Keep the family and friends of former congresswoman and vice-presidential candidate Geraldine R. Ferraro in your prayers.
Ms. Ferraro, 75, died Saturday, March 26. Her funeral Mass is this morning, Thursday, March 31, at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, 869 Lexington Avenue and 66th St., New York City, N.Y.
She was a gutsy and classy woman, a real role model, not just to all women in politics, but all men in politics, too.
It was great to hear Secretary of State Hillary Clinton say such kind words about Ms. Ferraro on Meet The Press on Sunday, March 27. She gave a beautiful mini-eulogy for Ms. Ferraro's influence on all who followed her.
I have a personal connection to St. Vincent Ferrer. It is a church run by the Dominican Order of Roman Catholic priests. They are the order of priests that run Providence College, where I went to college. They also ran Sacred Heart Church, Jersey City, where I was baptized. That is the parish where my mother and her family are from, in the Greenville section of the city. I attended Sacred Heart School for my first three grades.
My uncle, the late Rev. John Jordan Lacey, O.P., was a Dominican priest. He was a graduate of Sacred Heart School, a fellow graduate of Providence College, and the holiest voice I have ever heard preach in the pulpit.
As a matter of fact, whenever he administered the sacraments, his voice would alter ever so slightly, and it was as if the Lord's Grace, itself, was lacing every word.
He was assigned to St. Vincent Ferrar for several years before he died, and his wake and funeral Mass were held at St. Vincent Ferrer. Ms. Ferraro is in very good company, indeed.
Eternal rest grant unto her, Oh Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her, and may her soul and the soul of all the faithfully departed, rest in peace, Amen.
For Musings
Denis J. Kelly
March 31, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Milky Snow-Covered Lazy Morning
Milky snow-covered lazy morning,
Sultry feelings lay low over the land,
Snow threats in the air from milky-pregnant couds.
Driving along back-country roads,
Farm fields and localized tree patches stand sentry on either side,
Views stretch 10 miles or more across farm flat lands
To distant Watchung Hills,
Horizons suggested by milky shades.
Suddenly a distant office building
Is noticeable with its overnight lights still on,
More noticeable than normal
Because it twinkles now like a distant star.
Early morning commuting car now turns a bend
And approaches the parkway
Which provides a sticks-as-branches canopy,
A mini-forest on either side,
With periodic old stone gazeboes,
Remnants from a more genteel time,
Standing deserted, snow-covered, cold.
Before we enter the tunnel of trees
To the left a herd of deer graze
On a fallow farm field on this
Milky snow-covered lazy morning.
For Conversations with Walt
Denis J. Kelly
March 29, 2011
Sultry feelings lay low over the land,
Snow threats in the air from milky-pregnant couds.
Driving along back-country roads,
Farm fields and localized tree patches stand sentry on either side,
Views stretch 10 miles or more across farm flat lands
To distant Watchung Hills,
Horizons suggested by milky shades.
Suddenly a distant office building
Is noticeable with its overnight lights still on,
More noticeable than normal
Because it twinkles now like a distant star.
Early morning commuting car now turns a bend
And approaches the parkway
Which provides a sticks-as-branches canopy,
A mini-forest on either side,
With periodic old stone gazeboes,
Remnants from a more genteel time,
Standing deserted, snow-covered, cold.
Before we enter the tunnel of trees
To the left a herd of deer graze
On a fallow farm field on this
Milky snow-covered lazy morning.
For Conversations with Walt
Denis J. Kelly
March 29, 2011
Final Four 1973: Remembering a corner of basketball heaven
One of the benefits of having taken Advanced Placement English at Xavier High School, besides preparing me for a career as a writer and an American journalist, is that I didn’t have to take freshman English when I got to Providence College in September 1970.
Instead, I landed in the same sophomore English class as Nehru King.
I tell these Providence College basketball stories more frequently around this time of year, March Madness, the NCAA Basketball Tournament. This is Basketball Heaven time, and I had the great honor, privilege and blessing to come this close to one of the sweetest corners of Basketball Heaven, Providence College 1973.
King was a hotshot basketball player out of Jersey City, where I grew up. He was in this sophomore English class. I was a rookie freshman student, but, thank God, I was also in this sophomore English class.
