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Letty!

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little

Ah, McTag. You are so dear to remember that.

Isn't our Brit a marvel, listeners:

...every time we say goodbye I wonder why a little.

Why the god above me, who must be in the know.

Think so little of me they allow you to go.

When we kiss there's such an air of spring about it.

I can hear a lark somewhere,

Begin to sing about it.

There's no love song finer,
But how strange the change,
From major to minor.
Every time we say goodbye.

Thank you for that, McTag.

make that gods. <smile>

Goodnight, all.

From Letty with love

The Dipsy Doodle
Tommy Dorsey

The dipsy doodle is the thing to beware
The dipsy doodle will get in your hair
And if it gets you, it couldn't be worse
The things you say will come out in reverse
Like "You love I and me love you!"
That's the way the dipsy doodle works.
You can't eat, you can't sleep. You go crazy.
You're just a victim of the dipsy doodle
And it's not your mind that's hazy
It's your heart that's at fault - not your noodle.
You better listen and try to be good
And try to do all the things that you should
The dipsy doodle will get you some day
And when it gets you the things you will say
Like the moon jumped over the cow - hey diddle!
That's the way the dipsy doodle works.

Robert Benchley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Robert Charles Benchley (September 15, 1889 in Worcester, Massachusetts - November 21, 1945) was an American humorist, newspaper columnist, film actor, and drama editor.

His essays were published in collections including Of All Things, Benchley Beside Himself, Inside Benchley, and Chips Off the Old Benchley. His books were illustrated by Gluyas Williams, whose spare, knowing line drawings added to Benchley's success.

Benchley's humor was based on everyday life, news oddities, and absurd, almost surreal essays such as his "Uncle Edith" series. At Harvard, he was a leading contributor to the Harvard Lampoon. With Dorothy Parker and Robert E. Sherwood, his colleagues at the original Life magazine, Benchley formed the Algonquin Round Table. He was an early and regular contributor to the New Yorker Magazine. His style influenced other humorists such as S. J. Perelman and James Thurber.


Film work

In 1928, Benchley starred in The Treasurer's Report, a short comedy film that was possibly the first all-talkie film shown in theaters (as opposed to The Jazz Singer (1927), which was primarily silent, and The Lights of New York (later in 1928), the first full-length talkie feature film). This led to a series of more than three dozen comedic instructional short films whose titles frequently began with "How to…". Each featured Benchley as a lecturer or as his family man alter-ego, Joe Doakes. How to Sleep (1935) won an Academy Award in 1938.

At the same time, he found frequent work, at several studios, as a character actor in feature films, often playing a variation on the befuddled burgher of his shorts or else a dipsomaniacal sophisticate. He appears in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, in Rene Clair's I Married a Witch and with Fred Astaire in The Sky's the Limit.

Benchley also appeared in the 1941 feature film The Reluctant Dragon, giving a loose tour of the then-new Walt Disney Studios facility in Burbank, California.

Benchley was awarded a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. He is the father of author Nathaniel Benchley and grandfather of Jaws writer Peter Benchley.

On his passing in 1945, Robert Benchley was interred in the family plot at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Benchley

Agatha Christie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, DBE (September 15, 1890 - January 12, 1976), was a British crime fiction writer. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott.

Agatha Christie is the world's best-known mystery writer and all-time best selling author of any genre other than William Shakespeare. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another billion in over 45 foreign languages (as of 2003). As an example of her broad appeal, she is the all-time best-selling author in France, with over 40 million copies sold in French (as of 2003) versus 22 million for Émile Zola, the nearest contender.

Her stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest run ever in London, opening at the Ambassadors Theatre on November 25, 1952 and as of 2005 still running after more than 20,000 performances.

Christie published over eighty novels and stageplays, mainly whodunnits and locked room mysteries, many of these featuring one of her main series characters, Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. Although she delighted in twisting the established detective fiction form - one of her early books, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, is renowned for its surprise denouement - she was scrupulous in "playing fair" with the reader by making sure information for solving the puzzle was given.

Most of her books and short stories have been filmed, some many times over (Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, 4.50 from Paddington). The BBC has produced television and radio versions of most of the Poirot and Marple stories. A later series of Poirot dramatizations starring David Suchet was made by Granada Television. In 2004, the Japanese broadcasting company Nippon Housou Kyoukai turned Poirot and Marple into animated characters in the anime series Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, introducing Mabel West (daughter of Miss Marple's mystery-writer nephew Raymond West, a canonical Christie character) and her duck Oliver as new characters.


