 'creaking gates' suffering from multiple conditions, for years. Apart from my brother, the fit and active ones have already gone.

My brother and sister-in-law have been happily married for 54 years and now have adult grandchildren.

It has always been difficult for my brother and I to express how much we care for each other. It may be a generational thing. Men of our ages don't say much about our feelings. What we did know is that we fought as siblings do when living in the same house, but appreciated each other more when there was 100 miles between us and visits were infrequent.

 

[oggbashan]

Thank you glynndah.

My brother came home yesterday. Although I am a considerable distance from him, I offered what help I could. It wasn't needed. My sister-in-law has had so many offers from his local friends to help look after him that she has had to produce a roster of visiting times, and she can't fit everyone on it.

We don't yet know how long he has. It could be days, weeks or even a few months but not longer. It depends on how he reacts to the transfer back home and the change from trying to halt the spread of cancer to palliative care to make him more comfortable.