A Lazy, Hot, Summer Holiday Weekend

We finally got a break in the heat this afternoon. It's raining outside now, and the front that moved in brought the temperature down into the 70^ºs for the first time in several days. I had just enough time after the men's finals at Wimbledon ended (at last) to run out and mow the grass in the front yard before the storm hit. (More about Wimbledon below.)

Sue and I have had a nice, quiet 4^th of July weekend. TJ, Amy and Amanda are down at Lake Powell with some of Amy's family. Stephanie is still down in Texas, finishing up her Teach for America training in Houston. Along with a group of about 20 corps members, she spent most of the weekend down at the beach near Galveston. She called Friday morning, a little bit homesick, because she noticed that Wimbledon tennis was on TV, and she was wondering if we were watching it. (We were.)

Stephanie will finish her training this week. After that, she is going to drive to San Antonio to visit her grandmother (Sue's mom) for two or three days. Next Monday, she will fly up to Salt Lake to spend a week with us before she heads to St. Louis to start her stint with Teach for America. It's good timing, because I got four lawn passes for the Elvis Costello/Police concert at Usana Amphitheater on July 19. Stephanie, TJ, Amy and I will go while Sue babysits Amanda. (She would have been a good sport and gone along, if Stephanie weren't here, but Elvis Costello and the Police aren't really Sue's kind of music (think Neil Diamond), and she wasn't looking forward to several hours sitting on the ground.)

We took it easy pretty much all weekend. With temperatures over 100^º, neither of us felt motivated to try anything ambitious. We worked on the sprinkler system for a while yesterday, and did a little other yardwork. Sue pruned her roses. A couple of weeks ago, they all looked spectacular, with dozens of blossoms. In a couple weeks, they should go through another blooming cycle. We barbecued both Friday and Saturday evening – some pork shoulder strips on Friday and beef spare ribs last night.

Wimbledon

Both Wimbledon finals were worth watching. Yesterday, Venus and Serena Williams squared off for the women's title, and even though Venus won in straight sets, it was a good, hard-fought match. Today, the men's final featured Roger Federer, attempting to win an unprecedented (in the open era) sixth straight men's singles title, and Rafael Nadal, the four-time French Open champion, facing Federer in the Wimbledon finals for the third straight year.

Early in the match, Federer seemed somewhat tense, and was not playing as loosely and confidently as usual. As a result, Nadal jumped out to an early lead, winning the first two sets, 6-4, 6-4. Partway through the third set, play was interrupted when rain moved in. When play resumed, Federer seemed to have collected himself, and he won the third set in a tie-breaker.

The fourth set was close throughout. Nadal had some chances to end the match early. In one game late in the set, he had Federer down 15-40 in a service game, but Roger managed to hold serve. They went on to a 6-6 tie and another tie-breaker. Nadal opened up a 5-2 lead in the tie-breaker, and had two serves to try to win the match. Instead, Federer won four straight points to take a 6-5 lead, and went on to win the tie-breaker and even the match at two sets each.

Despite a few break opportunities, Federer and Nadal stayed on serve throughout the fifth set. There was another rain delay with the set tied 2-2 and Federer serving at deuce. By the time they returned after this second interruption, it was about 8:30 pm in London, and time was short if we were going to crown a winner today. Federer held service to take a 3-2 lead, then Nadal evened the set 3-3, and so on. Nadal survived one break point in the eighth game of the set, and Federer faced a double-break opportunity for Nadal in the 11^th game, yet held serve. They got to 6-6, but this time there would be no tie-breaker. In a deciding fifth set for the Wimbledon title, the players must continue until one or the other has a two-game advantage.

After failing to capitalize on a 15-40 lead at 5-5, Nadal sees another opportunity slip away when Federer hangs on to take a 7-6 lead, despite losing the first two points and trailing 0-30. In the 15^th game of the set, Federer again falls behind 0-30. He gets to 15-30, but then Nadal hits a winner off his backhand to give him another double-break chance. Federer gets an ace and wins another point to even the game at deuce. Nadal wins the next point, and Federer faces another break point, which he again erases with an ace. Nadal wins the next point to get the advantage, and this time he ends the game, taking an 8-7 lead and a chance to serve for the title.

The final game is as hard-fought as the rest of the match. Nadal gets to 40-30 to earn his third championship point (the first two came late in the fourth set), but the ever resilient Federer again denies him with a blistering return of what looked like a very good serve. At deuce, Nadal answers with an ace to get back to championship point. This time, Federer's forehand finds the net, and the match is finally over.

To his great credit, Federer was gracious in defeat, saying that he tried everything, but that Nadal, who he called a deserving champion, just had too much. Nadal was giddy and filled with disbelief that the Wimbledon crown was finally his. After climbing into the stands to hug his family and the Prince and Princess of Spain, who were watching from the Royal Box, Nadal posed for several minutes, playfully biting one of the handles on the championship cup in what has become his signature gesture. Cameras followed him a few minutes later as he paused to sign autographs for fans as he departed the All-England Tennis Club.

In post-match interviews with both players, John McEnroe said this was the greatest tennis match he had ever witnessed. That's saying something, coming from a man who participated in historic battles at Wimbledon and at the U.S Open against players such as Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors and Ilie Nastase, to say nothing of the many matches he has since seen as a television commentator.

iPod Madness

Over the last few days, I've come up with a few new playlists for my iPod and my iTunes library on my PC. It had been a while since I had created any lists. Lately, I've mostly been listening to music by artist or by album, but I felt like it was time to add a little variety.

For my first list, I wanted to select good solid quality tracks, but not limit my choices by too many rules. I didn't include any classical, of course, but a few show tunes crept in (e.g., Patty Lupone singing "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from Evita) and some jazz, too (Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis). I did stop myself after ten Beatles tracks made the cut, and decided no other artist would get nearly that many.

I had titled this playlist "A Few Favorites." After I finished going through my music library and making selections, I checked to see how many I had picked. It turns out that my few favorites number 595 tracks. Well, I wanted variety.

For my next effort, I decided that NO ONE, not even the Beatles, would get multiple tracks. Also, I decided that for the purposes of this list only music that fit the pop music genres (including rock, folk, R&B, blues and the like) would be considered. Show music and jazz, as well as anything classical, will be dealt with in future lists.