Early on after one class, I got up the nerve to mention to King that I was also from Jersey City.
Big, broad, friendly smile lit up his face. It was like we were long lost friends. And here I was just a rookie freshman, but here comes this big hand shake. Not that we hung out or anything, but from then on, whenever he saw me on campus, or anywhere, it was “Jersey City, how’s it going?”
Oh, and could he play. He could leap. As they would say at one time, he could “sky.” He was like the Dwight Stone of basketball. He was like David Thompson of North Carolina State and Denver Nuggets fame. And he was a slasher. He could slash to the basket. He could come off the bench and light up the score.
During the 1973 season, he and Charlie Crawford would take turns being the fifth starter or the sixth man on the team. Oh, and the team rang up a 27-4 season record.
Crawford had come to Providence from Yonkers or New Vernon, just north of New York City.He was as tall as King, but more square-shouldered. He was a stoic defender. He did all the stuff that doesn’t show up on stat sheets, but that you can’t win without. He was like Heather Zurick was on the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team that went to the Final Four in Cleveland. He was quiet, too, but you needed him on the team.
Costello, Stacom
King and Crawford were on the team, of course, that 1973 team, with absolute legends of Providence College basketball: Ernie Di Gregorio, Marvin Barnes, and Kevin Stacom.
Prior to their time at PC, there had been other basketball gods: Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkins; Johnny Egan; Vinnie Ernst; former Boston Mayor and U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Ray Flynn; future Georgetown Coach John Thompson; the great Jimmy Walker, and coach Joe Mullaney.
But that 1973 team was coached by future Big East founding commissioner, Dave Gavitt. They had a real shot to win it all that year, had an injury to Marvin halfway through the first half of the semi-final game against Memphis state and Larry Kenon, “Dr. K,” changed what could have been.
Forward Francis Costello was 6’7,” out of Boston with a huge Boston accent, and firey red hair. Every summer he’d grow a full beard. Every Fall, everyone on campus would watch to see when he would shave it off. It was fun to see him do it gradually, first down to a long goatee, then to a really long Fu Manchu mustache. Then, he’d be clean shaven. Time for basketball.
The only interaction I had with him was when he worked mornings at this coffee and donuts operation the college set up in a soda-shop corner of the dorm students’ cafeteria building. I’d get coffee and a cinnamon donut. He’d be behind the counter.
Everybody called Costello “Franny,” and he could be lights out from the corner.
Stacom had transferred from Holy Cross College, a throwback gym rat from Long Island. He was built like Walt “Clyde” Fraser of the Knicks, John Havilicek of the Celtics, and Chris Mullin of St. Johns and the Warriors. Legend was that during the summer he’d get up, run a couple miles from his home to the gym, dribbling the basketball all the way. They he’d play and practice shooting all day, and run home, dribbling all the way home.
He was a perfect complement to Ernie D as guard and Marvin under the basket. Stacom was one of the three gems on a great team. He was a brilliant mid-range jump shooter. He was like a gazelle down the court for outlet passes from Marvin. Like Havlicek, he was always running without the ball and ready to get the unexpected Bob Cousy-like and Pete Maravich-like pin-point brilliant passing from Ernie D.
After he graduated, you would occasionally see Stacom back on campus working out, maybe playing tennis. He was as quiet as Crawford in his own way. Always respectful. Like Derek Jeter in a way. Movie star looks. Never seemed to be the diva. And built like wirey steel.
He played a bunch of years in the NBA, including five seasons with the Boston Celtics in the mid to late 1970s. He was on the championship team of 1976, during the Dave Cowens era. It was easy to cheer for him.
Ernie D, Marvin
And then there was Ernie D and Marvin. There was never a need for last names. They were like Cher and Madonna.
Their names became generics for “great fancy passer and throwback point guard” and “dominating rebounder and defender.” Marvin was a Dennis Rodman-type, a brilliant rebounder. He was second in rebounding in the country. And brilliant at defense, too, He was second in the country behind only Bill Walton in defense.
The only Ernie D story I have was when I was a freshman and PC was playing Villanova University down in Philadelphia. A couple rooms down in the dorm from me was the room of my friend, Tony Puccio from Union. He was a junior. I was a freshman. He was the unofficial mayor of the floor, and he had a great radio receiver.
