WA2K Radio is now on the air

Don't let politics blur your appreciation of the Fouth Letty. It's celebration is not for the politicians but the brave and frightened young men and women who fight and hopefully return to parents, wives and husbands, children. Remember it's our America we're celebrating. It's thanks for our past and dreams for our future. Don't let anyone take our joys away.

The Platters - Enchanted

Living is a dream when you make it seem enchanted
Lovers take for granted all the world?s aglow, they ought to know
When you touch a star then you really are enchanted
Find a seed and plant it, love will make it grow

It?s really grand when you stand hand in hand with your lover
And thrill to the wonders of night
And days, too, will amaze you and soon you?ll discover
Your dreams run to dreams in continuous flight





Love is ecstasy, it?s divine to be enchanted
When your dreams are slanted through a lover?s eyes

It?s really grand when you stand hand in hand with your lover
And thrill to the wonders of night
And days, too, will amaze you and soon you?ll discover
Your dreams run to dreams in continuous flight

Love is ecstasy, it?s divine to be enchanted
When your dreams are slanted through a lover?s eyes

My word, Angel. I missed yours as well. Sorry, my dear. Yes, now I recall it.

edgar, I remember as a kid that the forest was an enchanted place, really. Thanks for that reminder.

Bob, I realize that, and more. Esprit de Corps! As Francis once remarked; sacrificed on the altar of love. Somehow, we must all recall those who gave their lives for what they believed to be "...that last measure of devotion..."

Just a slight diversion here, listeners. A little of my divergent thinking.

Idioms


It isn't always the nonnative speaker's accent (which may be perfect) that enables people to recognize instantly an outsider who is learning their language?-it's the odd mistakes that no native speaker would make. The idiomatic use of words such as to, for, and with varies from language to language. Just as each person has a unique, characteristic signature, each language has unique idioms. In fact, the word idiom comes from the Greek root idio, meaning a unique signature. Thus, each language contains expressions that make no sense when translated literally into another tongue. The humorist Art Buchwald wrote a famous column, often reprinted, in which he translated some of our Thanksgiving (Mercidonnant) terms into literal French, with comic results. If a German or Spaniard or Italian literally translated birthday suit and get down to brass tacks, the terms would make no sense, or the wrong sense. Even a native speaker of English who is not used to hearing literate idioms such as fits and starts, cock-and-bull story, hue and cry, and touch and go will not be able to make sense of them. Our purpose in defining these idioms is to let the cat out of the bag for those who haven't heard them often enough to catch their meanings. 1
Other idioms are really allusions or foreign-language terms that make no sense unless you know what the allusions or terms mean. Carry coals to Newcastle translates adequately into any language, but it makes no sense to a person who doesn't know that Newcastle is a coal-mining city. Knowing the literal meaning of idioms won't enable you to understand them unless you also know what they allude to. Such ignorance is an Achilles' heel and an albatross around one's neck. Moreover, just knowing a baker's dozen of them is not enough; you have to know them en masse. Educators who complain about the illiteracy of the young but pay no attention to teaching idioms are just weeping crocodile tears. We have therefore decided to cut the Gordian knot by systematically defining some of the most widely used idioms in American literate culture.

But I won't bore our listeners with the entire list.

And one must remember that it was NOT Damocles sword that cut out the Gordian knot...

<smile> I remember you, Francis. Don't you live somewhere in Paris?

Well, listeners, the dawn is breaking and with it the end of my quiet time.

Station break:

This is cyber space, WA2K radio.

Good Morning WA2K.

Birthday Celebs:

1491 King Henry VIII, king of England who separated the Anglican Church from the Roman Catholic Church (Greenwich, England; died 1547)
1577 Peter Paul Rubens, painter and diplomat (Siegen, Westphalia; died 1640)
1712 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher (Geneva, Switzerland; died 1778)
1902 Richard Rodgers, composer and collaborator with Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein (New York, NY; died 1979) (See Bobsmythhawk"s bio) Can't say enough about Richard Rodgers. His songs are timeless.

1905 Ashley Montagu, anthropologist/author (London, England; died 1999)
1909 Eric Ambler, suspense novelist (London, England; died 1998)

1926 Mel Brooks, actor/director (New York, NY)(See Bob's bio - Young Frankenstein and The Producers are my two favorite comedies)

1946 Bruce Davison, actor (Philadelphia, PA) (Oscar nominated for Longtime Companion, 1990)

1946 Gilda Radner Detroit, comedienne (SNL-Baba Wawa); second husband, Gene Wilder; died 1989 (wrote a memoir about her life and struggle with the illness, called It's Always Something. The book was written by Radner in tribute to cancer sufferers everywhere, and she used humor to overcome tragedy and pain.)

