Saturday and Sundry Thoughts

Has anyone noticed that the Sun has quietly slipped out of heat-drenched Leo into what will, I hope, turn out to be an ever so slightly cooler, better presented stint in zodiac sign Virgo?

Speaking of Virgo, Ogden Nash, a favourite writer of mine, once wrote a piece of poetry which, all unknowingly by the author (I guess) was a pretty accurate description of someone with a hefty dose of Virgo in their natal chart - not just the Sun in Virgo though. A true, recognisable Virgo-type needs strong natal emphasis on the sign in order to advertise clearly its attributes. A cluster of planets in the sign, particularly the personal planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars) would do it. Virgo on the ascendant angle or angle opposite, or at mid-heaven or nadir of the chart would provide even more emphasis.

Here's what Ogden Nash wrote about a true Virgo-type, possibly without realising what he'd done. I suspect he was describing his wife, a friend, or a colleague!

A Stitch Too Late Is My Fate
by Ogden Nash

There are some people of whom I would certainly like to be one,
Who are the people who get things done.
They balance their checkbooks every month and their figures
always agree with the bank's,
And they are prompt in writing letters of condolence or thanks.
They never leave anything to chance,
But always make reservations in advance.
When they get out of bed they never neglect to don slippers
so they never pick up athlete's foot or a cold or a splinter,
And they hang their clothes up on hangers every night and
put their winter clothes away every summer
and their summer clothes away every winter.
Before spending any money they insist on getting
an estimate or a sample,
And if they lose anything from a shoelace to a diamond ring
it is covered by insurance more than ample.
They have budgets and what is more they live inside of them,
Even though it means eating things made by recipes
clipped from the Sunday paper that you'd think they would have died from them.
They serve on committees
And improve their cities
They are modern knight errants
Who remember their godchildren's birthdays and the anniversaries
of their godchildren's parents,
And in cold weather they remember the birds and supply them with
sunflower seed and suet,
And whatever they decide to do, whether it's to save
twentyfive percent of their salary or learn Italian or write a musical comedy or touch their toes a hundred times every morning before breakfast,
why they go ahead and do it.
People who get things done lead contented lives, or at least I guess so,
And I certainly wish that either I were more like them or they were less so.

Music Monday ~ Speaking Low

One evening last week we accidentally happened upon a strange little film of a 1955 TV live presentation (on the poster it's listed as a "Legendary Telecast") of the 1940s musical play "One Touch of Venus". The musical was also made into a 'proper' movie starring Ava Gardner. This presentation, with Janet Blair as Venus is in a rather blurry black and white, very dated, but interesting due to its history, and one particular song: "Speak Low".

"One Touch of Venus" was a musical - music written by Kurt Weill, lyrics by none other than Ogden Nash; book by S. J. Perelman and Nash, based on the novella The Tinted Venus by Thomas Anstey Guthrie... [Note from your friendly blogger - it also smacks of Thorne Smith's style in "Nightlife of the Gods", but a tad less bawdy. The title with single line synopsis was the reason I decided to investigate. "This sounds like one of Thorne Smith's I said to husband - who agreed. We are both fans of that mostly forgotten author of quirky fantasy tales.]

Ogden Nash, as I wrote in 2006 (one of my very early blog posts was about him)

"always had a burning ambition to write for musical comedy. He eventually attained his dream when he provided the lyrics for Kurt Weill's classic "Speak Low" in collaboration with my next subject S.J Perelman, who was to become his lifelong friend. Nash and Perelman co-authored the show "One Touch of Venus" from which the song came. "Speak Low" was to become the show's signature number, but there are many more, including "Very, Very, Very" which, satirically, takes off on targets from fine art to free love. As the Nash lyric explains, "It's a minor peccadillo/To patronize the wrong pillow." "

SO..."Speak Low" is my tune for this Music Monday - one version sung by a female, one by a male.





Speak low when you speak, love
Our summer day withers away too soon, too soon
Speak low when you speak, love
Our moment is swift; like ships adrift, we're swept apart too soon

Speak low, darling, speak low
Love is a spark lost in the dark too soon, too soon
I feel wherever I go
That tomorrow is near, tomorrow is here and always too soon

Time is so old and love so brief
Love is pure gold and time a thief

We're late, darling, we're late
The curtain descends, everything ends too soon, too soon
I wait, darling, I wait
Will you speak low to me? Speak love to me and soon

Time is so old and love so brief
Love is pure gold and time a thief

We're late, darling, we're late
The curtain descends, everything ends too soon, too soon
I wait, darling, I wait
Will you speak low to me? Speak love to me and soon
Speak low.

Anti-everything?

The silly season has been upon us for quite sometime already this year, and is set to continue.

