Friday, May 2, 2014

DAY 99 - COUNTING DOWN TO THE 50TH

Good Morning, Class of '64
Maypole Dance - Dot Gould - http://www.dotgouldpainting.co.uk/index.html
The world's favorite season is the spring.
All things seem possible in May."
Edwin Way Teale


For winter's rains and ruins are over, 
And all the season of snows and sins; 
The days dividing lover and lover, 
The light that loses, the night that wins; 
And time remembered is grief forgotten, 
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, 
And in green underwood and cover 
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
 Algernon Charles Swinburne 

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers: 
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers. 
I sing of Maypoles, Hock-carts, wassails, wakes, 
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.
Robert Herrick

The month of May was come, 
when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom,
 and to bring forth fruit; 
 for like as herbs and trees bring forth 
fruit and flourish in May, 
 in likewise every lusty heart that 
is in any manner a lover, 
springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds.
 For it giveth unto all lovers courage, 
 that lusty month of May.
Sir Thomas Malory
May Day - Kate Greenaway
May 2, 1964
Saturday
  • Some 400–1,000 students march through Times Square, New York, and another 700 through San Francisco, in the first major student demonstration against the Vietnam War. Smaller marches also occur in Boston, Seattle, and Madison, Wisconsin.
  • Senator Barry Goldwater receives more than 75% of the vote in the Texas Republican Presidential primary. 
  • Died: Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, hitchhiking in Meadville, Mississippi, are kidnapped and beaten by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Their badly decomposed bodies are found by chance two months later in July, during the search for three civil rights workers – Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. 
  • Beatles' "Beatles' 2nd Album" goes #1 & stays #1 for for 5 weeks 
 LBJ and Hubert Humphrey
5/2/64
Telephone Conversation
 between 
President Johnson and 
Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

May Basket - Andrew Wyeth
May. The May of 50 years ago brought an end to our public school years. We'd walk the halls of the old brick school building no more. Standing in it's place is an unfamiliar, one story building that a younger generation calls "our school". But it can never be "our school" to the graduates of 1964.

The brick building with the oiled floors and backstair fire escape, "our school", has been gone for many years. Only photographs and memory, as long as we are alive to hold the memory, attest to its existence. We learned there, made friends there, fell in and out of love there, then, left there to go out and make our way in the world.

It was there through it all, that old brick building. It felt the vibrations of an enthusiastic band. It listened to teacher's lectures and to cheers for the red and white team. It heard the laughs and whispers in the hallways and the silence of Study Hall.

Maybe the old school would be proud of us. Maybe the old school would give us a wink, a pat on the head, a shake of the hand if it could, or an arm around our shoulders. But, this is another May, and "our school" became a pile of bricks to be hauled away.
Adieu, Old School.

Try to Remember
From The Fantasticks, an original
off-Broadway production that ran a total
of 42 years and 17,162 performances,
making it the world's
longest-running musical.
The Brothers Four

 "Sweet May hath come to love us,
Flowers, trees, their blossoms don;
And through the blue heavens above us
The very clouds move on."
Heinrich Heine
Book of Songs

May Day Procession - Anna Richards Brewster
Turn Around
 Recorded on the Time to Think 
album released in 1963. 
It reached number 7 on the 
Billboard Pop Albums chart.
  The Kingston Trio - 1963

Turn around
Turn around
Turn around and
you're a young girl
Going out of the door

May Day - Pal Szinyei-Merse

May
 
Sara Teasdale
The wind is tossing the lilacs,
The new leaves laugh in the sun,
And the petals fall on the orchard wall,
But for me the spring is done.
 
Beneath the apple blossoms
I go a wintry way,
For love that smiled in April
Is false to me in May.

Green Fields
American folk singing group,
founded in 1957.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brothers_Four 
Brothers Four - 1960

Once there were green fields kissed by the sun
Once there were valleys where rivers used to run
Once there were blue skies with white clouds high above
Once they were part of an everlasting love
We were the lovers who strolled through green fields
A May Day Celebration - Unknown
Green, Green
 Peaked at number three.
The first hit single by the group.
New Christy Minstrels - 1963

Green, green, it's green they say
On the far side of the hill
Green, green, I'm going away
To where the grass is greener still.
May Day in Central Park - Maurice Prendergast
 'But I must gather knots of flowers,
And buds and garlands gay,
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother,
I'm to be Queen o' the May.'
 
Alfred Lord Tennyson
May Day Garland - Marshall Thomas Falcon

1 comment:

  1. as always a good read and good music..JMC

    ReplyDelete