1947 Mark Helprin, author (New York, NY)

1948 Kathy Bates, actress (Memphis, TN) (Fried Green Tomatoes; At Play in the Fields of the Lord; Dolores Claiborne; About Schmidt; Oscar for Misery, 1990)

1949 Don Baylor, baseball player/manager (Austin, TX)
1960 John Elway, football quarterback (Port Angeles, WA)
1966 John Cusack, actor (Evanston, IL)
1971 Aileen Quinn actress (Annie)

Black sails knifing through the pitchblende night
Away from the radioactive landmass madness
From the silver-suited people searching out
Uncontaminated food and shelter on the shores
No glowing metal on our ship of wood only
Free happy crazy people naked in the universe
WE SPEAK EARTH TALK
GO RIDE THE MUSIC

If you smile at me you know I will understand
Cause that is something everybody everywhere does
In the same language
I can see by your coat my friend that you're from the other side
There's just one thing I got to know
Can you tell me please who won
You must try some of my purple berries
I been eating them for six or seven weeks now
Haven't got sick once
Probably keep us both alive
Wooden ships on the water very free and easy
Easy you know the way it's supposed to be
Silver people on the shoreline leave us be
Very free and easy
Sail away where the mornin sun goes high
Sail away where the wind blows sweet and young birds fly
Take a sister by her hand
Lead her far from this barren land
Horror grips us as we watch you die
All we can do is echo your anguished cry and
Stare as all you human feelings die
We are leaving
You don't need us
Go and take a sister by her hand
Lead her far from this foreign land
Somewhere where we might laugh again
We are leaving
You don't need us
Sailing ships on the water very free and easy
Easy you know the way it's supposed to be
Silver people on the shoreline leave us be
Very free
And gone
NO C'MON
GO RIDE THE MUSIC
C'MON RIDE IT CHILD

Ah, Raggedy. Thanks for once again keeping us informed about the celebs. Back later with a tribute.

dys, that's a rather scary song; it is a song, right?

Hashed metaphor--trinity of love and power/trinity the testing of the atom bomb.

Well, listeners, I face a gordian knot today that I wish would go away, but it won't. The worst part is I have no excalibar.

I'm beginning to think that Kris was right:

"freedom's just another name for nothing else to lose."

JOPLIN LYRICS

"Mercedes Benz"

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV ?
Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me.
I wait for delivery each day until three,
So oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV ?

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town ?
I'm counting on you, Lord, please don't let me down.
Prove that you love me and buy the next round,
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town ?

Everybody!
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends,
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?

That's it!

And so it was for that poor girl.

Good morning to WA2K listeners. It is a beautiful summer day

Weather, weather everywhere, be sure to have a drink.

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. ~Henry James

It isn't all perfect, especially for those of us who remember quiet forests and clear, clean streams.


They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Hey farmer farmer
Put away that d.d.t. now
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees
Please!
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Late last night
I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi
Took away my old man
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

?- Joni Mitchell Lyrics

I barely remember the clear streams, Diane. In Virginia, you could drink right from the little cistern that held the underground water. Nothing ever, EVER tasted better.

Well, listeners, it seems that gasoline in headed for $3.00 a gallon here in the U.S. and here's an interesting item from France:

What Is This? PARIS, France (Reuters) -- France set out on Thursday the terms of the world's biggest initial public offering of shares this year -- a €4 billion ($4.87 billion) sale of shares in Gaz de France designed to cut public debt and support the utility's expansion.

The sell-off, which is opposed by France's powerful energy unions, will start later on Thursday when the conservative government plans to offer up to 22 percent of Europe's third-largest gas firm to private investors, according to details issued by the finance ministry in the early hours.

It is the first of three politically charged sell-offs in the French energy sector expected within the next 12 months and is bitterly opposed by French energy workers who staged the latest in a series of minor protests on Wednesday.

The deal involves the sale of up to 121.3 million state-held shares expected to net the government some €2.4 billion for debt reduction depending on whether investors are willing to pay at the top end of an indicative price range of 20.7 to 24 euros.

The sale comes weeks after French President Jacques Chirac appointed a new premier with orders to tackle France's chronic unemployment of around 10 percent, after voters dealt him a blow by rejecting a proposed European Union charter.