We listened to the game sitting around his room with a bunch of other guys, when with about four or five minutes to go, Ernie D gets the ball and puts on a dribbling display for the next three or four minutes that was unbelievable to hear described on radio.
We were going nuts. The radio announcer was going nuts. Ernie D was making like a Harlem Globetrotter, playing keep away in a legitimate game.
Ernie D was also a brilliant foul shooter, and that skill helped him win Rookie of the Year when he was playing for the Buffalo Braves in the NBA. He led the league in foul shooting percentage that year.
So Ernie D was from North Providence, a heavily Italian suburb adjacent to Providence, and Marvin was from the predominantly black South Providence section of Providence. They were two home grown prospects, among the best college players of all time, who both decided to stay home to play basketball. How did PC get so lucky?
My Marvin story is a classic. It was editor-in-chief of The Cowl, the student newspaper, and I was asked by the president of the Afro American Club, another basketball player, Alan Baker, to attend a meeting of the club to talk about the “African American student supplement” that was published in The Cowl in the February 1973, just before the Final Four.
Anyway, I was at the meeting, sitting cross-legged on the floor. I was right next to the door in the student center meeting room. I was waiting my turn to answer any newspaper questions that might come up, and naturally, everyone else in the room was Black.
The door opens, and it’s Marvin, all 6’9” of him. He was wearing one of those long, long overcoats, the kind that makes everyone look taller. Marvin didn’t need to be made to look taller. And, I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking up.
I’d never spoken to Marvin before, and had hardly ever seen him on campus, really.
He looks at me, and says, “Man are you in the wrong place.”
Quickly Alan Baker, who was Marvin’s back-up center on the basketball team, explained to Marvin, that I had been invited to talk about the supplement, about deadlines and such.
Oh, OK, Marvin said.
I can never think of that encounter without laughing. I loved it. I still love it. And I don’t mind saying that the supplement came out great, and I am proud to say that it happened when I was editor. I had been editor a year earlier with The Cowl published a “Women ‘s Supplement” to help celebrate the completion of the first year of co-education. The section editor of the supplement happened to be Karen Ignani, the health care industry lobbyist who was prominent in the Affordable Care Act debate last year. She’s every bit as successful in her area as Ernie D and Marvin were in their’s. And we were all at PC at the same time. Small world.
Anyway, the semi-finals with Memphis State was going along swimmingly. PC was dominating, when Marvin went down with a serious leg injury. He tried to do a Willis Reed thing at the beginning of the second half, walk out on the court with a heavily-taped leg and play through the pain and immobilization, but couldn’t.
Ernie D tried to single-handedly carry the load.
They say half the country was banking on there being a showdown in the finals: Walton at UCLA against Ernie D and Marvin at PC. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. We were then and are now left with a whole bunch of could have beens, would have beens and should have beens.
Man, but those could have beens, would have beens and should have beens remain one of the sweetest corners of basketball heaven for folks who were at PC in 1973.
Of course, Marvin and Ernie D both had short-lived pro careers. Like Ernie D, Marvin was named Rookie of the Year, but it was in the ABA, not the NBA. He also set the record for the most two-point field goals, 27, made in a game in the ABA.
But Ernie hurt his knee after his first year, and was never the same. And Marvin ran afoul of the law, and became a drug addict. Stacom had the longest career among the three. And there have been many PC alum in the pros and in college and the pro coaching ranks. Long time Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese came from PC. So did NJ Devils Coach Lou Lamoriello. Coach Jim Laranaga of George Mason University, who was a senior at PC when I was a freshman, and Coach Billy Donovan of Florida, who was on Rick Pitino’s Final Four team at PC in the mid-1980s, coached their teams in this year’s NCAA and against each other in the 2006 NCAAs.
PC stuck by Marvin during his legal and drug troubles. I remember a priest friend of mine going to minister to him in prison way back in the 1970s. Fortunately, after a long, long ordeal, Marvin turned his life around, and both he and Ernie D remain well-loved and legendary community figures in Providence. Good for them.
And Nehru King? Several years after graduating, I was walking around the Wharf area of Newport, where there were lots of trendy boutiques. I’m just wandering around like at an outdoor mall, big blue sky, breeze off Narragansett Bay. And from out of one of the boutiques comes, “Hey, Jersey City!”
