A poste messe

With its frantic tempo and onomatopoeic lyrics, A poste messe, by the Florentine Lorenzo da Firenze puts you very vividly in the scene of a 14th Century Italian hunting expedition with dogs (named Vilan and Baril we assume).  The performance is by the Italian group La Reverdie:  

The piece is an example of the Italian Ars nova or Trecento style.  This recording was used to great effect in The Little Hours, the 2017 film adaptation of a story from Boccaccio's Decameron that gets the unspeakable (as heck) golden seal of approval.  The Italian lyrics and English translation are from the YouTube video:

Italian:

A poste messe veltri e gran mastini,
"Te, te, Villan, te, te. Baril", chiamando,
"Ciof, ciof qui, qui ciof."
Bracchi e segugi per bosch'aizando
"Eccola eccola!" "Guarda, guarda qua!"
"Lassa, lassa, lassa!" "O tu, o tu, o tu!"
"Passa, passa, passa!" "Eccola, eccola!"
"Guarda, guarda qua!" "Lassa, lassa, lassa!"
"O tu, o tu, o tu!" "Passa, passa, passa!"
La cervia uscì al grido ed a l'abaio,
bianca, lattata col celiar di vaio.

A ricolta, bu, bu, bu, bu, sanca corno,
ta tin ta tin ta tin tin to tin to tin to
sonava per ischorno no no no no.

English translation:

All in their places, greyhounds and great mastiffs,

Hey, hey, Vilan! Hey, hey, Baril! 

Calling "woof woof", here. "Woof!"

Hunters and hounds to the shining woodlands!

Here it is, here it is!

Look, look here! Let them go, loose loose! 

Hey you, or you, or you! Go, go, go!

The doe came out to the shouting and the barking,

milky white, with neck of speckled grey.

Rally to! bu, bu, bu, without horn.