The cash cannot be poured directly into the government's main priority of providing jobs, but could indirectly create some extra leeway for boosting the labour market or other measures by lowering interest charges on reduced debt.

However, the government is also under pressure to control spending, with Finance Minister Thierry Breton issuing a blunt warning this week that the country was living beyond its means.

To bolster its own finances Gaz de France will also sell 80.9 million newly created shares as part of the overall deal, tapping the market for some €1.6 billion to fund future expansion as it faces up to increased deregulation at home.

"The capital increase will enable us to pursue our current strategy, with the aim of reinforcing our position as one of the leading participants in the sector, in both France and Europe," Gaz de France Chairman and Chief Executive Jean-Francois Cirelli said in a statement.

The finance ministry said it would keep 78 to 80 percent of Gaz de France following the sell-off. It has legal approval from parliament to sell up to 30 percent.

The offer period runs from June 23 to July 6.

Big operation
"This is a big operation. We need to deliver sufficient financial means to GDF, which at the moment is a mid-sized group relative to its competitors," Industry Ministry Francois Loos told LCI television as the finishing touches were put to the partial privatization late on Wednesday.

Cirelli, 46 and a lifelong civil servant who became head of GDF nine months ago, has been urging the government to press ahead with the IPO to give the firm the sturdiness it needs to rival energy giants such as Germany's E.ON and Britain's Centrica.

The complex structure of the deal, in which 15 percent of the offer is being made in-house within Gaz de France at preferential rates to woo sceptical staff, means it is not easy to calculate the exact amount to be raised from the raw figures.

On paper the government could raise €2.9 million based on the price offered to banks. Retail investors will get a 0.2 euro discount plus various other incentives.

Sources close to the deal said the government could in practice net about €2.4 billion from the sell-off, depending mainly on the progress of the ambitious employee offering. The overall deal could be worth €4 billion ($4.87 billion).

That would surpass Belgacom's $4.4-billion offering last year and place Gaz de France just inside the top 10 list of world IPOs since 2000, on a par with CIT Group of the United States, according to Dealogic data.

It is also around half the amount France hopes to raise by selling a chunk of the larger but more indebted state energy concern, power giant EDF, in a sell-off due later this year.

Unions particularly oppose that sale which they say would undercut public services and pave the way for a free-for-all.

It's a corporate world, folks.

Oh, not here, Letty dear!

It's an absolutely gorgeous morning. Bright blue sky, gentle breeze, so clear that everything seems in sharp focus. Dewdrops are sparkling on the grass, and I can't help but feel optimistic for the rest of the day.



Oh, what a beautiful mornin',
Oh, what a beautiful day.
I got a beautiful feelin'
Ev'rything's goin' my way......
Oh, what a beautiful day!

Ah, dear Eva. You have such a wonderful spirit of expectation, right listeners?

Things are so uncertain right now. Tico had a thread about that serial killer and his matter of fact confession that made my blood both boil and freeze.

And now, folks, Congress has either complicated things or over simplified them:

Senate Overwhelmingly Passes Energy Bill By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
24 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - The Senate overwhelmingly approved energy legislation embraced by both Republicans and Democrats Tuesday, but hard bargaining looms with House GOP leaders who favor measures more favorable to industry.

See what I mean, audience?

Ah, well, perhaps it time for some music:

It's A Big Wide Wonderful World


It's a big wide wonderful world
When you're in love you're a master
Of all your survey you're a gay Santa Claus
There's a brave new star-spangled sky above you
When you're in love you're a hero
A Nero a Poirot a Wizard of Oz

You've a kingdom power and glory the old old oldest of stories
Here's new true you'll build your Rome in just one day
Life is mystic a mid-summer's night you live in
A Turkish delight you're in heaven
It's swell when you're really in love
It's swell when you're really in love

Did that work?

A gay Santa Claus? words change and so does the meaning. <smile>

You know, listeners. It suddenly appeared to me in an AHA moment how many of the things that we recall as kids are elements of the past, and how the most common things can be metaphors for time:



There's an old spinning wheel in the parlor
Spinning dreams of the long, long ago,
Spinning dreams of an old fashioned garden
And a maid with her old fashioned beau.
Sometimes it seems that I can hear her in the twilight
At the organ softly singing "Sweet and Low",
There's an old spinning wheel in the parlor,
Spinning dreams of the long, long ago,

That song when compared with Whitman's "Sparkles from the Wheel", pales a bit, but the message is the same.