There he is. One of the proprietors. Nehru King. He comes out of the shop, from out of the blue, from years of not seeing each other, a big, broad, friendly smile, and a big hand shake.
“Hey Jersey City! How’s it going?”
Thank God for AP English.
For Essays and Editorials
Denis J. Kelly
March 29, 2011
Instead, I landed in the same sophomore English class as Nehru King.
I tell these Providence College basketball stories more frequently around this time of year, March Madness, the NCAA Basketball Tournament. This is Basketball Heaven time, and I had the great honor, privilege and blessing to come this close to one of the sweetest corners of Basketball Heaven, Providence College 1973.
King was a hotshot basketball player out of Jersey City, where I grew up. He was in this sophomore English class. I was a rookie freshman student, but, thank God, I was also in this sophomore English class.
Early on after one class, I got up the nerve to mention to King that I was also from Jersey City.
Big, broad, friendly smile lit up his face. It was like we were long lost friends. And here I was just a rookie freshman, but here comes this big hand shake. Not that we hung out or anything, but from then on, whenever he saw me on campus, or anywhere, it was “Jersey City, how’s it going?”
Oh, and could he play. He could leap. As they would say at one time, he could “sky.” He was like the Dwight Stone of basketball. He was like David Thompson of North Carolina State and Denver Nuggets fame. And he was a slasher. He could slash to the basket. He could come off the bench and light up the score.
During the 1973 season, he and Charlie Crawford would take turns being the fifth starter or the sixth man on the team. Oh, and the team rang up a 27-4 season record.
Crawford had come to Providence from Yonkers or New Vernon, just north of New York City.He was as tall as King, but more square-shouldered. He was a stoic defender. He did all the stuff that doesn’t show up on stat sheets, but that you can’t win without. He was like Heather Zurick was on the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team that went to the Final Four in Cleveland. He was quiet, too, but you needed him on the team.
Costello, Stacom
King and Crawford were on the team, of course, that 1973 team, with absolute legends of Providence College basketball: Ernie Di Gregorio, Marvin Barnes, and Kevin Stacom.
Prior to their time at PC, there had been other basketball gods: Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkins; Johnny Egan; Vinnie Ernst; former Boston Mayor and U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Ray Flynn; future Georgetown Coach John Thompson; the great Jimmy Walker, and coach Joe Mullaney.
But that 1973 team was coached by future Big East founding commissioner, Dave Gavitt. They had a real shot to win it all that year, had an injury to Marvin halfway through the first half of the semi-final game against Memphis state and Larry Kenon, “Dr. K,” changed what could have been.
Forward Francis Costello was 6’7,” out of Boston with a huge Boston accent, and firey red hair. Every summer he’d grow a full beard. Every Fall, everyone on campus would watch to see when he would shave it off. It was fun to see him do it gradually, first down to a long goatee, then to a really long Fu Manchu mustache. Then, he’d be clean shaven. Time for basketball.
The only interaction I had with him was when he worked mornings at this coffee and donuts operation the college set up in a soda-shop corner of the dorm students’ cafeteria building. I’d get coffee and a cinnamon donut. He’d be behind the counter.
Everybody called Costello “Franny,” and he could be lights out from the corner.
Stacom had transferred from Holy Cross College, a throwback gym rat from Long Island. He was built like Walt “Clyde” Fraser of the Knicks, John Havilicek of the Celtics, and Chris Mullin of St. Johns and the Warriors. Legend was that during the summer he’d get up, run a couple miles from his home to the gym, dribbling the basketball all the way. They he’d play and practice shooting all day, and run home, dribbling all the way home.
He was a perfect complement to Ernie D as guard and Marvin under the basket. Stacom was one of the three gems on a great team. He was a brilliant mid-range jump shooter. He was like a gazelle down the court for outlet passes from Marvin. Like Havlicek, he was always running without the ball and ready to get the unexpected Bob Cousy-like and Pete Maravich-like pin-point brilliant passing from Ernie D.
After he graduated, you would occasionally see Stacom back on campus working out, maybe playing tennis. He was as quiet as Crawford in his own way. Always respectful. Like Derek Jeter in a way. Movie star looks. Never seemed to be the diva. And built like wirey steel.
