Francessa, is celebrating her birthday in Vienna today. She is a teacher, researcher, and admitted "hard blogging scientist." Truly, she has one of the most inquisitive minds I've ever known and she delights in life's intricacies as well as its simplicities.
As lifetimes go our friendship is new. As friendships go our connection is real.
When Francessa and I exchanged our birth dates I told her that mine is the same day as Joan Baez, and she said hers is shared with Mick Jagger. When I went to my calendar to write my friend's birthday on the July 26 square, Karl Jung's name was already there. (Jung has been on my calendars since 1985, the year I got sober and read him in earnest; sorry, Francessa, I like Mick Jagger but he doesn't rate high enough to make my wall calendar birthday notes!)
I have a New Years Day tradition of transferring all my birthday notes from the old wall calendar to the one for the new year. I've been doing it since I was in high school. As the years have passed some names dropped (ex-husband, co-workers, etc.) and new ones were added. What has remained consistent are names of living and deceased family members and other people I admire for various reasons. When I see these names it gives me a sweet pause to consider a life that means or meant a lot to me, or to the masses.
There is a Bob Dylan song, at its best covered by Joan Baez, one of those heart songs of mine that, coincidentally, just happens to be one great song to commemorate a birthday...
Happy Birthday, Francessa, and may you stay Forever Young!
An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
16 comments:
Joan Baez has been one of my favourite singers since my time as a teenager and I am now also about your age.
Kedar
Whoa, hearing Joan Baez's voice really transported me through a time warp this morning! What a fabulous voice...and I visited Francesca and had a wonderful time reading about ish and uff. What a great blogosphere!
Hi there...found you by way of Ann Haines' blog which led me to Corn Shake, which led me to a site "review" which had an essay from Sandra Beasley which led me to YOU.
LOVED the "...which is a great thing..." series in your About Me description on your home-page.
And I love that you celebrate a fellow-blogger's birthday at your Blog. I did that too, awhile ago, when I mentioned Selma In The City at my Blog:
www.lisananetteallender.blogspot.com/
Keep up the great work!
love joan baez
blessings from costa rica
Kedar,
Very nice to have you visit my blog and to know that we share a common appreciation for Joan Baez. I'll see you at your blog soon.
Mibsy,
You changed your thumbnail photo and that's cute. I'm glad you had fun at Francessa's blog. There's always something interesting going on there.
Lisa,
Receiving your comments right after I had posted that blogging is a wonder to me simply intensified the wonder! Thanks for providing the thread that led you to my blog, as I really think it's interesting to know. I appreciate your kind comments and am on my way to visit your blog (even though it's 1:35 a.m.!)
Kathie,
Great to hear from you, and always love your blessings. I'm sorry I have been remiss in visiting and I'll correct that tomorrow!
Oh my, I read that wonderful blogpost about my birthday just now! What a present! Thank you so much, especially for Joan Baez singing Bob Dylan! Great text, great music, great singer!
I'm no fan of Mick Jagger at all (George Bernard Shaw, Carl Jung and Aldous Huxley are much more to my liking) - somebody just told me long ago that we share the same birthday, and, annoyingly, it always comes to my mind on that day ;-)
Thanks again!
Francessa,
I'm glad you liked your b-day surprise.
You do indeed share your birthday with some of the greats in history.
I can tell that you feel similar to also sharing your b-day with Mick Jagger as I do with also sharing my birthday with.....Richard Nixon. :("annoyingly, it always comes to my mind on that day" is the perfect way to describe it.
(But I also share mine with Simone de Beauvoir, who is one of those historical greats in my opinion.)
Hi Lydia--I've added your Blog to my list of links at my blog. Thank you again...btw, check out one of my popular, and older poems, below. You'll see why I think you'll enjoy it. LOL.
What I Believe
I believe in tall women with long hair. I believe in science.Fried green tomatoes for lunch. I believe in my father’s smoky voice, I hear it at night, when I’m alone.
My fiance’ is away; he’s on a plane, and I believe he’ll still curse at me when he returns. He’ll tell me this is all foolish, that there is no point to this, but I believe poetry is the only point. It’s the bubbles in the pot, boiling, roiling…
I believe in my niece’s laughter; I remember how at 11, I saw her pirouetting—she was pirouetting to Eminem---and I thought, ”This is perfection. This is beauty.”
I believe in friends I’ve known for 20-plus years; I believe in God, for the first time in nearly 20 years…I believe in physics, in Richard Feynman, and wish I’d been able to go to strip clubs with him, and hear this physicist play his bongo drums. I believe Shakespeare’s sonnets are aphrodisiacs, and so are fresh figs.
I believe love would be a lot easier, if only heterosexual men were gay.
I believe no matter what I write, or what you think you understand me to say, there’ll still be a huge space between us. I believe that doesn’t matter. At all.
I believe that communion we all look for---at church, at the theatre, it’s here, for the taking---this communion with each other….
I believe my fiance’ understands. Sometimes. Other times, I’m alone. That saying, “Being alone is not the same as being lonely” is true.
I love walking in museums alone. That’s where I went, what I did. When everyone else went to their houses of worship, I prayed there---after 9/11, I saw more art, went to more plays, read more poetry, wrote more poetry….
I believe in all those female singers—in the 1970’s, they called them folk singers. I believe in Joan Baez’s “Diamonds and Rust”,
and, if you don’t know it, we can never be intimate.
I believe in only dating a man who has at least one sister; I believe in dating women who are confident, literate, beautiful. I think there are very few men who are all of that.
There are many animals I believe should be pets.
Pigs, because they’re smart; they have the mentality of a three year old child.
Rabbits, just because they’re cute.
I believe I need to live to be 100 or so, because I have a lot of things I still want to do.
December 2003.
Have a great night. Peace.
Lisa,
I admire your "space for poetry, politics, and peace" and consider it an honor that you placed a link to my blog there. With pleasure, I reciprocate. Your poem is a wonderful stream of consciousness that swept me away...and I believe in "Diamonds and Rust" too. ;)
On a slight tangent to your blog there's a great joke in Frazier where his brother Niles takes over the radio show for a week whilst Frazier is ill and Niles, initially hopeless at presenting begins by saying; "Whilst Frazier is a Freudian, I am a Jungian - so there'll be no blaming mother today!"
DFTP,
O, that is so funny! I watched an episode of Frazier just last week and was lamenting that it went off the air. That one would have remained fresh for me forever (and I'm happy there are re-runs).
I don't know who I share a birthday with?!?! hmmmm.....I shall find out!
What a beautiful tribute to your friend! You are a great writer. I tried checking out her link, but there was just a page that said, html can't be found. maybe my computer is acting wiggy!
WW,
After you research your "birth mates," let me know who they are; I'm curious!
Lily H,
Thank you so much for alerting me to the gunked up link! It wasn't your computer at all. I fixed it. She's also on my blogroll under Francessa's Thinking. Thanks again :)
Hi Lydia--I am checking in with you again. Thank you for commenting at my blog, and my goodness, you're WELCOME, I'm HAPPY to provide a LINK to you, and THANK YOU for including me here at your Blog!
Peace, woman!
Lisa,
So good to hear from you again and to have comments from you on some other posts as well. I'm certainly enjoying being a regular reader at your blog!
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