1819-1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

227. Sparkles from The Wheel



1

WHERE the city's ceaseless crowd moves on, the live-long day,
Withdrawn, I join a group of children watching?-I pause aside with them.

By the curb, toward the edge of the flagging,
A knife-grinder works at his wheel, sharpening a great knife;
Bending over, he carefully holds it to the stone?-by foot and knee, 5
With measur'd tread, he turns rapidly?-As he presses with light but firm hand,
Forth issue, then, in copious golden jets,
Sparkles from the wheel.

2

The scene, and all its belongings?-how they seize and affect me!
The sad, sharp-chinn'd old man, with worn clothes, and broad shoulder-band of leather; 10
Myself, effusing and fluid?-a phantom curiously floating?-now here absorb'd and arrested;

The group, (an unminded point, set in a vast surrounding;)
The attentive, quiet children?-the loud, proud, restive base of the streets;
The low, hoarse purr of the whirling stone?-the light-press'd blade,
Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold, 15
Sparkles from the wheel.

What do you think?

This is for everyone that is interested in the Supreme Court's rulings cocerning religious monuments and the like.

(THERE WAS A) TALL OAK TREE
DORSEY BURNETTE (ERA 3012, 1960)

There was a tall oak tree
That loved a babblin' brook
And the babblin' brook
Loved the mountain high
And the mountain high
Loved the sky above
The Creator looked down
And saw everything was love, love, love

Then he took a bone
And a piece of mud
He made a man, then a woman
To be flesh and blood
Then along came the devil
Up out of the ground
He tempted woman
And that spread sin all around, all around, all around

Now, if she'd left that apple
On the apple tree
There'd be no tears and sorrow
We'd live eternally
And then along came Man
To burn the oak tree down
Now the babblin' brook
Is a solid ground
And the mountain high
Don't stand so high
'Cause there's a cloud of smoke
That covers up the clear blue sky

There was a tall oak tree
There was a tall oak tree
There was a tall oak tree

edgar, this has been such an odd day, and your song simply reflects it.

The president is speaking, and I have no desire to listen.

You know, folks. It really doesn't matter how we feel personally about religion or beliefs or even spiritual things. It simply matters that we keep trying to do something. Existing is simply not enough.

When I read the Spinning Wheel and Whitman's poem, it shows the irony of the beautiful and the humble and not one is more excellent than the other, and therein lies the soul of man.

Did anyone drink up the significance of the roundness of things? That is why I have always been fascinated with the golden spiral.

Perhaps The Toronto Star is correct:

We're in danger of amusing ourselves to debt


JAMES TRAVERS

Missing from the Live 8 concerts are a couple of stars who once rocked the world's conscience. One is Karl Marx, the other Neil Postman.

Before capitalism routed communism, Marx famously noted that the rich will do anything for the poor except get off their backs. Postman, a New York professor, thinker and writer, warned that we are in danger of amusing ourselves to death.

It's an unlikely combo, but Marx and Postman say something important about Bob Geldof's latest attempt to rescue Africa with music. Only a change of tune will start the good times rolling across a continent brought to its knees by corruption, AIDS and poverty.

Those problems are simply too entrenched to be moved by momentary pressure on politicians. Nor will they be budged by the celebrated decision to forgive the debt of the few developing countries demonstrating good governance, or by Prime Minister Paul Martin's grudging reappraisal of Canada's failure to hit the international assistance target set by Lester Pearson in ?- wait for it ?- 1969.

What's needed now, is that those who have so much give remarkably entrepreneurial, notably hard-working Africans a chance to lift themselves. That will only happen if we stop singing and dancing long enough to seriously consider evidence that we are killing them.

Instead of tapping our toes to the music, we should be putting our foot down on a trading system that excludes poor farmers from rich markets and makes aid beggars of states whose low costs should make them tough competitors. Instead of humming along, we should be shouting for fairness in an economic order that delivers less in aid than it takes away in commerce.

This isn't some dusty, defty-lefty, bleeding heart socialist theory resurrected by Marx's few remaining disciples. The hardly radical World Bank says knocking down trade barriers and eliminating $280 billion in subsidies that mostly benefit corporate agribusiness would put some $100 billion U.S. annually into developing country pockets.

So what's $100 billion? Its about $20 billion more than those same wealthy, industrialized nations contribute annually in aid.

If that sounds like taking a lot while giving a little, it is. If it sounds like an argument persuasive enough to convince G-8 leaders to cut subsidies or double aid at next month's meeting in Scotland, it's not.

