National Dress

[davidhuh]

Dear NJS,

sometimes, it is not easy to respond and perhaps better to stay quiet. However, as we are not physically present in the same room, where a simple nodding or eye contact may suffice, I give it a try.

"We'll know more about it in the morning."

A very special thank you for sharing this. It amazes me how few words it takes to say everything.

And our fragility too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8sewohu ... re=related

RIP Lena Zavaroni. RIP.

I chose Lena Zavaroni because there was a time when she was at the top of the arc in terms of popularity and certainly vivacity. Then, she slowly killed herself, dying of self-imposed starvation at the age of nearly thirty six. I didn't choose her to brighten anyone's morning.
NJS

Thank you for introducing me to Lena Zavaroni. What a voice, what a painful end. Good to know we can still admire her.

There's an interesting aside about Dorothy Parker's dust. She was cremated in 1967 and the ashes were left at the crematorium for six years and then sent to her lawyer's offices, where they remained in a filing cabinet for fifteen years. Someone then remembered them and they were given to the charity which was her principal beneficiary and they interred them, on 20th October 1988, in a dedicated memorial garden, under a plaque which mentions "Excuse my dust". An alternative epitaph which she gave herself was "Have this one on me".

"Excuse my dust" - incredible self fulfilling prophecy... Dorothy Parker would love it.

Contemplating about Dorothy, dark humour, Lena, the beauty of the human voice and the fragility of our existence, I found something you might perhaps like. Next Saturday October 8, it will be 58 years since the premature death of Kathleen Ferrier.

David

http://youtu.be/dX7FjQu1uss

http://youtu.be/WjvHg9cBriw

[NJS]

David - Thanks for this. It is strange because I nearly put up a youtube clip of Kathleen Ferrier earlier today. She made her last recordings in between hospital visits (I think to UCH), knowing that she was dying. Caruso and Callas were two others who didn't make it into old age. Maybe, in their cases, they just had something too special to last long. Princess Charlotte Augusta (George IV's only legitimate child) is another one: a bit of a tear-away but hugely popular, in strong contrast to her father; she was noted, even as a child, for such acts as insisting on stopping her attendants in the street, against their warnings, and herself bandaging a beggar-boy's wounds. She died in childbirth, aged 21 years. She was buried with her son in the same casket: two direct heirs to the throne together; the poor medic held responsible, for weakening her with blood-letting (Sir Richard Croft) killed himself in 'the triple obstetric tragedy', and the public mourning was said, by Henry Brougham, to amount to a feeling that "every household throughout Great Britain had lost a favourite child".
NJS