Biography
A plaque showing the Agatha Christie Mile at Torre Abbey in Torquay.


Born Mary Clarissa Miller, her first marriage, an unhappy one, was in 1914 to Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. The couple had one daughter, Rosalind, and divorced in 1928.

During World War I she worked at a hospital and then a pharmacy, a job that also influenced her work: many of the murders in her books are carried out with poison.

In December 1926 she disappeared for eleven days, causing quite a storm in the press. Her car was found abandoned in a chalk pit. She was eventually found staying at a hotel in Harrogate, where she claimed to have suffered amnesia due to a nervous breakdown following the death of her mother and her husband's confessed infidelity. Opinions are still divided as to whether this was a publicity stunt or not. A 1979 film, Agatha, starring Vanessa Redgrave as Christie, recounted a fictionalised version of the disappearance.

In 1930, Christie married (despite her divorce) a Roman Catholic, Sir Max Mallowan, a British archaeologist 14 years her junior, and her travels with him contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Other novels (such as Ten Little Indians) were set in and around Torquay, Devonshire, where she was born.

In 1971 she was granted the title of Dame Commander of the British Empire.

Dame Agatha Christie died on January 12, 1976, at age 85 from natural causes. Agatha Christie's only child, Rosalind Hicks, died on October 28, 2004, coincidentally also aged 85, from natural causes. Christie's grandson, Matthew Prichard, now owns the royalties to his grandmother's works.
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Two of her novels were written at the height of her career, but held back until after her death: they were the last cases of Poirot and Miss Marple. In the final Poirot novel Curtain, Christie killed her creation and explained in her diary that she had always found him insufferable. She had a great fondness for Miss Marple however, as she had based her characterisation largely on her own grandmother, so she allowed Miss Marple to solve one more mystery in Sleeping Murder and return to the solitude of her village.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie

Jean Renoir
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Jean Renoir (September 15, 1894 - February 12, 1979), born in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris, France was a film director.

Renoir was the second son of Aline Victorine Charigot and one of the world's most famous painters, Pierre-Auguste Renoir.


Life and work

When he was a child, his family moved to the south of France. He and the rest of the Renoir family would be the subject of many of his father's paintings. As a young man, his father's financial success ensured that Jean was educated at the best of schools. However, his education was interrupted when World War I broke out and he joined the army, serving first as a cavalryman and later as a pilot. He was injured in action, which left him with a permanent limp. After the War, Jean Renoir worked as a ceramic artist but soon became fascinated by the developments in motion pictures, particularly by the works of D. W. Griffith and Charles Chaplin, who he knew for several years only by his French name, Charlot.

In 1925, he directed the first of several silent films, many of which starred his first wife, Catherine Hessling. Associated with the Popular Front in the mid thirties, several films such as Le Crime de Monsieur Lange reflected the movement's politics. In 1937 he directed what many see as his first masterpiece, "La Grande Illusion." The film was banned as French propaganda in Germany by senior Nazi leader, Joseph Goebbels, and eventually by Mussolini in Italy after it won the "Best Artistic Ensemble" award at the Venice Film Festival. This was followed by another cinematic success: "La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast)," a film based on an Emile Zola novel and starring the immensely popular Jean Gabin.

In 1939, Renoir directed "La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game)", a film about upper-class French society just before the start of World War II. Renoir also appears in the film as one of the main characters. The film was initially judged to be too gloomy and was greeted with derision by a Parisian crowd on its premiere. The French government duly banned it, but in later decades it came to be recognized as one of the greatest films of all-time.


When World War II came, the 45-year-old Renoir joined the Film Service of the French army. With the German invasion and Occupation in 1941, he fled France to the safety of the United States where he worked in the film industry in Hollywood, California. In 1943, he produced and directed an anti-Nazi propaganda film: "This Land Is Mine," starring Maureen O'Hara and Charles Laughton. Two years later he made "The Southerner," a film regarded as his best work in America and one for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Directing. In 1946, Renoir became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

In 1962, Jean Renoir wrote a biography titled: Renoir, My Father. In 1975 he received an Academy Award for his lifetime contribution to the motion picture industry and that same year a retrospective of his work was shown at the National Film Theatre in London. In 1977, the government of France awarded him with the Legion of Honor. His life story titled My Life and My Films was published in 1974. In it, he talks about the profound influence of Gabrielle Renard, the woman seen here in the portrait by his father. Renard was a cousin of his mother and the family nanny who helped raised Jean from birth and who introduced him to the world of the cinema.