Worried about the political impact of the one, and divided over Tony Blair's drive for the other, the world's economic high-rollers are taking cover behind the June 11 agreement to forgive the foreign debt of 18 of the poorest countries. Geldof welcomes that as a step in the right direction and a triumph for the Live 8 tactics. But it frees only $1 billion a year for wells, schools and clinics.

Here at home, Martin, who is spending billions domestically trying to re-elect Liberals, is hard pressed to find the money needed to restore Canada's development reputation internationally. That would cost about $15 billion annually by 2015 ?- or about $12 billion more than Ottawa spends now ?- and is an imposing number even if the government, as it often does, pushes meaningful increases far into the comfortable future.

It's hard to see how a few concerts will stiffen spines enough to make a difference.

Politicians who preach free trade while practising protectionism, countries that pinch pennies while boasting about generous hearts, aren't about to change because people who mostly stay home on election day come out for rock 'n' roll.

Its not that the concerts are a bad thing: It's just that so much more is needed.

Instead of amusing ourselves to death, we need to look into our souls and decide if we are willing to sacrifice a little to help a lot. We need to rethink how much is spent on aid and how its delivered.

Then we need to get off the backs of the poor.

Listeners, when I feel that I have the world on my shoulders, instead of shrugging, I find that I must simply develop stronger shoulders.

It's very important to be wanted and needed, for in that we feel the real sense of being part of the animal kindgom.

Okay. I'll stop now. Someone has a song dedication:

This dedication is to somone that I am happy to know:

"Say It With Music"

Love is the sweetest thing
What else on earth could ever bring
Such happiness to ev'rything
As Love's old story.

Love is the strangest thing
No song of birds upon the wing
Shall in our hearts more sweetly sing
Than Love's old story.

Whatever heart may desire
Whatever fate may send
This is the tale that never will tire.
This is the song without end.

Love is the greatest thing
The oldest yet, the latest thing
I only hope that fate may bring
Love's story to you.

canadian folksinger bob snider has this to say about progress

Parkette
Bob Snider

When I was a kid, I found a
robin's egg and hid it on a
timber in an old abandoned shack

that was sitting in a field
full of raspberry bushes
with a crab apple tree around the back.

And a stream going by
at the bottom of a hill
with a rock in the middle
and if you sat still

You could see the minnows swimming
from an overhanging limb
you could listen to the heat bug trill.

And early every day
all my friends and I would play
digging holes and finding gold
among the rocks.

And looking for salamanders,
and eating all the berries,
and rolling down the hill in a box.

Until on day they came with their machinery
and dozed down the shack
and hacked up the greenery
and stuffed the steam in a concrete pipe
and leveled the hill away.

And then they built a couple of mounds,
to make it look round,
and brought in loads of sod.
And planted a row of tress
that came up to our knees;
without a speck of shade it looked so odd.

And there were no more dragon flies
and no cray fishin;
and they called it a Parkette
after a politician

And put up a sign
saying no ball playing
and nobody ever went there anymore.

Our Day Will Come
Ruby & The Romantics

Our day will come
And we'll have everything.
We'll share the joy
Falling in love can bring.

No one can tell me
That I'm too young to know (young to know)
I love you so (love you so)
And you love me.

Our day will come
If we just wait a while.
No tears for us -
Think love and wear a smile.

Our dreams have magic
Because we'll always stay
In love this way
Our day will come.
(Our day will come; our day will come.)



Our dreams have magic
Because we'll always stay
In love this way.
Our day will come.
Our day will come

ah, dj, and edgar. Thank you so much for those contributions.

dj, I have had the same experience, my Canadian friend. I use to bury things all the time and look for eggs in the nest, but I never touched them. I was too afraid that the mother would come back, and the place where I played and imagined is gone as well.

Yes, edgar, our day will come, my friend, and in closing, may I play a different type song.

gershwin

There's a saying old says that love is blind
Still we're often told, seek and ye shall find
So I'm going to seek a certain lad I've had in mind
Looking everywhere, haven't found him yet

He's the big affair I cannot forget
Only man I ever think of with regret
I'd like to add his initial to my monogram
Tell me, where is the shepherd for this lost lamb?

There's a somebody I'm longing to see
I hope that he turns out to be
Someone who'll watch over me
I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood
I know I could always be good
Someone who'll watch over me

Although he may not be the man some
Girls think of as handsome
To my heart he carries the key
Won't you tell him please to put on some speed
Follow my lead, oh, how I need
Someone to watch over me

Goodnight, someone.