I called the new list "Best of the Best," and when I was finished it included a still too high 191 tracks.

Finally, this evening, I decided to pare the "Best of the Best" down to an even 100, all by different artists, which I naturally call the "Top 100." This is not to say that I am characterizing my list as the greatest 100 rock/pop songs ever or anything. I wouldn't even say I necessarily picked the best song from each artist. It's just the 100 songs by the 100 artists that most appealed to me when I was going through what was available on my iPod.

Without further ado, here is the "Top 100" playlist that I will be listening to from time to time on my iPod (alphabetically by artist):

Melissa (The Allman Brothers Band)
The Weight (The Band)
Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys)
A Day In The Life (The Beatles)
(Don't Fear) The Reaper (Blue Öyster Cult)
Changes (David Bowie)
Fountain Of Sorrow (Jackson Browne)
Hallelujah (Jeff Buckley)
My Back Pages (The Byrds)
Ring Of Fire (Johnny Cash)
Taxi (Harry Chapin)
Georgia On My Mind (Ray Charles)
With a Little Help from My Friends (Joe Cocker)
Viva la Vida (Coldplay)
Farewell To Tarwathie (Judy Collins)
School's Out (Alice Cooper)
Veronica (Elvis Costello)
Ode to My Family (The Cranberries)
Badge (Cream)
Operator (That's Not The Way It Feels) (Jim Croce)
Helpless (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
Gimme Some Lovin' (The Spencer Davis Group)
Layla (Derek & The Dominos)
Listen To The Music (The Doobie Brothers)
Light My Fire (The Doors)
Like A Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan)
Hotel California (The Eagles)
Telephone Line (Electric Light Orchestra)
O-o-h Child (The Five Stairsteps)
The Chain (Fleetwood Mac)
Baby, I Love Your Way (Peter Frampton)
What's Going On? (Marvin Gaye)
Radar Love (Golden Earring)
Friend Of The Devil (Grateful Dead)
American Woman (The Guess Who)
All Along the Watchtower (The Jimi Hendrix Experience)
The End Of The Innocence (Don Henley)
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother (The Hollies)
Mony Mony (Tommy James & The Shondells)
Funk #49 (James Gang)
Somebody To Love (Jefferson Airplane)
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant (Billy Joel)
Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me (Elton John)
Me & Bobby McGee (Janis Joplin)
Dust In The Wind (Kansas)
Stand By Me (Ben E. King & The Drifters)
Jazzman (Carole King)
Greenback Dollar (Kingston Trio)
A Well Respected Man (The Kinks)
Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
Imagine (John Lennon)
Canadian Railroad Trilogy (Gordon Lightfoot)
Danny's Song (Loggins & Messina)
Darling Be Home Soon (The Lovin' Spoonful)
Free Bird (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
Monday, Monday (The Mamas & The Papas)
No Woman No Cry (Bob Marley & The Wailers)
A Case Of You (Joni Mitchell)
Question (The Moody Blues)
Caravan (Van Morrison)
All The Young Dudes (Mott The Hoople)
Love Hurts (Nazareth)
Still The One (Orleans)
Simply Irresistable (Robert Palmer)
The Last Thing On My Mind (Tom Paxton)
Rolling Home (Peter, Paul & Mary)
Don't Do Me Like That (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers)
Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd)
Every Breath You Take (The Police)
A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procol Harum)
Amie (Pure Prairie League)
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen)
Right Down The Line (Gerry Rafferty)
(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay (Otis Redding)
Can't Fight This Feeling (REO Speedwagon)
Sympathy for the Devil (Rolling Stones)
When Will I Be Loved (Linda Ronstadt)
Oye Como Va (Santana)
The Girl You Think You See (Carly Simon)
The Boxer (Paul Simon)
Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
Streets Of Philadelphia (Bruce Springsteen)
Born to Be Wild (Steppenwolf)
Wild World (Cat Stevens)
July, You're A Woman (John Stewart)
Reason To Believe (Rod Stewart)
Sweet Baby James (James Taylor)
The Things We Do For Love (10cc)
Hold On Loosely (.38 Special)
Dear Mr. Fantasy (Traffic)
Black Horse and the Cherry Tree (KT Tunstall)
Where The Streets Have No Name (U2)
Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh)
Baba O'Riley (The Who)
Frankenstein (Edgar Winter)
Overjoyed (Stevie Wonder)
Roundabout (Yes)
The Needle and the Damage Done (Neil Young)
Hasten Down The Wind (Warren Zevon)
Tush (ZZ Top)

While I said that no artists have more than one track in this list, there are a few individuals who appear more than once. John Lennon is here as a solo artist as well as with the Beatles. Similarly, Don Henley, Paul Simon and Neil Young are all here as solo artists and as members of The Eagles, Simon & Garfunkel and CSNY, respectively. Eric Clapton is here in both Cream and Derek and the Dominoes, David Crosby in both The Byrds and CSNY, Graham Nash in both The Hollies and CSNY, and Steve Winwood in both The Spencer Davis Group and Traffic. The champion, with three appearances, is Joe Walsh, included as a solo artist, with the James Gang and with The Eagles.

Coming Soon! A New Blog from Yours Truly

That's right ... in the not too distant future, I plan to unveil a new blog. I am currently at work on the research. This new blog will return me to my curmudgeonly blogger roots. No happy memories or singing the praises of those I believe deserve it there! Quite the oppo, in fact. It will be a 96-installment, month by month history of the worst presidency in American history.

That's right! You guessed it. I am refering, of course, to the one we all cannot wait to see end. The Current Occupant, as Garrison Keiller calls him. AKA the dumbest shithead ever to walk out of Texas with his boots on the wrong feet. ("Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! I don't understand it, Laura. These boots is new, but they hurts like h-e-double hockey sticks!")

I plan to try to space the entries, so that my recounting (oh, if only we could have really recounted in 2000!!) of the high(?) and oh so many low points of the GWB years will end just as we all waken from the national nightmare next January 20. Join me, and please feel free to add to the fun with your own favorite memories!!


Meanwhile, I also plan to keep this blog going, hopefully on a more regular basis, with intermittent glimpses at the people and things musical, literary, cinematic and otherwise that I find fascinating and about which I feel compelled to share. Enjoy.