Example: from a local newspaper in the UK:
Town Prophet Fears Trump is the Antichrist

Ah yes - that old antichrist meme. Been there, I ventured down that rabbit-hole some 5 years ago, I recall:
Will the Real Antichrist Please Stand Up ? Donald Trump wasn't a blot on the presidential campaign season back then though.

A trio of other ideas on this topic :

Our blight is ide­olo­gies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!
Carl Jung

Television is the Antichrist, and I can assure you after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own and humans will return to medieval savagery and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb...it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything and a lousy joke at that.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Anti-anti:

Anti, anti, anti...anty, antish...

The Ant by Ogden Nash

The ant has made himself illustrious
Through constant industry industrious.
So what?
Would you be calm and placid,
If you were full of formic acid?

From our floral friends: the Antirinum, aka Antirrhinum or Snapdragon

And this cannot be forgotten:

antidisestablishmentarianism (here).

"People who get things done..."

Ogden Nash's poetry and comments on life never fail to bring a smile and a nod. In this piece he had, all unknowingly, written a description of the person with a hefty dose of Virgo in their natal chart. Sun is now inching into zodiac sign Virgo so:





A Stitch Too Late Is My Fate

There are some people of whom I would certainly like to be one,
Who are the people who get things done.
They balance their checkbooks every month and their figures
always agree with the bank's,
And they are prompt in writing letters of condolence or thanks.
They never leave anything to chance,
But always make reservations in advance.

When they get out of bed they never neglect to don slippers
so they never pick up athlete's foot or a cold or a splinter,
And they hang their clothes up on hangers every night and
put their winter clothes away every summer
and their summer clothes away every winter.

Before spending any money they insist on getting
an estimate or a sample,
And if they lose anything from a shoelace to a diamond ring
it is covered by insurance more than ample.
They have budgets and what is more they live inside of them,
Even though it means eating things made by recipes
clipped from the Sunday paper that you'd think they would have died from them.

They serve on committees
And improve their cities
They are modern knight errants
Who remember their god-children's birthdays and the anniversaries
of their god children's parents,
And in cold weather they remember the birds and supply them with
sunflower seed and suet,
And whatever they decide to do, whether it's to save
twenty-five percent of their salary or learn Italian or write a musical comedy or touch their toes a hundred times every morning before breakfast,
why they go ahead and do it.

People who get things done lead contented lives, or at least I guess so,
And I certainly wish that either I were more like them or they were less so.

SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT ~ Sounds like Virgo !

Ogden Nash is a favourite writer of mine - his poetry and comments on life never fail to bring a smile and a nod. Reading this piece the other day, it struck me that all unknowingly he had written a description of the person with a hefty dose of Virgo in their natal chart.

(Blogger refuses to adhere to the line breaks I (and Mr. Nash) inserted, so please excuse any odd-looking breaks.)

A Stitch Too Late Is My Fate


There are some people of whom I would certainly like to be one,
Who are the people who get things done.
They balance their checkbooks every month and their figures
always agree with the bank's,
And they are prompt in writing letters of condolence or thanks.
They never leave anything to chance,
But always make reservations in advance.
When they get out of bed they never neglect to don slippers
so they never pick up athlete's foot or a cold or a splinter,
And they hang their clothes up on hangers every night and
put their winter clothes away every summer
and their summer clothes away every winter.
Before spending any money they insist on getting
an estimate or a sample,
And if they lose anything from a shoelace to a diamond ring
it is covered by insurance more than ample.
They have budgets and what is more they live inside of them,
Even though it means eating things made by recipes
clipped from the Sunday paper that you'd think they would have died from them.
They serve on committees
And improve their cities
They are modern knight errants
Who remember their godchildren's birthdays and the anniversaries
of their godchildren's parents,
And in cold weather they remember the birds and supply them with
sunflower seed and suet,
And whatever they decide to do, whether it's to save
twentyfive percent of their salary or learn Italian or write a musical comedy or touch their toes a hundred times every morning before breakfast,
why they go ahead and do it.
People who get things done lead contented lives, or at least I guess so,
And I certainly wish that either I were more like them or they were less so.

ARTY FARTY FUNNY FRIDAY

A few cartoons or funnies, linking mirthmaking to art.....kind of. The first two are home-grown:

#1: A photograph found by my husband, captioned by him and used on his blog "Thinks Happen" earlier this week. #2: A cartoon drawn by my husband, captions chosen by both of us. The rest are "borrowed", with thanks to the copyright owners (clearly marked), in the hope they will not chase me for infringement for use on this "not for profit" blog.




"Oh Fudge!"

"My bad!"

Finally, verses from a poem by one of my favourite humorists of the 20th century. It was written c.1948, but it's oddly apt for how I'm feeling, right now!

