A Tribute to abra a collection of her comments

[hrossa]

"The doctor knows what his trained eyes see - and he says it's the last of the ninth for me. So one more thing while the clouds loom dark and then I must leave this noisy park. "— Unattributed

chopstix
November 1, 2012, 7:58 pm
I wonder what that last request was?

Barnabas
March 11, 2013, 4:09 pm
I hope he fooled him and the game went into extra innings.

skoogie2
August 10, 2014, 12:50 pm
That's sad, I wonder who said it?

abra
August 10, 2015, 11:43 am
This doesn't seem like it should be unattributed, but googling only turns up UNKNOWN. I also didn't find any additional lines. I wanted to know what his "one more thing" was.

abra
June 30, 2016, 12:00 pm
Reminds me of Steve Goodman's A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request. If you don't know it,look for it on Youtube. Goodman was a genius.

abra
December 10, 2016, 2:13 pm
If you didn't know Steve Goodman before. You probably know him now. His Go Cubs Go became very well know this past season. He wrote Go Cubs Go, after A dying Cub Fan's Last request was criticized for being to dark. His ashes were scattered at Wrigley, without the consent of the management :0) In the song he calls it an "Ivy covered burial ground".

skeeter
March 17, 2017, 1:43 pm
I say we all hoist a Big Beer to his honor in the cheap seats at Fenway and sing "My Blue Heaven."

kb83
July 23, 2017, 2:36 pm
Extra innings sounds good.

munchlet
November 14, 2017, 1:25 pm
abra, I thought of Steve Goodman too. And I love his Dying Cub Fan's Last Request -- although last year we had a reprieve.
...

abra
September 18, 2018, 10:18 am
He told 'em, "It's late, and it's getting dark in here And I know it's to time to go But before I leave the lineup Boys, there's just one thing that I'd like to know "Do they still play the blues in Chicago When baseball season rolls around? When the snow melts away, do the Cubbies still play In their ivy-covered burial ground?
...

munchlet
December 9, 2020, 1:00 am
The dying man's friends told him to cut it out. They said, "Stop it" and "That's an awful shame." He whispered, "Don't cry, we'll meet by and by Near the heavenly hall of fame." He said, "I've got seasons tickets to watch the angels now. So it's just what I'm gonna do." He said, "But you the living, you're stuck here with the Cubs. So it's me who feels sorry for you"

[Eureka]

"Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible. " — Virginia Woolf

abra
June 4, 2016, 2:10 pm
She lost me at "spider".

[LLapp]

Abra often apologized for her commas, but I always felt she had full poetic license for punctuation. The way she placed her commas, you could just hear her voice in the words.


"I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand." — Leonardo da Vinci

emmatation
May 11, 2014, 11:31 am
This strikes me as a very hipster quote. Someone should photoshop it onto a stock photo of a meadow or something similar.

LLapp
June 30, 2015, 6:28 pm
I love that it comes from Leonardo -- that, after all, this genius of the ages was still a human being who sometimes struggled to understand things.

abra
August 7, 2015, 11:07 am
I think that it's wonderful, that someone, who probably, understood more that most of his contemporaries, went looking for more answers. I wonder what he was looking for.

bkmcincinnati
January 8, 2017, 1:05 am
abra: A long time ago I had a coworker (now deceased) who used commas like you do. I miss that.

LLapp
January 12, 2017, 8:16 pm
bkm: Yes, abra uses commas like poetry. She is quite the poet sometimes.

[Eureka]

"No facts are to me sacred - none are profane. I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

WRQ9
November 27, 2013, 6:39 am
That is not to say that certain harmonic redundancies are not worthy of note, or even quite valuable. dare I suggest even precious.

LLapp
August 8, 2016, 1:39 pm
I notice that word "redundancies" appears in many of WRQ9's more oblique comments.

abra
June 21, 2020, 8:24 pm
Dare to say it WRQ9. Dare to say it. We won't get it but it will give us something to think about, and the world is a better place with preciously, redundant harmonic thingies.