Two Champions and a Postscript

Last night saw the NBA championship return home to Boston after 22 years on the road. No other NBA franchise has held the championship as often - 17 times now. Of course, the lion's share of those championships came a good many years ago, during the 1950s and 60s. Red Auerbach was the head coach during nine of those championship seasons between 1956 and 1966. Nine chamionships out of ten consecutive seasons(!), interrupted only during the 1957-58 season, when the Celtics made it to the NBA finals, but lost in six games to the St. Louis Hawks (who now reside in Atlanta).

Eight out of the nine NBA players who have the most championship rings played on those Celtics teams: Bill Russell with 11 (Russell continued to play and won two more championships in the 1960s after Red had retired from the bench, though he was still the GM of the Celtics.), Sam Jones with 10, Tommy Heinsohn, KC Jones, Tom Sanders and John Havlicek each with eight, Jim Loscutoff and Frank Ramsey with seven and tied with Robert Horry, the first non-Celtic in this list. One more Celtic, Bob Cousy is tied with Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Scottie Pippen with six championship rings.

The Celtics added three more championships during the 1980s with another stellar line-up of players that included Cedric Maxwell (MVP in 1981) and Larry Bird (MVP in 1984 and 1986) and their teammates: Robert Parrish, Nate Archibald, Kevin McHale, Rick Robey, Chris Ford, Gerald Henderson, Dennis Johnson, Danny Ainge, Scott Wedman, Quinn Buckner, M. L. Carr and Bill Walton among them.

Watching them complete this latest championship in the TD Banknorth Garden (not quite as poetic as the Boston Garden, is it?) I was struck, not only by the sixteen championship banners hanging from the rafters, but by the banner emblazoned with the player numbers they have retired. Twenty-one former Celtics are remembered there, including, I'm sure, many of those mentioned in the last two paragraphs. See the complete list here.)

This final game of the 2007-08 season, this deciding game 6 of the championship series was a study in teamwork, a study in relentless team defense, a study in doing the right things right. The Celtics ran the Lakers off the court. I don't think they slowed down until they reached St. Louis on their way back to the coast. This Celtic team made fools of the sports analysts (most of them, it seemed) who predicted it would be the Lakers who would prevail in six games. Kobe won't be denied?? Please!

Kobe didn't even come close. He scored 22 points last night, but after starting out 4 for 5 from the field, Kobe then missed seven attempts in a row. In the Eastern Conference finals, King James pushed the Celtics harder, to a deciding game 7, and he scored 45 points for the Cavaliers in that ultimately losing effort. LeBron did it with a less talented supporting cast than the one surrounding Kobe. I hope I never hear Steven A. Smith call Kobe the greatest player on the planet again. (I may just have to swear off ESPN.)


The day before the NBA's finale, another champion was crowned - this one winning the U.S. Open golf title for 2008. It's hardly a surprise who the title went to - after all, Tiger Woods had won thirteen majors before this, and in 2007 he had possibly the greatest year in professional golf since Bobby Jones' Grand Slam in 1930 and Byron Nelson's record-setting year in 1945.

The manner in which Tiger brought this one home was remarkable, however. As the week progressed, it became more and more clear that Tiger's left knee still was not right. By the middle of round 4 on Sunday, TV viewers could see Tiger grimacing or gritting his teeth in pain after each hard swing. Tiger was not to be deterred, however. The back nine on Sunday afternoon included two eagles and a miracle birdie on the 17th hole.

The eagle on the final hole Sunday was just enough to help Tiger overtake Rocco Mediate, forcing an 18-hole head to head playoff on Monday. The good news was that Tiger still had a shot, but it meant that he had to go out and nurse than knee through another entire round of golf.

Monday's round was another dramatic battle. With eight holes to play, it looked like Tiger had it wrapped up with a three stroke lead. However, Tiger bogeyed one hole, and Rocco had three birdies in a row, so as they came to the last couple holes, it was Mediate who led, though only by a single stroke. Tiger caught up with him again, with a birdie this time on the eighteenth hole. Fortunately, this time the tie led to a sudden death playoff, rather than another entire round. Tiger made short work of it, beating Rocco by a stroke on the first hole of sudden death.

Today, it was announced that Woods is done for the year. Not only has he been playing on an injured ACL, it turns out that he suffered a double stress fracture of the tibia two weeks before the Open. Nonetheless, Tiger saw the U.S. Open, especially at Torrey Pines, a course where he has seen remarkable success in the past, as his best chance to win a major tournament in 2008. So he played. And it paid off. Now he will let his doctors and surgeons work on the knee and tibia, and he will give his leg time to heal. And hope he can then return to form.

Should Tiger have played on such a bad leg? I don't know. Time will tell, I guess. However, I do know it took courage, not just for him to play, but for him to reach deep within himself and find the determination to face down challenges, not only from Rocco Mediate, but also from Lee Westwood, who finished Sunday in third place, one stroke out of the playoff. It made for one of the most memorable U.S. Opens in history. And it added another page to Tiger's legend.


Postscript - This evening, after dinner, I watched the memorial to Tim Russert that had been televised earlier this afternoon on MSNBC. It was a moving tribute. A private funeral Mass was celebrated this morning at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown. On the news they said that with no fanfare, and no entourages attending them, the two presumptive candidates in the upcoming presidential election, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, entered the church and sat next to each other during the funeral.

The public memorial was held at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. After the presentation of the colors and a stirring rendition of the National Anthem, Tom Brokaw spoke first. He promised a celebration, in the Irish tradition, of the life of Tim Russert. He went on to direct most of his remarks to Tim's family members - his son Luke, his widow Maureen, and his dad Big Russ, who was watching the proceedings from Buffalo. Brokaw promised to raise a mug of Rolling Rock beer (which he pilfered from Tim's cooler at the NBC News offices in Washington) to Big Russ on election night, thanking him for his gift of Tim.

Others who made remarks included former Governor of New York Mario Cuomo, Brian Williams, Maria Shriver and Doris Kearns Goodwin. Luke Russert delivered an abbreviated version of the eulogy he had given earlier in the day at the funeral. He joked that he had learned the trick of adapting a prepared speech for different audiences from his father. He told all of the charities, foundations, associations and what-not, who invited Tim Russert to speak, that he was sorry to break the news to them, but that Russert did not write an original speech for each of them.