I WILL ARISE AND GO NOW by Ogden Nash

In far Tibet
There live a lama,
He got no poppa,
Got no momma,

He got no wife,
He got no chillun,
Got no use
For penecillun,

He got no soap,
He got no opera,
He don't know Geritol
From copra,

Got no opinions
Controversial.
He never hear
TV commercial,

He got no teeth,
He got no gums,
Don't eat no Spam,
Don't need no Tums.

He love to nick him
When he shave;
He also got
No hair to save.

He use no lotions
for allurance,
He got no car
And no insurance.

If you will mind
The box-tops, comma,
I think I'll go
And join that lama.

Ogden Nash, Poet with Leo's Sense of Fun

Ogden Nash, born 19 August 1902 in Rye, NY at 1.30am

It seems to me that what James Thurber did via cartoon drawing, Ogden Nash did writing verse. Adjectives such as "kind", "loving" and "gentle" are used to describe this man and his work in a variety of articles and reviews on-line.

In Nash's natal chart the Sun is in Leo, Mercury in Virgo (see how often Virgo features in these writers' charts!) Venus, Mars and Neptune all in Cancer - here's his loving kindness and the reason wit and satire became gentle in his hands. Moon and Jupiter in Aquarius probably account for his habit of mocking the establishment, conservative politicians and religious moralising - not unlike Sinclair Lewis' approach, but with a more emphasised sense of the absurd. Sun and Moon are exactly opposing each other, but without knowing more about Nash's personal life, it's not possible to say how this materialised for him. Simply put, it's meant to signify conflict between needs and wants. I notice that a similar opposition occurs in the chart of my next subject, S J Perelman.

Saturn is in Capricorn, Uranus in Sagittarius. Pluto is, of course in Gemini as with all six of my chosen subjects There is a Yod in Nash's chart (as there was in Dorothy Parker's and James Thurber's). Nash's Yod points to Saturn, with Sun/Pluto sextile. He was obviously a very hard worker, working almost to the time of his death - perhaps in his case this was his way of relieving the tensions of ill health and a tempermental wife upon whom he doted.

Ogden Nash's Leo Sun would have influenced his playful use of language, and his almost child-like sense of fun - apparent in his many rhymes about animals and insects:

"THE CENTIPEDE

I objurgate the centipede,

A bug we do not really need.

At sleepy-time he beats a path

Straight to the bedroom or the bath.

You always wallop where he's not,

Or, if he is, he makes a spot."

"THE FLY

God in his wisdom made the fly

And then forgot to tell us why."

Ogden Nash used the English language like a ball of clay, moulding it to his will and his verse:

"I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance,

Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance."

"If called by a panther/Don't anther."

His own assessment of "serious" works of prose and poem:

"Very Like a Whale

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for

Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.

Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,

Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say that it is like something else.

What does it mean when we are told
That the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?

In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of Assyrians.

However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity,We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.

Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on the fold?

In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there are a great many things,
But I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.

No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;

Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail anda big red mouth and big white teeth and did hesay Woof woof? ".............................................

Nash's working life started uncertainly with a variety of different jobs, leading eventually to a position with Doubleday, a well-known New York publishing house, this is when he began writing his humourous poetry, which apparently came to him with little effort, after a shaky attempt to write more serious verse. Later he became a regular contributor to the New Yorker, and other quality magazines, and was to count Dorothy Parker among his circle of friends.

Ogden Nash married Frances Rider Leonard in 1931, with whom he had two daughters. His experiences with fatherhood provided more comic fodder for his verse, evident in the 1936 collection "The Bad Parents' Garden of Verse." He offered this observation as a result of a party, comparing his children and their companions to tribal warriors:

"Of similarity there's lots

Twixt tiny tots and Hottentots."

According to some on-line biographies Frances Nash was a hard woman to like, very temperamental - yet Nash remained devoted to her, and his family (stellium in Cancer!) He suffered bouts of ill health throughout his life, and frequently wrote humourously about his encounters with the medical profession. His book "Bed Riddance...A Posy for the Indisposed" is one example.

Nash always had a burning ambition to write for musical comedy. He eventually attained his dream when he provided the lyrics for Kurt Weill's classic "Speak Low" in collaboration with my next subject S.J Perelman, who was to become his lifelong friend. Nash and Perelman co-authored the show "One Touch of Venus" from which the song came. ''Speak Low'' was to become the show's signature number, but there are many more, including ''Very, Very, Very,' which, satirically, takes off on targets from fine art to free love. As the Nash lyric explains, ''It's a minor peccadillo/To patronize the wrong pillow.''

As well as his writing, Ogden Nash undertook a regular circuit of lectures, which he found exhausting but gratifying. He carried on working almost up to the time of his death in 1971.At one of his last venues he said of humour:

"It is not brash, it is not cheap, it is not heartless. Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit. . . . So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves."

I'd have liked Ogden Nash - no doubt at all.