Monday, February 27, 2012

♥ From jc's website ♥ Five years ago ♥


















Rene A. Van Hulle, Jr.

28 July 1953 - 27 Feb 2007

True Colors
Cyndi Lauper

You with the sad eyes
don't be discouraged
oh I realize
it's hard to take courage
in a world full of people
you can lose sight of it all
and the darkness inside you
can make you feel so small
But I see your true colors
shining through
I see your true colors
and that's why I love you
so don't be afraid to let them show
your true colors
true colors are beautiful
like a rainbow
Show me a smile then
don't be unhappy, can't remember
when I last saw you laughing
if this world makes you crazy
and you've taken all you can bear
you call me up
because you know I'll be there
I can't remember when I last saw you laugh.
And I'll see your true colors
shining through
I see your true colors
and that's why I love you
so don't be afraid to let them show
your true colors,
true colors are beautiful
like a rainbow

Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame

Thankful

15 comments:

  1. Not much I can add to that, except that there's a lot of decent stuff comin'
    around, despite all the other stuff. And Howard's some decent, eh? Just as jc is.

    Thanks for sharing about Fr. Joe, listener.

    Those snow rollers are certainly interesting; none out here! It cooled off and was looking stormy today, and the prediction is for maybe some rain off and on during the week.

    Got in to see an orthopedist on Friday about my knee; he said the ligaments were fine ("rock solid"), and since the xray showed the bones were OK (meaning no degenerative arthritis) and the symptoms fit, it had to be damage to the meniscus (the big pad of cartilage between the knee bones). Maybe torn, maybe sprained. He gave me a shot of steroid and lidocaine (anesthetic) into the knee (hardly felt it--he was real good), and said if it was going to work I should know inside of a week. The response has been nearly incredible. Despite working the rest of Friday and all weekend, by today (Sunday) I was walking most of the time without cane, crutches, or pain. Still going to be very careful. With the swelling reduced, the meniscus can heal, and I may well be able to avoid surgery; I could really go for that.

    Reading Arthur Griffiths' The Passenger from Calais after finishing his The Rome Express. Although they have some interesting features, they are mostly the sort of overwrought stuff that gives Victorian writing a bad name. Even pruning out the silly posturing of the supposed upper class protagonists and the stereotyped foreigners, the plots are not compelling (they seem a poor imitation of Wilkie Collins). They might serve as a contrast in a study of some really good Victorian writing.

    Stumbled across this obituary:

    http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E0DE1230F932A05750C0A9679D8B63

    I wasn't aware of HRF Keating, but it sounds like I should make his acquaintance. I found an online summary of his book about his list of 100 best crime and mystery books, and think I will feed off of it for a while (some of them I know):

    http://classiccrimefiction.com/keating100.htm

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  2. Alan, the knee situation is sounding very good. May it continue!

    Rene was pretty remarkable -- as is his sister. Soon the bluebells, eh, listener?

    Quiet day, for the most part. Been contemplating the possibility that God gave us dogs because he knew we are always in danger of owning too many things. . . .

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  3. I'm heartglad about your knee news, Alan! :-D
    Sending good vibes that you avoid the "S" word!

    Some decent. Yea, verily!

    ~~~

    puddle...a few days ago I would have said that the Bluebells are not far away. But today it looks like it might be awhile. Ask me next week. ;-)

    Yes, dogs want to be all we own.
    Cats, on the other hand, help us know we will never own everything. ;-)

    ~~~

    Renee, did you get to come by again? Thinking of you.

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  4. Interesting think piece about the roots of GOP behavior in the current campaign:

    http://nymag.com/news/features/gop-primary-chait-2012-3/

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  5. That *is* an interesting article!

    My first thought when I opened it and saw the photo was that those people listening to Gingrich speak sure don't look enthusiastic. I'd say the article explains why.

    GO POCALYPSE! (not a typo)

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  6. 'Bout that Pocalypse: couldn't happen to a nicer or more deserving party. . . .

    Not so much dog's wanting to be all we own, as a determined effort on their part to make sure we own less. . . .

    So very sorry about the loss of your friend and mentor. But I agree, those who have made themselves part of us, stay with us best. Still, having so many go on ahead on "vacation" can leave us a bit lonely. I talk to my parents and Edwin a whole lot, lol!

    I do wonder sometimes what my father, a very left Democrat for pretty much the whole of his life, would make of the flock of grandchildren who are Romney supporters, or worse: Glenn Beck fans. . . . *This* apple fell closest to the tree, politically speaking, but rolled away from my mother's religion/the "family's religion" (still pretty close to my dad's, but he kept awful quiet about it, lol!).

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  7. Bill Thomasson2/27/2012 01:02:00 PM

    For me, the most salient sentences were at the start of the last paragraph: "Now, there are two points to keep in mind about the emerging Democratic majority. The first is that no coalition is permanent. One party can build a majority, but eventually the minority learns to adapt to an altered landscape, and parity returns." I find this so obvious that I can't truly relate to the article as written. But I probably could if it were recast in terms of people who have always thought of themselves as "the real Americans" feeling things slipping away from them.

    But when things are cast in terms of party, you have to remember that the GOP is itself a coalition. And for the most part, at least prior to the last couple of years, these people have not been the dominant voices in the coalition.

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  8. Depends on how you define "nicer." 8-)

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  9. Bill Thomasson2/27/2012 08:00:00 PM

    Incidentally, the article also misstates the context of Obama's remark about guns and religion. He was not talking about rural people but about people in Rust Belt town whose manufacturing jobs had disappeared during the Reagan era.

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  10. So, has anyone here seen George Clooney's 2011 movie "The Ides of March" ~ which was loosely based on the Dean campaign??? Apparently one of the other two people who wrote it with George Clooney was a former staffer of the Dean campaign. Clooney plays Dean (called Morris). Howard Dean was interviewed and sounded in favour of the movie, said it was an honour even if it doesn't follow the actual story. As you can guess by the title. it's about a campaign that fails due to what some of the people close to the candidate do.

    I plan to watch it soon.

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  11. Trailer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1124035/

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  12. Looks here like they mixed some of Edwards into the character too. Heh.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ides_of_March_%28film%29

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  13. What I like most is this article by Susan Green of the Burlington Free Press
    http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20110925/ARTS04/110923015/Howard-Dean-campaign-inspires-new-George-Clooney-film

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  14. Bill Thomasson2/27/2012 11:40:00 PM

    Although the candidate's rhetoric in the trailer sounds a lot like HD, the plot doesn't in the least remind me of anything that happened in the campaign. Maybe the play was closer?

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  15. Knee continues rapid improvement--whole day (including work) with no need for either cane or crutches. Yay!

    Finished The Passenger from Calais. It is completely beyond redemption--overwrought prose, stereotypes, snippets of motifs from various genres, degenerating from mystery into farce. Griffiths was well known for other books related to his time as a prison warden and true crime, but I cannot recommend his mystery novels. The Victorian and Edwardian eras produced FAR better writing. Well, it was educational.

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