Following the oratory, the memorial turned musical. Tim Russert's brother-in-law, Tony Scozzaro, a musician from Buffalo (of course) played a heartfelt and technically brilliant instrumental of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" on guitar. Then Tom Brokaw and Luke Russert introduced, via satellite from Europe, where he is currently touring with the E Street Band, the Boss himself. Springsteen spoke about his friendship with Tim for a few minutes, recalling an early morning when he looked out and saw Tim eagerly watching from the crowd as he and the E Street Band played in the plaza at 30 Rock for the Today Show. Knowing what Tim's day job was, Springsteen said he was sure Russert must have had more important places to be. He then sang "Thunder Road," dedicating it to Tim as he did a in concert last Friday night after he learned of Tim's death. The lyrics are full of energy and optimism, so it's no surprise that it was one of Tim's favorite songs.

I find myself more and more moved by the tributes and memories of Tim Russert I have seen these past few days. His colleagues all recall the enthusiasm he brought to every new day, to every new assignment. For some time now, I haven't had that kind of enthusiasm, though I can still remember when I did.

Lately, I feel like I have been too self-absorbed and allowed myself to play the victim. I may have my problems, with ADD, depression and the rest, but that's not reason enough to allow myself to wither and rot. What's the point of living, if you don't make the most of it?

Tim Russert made the most of it, most every day, according to his friends and family. Tiger Woods made the most of it this past week, despite the devastating pain he had to face and the lengthy recovery ahead. The Boston Celtics, after a long drought, made the most of it last night and throughout a successful season in which they posted the greatest turnaround in NBA history.

I want to do the same. To raise my own game, to face each day with optimism and enthusiasm - that would be the best tribute I could offer in Tim Russert's name.

A Great Loss

A few days ago, American political discourse suffered a great loss. It's hard to imagine watching the election returns this coming November without the analysis and commentary of Tim Russert to help us understand the emerging trends and make sense of it all.

How many of us remember his on air performance in the 2000 presidential election, when he used the back of a legal pad, and then the famous white dry-erase boards to analyze the best chances of the two candidates? As the networks' computer projections declared one state after another either blue for Vice President Al Gore or red for Governor G. W. Bush, as NBC itself awarded Florida to Gore, then reversed itself and called it too close to call, as Tim Russert clearly was enjoying himself sitting next to Tom Brokaw watching the madness unfold, we saw it all come down to the one state Tim had famously predicted would decide the election. He didn't say "I told you so," at least not in so many words, but you could tell he was enjoying himself when he held up the small white board bearing the legend, "Florida, Florida, Florida." (In 2004, Tim was right again. This time, it was "Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.")

Many viewers became fans of Tim Russert that night in 2000, but the fact is, he had been hard at work for years, using a sharp mind and a prosecutorial zeal for truth and justice to help us make sense of the world of Americal politics. Tim first entered that world working in the 1976 Senatorial campaign of Daniel Patrick Moynahan. Moynahan was in some ways an unlikely choice, but he was the candidate Tim Russert believed had the qualities and held the values that New York, and America, needed.

Moynahan was a scholar who, by 1976, had already served in the administrations of four presidents in succession from John F. Kennedy to Gerald Ford. In today's highly polarized environment, it seems hard to believe, but prior to being appointed, by Richard Nixon, to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Moynahan had been a member of the White House Staff during Nixon's first term, serving as Counselor to the President on urban affairs. The 1976 Senate race in New York was tumultuous, with Moynahan pitted against an array of iconic Democrats, including Bella Abzug and Ramsay Clark, as well as incumbent Conservative Party Senator James L. Buckley, but in the end, Moynahan was victorious, launching a four-term career in the United States Senate.

Tim Russert so distinguished himself during that successful campaign, that he emerged from a pack of seemingly better groomed staffers to become Moynahan's chief of staff in 1977. Sensing that Russert, a kid from working class roots in Buffalo might be intimidated by the Harvard/Yale crowd he would be supervising, Moynahan reportedly took Tim aside and told him, "What they know, you can learn. What you know, they can never learn."

What Tim Russert knew that Moynahan saw in him was how things should be done and that, no matter how tempting, it was never right to take the expedient route, when you knew that the hard way was the right way. Russert had learned this, as many have recalled this past weekend, partly from the nuns and Jesuits who had taught him in South Buffalo parochial schools, at Canisiuis High School and at John Carroll University. Even more, however, as Tim himself poignantly remembered in his bestselling book, Big Russ & Me, he got these values from his father, who had worked two full-time jobs, as a newspaper delivery driver and as a sanitation worker, to provide his children with a greater education and broader opportunities.

Tim Russert made the most of those opportunities. He left Moynahan's staff in 1983 to help Mario Cuomo win office as governor of New York. After a short stint on Cuomo's staff, he left politics for journalism in 1984, joining NBC News in an executive position. He became the Washington Bureau Chief for NBC News in 1988, a position he held until his death last week. In 1991, he stepped before the camera for the first time as host of Meet the Press. He went on to moderate the show for longer than anyone who had preceded him.

He also breathed new life into an institution, the Sunday morning political gabfest, that had become tired and moribund. Unlike many of today's political talk show hosts, whether on television or radio, Tim Russert was not cynical and cranky like Bill O'Reilly, nor was he a shallow shill for a particular political agenda, like Rush Limbaugh. Instead, he worked tirelessly to prepare for each interview, and used that preparation to come up with questions that were both fair and carefully designed to get at the truth. He did not ambush his guests or seek to embarass them, but he had no sympathy for a guest who came to Meet the Press without adequate preparation. To Tim's mind, this was a failure to keep faith with the American people. If you want to seek and hold high office or serve in important appointed positions, you should be ready to answer relevant questions, and do so truthfully.

Tim died in his office, preparing for upcoming interviews on Meet the Press. He had just returned from a vacation in Italy with his wife and his son, Luke. They were celebrating Luke's graduation from Boston College. Despite his reputation for hard work, family always came first for Russert. Along with hard work and respect for the truth, this was one of the values he got from Big Russ. Sadly, the first Sunday following his death was Father's Day. As much as he will be missed by his fans and colleagues in politics and jounalism, it's hard to imagine what a loss this is to his wife and son.