Jean Renoir died in Beverly Hills, California on February 12, 1979. His body was returned to France to be buried beside his family in the cemetery at Essoyes, Aube, France.

Jean Renoir has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6212 Hollywood Blvd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Renoir

Good Morning WA2K:

I like your choices, Bob.
I notice Fay Wray is listed for a birthday today. I thought we talked about her not too long ago. I wonder if she celebrated two birthdays, too.

Today's birthdays:

973 - Al-Biruni, mathematician (d. 1048)
1580 - Charles Annibal Fabrot, French lawyer (d. 1659)
1613 - François de La Rochefoucauld, French writer (d. 1680)
1649 - Titus Oates, English minister and plotter (d. 1705)
1789 - James Fenimore Cooper, American novelist (d. 1851)
1828 - Aleksandr Mikhailovich Butlerov, Russian chemist (d. 1886)
1857 - William Howard Taft, President of the United States and Supreme Court Justice (d. 1930)
1876 - Bruno Walter, German conductor (d. 1962)
1879 - Joseph Lyons, tenth Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1939)
1881 - Ettore Bugatti, automobile engineer and designer (d. 1947)
1883 - Esteban Terradas i Illa, Catalan mathematician, scientist, and engineer (d. 1950)
1889 - Robert Benchley, author (d. 1945)
1890 - Agatha Christie, English writer (d. 1976)
1890 - Frank Martin, Swiss composer (d. 1974)
1894 - Jean Renoir, film director (d. 1979)
1898 - J. Slauerhoff, Dutch poet and novelist
1901 - Sir Donald Bailey, civil engineer (d. 1985)
1903 - Roy Acuff, country musician (d. 1992)
1904 - King Umberto II of Italy (d. 1983)
1907 - Fay Wray, actress (d. 2004)
1908 - Penny Singleton, American actress (d. 2003)
1913 - John N. Mitchell, United States Attorney General and convicted Watergate criminal (d. 1988)
1914 - Adolfo Bioy Casares, Argentine writer (d. 1999)
1915 - Igor Cassini, fashion designer (d. 2002)
1922 - Jackie Cooper, actor, director
1924 - Bobby Short, jazz musician
1924 - Lucebert, Dutch painter and poet
1926 - Jean-Pierre Serre, French mathematician
1928 - Cannonball Adderley, saxophonist and bandleader (d. 1975)
1929 - Murray Gell-Mann, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1929 - Eva Burrows, Salvation Army General
1933 - Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Spanish conductor
1933 - Henry Darrow, actor
1938 - Gaylord Perry, baseball player
1940 - Merlin Olsen, American football player and actor
1946 - Tommy Lee Jones, American actor
1946 - Oliver Stone, film director
1949 - Joe Barton, American politician
1961 - Dan Marino, American football player
1976 - Paul Thomson, drummer (Franz Ferdinand)
1984 - Prince Harry of Wales

Good morning WA2K radio fans and contributors.

edgar, that song was unique. Dipsy Doodle? I know that my sister will remember it! Thanks, Texas.

Bob, I was familiar with all your bio folks, and thinking especially of James Fenimore Cooper and his exciting books of Natty Bumppo and Uncas, (I think that was the last of the Mohicans' name)

Dropsy was just what they referred to as heart failure in those days and it was simply an accumulation of fluid.

I have the last book that Agatha Christie ever wrote, intended to be published after her death and heralded the end of her wonderful character Hercule Poirot. The name of the book was Curtain, if I recall correctly.

Ah, there's our dear Raggedy with her celeb updates. I love the impressionists, and Jean Renoir's father is one that I especially like. I had no idea that the man was in films. Thanks dear, for that information.

