What can I add to all of the tributes? An animal advocate, a World War II volunteer, a talented comedienne – it has all been said these past ten days. I, of course, first really saw her when I was a kid watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show with my mother. I watched it again in reruns…and again…and again. I must have encyclopaedic knowledge of the show. I also loved The Golden Girls as did my parents. My father took to nicknaming my mother “Rose,” as the absurd and lengthy stories she told over the years – filled with Norwegian names, all preposterous – were so like Rose’s St. Olaf stories on the series. Hard to choose a preferred Betty White moment, but this comes close – two brilliant performers combined with great writing. Enjoy, and RIP, Betty.
The Big Issues
Because I’m not afraid to tackle the big issues: a thing I wrote about Emily in Paris versus And Just Like That. Spoiler alert: Emily wins.
Epiphany
January 6 is always a bittersweet day for me. There’s still an element of post-Christmas letdown, especially since this is the day I take down all of our decorations. I’m a traditionalist: Christmas decor goes up the first Sunday of Advent and comes down on Epiphany. So there’s that to bring on some blues. And, of course, it is also my oldest brother’s birthday – he would be 73 today. Always missed. I can hear him saying, “Rondi, enough with your post-holidays lollygagging! Get on with it.”
So yeah, I’m going to try.
Llwyn On: The Ash Grove
I watched How Green was my Valley last night, and, of course, went through about fourteen boxes of Kleenex. Music is such a big part of that film and while I love “Men of Harlech” and “Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer,” I think my favourite musical moment in HGWMV is the Welsh version of “The Ash Grove.” It is sung by the townspeople as Ivor and Bronwyn leave the church after their wedding. Here is a version from Thomas L. Thomas, the Welsh baritone.
Sir Tony Blair
This – everything. One hundred percent. Blair’s knighthood is long overdue.
He saw in Kosovo a resurgence of ethnic conflict in Europe and outlined his Chicago Doctrine of liberal interventionism. He saw public services that had benefited from significant injections of resource without enough in the way of reform. There is courage with him, too. It would have been easy for him to do a Schröder or a Chirac in the aftermath of 9/11 and pander to domestic anti-Americanism. He would have won plaudits from his own party, the media and the liberal intelligentsia. Instead, he stood by the US, not least over Iraq, because he considered it a moral struggle and thought by America’s side was where Britain ought to be. Approve or revile his decision, he made it aware of the political costs at home… Does he deserve a knighthood? Of course he does: for service to our country, for service to his party, for the wise counsel he provides on everything from the Middle East to Covid-19. The only question is why it took so long for him to become Sir Tony.
Absolutely.
Tutu and Didion
Too lazy to write two posts, so I will include both of these very different people here. Bishop Tutu died and the laudatory headlines were everywhere. Would anyone, I wondered, have the courage to write about his, er, uncomfortable relationship with Jews and the Jewish state? Melanie Phillips to the rescue with this must-read. (I had not been aware with just how vile some of Tutu’s views were. Now I – distressingly – am.) Apart from Phillips, though, there has been little criticism or challenging of Tutu – it reminds me of when Helen Thomas died and nobody would mention the antisemitic elephant in the room. It was all, what a feminist icon, blah blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
My internet friend Rick McGinnis (still have not met him, but hope that I will, one day, post-pandemic) wrote about Joan Didion three years ago. An original take – as he calls it, her “uncomfortable fit” in American (counter) culture.
Missing Link: Get Out Your Kleenex Edition
This should have been included in my most recent Beryl O’Links – it’s such a gorgeous story, though, that perhaps it is fitting to give it its own post. Ndakasi, an orphaned gorilla, dies in the arms of the ranger who saved her. (There is glory on this earth. We just don’t see it enough.)
Ring out, Wild Bells
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Boxing Day/Week
This is alternately a dreary/depressing post-Christmas letdown time of year, or a fun, lie-on-the-couch and eat too much week where one doesn’t even bother with the theatre of pretending to be productive. I am kind of in a combined state of the two – I know I will regret that I did not use this week effectively, though. This article outlines what’s fun about this time of year and it occurs to me I should not be so hard on myself. What’s wrong with a slovenly week? Probably not much, except that I have had many of those in the past year(s) and it needs to stop.
The British call this week “Boxing Week,” an extension of the more formal holiday Boxing Day, on December 26. Boxing Day is an older tradition that may stem from wealthy families giving presents to their household staff the day after Christmas; in its current form, it is a day to box up and get rid of extra stuff, or regift unwanted gifts. Boxing Week has become an excuse for Black Friday–type sales and the accumulation of more stuff. In Norwegian, Dead Week is known as romjul, a word that combines the Norse words for “room” or “space” and Jul, or “Yule”; it literally means “time and space for celebrating the yuletide.” But it also echoes the Old Norse word rúmheilagr, which means “not adhering to the rules of any particular holiday.” The week has neither the religious gravity of Christmas nor the flat-out party atmosphere of New Year’s Eve, but is stuck halfway between one and the other.
The Boxing Day references brings up a memory for me: I was living in Paris, studying and being an au pair and I had an American friend, Anne (not her real name – her real name was Mara). She was kind and fun but she had this pretentious boyfriend. One day they were asking about Boxing Day – what is it? Why is it called that? And so forth. I explained the origins and as I was from a country with Boxing Day, I assumed that was enough. Oh no, the arrogant boyfriend said, with a smirk. That can’t be it! He laughed and turned to Anne and – to my dismay – she joined in the general mockery of what I had said. Seriously? They then went on to offer other suggestions as to why it was called “Boxing Day” – it was a conversation between the two of them, as though I was not even in the room. Unkind and condescending. (One of their brilliant ideas? That it had to do with the Boxer Rebellion. Sheesh.) Which makes me ask – why do I even remember this unpleasant incident? It was hardly a huge event in my life and I know my friend’s kindnesses far outweighed it. This article attempts to explain why (some) bad memories stick in our craws and our memory banks.
I hope this Boxing Week finds you, my dear readers – and Anne, wherever she is – well.
Good 2021 News
Twenty-one scientific discoveries – in other words, the year has not been entirely about the plague, even if the headlines might indicate that it has been so. Obviously, vaccine news – both about COVID and malaria – is at the forefront, but there is more. What I find particularly fascinating (and not unrelated to Kennewick Man):
Between 23,000 and 21,000 years ago, a teen ambled across wet sand near the shores of an ancient lake in what is now New Mexico’s White Sands National Park. The fossilized prints from this slightly flat-footed youth are challenging theories of when humans first crossed into the Americas. The prints, described in September in the journal Science, date to a time when scientists think towering glaciers had walled off human passage to the continent from Asia.