tintin, tatin, tintin tatin, 

sounded as if in scorn, no no… 

~~~~~~~~

A live version is here.  Follow along with the score here.

Cross words

I lead an impoverished life as I think you may have figured out by now, and one of my impoverishments is an addiction to my daily Crossword Puzzle app.  I do the puzzle daily--religiously as it were-- and then quite often read a blog that talks about it.*  It’s written by a sometimes quite comical but most times exceedingly fussy chap.  He’s a fast solver, you see.  Not the fastest I’ve seen but waaayyyy faster than me.  I take 7 minutes at least on Monday, usually more like ten or so if my attention wanders, as it is often wont to do.  He takes less than 2.  On Saturday, the hardest day, I take upwards of 45 minutes.  He suggests a typical Saturday solve for him is around 4 minutes.  Sunday is not always the hardest puzzle of the week but it’s time consuming to get through all those clues, so I rarely take less than an hour.  He probably does it in less than ten minutes.

I’m not in it for the speed.  But I like a good solve and I wish I could go to this blog and share the experience.  He says he blogs because it’s a solitary activity and this is a way to feel communal around it.  What almost invariably happens is I go to share in the joy for a puzzle I've loved and he trashes it.  Usually it’s because it has things in it he doesn’t know, and for an English professor there’s a hell of a lot he doesn’t know.  While he cheers clues and answers that commemorate contemporary ephemera, he has a disdain for historic and pop culture references earlier than 1980 (gee I wonder why) and goes off on puzzles that have more than one or two of them.  While I complain about him just because being annoyed by him on a regular basis is a solitary activity and this is a way to feel communal around it, an example of what I'm talking about was a Friday puzzle that memorably kicked my ass from here to Timbuktu.  Friday’s the second hardest day for the puzzle.  I wasn’t annoyed-- I never am by my own ignorance and I also grant constructors a great deal of leeway out of gratitude for their work (the blogger is himself a constructor so feels entitled to critique his comrades’ output with vigor; his readership though is generally not, yet they also pile on with glee each day) but it was a very hard earned solve and probably my worst Friday ever.  So I go to the blog at least expecting to see it graded as challenging and to get at least some validation for my perception of it as a bear and not only has he graded it Easy but he says it was one of his fastest Fridays ever.

The crossword puzzle that I struggled with another day was a particular pain in the butt.  I technically didn’t finish it the night it appeared because of 2 crosses where I really didn’t know either answer.  They were:

• Unit of a newspaper (I had vOL when the answer was COL—I mean my answer fit) crossed with Classic Camaros (I had IROvS when the answer was IROCS—I didn’t have a clue)

and

• Old TV Screens (C?TS was all I had when the answer was CRTS) crossed with Logger’s Contest (?OLEO versus ROLEO)  Again, neither one of those meant a thing to me.

If I'd had only the second problem, it would have been tempting to run the alphabet for the mystery letter until I hit on the correct solution and got the snazzy music heralding success.  As it was, I had to wait until the next morning’s publish of the curmudgeonly crossword blog to fix my errors because I wasn’t going to let a little thing like a stupid puzzle ruin my 201 day streak.

The whole puzzle just struck me as weird.  I can’t be more specific than that, because as I look it over now for examples of what I’m talking about, even though it’s full of outlying clues and answers, none hit me quite the way it was hitting me as the memory of all but solving it the prior evening came to me in my stupor that morning when the cat woke me up by jumping from the window sill onto my gut with his claws extended.  The way it hit me that morning was weird in the way I've previously often thought about, like some families are weird because the parents kiss the kids on the lips to say goodnight and have bizarre family expressions like “don’t get all wee-wee’ed up” and exotic customs like putting salt on their watermelon and what not.  I mean every family is weird in its own way but some families it occurred to me are just freaks!  And I was thinking the constructor had come from such a family and had composed his puzzle with his-family-isms as though his family’s ways were normal.  And the thought I really wanted to share with you was that I was sure his family was from money, and as I had concocted this image of him and his wealthy parents and siblings sitting around the breakfast table salting their watermelon before driving their IROCs to the Roleo Invitational, a startling insight hit me, which was that there are certain things that some wealthy families of my acquaintance appear (to my pinko peasant heart) to have in common with cartoon hillbilly families: insularity; bizarre customs; incest; hostility to strangers; arrogance.  It sounds weird and probably wrong now but believe me it was brilliant that morning.

Reading the blog and commentary on the puzzle gave me a severe case of Anthrophobia.  People were fine with the 2 mystery spaces that stopped me dead in my tracks but were extremely worked up by a totally different and innocuous clue and answer in particular: the clue was “Hey there, Tiger!” and the answer was “ROWR”  Not ideal in the scheme of things but perfectly legitimate, am I right?  The curmudgeonly blogger set off the argument by insisting that fake lion sound is RaWR not ROWR.  But, to paraphrase Joe Biden, come on, man!  Rawr and Rowr are 2 different things!  One is a lol catty spelling of the sound a monster makes, and the other is a phonetic rendering of a sexy growl a la Roy Orbison.  Am I right?!  But the comments were full of people chiming in in agreement (in a volume reminiscent in its overwhelming pointlessness of the excessive vote in California for Hillary Clinton in 2016) that Rowr is the wrong spelling of Rawr.

These were probably the same people who in a similar kerfuffle earlier in the week didn’t hear any distinction at all between DOH and DUH.  There was no disagreement that there were 2 spellings; just no acknowledgement that they had different meanings-- the former the vocal head slapping verbally betraying the moment you realize you're wrong; the latter a shorthand for 'here is stupidity' whether your own or someone else's or a synonym for "No shit, Sherlock!"   It’s not just caring about trivialities while being sloppy with important details that make people conventional to an irritating degree mind you, it’s just the way they do it, what they volunteer to reveal about themselves to strangers in public probably by accident most of the time (such as when they rush to be wrong about something that plenty of people have already been wrong about as though their impulse to chime in will influence reality to change its mind).  It would be almost disturbing if  it weren't so pathetic and sad. By talking about this I'm guilty of what I’m accusing these folks of, I admit, but I never exclude myself from my general disappointment in humanity.

And that is what I love about doing crossword puzzles.