Fudi
March 17, 2021, 10:49 pm
^Ha abra!!

LLapp
September 5, 2021, 4:35 am
Let's hear it for redundant harmonic thingies!

[LLapp]

I love this whole thread, really. I'm putting it here because of abra's surprise anecdote at the end.

"Giving your son a skill is better than giving him one thousand pieces of gold." — Chinese Proverb

skoogie2
February 16, 2014, 7:37 am
If you give a man a fish....

kb83
March 13, 2014, 4:44 am
And giving him both is even better.

universalmom
April 28, 2014, 3:32 pm
i'm with you kb!

montyb
December 23, 2014, 5:04 pm
Well I was giving him a skull.

montyb
January 8, 2015, 9:17 am
This time i was giving him a still.

jval
January 28, 2015, 2:46 pm
I vote gold, not skill, skull or still or even spill.

skeeter
April 25, 2015, 3:33 pm
Like Monty, I gave him a still. If your'e the biggest bootlegger in Floyd County, Virginia, you've got yourself quite a living. His aged batches with a peach in the bottom of the quart jar (for taking out the toxins -- never eat the peach) are smoother than black Jack Daniels.

abra
July 1, 2015, 10:27 am
Skeeter, sounds like you know something about the whole process.

skeeter
September 30, 2015, 4:48 am
Mighty, mighty pleasin', pappy's corn squeezin', Whshhhoooh... white lightnin'. -- George Jones

munchlet
September 21, 2017, 4:39 pm
(hic)

kahvecowgirl
April 17, 2018, 11:05 am
A still! If only my parents had been so thoughtful. They even hid the beer when they left me alone.

abra
September 10, 2019, 7:37 pm
I know a woman who found a still under her house. Teenage son put a trapdoor in his closet, and installed a still. You never know. If you've got a teenager maybe you have a still.

abra
October 16, 2019, 10:49 pm
Maybe the trapdoor was already there. That makes more sense.

[LLapp]

"My sister taught me everything I really need to know, and she was only in sixth grade at the time." — Linda Sunshine

abra
January 23, 2019, 1:53 pm
My older sister taught me so much. She was much nicer to me, than I was to my younger sisters. I have been missing her for over forty years.

[LLapp]

"Happiness isn't something you experience, it's something you remember." — Oscar Levant

universalmom
April 30, 2014, 9:30 am
if you're happy and you know it...naaaah...

abra
September 2, 2015, 1:29 pm
Why not, universalmom? Clap 'em.

abra
October 23, 2015, 7:55 am
It would be sad to be happy, and not know it.

abra
August 13, 2016, 6:27 pm
Tonight we celebrated my birthday with our son and grandsons. I was happy and I DID know it.

[hrossa]

"All love is probationary, a fact which frightens women and exhilarates men." — Mignon McLaughlin

abra
April 24, 2021, 10:58 pm
I never loved my husband probationally and I never felt like I was on probation. I guess after all these years we're both slightly exhilarated.

Eureka
March 4, 2022, 2:14 am
Your comments about your marriage always delight me, abra.

[hrossa]

"Hearing protection is a sound investment." — Unattributed

opallady
May 1, 2013, 2:08 am
So is "wearing" protection.

abra
June 14, 2013, 12:58 am
But without the pun :0)

[Eureka]

"The trouble with living alone is that it's always your turn to do the dishes." — Unattributed

abra
September 4, 2020, 1:12 am
One of the nice thing since my husband retired as that we clean up together after dinner. He scrubs the pans. We load and unload the dishwasher together. One of us cleans the stove top and counters One of us puts away leftovers. He takes out the garbage.

LLapp
October 11, 2020, 2:42 am
Abra, I think you and your husband deserve a trophy for working that out so nicely.

[Eureka]

"An angler is a man who spends rainy days sitting around on the muddy banks of rivers doing nothing because his wife won't let him do it at home." — Unattributed

abra
November 8, 2015, 8:31 am
Truth is, she may have been quite happy that he was out on his muddy river bank. That gave her the afternoon to do cryptos.