The Father's Day broadcast of Meet the Press was dedicated to Tim's memory. Tom Brokaw, Doris Kearns Goodwin, James Carville, Mary Matalin, Maria Shriver and others recalled Tim in anecdotes, and clips of some of his many interviews were played. The question is, where will NBC go now? As Tim always said at the end of each broadcast, "If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press." It has been for 61 years, longer than any other show on network television. I'm sure it will be for many years to come, but without Tim Russert, it won't be the same.

Over the years, Time Russert has been accorded many awards and honors.

To wrap up this brief and inadequate tribute, here is a quote from Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, about Tim Russert's impact.

"Tim Russert was a transformative jounalist. He changed American television news, by bringing to it his own values: integrity, fairness, good humor, humility, and a unique sense of how reporting, history and politics are bound together. He was masterful at exposing hypocrisy. I knew him as a source, a colleague, a competitor, and - on the air - as the subject of his tough questions. His approach to every role was always the same: he loved what he did, and sought a way to tell the truth, often unconventionally."

Hey, Diddle Diddle!

When I started this blog a little over a week ago, I used a poem from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings as an introduction and to explain the name I chose for the blog. The poem was an example of Tolkien's reworking of a familiar adage to suit his purpose. I think it is also quite a nice piece of verse.

Just a little before he unveils "All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter" to introduce the character of Strider, Tolkien worked a similar kind of magic, even more grandly, on an old nursery rhyme. The rhyme is "Hey, Diddle Diddle," and it goes as follows:

Hey, diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.


On the surface, this seems to be a nonsense rhyme. Whether there is anything more significant to its origins is a matter of some speculation. It's certainly difficult to see it as the culmination of any sensible narration, but this is, in fact, the challenge that Tolkien undertook. To create a humorous song for Frodo to perform while the hobbits were guests at the inn The Sign of the Prancing Pony in Bree, he imagined a story in which the verse with which we are familiar is but a small part. Within the vast historical and philological context that Tolkien created for his stories, he is, in essence, suggesting that the nursery rhyme we know is the only surviving part of a longer text that dates back to the Third Age of Middle-earth.

He called the resulting song "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late." Unfortunately, the tune to which Frodo sang the story that night in Bree, is, like most of the lyric was, prior to Tolkien, lost in antiquity. However, I believe that there are some who have set the verses to new music. Anyway, even without music, it's an interesting read, and much more satisfying, narratively speaking, than the short nursery rhyme.

You can read the whole poem here. Let me know how you like it.

A Daydream Believer and So Much More

About three weeks ago, the music world lost a giant. Unfortunately, to the extent his passing was noted in the mainstream press at all, he was cited for what I would consider one of his lesser achievements - writing the song "Daydream Believer" in 1967 for The Monkees.

Not that there's really anything wrong with "Daydream Believer." I'm sure that a large part of my problem with it is due to the fact that it was introduced by "The Pre-fab Four," as some referred to The Monkees way back when. For those too young to remember, The Monkees was some record executive's idea of a way to stem the British invasion and get an American rock and roll act back on top of the charts. It was all engineered from the very start. A record label was lined up, a concept for a television show was in the works, they started to work on finding songs that would work ...

Oh, and that's right, they also had to find a few guys to make up the group. So ads went into Daily Variety, and casting calls were held. (Is this any way to form a rock 'n' roll band? A boy-band maybe, but rock 'n' roll?) Hundreds of aspiring actors/musicians turned out. Stephen Stills (who was still an unknown in 1966) clearly had the musical chops, but the producers felt he looked too old for the part. Stills referred a former roommate, Peter Thorkelson, who made the group under the name Peter Tork. The group also included two other Americans, Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith, and one Brit, Davy Jones. Micky Dolenz had been acting in television since the 1950s, when he had starred for three seasons in a show called "Circus Boy." Mike Nesmith was already a fairly successful musician and songwriter. He wrote the breakout hit "Different Drum" for Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys. (Mike's mom invented Liquid Paper, a typewriter correction fluid. A single mom, she no longer had to work as a secretary after that.) Davy Jones was a musical stage actor. He had already attracted a lot of attention in the role of the Artful Dodger in the original London and Broadway casts of "Oliver!" Along with the rest of the "Oliver!" cast, he appeared on the Ed Sullivan show the same night that the Beatles made their U.S. debut. (By the way, a few years later in an "Oliver!" revival on the West End in London, another future rocker made waves in the role of the Artful Dodger. His name was Phil Collins.)

But, as they say, I digress. Back to our Daydream Believer.

John Stewart was born (09/05/1939) and raised in Southern California. He showed musical ability from an early age, learned to play the guitar and banjo,and wrote his first song at the age of ten. As an adolescent, during the 1950s, he was a great fan of both traditional folk music (e.g., the Weavers and Pete Seeger) and the emerging music of rock 'n' roll (e.g., Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley). While still in high school, he formed his first band, Johnny Stewart and the Furies.

A little later, John teamed up with Gil Robbins (father of actor Tim Robbins) and John Montgomery as the Cumberland Three. As a trio, they were similar to and greatly influenced by the Kingston Trio, which had formed in 1957, and had become one of the most popular recording acts in the U.S. (At one point, the Kingston Trio had four albums in the Billboard Top Ten; not even the Beatles did that!) The Cumberland Three recorded a two-album set called "Songs from the Civil War." One record featured songs from the Union side, and the other songs of the Confederacy.

In 1961, Dave Guard, the founder of the Kingston Trio, wanted to pursue a less commercial sound, so he left to form the Whiskey Hill Singers. John Stewart was recruited to succeed Guard in the Kingston Trio, and under his leadership, they recorded twelve more albums between 1962 and 1967. However, as the 1960s progressed, it became increasingly difficult for the Trio to hold onto the fame and popularity they had once possessed. In some ways, they had sown the seeds of their own failure.

Without the popularity the Kingston Trio had brought to folk music between 1957 and 1962, it may have been difficult for newer artists like Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and the like to have gotten record contracts and reached national audiences. Also, college students in the early 1960s were far more political than just a few years earlier. They wanted more from their folk artists than catchy world beats, tight harmonies and comic patter. Dylan, Baez and many of the other new folk acts delivered with relevant songs about social justice, civil rights, American imperialism in Central America and the Caribbean, and eventually, the anti-Vietnam War movement.