He played a bunch of years in the NBA, including five seasons with the Boston Celtics in the mid to late 1970s. He was on the championship team of 1976, during the Dave Cowens era. It was easy to cheer for him.
Ernie D, Marvin
And then there was Ernie D and Marvin. There was never a need for last names. They were like Cher and Madonna.
Their names became generics for “great fancy passer and throwback point guard” and “dominating rebounder and defender.” Marvin was a Dennis Rodman-type, a brilliant rebounder. He was second in rebounding in the country. And brilliant at defense, too, He was second in the country behind only Bill Walton in defense.
The only Ernie D story I have was when I was a freshman and PC was playing Villanova University down in Philadelphia. A couple rooms down in the dorm from me was the room of my friend, Tony Puccio from Union. He was a junior. I was a freshman. He was the unofficial mayor of the floor, and he had a great radio receiver.
We listened to the game sitting around his room with a bunch of other guys, when with about four or five minutes to go, Ernie D gets the ball and puts on a dribbling display for the next three or four minutes that was unbelievable to hear described on radio.
We were going nuts. The radio announcer was going nuts. Ernie D was making like a Harlem Globetrotter, playing keep away in a legitimate game.
Ernie D was also a brilliant foul shooter, and that skill helped him win Rookie of the Year when he was playing for the Buffalo Braves in the NBA. He led the league in foul shooting percentage that year.
So Ernie D was from North Providence, a heavily Italian suburb adjacent to Providence, and Marvin was from the predominantly black South Providence section of Providence. They were two home grown prospects, among the best college players of all time, who both decided to stay home to play basketball. How did PC get so lucky?
My Marvin story is a classic. It was editor-in-chief of The Cowl, the student newspaper, and I was asked by the president of the Afro American Club, another basketball player, Alan Baker, to attend a meeting of the club to talk about the “African American student supplement” that was published in The Cowl in the February 1973, just before the Final Four.
Anyway, I was at the meeting, sitting cross-legged on the floor. I was right next to the door in the student center meeting room. I was waiting my turn to answer any newspaper questions that might come up, and naturally, everyone else in the room was Black.
The door opens, and it’s Marvin, all 6’9” of him. He was wearing one of those long, long overcoats, the kind that makes everyone look taller. Marvin didn’t need to be made to look taller. And, I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking up.
I’d never spoken to Marvin before, and had hardly ever seen him on campus, really.
He looks at me, and says, “Man are you in the wrong place.”
Quickly Alan Baker, who was Marvin’s back-up center on the basketball team, explained to Marvin, that I had been invited to talk about the supplement, about deadlines and such.
Oh, OK, Marvin said.
I can never think of that encounter without laughing. I loved it. I still love it. And I don’t mind saying that the supplement came out great, and I am proud to say that it happened when I was editor. I had been editor a year earlier with The Cowl published a “Women ‘s Supplement” to help celebrate the completion of the first year of co-education. The section editor of the supplement happened to be Karen Ignani, the health care industry lobbyist who was prominent in the Affordable Care Act debate last year. She’s every bit as successful in her area as Ernie D and Marvin were in their’s. And we were all at PC at the same time. Small world.
Anyway, the semi-finals with Memphis State was going along swimmingly. PC was dominating, when Marvin went down with a serious leg injury. He tried to do a Willis Reed thing at the beginning of the second half, walk out on the court with a heavily-taped leg and play through the pain and immobilization, but couldn’t.
Ernie D tried to single-handedly carry the load.
They say half the country was banking on there being a showdown in the finals: Walton at UCLA against Ernie D and Marvin at PC. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. We were then and are now left with a whole bunch of could have beens, would have beens and should have beens.
Man, but those could have beens, would have beens and should have beens remain one of the sweetest corners of basketball heaven for folks who were at PC in 1973.
Of course, Marvin and Ernie D both had short-lived pro careers. Like Ernie D, Marvin was named Rookie of the Year, but it was in the ABA, not the NBA. He also set the record for the most two-point field goals, 27, made in a game in the ABA.