~~~~~~~~~~
* Sometimes I go to the blog just to lurk around the latest battle in the comments around the question of whether the proper attitude toward language should be one of prescription (e.g., One mustn't end a sentence with a preposition!) or description (Like it or not, language belongs to all of us and most of us don't give a damn about that with which a sentence should end!).  An army of fussbudgets is ever at the ready to defend the right to feel superior to less persnickety speakers of the tongue. I feel the descriptive side is more than adequately represented in these discussions by the fierce, brilliant, provocative and entertaining contributions of a West Virginia teacher with a background in linguistics. Respect!

Victory Dirge

John Selleck (1967)

I can’t have anything nice apparently.  Voter turnout in New Hampshire on Tuesday surpassed 2016, so based on the disappointing amount of daylight between the winner and the runner up at the end of the night, it does seem like Boot-edge-edge crept up on Bernie.  Is polling a useful thing anymore?  Where were all these people who told pollsters they intended to vote for Bernie to that point.  Did they watch some more MSNBC in the interim and waffle at the last minute?  I think it’s true, too many "demoncraps" are thinking, “Hey, I like 'em all! You pick and I’ll show up in November to defeat Trump!”  That strategy could work I guess.  I’m struggling with the thought that people aren’t exactly getting the urgency this year.  Have you heard of a little thing called global warming?  Are you aware that there are great and widening disparities of wealth and income in this society?   Have you noticed people struggling day to day while Mike Bloomberg on his own dime saturates your tv and your youtube sessions with propaganda designed to seduce you into substituting him for Donald Trump?  I guess there’s some pucker left in the American kisser for the ass of capitalism yet.  ^_^  (don’t quote me)

I wish I was happier.  I have bursts of resolve that occasionally plummet to disappointment and despair.  Why can’t I just be happy Bernie won.

Imagine how I’d be if he hadn’t won!  For a few too many minutes Tuesday night watching the margin of victory shrink I was imagining the spring I'd see today in an openly Pete supporting colleague's* step if B-E-E stealth stole it from Bernie deep into the night.  2016 all over again.  In fact, he’s so far pulling a Donald Trump on the primaries.  Are you Pete supporters happy with how he's accumulated delegates so far in Iowa and New Hampshire?  (Why yes they are.)

I’ll be better.  I just need a few moments.

The one consolation of Tuesday (aside from the fact that Bernie won for fuck sake!!) is that now Pete will have to face Bloomberg and black voters like everybody else.  Bloomberg coming up fast.   Has mini-Donald bought the election yet?

Is revolution possible at the ballot box?  Shouldn’t it be?  They will pay people to keep it from happening,  to do their bidding for them and to defeat us.  They own the channels of persuasion and dissuasion.  They have suppression and spin and media saturation.  We have our bodies.  We have each other.  We have to motivate ourselves to show up.  For ourselves.  For each other.  For those who won't come. For those who can't.

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* A very decent sort but a decided member of the Professional Managerial Class. Of course he’s the only colleague whose candidate I know. There’s a telling obliviousness to the way he drops Pete into silences around the conference table. He seems to think, These are smart people of good taste.  Of course everyone’s for Pete!

Give Yourself Permission

Democrats desperately want to defeat Donald Trump.  They'd like to get things back to how they were before Hillary Clinton lost to him.  Conventional wisdom within the upper echelons of the party dictates that what is needed for this job is a conventional dem.  Résumé ready, brimming with policy proposals, as comfortable in a roomful of Silicon Valley billionaires as seated before the members of the New York Times editorial board.  A celebrity cab drivers would line up to have a beer with, with a name that easily escapes the mouths of our nation's most esteemed pundits while provoking nothing more dyspeptic than a knowingly cynical smirk.  Intersection with an approved identity not a disqualification. Pete Buttigieg would represent the standard notion but in a new package that is young, gay and military.  Amy Klobuchar has the concept down and is an excitingly alternative gender. But if the voters are not exactly turned on by either of those newish faces, Joe Biden should work.