At the same time, new sounds were emerging that were claiming a larger and larger share of the pop music market. There was beach music personified by the Beach Boys, whose signature striped shirt look was copied almost directly from the Kingston Trio. There was also the emerging R&B sound coming from Detroit that was, for the first time, gaining broad mass appeal that went beyond black audiences. The final straw was the beginning of the British invasion with the Beatles' American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. Folk music would never again claim as big a piece of the American music scene, and the success that it did enjoy would be shared by the topical artists, especially those attacking the continued U.S. presence in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and early 1970s.

I think that is part of the reason that John Stewart was not more successful in his solo career following the disbanding of the Kingston Trio (in it original form) in 1967. It's not that John wasn't topical. He toured extensively in support of Bobby Kennedy's presidential bid in 1968, before the campaign came to a tragic end following the California primary. But he wasn't a protest singer. Instead, I think Stewart wrote music and sang from the heart about everyday people holding their heads up and getting on with life. Though he lived his entire life in California, he traveled extensively and wrote about America. I've counted at least 35 of the 50 states that are mentioned in his song lyrics, not to mention many American towns and cities.

I'm attaching a YouTube player to this post (assuming I can figure out how to). The clips I will index there include a couple of tributes I found to John Stewart, as well as a number of performance clips. Some are recent, some from the 1970s, and a couple even date back to TV appearnaces he made with the Kingston Trio during the 1960s. I encourage you to give them all a try to get a picture of this great American musician.

Even though John had left the Kingston Trio back in 1967, they all remained good friends. There were occasional reunion appearances, and over the past few years, John Stewart and Nick Reynolds have held annual Trio Fantasy Camps in Scottsdale, Arizona. You can get information about the 2008 camp, which will be dedicated to the music of John Stewart, here.

If you are interested in the music of John Stewart, one great compilation is "The Phoenix Concerts - Live," recorded in the mid-1970s. In my opinion, it's one of the best live concert albums ever. To order more recent albums, you can visit John's website, chillywinds.com.

Introducing ... Baby Amanda and some of the rest of the family

In a little over a month, we will be celebrating a big occasion in our family. It'll be the first birthday for Amanda, our first granddaughter.

Our son, Tim, or T.J., as we like to call him, married Amy in April 2006. They gave birth to Amanda on March 19 of last year, the same day that my father turned 80. That was a nice plus, because it was only a month earlier that we lost my mom to lung cancer.

Anyway, Tim and Amy started a family blog a while back, so if you would like to see pictures of them, baby Amanda (talk about all that is gold!) and their two new puppies, Molly and Boo Radley, you can visit them here.

This probably won't be a long entry tonight. I took my second Lortab of the day a few minutes ago, and if it's anything like the first one, I'll be out cold in a short while.

After two days of gritting my teeth and trying to get over my misadventure on the front steps (see my last entry for details), I broke down and called the doctor today. The pain seemed to get sharper yesterday, and I also noticed that as the general lower backache eased off a bit, the pain became more localized around the area of my right kidney. It was probably just paranoia, but I also felt like I was peeing a lot more often than usual yesterday.

The good news is that my kidney is fine, thank you. My fall just resulted in a nice deep contusion in the muscles on the lower, right side of my back. To help ease the pain and let me get an uninterrupted night of sleep, the doctor was kind enough to prescribe a muscle relaxant, plus the aforementioned Lortabs. I don't want to use the latter for any longer than necessary - hopefully just the next day or two. Lortab is essentially an extra-strength Tylenol bolstered with an opiate to help kill the pain. Obviously, this is not the type of medicine you want to fool around with or use without good reason.

My appointment with the doctor was scheduled for 11:00 a.m., but it was well past noon by the time they called my name, and nearly 1:00 p.m. before I got out of there. That's one of the problems with seeing the most popular doctor in the clinic. It seems like his schedule is always overfilled. I like him though. In this day and age of assembly line medicine, with the accountants running the HMOs and cracking down on any M.D. who averages more than 11 minutes with a patient, my doctor takes his time, makes sure any questions you have are answered, and really seems to try to get to know his patients. Kicking it old school, so to speak.

Between the time of the appointment, waiting to get my prescription filled while I grabbed a little lunch, and then breaking in that first dose of Lortab, I didn't get into work today at all. It gave me a chance to finish a book I picked up at the library on the way home from work last night.

A co-worker (Kirsten J.) and I had been chatting about favorite books at work. My all-time favorite novel (and I make an exception here, because I don't usually like to single out the very favorite anything) is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I mentioned that one of the things about the book that I like is the unique first person perspective, in this case that of Scout Finch between the ages of approximately 6 and 8. This led to talk about other books that have unusual first person points of view. One such book is Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, told from the point of view of the large native American that McMurphy befriends in the asylum.

An author who almost seemed to specialize in such first person perspective novels was Jerzy Kosinski. His first novel, The Painted Bird, was the tale of a young boy in the surreal landscape of German-occupied Poland during WWII. At times, Kosinski suggested that the novel was, at least in part, autobiographical. It is true that Kosinski was a young boy in Poland during the war. He was born Josek Lewinkopf in Lodz in 1933. However, the truth of the matter is that his Jewish parents obtained a forged baptismal certificate for him in the name Jerzy Kosinski and placed him safely with a Roman Catholic family for protection during the war. It does not appear that he personally was subject to the acts of cruelty and abuse portrayed in the novel.

Another of Kosinski's first person perspective novels was Steps, with a blind protagonist. The title refers to the fact that he has memorized the exact number of steps between each of the places he visits in his daily routine.

Probably the best known of Kosinski's books is Being There. A great part of its fame is due to the fact that it was made into a quite successful movie in 1979. Peter Sellers starred in the movie as Chance the gardener (or Chauncey Gardiner) and was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor. Melvyn Douglas did win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar portraying Ben Rand, a successful, but aging businessman who becomes Chance's mentor. Kosinski himself won several awards, including a Writer's Guild Award for best screenplay for the adaptation from his novel.

I originally read Being There when it was first released in 1970 or 1971. The first thing that struck me when I picked it up in the library last night was how short the book is. I didn't remember this, but it is almost more of a novella than a full novel. The paperback edition I borrowed is less that 120 pages long, and the story consists of a mere seven chapters, that last of which is an enigmatic three-page epilogue.