[LLapp]

Nostalgia for Abra's son...


"The world began when I was born and the world is mine to win." — Badger Clark

montyb
November 24, 2012, 11:59 pm
Badger Clark was a cowboy poet and the first poet laureate of South Dakota. (link)

lainie18
February 9, 2013, 2:51 am
Well, I guess he didn't win the world, but he won South Dakota

LLapp
November 21, 2015, 6:58 pm
I wonder if he knew Fargo North, Decoder.

abra
August 25, 2018, 1:39 pm
The Electric Company was such a good show for kids learning to read. My son could read before he started school, but when he was about nine or ten years old, we all watched The Electric Company together. It was so funny at times. One of the best parts was Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader but Skip Hinnant as Fargo North Decoder was good too.

LLapp
March 9, 2019, 2:14 am
Abra, my son was an early reader like yours, but I insisted on watching Electric Company with him because I loved the show just for the entertainment. Believe it or not, it was my 10th grade biology teacher who got me hooked on it -- he finished a lecture with a few questions, and then added "And, what about Naomi?" I asked him what that was about and then went home that afternoon and watched the show, because my bio teacher could do no wrong.

badbob
June 22, 2019, 4:51 am
when my son was a child (he's 40 now) damn i'm old. our local PBS station showed Sesame Street, The Electric Company and Mr Rogers back to back to back we watched them all . then we watched Inspector Gadget for realism

Eureka
May 21, 2020, 10:18 pm
The Westerner (first stanza) My fathers sleep on the sunrise plains, And each one sleeps alone. Their trails may dim to the grass and rains, For I choose to make my own. I lay proud claim to their blood and name, But I lean on no dead kin; My name is mine, for the praise or scorn, And the world began when I was born And the world is mine to win.

TimmyTee
July 5, 2020, 8:36 pm
Thanks Eureka. That fleshes it out MUCH better. The cryptogram sounded awfully solipsistic.

abra
April 23, 2021, 10:07 pm
Thank you, Eureka.

abra
April 23, 2021, 10:12 pm
Cute story, LLapp. I love that so many of us watched with our kids. HEY YOU GUYS!!!

[Eureka]

(This made me laugh.)

"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there." — Robert M. Pirsig

abra
August 5, 2011, 8:58 pm
ZEN - I kept trying to use MEN.

haverwench
January 12, 2013, 10:32 pm
Which doesn't work, grammatically.

WRQ9
February 1, 2013, 9:37 am
Nor does it follow the rule of non-equivalent clues.

abra
March 27, 2016, 12:32 pm
I tried MEN again, and yes, I knew that the grammar was wrong. Zen just didn't come to mind, and I couldn't figure out what other word to use. Then there's the fact that I didn't get the memo about the rule of non-equivalent clues. )

darkyr
September 16, 2016, 9:03 am
I was shorted the same memo.

LeonaB
May 22, 2018, 4:27 pm
The rule of non-equivalent clues?!

abra
August 25, 2018, 5:51 pm
^Apparently if you know it, this quote is a cinch.

[Eureka]

"A mother's heart is always with her children. " — Proverb

abra
May 9, 2015, 11:59 am
Tomorrow is Mother's Day. I sometimes feel sorry for my son, because he's our only child, and he's on the receiving end of a lot of "heart". He bears it well though.

[LLapp]

And his name is a whole sentence!! One of abra's favorite things. I wonder if she noticed it -- she must have, right?


"Despite what they tell you, there are simply no moral absolutes in a complex world." — Berkeley Breathed

abra
August 22, 2018, 6:33 pm
One of my son's very favorites. We had a terrible time trying to find a DVD of A Wish For Wings That Work, for Christmas one year.

LLapp
October 6, 2019, 1:18 am
Abra, your son had great taste in cartoons. Does he still have them?

abra
February 1, 2020, 6:46 pm
Yes, and he's passed them down to his kids.