Bernie Sanders is categorically different.  The comfort in his own skin comes from a constitution that is driven to restore America from its billionaire and corporate owners back to its people where it has always belonged.  Healthier now though he is than he was before he started this time last year thanks to a heart procedure that cleared his bloodstream, it is still valid to ask whether it wouldn't be more reasonable to ask of him nothing more taxing than the benefit of his wisdom and guidance from the safety of the less stressful sidelines.  But who would he advise? Who is as committed as Bernie Sanders to the type of fundamental change that is urgently needed to turn this country and this planet around from the free way that capitalism has had with it for nearly 40 years?  Few voters have as crystal clear a vision of the disease of capitalism that plagues this country and the world.

Bernie's revolution starts with specific policy proposals.  Medicare for All-- no qualifications.  Free Public College for All.  Cancelling Student Debt. Transforming the economy through the Green New Deal and reducing carbon emissions to slow down and who knows maybe someday reverse the effects of man made climate change.  Cancelling trade deals that are designed only to pad the profits of tax-shirking corporations while exploiting labor in other countries, meanwhile decimating the distribution of American wealth.  Reform of an immigration policy that is designed to keep a steady supply of immigrant workers whose undocumented status makes them vulnerable to low pay and outrageous abuse and exploitation from unscrupulous employers (many of whom pour money back into the political system to keep paths to legal immigration as prohibitive to would be refugees as they currently are).  Decriminalizing poverty-- reforming our justice system so that it is more just and less systematically brutal on selective populations. Getting capitalism out of government.  Getting Billionaires and Corporations to give back some of their obscenely excessive share of the world's pie to begin to address the mess their unfettered greed has made for all of us.  Getting money out of politics.  Seeing to it that things fundamentally change for the leeches in the uppermost percentages of the 1%, because this is the only way it can fundamentally change for the better for all of us (including the leeches).

No one could credibly claim it's absolutely impossible for Joe Biden to win in November against Donald Trump.  Anything is possible.  The Financial Crisis that devastated the middle and lower classes was a deliberate crime against America that caused real misery and harm, and yet nobody who caused it lost a dime, nobody was prosecuted for it and many who were behind it were recruited to the administration that was elected to handle it. Thanks to a decision of the highest deliberative body of the land, corporations are considered to have as much freedom to participate in the political process as people and their money is considered a legitimate form of speech.  We blithely accept a mercilessly profit seeking layer called "health insurance" chosen for those of us lucky enough to be employed by employers who are legally under no obligation to grant us this benefit and who offer us this layer of their choosing that sits between ourselves and those we seek health care from as though this is a perfectly normal and not at all insane way for a people to procure care for their health.  Billions of dollars a year are transacted to bring you panels of the most highly educated, sanitized experts on politics on our cable news channels and in the pages of our most influential newspapers and magazines who are always wrong. All of these pundits will tell you what Bernie Sanders stands for is an impossible pipe dream.

Bernie Sanders is fond of quoting Nelson Mandela's observation that a thing "always seems impossible until it is done."  Give yourself permission to believe in a better future of a specific nature: A future in which much much more of the 90% of wealth and income concentrated among the 1% of the county finds its way into the lives of ordinary poor and working class Americans and their families.  A beautiful future of people happily educated to whatever level suits their fancies and helps them meet their dreams, a people who have no fear of sudden illness ruining their finances and their lives, a people whose lives are powered by abundant clean energy, who breathe clean air, drink clean water, travel in clean cars and high speed trains, who live in peace with their neighbors and whose country lives at peace with the world.    Permit yourself to vote for change.  You will be joined, polls show, by a groundswell of people who would not vote any other way.  This is how Donald Trump gets beaten.  Be part of it.