But Ernie hurt his knee after his first year, and was never the same. And Marvin ran afoul of the law, and became a drug addict. Stacom had the longest career among the three. And there have been many PC alum in the pros and in college and the pro coaching ranks. Long time Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese came from PC. So did NJ Devils Coach Lou Lamoriello. Coach Jim Laranaga of George Mason University, who was a senior at PC when I was a freshman, and Coach Billy Donovan of Florida, who was on Rick Pitino’s Final Four team at PC in the mid-1980s, coached their teams in this year’s NCAA and against each other in the 2006 NCAAs.
PC stuck by Marvin during his legal and drug troubles. I remember a priest friend of mine going to minister to him in prison way back in the 1970s. Fortunately, after a long, long ordeal, Marvin turned his life around, and both he and Ernie D remain well-loved and legendary community figures in Providence. Good for them.
And Nehru King? Several years after graduating, I was walking around the Wharf area of Newport, where there were lots of trendy boutiques. I’m just wandering around like at an outdoor mall, big blue sky, breeze off Narragansett Bay. And from out of one of the boutiques comes, “Hey, Jersey City!”
There he is. One of the proprietors. Nehru King. He comes out of the shop, from out of the blue, from years of not seeing each other, a big, broad, friendly smile, and a big hand shake.
“Hey Jersey City! How’s it going?”
Thank God for AP English.
For Essays and Editorials
Denis J. Kelly
March 29, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Remembering Elizabeth Taylor
Just finished reading the big obituary of Elizabeth Taylor in the New York Times while eating lunch at Paulie's Restaurant in Stirling.
The two-page obituary, complete with a couple of sidebars, was like a meal, itself. And it was wonderful
Now I want to see a bunch of Elizabeth Taylor movies. I want to see "Cleopatra." of course. I knew of it, being in grade school in the mid-60s, but I never actually saw it. I want to see "National Velvet," with Mickey Rooney, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," with Paul Newman, "Suddenly, Last Summer," written by Tennesse Williams, and with Katherine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift, "Butterfield," with Manhattan as the backdrop and for which she won an Oscar, and, of course, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf," with Richard Burton, for which she won an Oscar, as did Sandy Dennis. The film was directed by Mike Nichols, and is based on a play by Edward Albee. Talk about six degrees of Hollywood, Broadway and American acting during the second half of the 20th Century. That's some six-pack.
She is like no other Hollywood actress. Others are like that, too, for sure. There are a handful of the really great actresses and actors that are like no other. Cagney, Bogart, Gable, Hepburn, Davis, Monroe. And she was definitely in that category. And for all of the headlines, gossip column fodder, glamour, diamonds, and all the other stuff, she was also like a glamorous rock star who could also actually really play his or her instrument. She could act.
I read she didn't like being called "Liz," like the character in "The Blind Side" didn't like everyone calling him "Big Mike."
All right, then, as Sandra Bullock told her adopted son, whom she forever after called Michael, from now on in my mind it will always be: Elizabeth Taylor. Thank you, Elizabeth Taylor. And, thank you New York Times.
For Musings
Denis J. Kelly
March 26, 2011
The two-page obituary, complete with a couple of sidebars, was like a meal, itself. And it was wonderful
Now I want to see a bunch of Elizabeth Taylor movies. I want to see "Cleopatra." of course. I knew of it, being in grade school in the mid-60s, but I never actually saw it. I want to see "National Velvet," with Mickey Rooney, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," with Paul Newman, "Suddenly, Last Summer," written by Tennesse Williams, and with Katherine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift, "Butterfield," with Manhattan as the backdrop and for which she won an Oscar, and, of course, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf," with Richard Burton, for which she won an Oscar, as did Sandy Dennis. The film was directed by Mike Nichols, and is based on a play by Edward Albee. Talk about six degrees of Hollywood, Broadway and American acting during the second half of the 20th Century. That's some six-pack.
She is like no other Hollywood actress. Others are like that, too, for sure. There are a handful of the really great actresses and actors that are like no other. Cagney, Bogart, Gable, Hepburn, Davis, Monroe. And she was definitely in that category. And for all of the headlines, gossip column fodder, glamour, diamonds, and all the other stuff, she was also like a glamorous rock star who could also actually really play his or her instrument. She could act.
I read she didn't like being called "Liz," like the character in "The Blind Side" didn't like everyone calling him "Big Mike."
All right, then, as Sandra Bullock told her adopted son, whom she forever after called Michael, from now on in my mind it will always be: Elizabeth Taylor. Thank you, Elizabeth Taylor. And, thank you New York Times.