For those who have not read it, I don't want to spoil the story here. Let me just say that it is an extremely entertaining story told from a very unique first person perspective. It is a satire of American values and, especially, of Americans' tendency to seize on pop icons. In this respect, the book is probably more relevant today than when it was published nearly 40 years ago.

As I said, the book ends on an enigmatic note. The reader is left to ponder the question, how far could a man like Chance go? As I finished reading the book this afternoon, my first thought was that for the last seven years, he's been occupying the Oval Office.

Enjoy.

Good News, Bad News

I think I'll start with the bad news ...

It's been a harsh winter here in Utah. This is my ninth winter since relocating from Northern Virginia to Utah for my job. Without question, we have seen more snow at my house than in any of the previous eight winters, and we still have six to eight weeks of potential winter weather to go.

Snow in Utah is not dealt out very evenhandedly. Sitting here in the Salt Lake Valley, we are surrounded by mountains, especially the Wasatch Mountains just to our east. The Wasatch Mountains are where Park City and all those hot ski slopes (Deer Valley, Alta, Snowbird, etc.) are. Obviously, they get considerably more snow in the mountains than we will ever see in the valley. Which is all to the good, since we need the mountain snow to fuel the winter tourism economy (Sundance only brings people to Utah for a week or two, after all.) and to fill the mountain reservoirs when temperatures eventually rise in June or July. (Hah!)

Even in the valley, though, the same storm will deliver remarkably different results, depending on where one lives. We only got a couple of inches in Sandy this past Sunday night/Monday morning, while in South Jordan, just a handful of miles to our west, they got nearly a foot. A couple of weeks ago, on Martin Luther King's birthday, while only four to eight inches fell almost everywhere else, even in the mountains, Sandy was hit with 15-18 inches of the cold, white stuff.

The storm had started in the early morning hours, and as I left for work, only a couple of inches had fallen at our house. My wife is a teacher, so she had the day off. As the inches kept mounting, she went outside periodically and fired up the snowblower, pretty effectively keeping our driveway clear. (Did I marry well, or what? Add to that the fact that I never have to apologize for watching football, since she is, if anything, a bigger sports fan than I am. She even watches baseball on television. During the regular season. A test for even the most avid sports fanatic, if you ask me.)

When I got home, I had to clear our sidewalks, which is a formidable task, since we have a corner lot, plus dig out around our mail box, so the mailman, rested though he might be after the MLK holiday, wouldn't have to work too hard to leave us our bills and advertising flyers.

It's been two weeks since that storm. For the first week or so, it was calmer, and temperatures even rose a bit, and some of that heavy snow melted, though the huge piles along the sides of the roads and driveways remained impressive. But then we began a cycle of storms that delivered a few inches of new snow every 48 hours or so. We ran out of Ice Melt last week, and it's been so bad that all of the stores in the area have been sold out of that, of rock salt, and even, as they told me when I went into K-Mart yesterday, of snow shovels.

Despite the lack of chemical assistance, as of late yesterday afternoon, I had managed to achieve a state of bare concrete on all of our sidewalks and two lanes of driveway. I went to bed with a great sense of accomplishment. Better still, despite the effort expended breaking up and removing ice pack at the end of our driveway and elsewhere, I woke up this morning surprisingly free of aches and pains.

At least until I went out to get the morning paper. If only I had heeded the warning I was given. When I opened the front door, I noticed that there were icicles hanging from the edges of the gutters running across the front of the house. If it hadn't been so early, I'd like to think that my brain would have made the following connection - icicles means water had been dripping, then refroze as the temperatures dropped during the night. Water dripping plus freezing temperatures means a layer of ice on the front steps.

This didn't run through my mind until after my feet flew out from under me and I found myself airborne, on the way to a hard landing on my lower back on the sidewalk out front. Given that there were steps behind me, I'm just grateful that I didn't crack my head open in the process. After scrambling back into the house, shouting obscenities all the way to get my wife's attention, I was finally able to determine that, apart from a very sore and stiff lower back, I had escaped my fall uninjured.

So it's been a day of acetaminophen every couple of hours and gritting my teeth every time I had to get up from my desk to visit the men's room or go anywhere else. Fortunately, my SUV has heated seats, which actually helped ease the pain in my back as I drove.

As for the good news, though I had planned to wait until I had been posting for at least a week, I ended up sharing the fact that I had starting blogging again with Kirsten J. from my office. We were chatting about it via an internal IM system we use at work. I was explaining about the source for the blog's name, and the talk turned to literature. Before I knew it, we had discussed, not only Tolkien, but some of my favorite authors, including Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) , Jerzy Kosinski (The Painted Bird, Steps, Being There) and Tom Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities), as well as a couple of K.J.'s favorites, one of whom, Wallace Stegner (Crossing to Safety), was a teacher of Ken Kesey's.

It was just the sort of exchange, in microcosm, at least, that I hope this blog will lead to. I came away from it with a couple of ideas for new books to read, and I hope that K.J. did, as well.

Now I just have to figure out how to play the blogging game, so that others whose interests intersect my own can find my blog and are motivated to post comments remarking on some of my observations, as well as sharing their own.

The Sad Tale of Jim “The Flash” Gordon

One of my favorite parts of “Layla” is the long piano coda, with Eric Clapton and Duane Allman trading blues guitar riffs as Jim Gordon plays those elegiac power chords on the grand piano. The piano part was originally to be a separate song that Jim Gordon was writing, but when Clapton heard him playing it in the Criteria Studio in Miami, where as Derek and the Dominos, they were in the midst of the sessions that produced the album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, he talked Gordon into adding it to the end of “Layla.” As a result, Gordon is given joint credit with Clapton for having written “Layla.”

Derek and the Dominos was a transitory group Clapton formed after the breakup of Blind Faith. Clapton had developed a friendship with Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, and he invited their group, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, to tour as the opening act for Blind Faith in 1969. During the tour, Clapton often appeared onstage with Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, and discovered he enjoyed playing with them more than he did with Blind Faith. Around the same time, Delaney and Bonnie were constantly bickering (their marriage would end a couple of years later), and the rest of their band, which included keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon, were getting tired of it.