Amazing news item, listeners:

WWII Soldier's Last Letter Makes It Home
Wed Sep 14, 3:43 PM ET

Gary Mathis bought a box of old newspapers at a yard sale in Kansas, and discovered the letter inside a newspaper from 1915. The letter's envelope has military post office markings dated March 6, 1944.
It was addressed to W.J. Krotz of nearby Poole, about 120 miles west of Lincoln.
Mathis placed an announcement and picture of the letter in the Ravenna News, hoping someone might know the family.
Louise Kisling said she heard about her brother's letter through word of mouth. Clinton Krotz, an infantry soldier in Italy during the war, was killed in action on May 8, 1944. The letter was the last one he sent home.
In the letter, her brother thanked his parents for a wristwatch they had sent as a birthday gift, as well as some candy and nuts.
Kisling said her only disappointment was that her parents never got the chance to see the letter. An envelope within the letter was postmarked by the Poole post office, Kisling said. She was not sure how it ended up in Kansas.
Mystery aside, Kisling is grateful.
"We sure appreciate the man that saved it," she said. "It's amazing a letter can come back after all these years."

Back In The U.S.S.A.
Back In The U.S.S.A.
Blending the Beatles with Politex

Flew in to New Orleans BOAC
Couldn't find a bed last night
On the way the paper bag was on my knee
Man I had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the U.S.S.A.
I know how lucky I am, boy
Back in the U.S.S.A.

Been away so long I hardly knew the place
Gee it's good to be back home
Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my mace
FEMA's disconnected the phone
I'm back in the U.S.S.A.
I know how lucky I am, boy
Back in the U.S.S.A.

Well the N'Awlins girls really knock me out
They leave the rest behind
And the Mississippi girls makes me sing and shout
And Alabama's always on my my my my my my my mind.

Show me round your flooded cities way down south
Take me to Trent Lott's crawdaddy farm
Let me hear Bush FEMA spinners shoutin' out
Come and keep our corporations warm.
I'm back in the U.S.S.A.
I know how lucky I am, boy
Back in the U.S.S.A.

Do you have a cite to that article, Letty? I know a "Gary Mathis," and it might be the same guy.

BBB, Thanks, gal for the politico Beatle connection.

Hey, Paladin<smile> I'll check and be back with you in a few.

Back, folks, with a note for our Tico.

Hey, buddy. I found that item on Yahoo news, and unfortunately, I cannot post a link to that particular site. I did a quick search on that article and found that it was from The Kansas City Star, but one must register for that, and I really didn't want to do so

Would you like the entire article?

and while we are waiting for our resident knight to respond, here's a song that I found in our archives:

Soldier's Last Letter
Artist: Ramblin' Jack Elliot

Album: Kerouac's Last Dream


When the postman delivered the letter
Well, it filled her old heart full of joy
But she didn't know 'til she read the inside
It was the last one from her darling boy

"Dear Mom," was the way that it started
"I miss you so much," it went on
"And, Mom, I didn't know that I loved you so
But I'll prove it when this war is won"

"I'm writing this down in a trench, Mom
So don't scold if it isn't so neat
For you know as you did, when I was a kid
And would come home with mud on my feet"





"Well, the captain just gave us our orders
And mom we will carry them through
I'll finish this letter the first chance I get
But for now I'll just say I love you"

Then the mother's old hands began to tremble
As she fought against tears in her eyes
For they came unashamed, there was no name
And she knew that her darlin' had died

That night as she knelt down by her bedside
She prayed, "Lord above, hear my plea
Protect all the sons who are fighting tonight
And dear God keep America free"

Ah, me, folks. It's too early for tears.

Free as a Bird

Free as a bird,
It's the next best thing to be free as a bird.
Home, home and dry
Like a homing bird I fly, as a bird on wings
Whatever happened to the life that we once knew
Can we really live without each other
Where did we lose the touch
That seemed to mean so much
It always made me feel so
Free as a bird,
It's the next best thing to be free as a bird.
Home home and dry
Like a homing bird I fly--a bird on wing
Whatever happened to the life that we once knew
Always made me feel soooo
Free

Free as a bird
It's the next best thing to be
Free as a bird
Free as a bird
Free as a bird


The Beatles

Letty thanks for Alice...

We all have a some woman in us that bleeds... some more than others...

People just hide from their vulnerabilities.

Hey, Rex. Welcome back, Maine.

Rex's song reminded my of an old hymn that my oldest sister used to sing and it was called "Flee as a Bird". I'll find the lyrics later.

Yes, Rex, my friend. We do indeed hide from our vulnerabilities, and sometimes, we are like that moth to a flame.

The Warning


Just now,

Out of the strange

Still dusk. .as strange, as still. .

A white moth flew. Why am I grown

So cold?