For Musings
Denis J. Kelly
March 26, 2011
Thank you, Marc Shaiman
"Hairspray" at Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School on Saturday, March 19, was absolutely great. And to top it all off, Marc Shaiman, who co-wrote the lyrics and music and is a graduate of Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School, was in the front row. He has a resume as tall as Abraham Lincoln, including working with Bette Middler, Billy Crystal, and on scores of movies. He is a winner of a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmy and has five nominations for Oscars. He is a huge success. He is super talented, and obviously so creative. Well at his alma mater on March 19, after the play was over on the last night of its two-weekend run, he spoke to the full cast that was on stage after final bows, and was gracious and generous with his time with the actors. He explained that when he was in school, he played in the pit in that very same auditorium, and dreamed of getting into musical theatre. He thanked his teachers and mentors going back all the way to high school for encouraging him the way today's teachers and mentors obviously encouraged this energetic cast of Hairspray. He told them that it had been one of the finest performances of the play that he had seen performed, and he said he had seen it performed everywhere from Broadway to Hollywood. Thank you, Marc Shaiman, for writing such a great play. And thank you for being such a gentleman. You are a credit to your school and your community.
For Musings
Denis J. Kelly
March 26, 2011
For Musings
Denis J. Kelly
March 26, 2011
On St. Patrick's Day
Hey, Happy St. Patrick's Day, but take it from someone who is Irish on all sides of the family: it is very, very uncool to get drunk on St. Patrick's Day. That's not cool, that's just embarrassing. Intead, scroll to U2, Van Morrison, Sinead O'Connor and The Chieftans on your iPod shuffle, go to an Irish restaurant, have some shepherd's pie, maybe a couple slices of Irish Soda Bread, the kind with lots of raisins and carroway seeds, like my Aunt Jo Varley, originally from Roscommon used to make, add some butter on top, and drink a pint of Guinness Stout like its a glass of vintage fine wine. That's Irish! Enjoy!
For Musings
Denis J. Kelly
March 26, 2011
Originally written March 16, 2011
For Musings
Denis J. Kelly
March 26, 2011
Originally written March 16, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Oh Season of Sumptuous Delight
Oh season of sumptuous delight
Oh symphony of splendor
Oh siren sending signals
Soft yet succinct,
It's quiet tap on the shoulder
Encouraging the spirit to succumb
And awake to the muse.
Yes, indeed, this is the season
For the spirits to whisk wishes
Like migrating birds
Across the sky,
Escaping as if the spirits of each
Apple picked, peach dropped,
Root unearthed, grain scythed,
Each heading out on journeys south
Drawn to the home nest
There to conspire plots anew
And savor harvests abounding
And thank,
Oh Holy Wonder of the World,
That kindred spirits still reach out
To join the fray at the barricades
For goodness and hope and faith,
And, oh yes, may it always be so,
For love, for love
Oh yes, for love,
Yes, indeed, this is the season.
Oh season of sumptuous delight
Oh symphony of splendor
Oh siren sending signals
Soft yet succinct
Its quiet tap in the shoulder
Encouraging the spirit to succumb
And awake anew to the muse.
For Conversations With Walt
Denis J. Kelly
March 25, 2011
Oh symphony of splendor
Oh siren sending signals
Soft yet succinct,
It's quiet tap on the shoulder
Encouraging the spirit to succumb
And awake to the muse.
Yes, indeed, this is the season
For the spirits to whisk wishes
Like migrating birds
Across the sky,
Escaping as if the spirits of each
Apple picked, peach dropped,
Root unearthed, grain scythed,
Each heading out on journeys south
Drawn to the home nest
There to conspire plots anew
And savor harvests abounding
And thank,
Oh Holy Wonder of the World,
That kindred spirits still reach out
To join the fray at the barricades
For goodness and hope and faith,
And, oh yes, may it always be so,
For love, for love
Oh yes, for love,
Yes, indeed, this is the season.
Oh season of sumptuous delight
Oh symphony of splendor
Oh siren sending signals
Soft yet succinct
Its quiet tap in the shoulder
Encouraging the spirit to succumb
And awake anew to the muse.
For Conversations With Walt
Denis J. Kelly
March 25, 2011
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