After the Blind Faith tour ended, Radle and Gordon left Delaney & Bonnie & Friends to tour with Joe Cocker and Leon Russell on the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour. Meanwhile, Whitlock joined Clapton in England, where they began working on new songs together. They reunited with Radle and Gordon (and another Delaney & Bonnie & Friends alum, Dave Mason) to work on George Harrison’s huge album All Things Must Pass during the summer of 1970. During that time, they officially debuted together at the Lyceum Theatre in London. Originally, they had planned to perform as Eric Clapton and Friends, but became convinced they needed another name. When announced to the crowd at the Lyceum Theatre as Derek and the Dominos, they went onstage to polite applause, until the crowd figured it out and went wild.

That was the only time Dave Mason played with Derek and the Dominos, but in August 1970, Clapton, Whitlock, Radle and Gordon assembled in Miami to begin work on their studio album. The first few days of the session were uninspired, and their producer, Tom Dowd, who was simultaneously producing the album Idlewild South for the Allman Brothers Band, took Clapton to see the Brothers play an outdoor concert in Miami. The next day, Duane Allman showed up at Criteria Studios where he and Clapton jammed for hours. Afterwards, Allman was invited to become the fifth and final member of Derek and the Dominos.

When they finished the studio sessions in October 1970, Derek and the Dominos prepared to go on tour, but without Duane Allman, who returned to the Allman Brothers Band.

Jim Gordon had been something of a straight arrow in the music business. He had gotten an early start, playing with the Everly Brothers in 1963, when he was only 17. However, after years of touring, including the tour with Derek and the Dominos in 1970-71, which was reputedly noted for an excess of drugs, Gordon was a cocaine and heroin user. In his case, this was a catastrophe, as he was an as yet undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. He continued to be one of the most sought out sessions drummers in the rock world for several more years. (Click here to see a partial list of the artists he played with, either in the studio, or on tour, or both.)

By the late 1970s, however, Gordon complained of hearing voices, including that of his mother, who he apparently believed to be a demon. His musical career crumbled, due to his mental instability. Then, in 1983, he murdered his own mother, thinking it would stop the voices in his head. Because California law had been changed to limit the use of the insanity defense, Gordon was tried and convicted of 2^nd degree murder, and has been held in California prisons or mental facilities ever since. Though he has served more than the minimum number of years of his sentence, it seems unlikely that he will ever be released. Reportedly, he did not even apply when he was last eligible for parole.

Some who have stayed in touch with Jim Gordon report that he is fairly content. He is said to be a model prisoner. He has described himself as “institutionalized,” which reminds me of Morgan Freeman’s narration in the movie “The Shawshank Redemption.” After years in prison, he says, a man becomes institutionalized, and loses his ability to cope with all the challenges of the world at large. What with his history of severe mental illness, in addition to more than 20 years in custody, I imagine the world today would be a pretty scary proposition for Jim. While it’s sad, it probably is best that he remain institutionalized, for his own well being, as much as anything else.

In addition to Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs and All Things Must Pass, Jim Gordon contributed his considerable skills on drums and percussion to a remarkable number of truly classic tracks and albums.

You can't judge a book by its cover

It's one of those old adages that everyone knows. Basically, it means that you shouldn't let yourself be governed by first impressions. Instinct is a valuable tool, but it only goes so far. For good or ill, people can surprise you. Some can be charming as hell on the surface, but turn out to be ultimate slimeballs. Likewise, people who seem very removed and difficult to get to know, can turn out to be your greatest friends.

YCJABBIC cuts both ways then. It's the all purpose maxim about first impressions. There are a host of others that are more pointed. Calling someone "a wolf in sheep's clothing" is a warning that, not only are they not what they may seem, but they probably have bad intentions. Similarly, "let the buyer beware," or "caveat emptor" in the original Latin cautions you to look carefully before you spend, lest you suffer buyer's regret.

Another of those old sayings that is closely related to caveat emptor is "all that glitters is not gold." Do not be fooled by a shiny exterior. Don't let yourself be taken in by fancy accessories. In particular, never succumb to flowery marketing talk, slick advertising and ridiculous claims. And don't be so vain as to think you aren't susceptible. Year in and year out, millions of people spend billions of dollars on impossible investment schemes, diet pills, astrologers and other charlatans, all because they are taken in by slick promises.

"All that is gold does not glitter" is a different kind of warning. In a world where we are often in too much of a hurry to worry about our destination, it cautions us that if we do not take our time, we may overlook that which is of true value because it does not initially grab us with its glitter. In some ways, this is a greater error than being fooled into making an unwise purchase or decision. We all make mistakes, and we all have shelves full of books we have never read (at least not past the first few pages) and CDs we never listen to anymore.

But passing something or someone up because they do not grab us right from the start often means that we will never get to know them. Missed opportunities are more likely to lead to regrets than bad purchases. "We may never pass this way again," as Seals and Crofts sang back in the 1970s.

"All that is gold does not glitter" is not really an old adage like those cited above. It is a twist on "all that glitters is not gold" created by author J. R. R. Tolkien. I'm sure many fans of The Lord of the Rings recognized it right off the bat. It's the first line in a poem Tolkien wrote as a way of introducing the character of Aragorn. If my memory serves me right, it first appears in The Followship of the Ring, in a letter from Gandalf to Frodo Baggins. He knows that Frodo and his companions will encounter Aragorn, in his guise as Strider, a ranger of the north, on their way to Rivendell. He wants Frodo to know that he can trust Strider, even though he may appear rough-hewn and dangerous.

Here is the entire text of the poem:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

The last lines of the poem, of course, presage that Strider is, in fact, Aragorn, Son of Arathorn and Heir of Isildur, who would take up the broken sword Narsil, reforged by the elves, and play a vital role in the downfall of Sauron. Thereafter, he would be crowned King of Arnor and Gondor, restoring a throne that had been vacant for ages. His coronation marks the end of the Third Age of Middle-earth, and with the withdrawal of the Elves to Valinor, marks the beginning of the Age of Men.

I selected All The Is Gold as the name for my new blog, because I want to use it to explore and share my thoughts on books, movies, music, people and whatnot that I have found to have real value. In a lot of cases, this is no secret, and I know that a great many others share my opinion. But, on at least a few occasions, I hope to introduce you, Gentle Reader, to something you might have otherwise missed. I welcome your feedback and look forward to learning from your insights, as I hope you will, once in a while at least, from mine.