A Month of Music, Day 3

“Now then,” I told Lady, “we have to get straight down to work, since it now turns out that you absolutely cannot listen to the Tchaikovsky or the Prokofiev that I was trying to fob off on you, yesterday.”

“Wonderful,” said Lady, “since I am either under general anesthesia, or very soon to be so, or just out of. Anyway, I’m languishing here at Centro Médico, which, as you know, is ideally suited to languishing. So it’s completely inappropriate that you even think of putting me in your blog, today.”

“Deadline,” I told her. “If it’s 31 days, it’s 31 days. And now it turns out that I’ve wasted nearly 1/31th of them, since the Tchaikovsky and the Prokofiev were no-go’s.”

“What’s the matter with those guys?”

“Well, a very-intelligent reader of this blog deemed Tchaikovsky’s music ‘pathetic….’”

“Well, is it?”

“Quite possibly,” I told her. “Let’s put it this way: if you are attending a cocktail party held by the International Association of Music Critics, do not drop the name of Tchaikovsky as one of your ‘go-to’ guys….”

“Wonderful,” she said. “Another thing for my anesthiated mind to wrap around. Or around which to wrap, just to satisfy Mr. Fernández.”

“Yes, about his prepositions he is persnickety. Anyway, today I have to get right on track. Though I have to say, I feel distinctly unsettled today…”

“Indeed? And has anybody been doing surgery on you? If not, you’re definitely settled, or even in fact well-populated….”

“It’s the day after Ash Wednesday,” I told her, “and Ash Wednesday is always jarring to me. In fact, I won’t feel better until we get Jesus out of the desert, onto the cross, into the tomb, and then resurrected again. I hate not knowing the outcome of things….”

“Surely there isn’t much doubt…”

“Easy for you to say: You’re a believer.”

“Well, I believe in God,” said Lady, “just not so much the other stuff.”

“You know, that totally irks me,” I told her. “Because believe me, it’s no fun being an atheist. Everybody thinks I just sail through life, never shedding a scruple. But it’s just the opposite! First of all, I have to work twice as hard to be a good person, and then I have to worry about everything that you believers know is going to happen. So Advent is torment, since what happens if God forgets to blow into Mary’s ear?”

“God blew into Mary’s ear?”

“Think I read that somewhere, but did a Google search help? Of course not. And that’s the point—if I had any sort of belief, I’d know all about God and the Virgin Mary’s ear. It just increases the angst, somehow, not knowing and having to worry all the same….”

“Hmm,” said Lady, “rather like being in the hospital, awaiting surgery?”

“Err, yes….”

“Well, anyway, don’t you have some work to do? You completely flubbed yesterday, you know, and given that you’re just three days in, it doesn’t look promising.”

“That’s the problem,” I told her. “What if I do something really criminal, like recommending Elgar? Or Smetana? They’d probably take away my musician’s license.”

“Don’t tell me…”

“Well, of course! You wouldn’t want anyone un-credentialed or unauthorized to be performing ‘music,’ would you?”

“Hmm,” she said, “not a bad idea. Let’s see, there could be a poet’s license, as opposed…”

“…to poetic license,” we said in unison.

“Anyway,” I told her, “I’m completely unsure what music to play, or indeed, if it’s OK to play any music at all, during Lent. But obviously it has to be something religious, and that’s a problem, because we could do a whole year of religious music, and still not have scratched the surface. Damn, and at some point, I suppose I’ll have to tackle the passions….”

“Tackle the passions,” said Lady. “And exactly what sort of blog am I being dragged into, this dread day that I’m spending in Centro Médico? You might wait a day or two, until the anesthesia entirely wears off, before tackling any passions with me!”

“Theologically speaking, you have nothing to worry about,” I told her. “Passion—from the past participle of the Latin verb patī….”

“Into my sick chamber does he come,” began Lady, “strewing past participles…”

“I am NOT strewing past participles!”

“Casting then, or perhaps dribbling,” she replied, “and it’s entirely unfair. Please, whatever you do, keep your passions well and truly to yourself!”

“I intend to,” I told her, “though the word ‘passion’ here refers only to the suffering of Christ…”

“Only?” she asked.  “You call being crucified….”

“We’re well astray, here,” I told her. “anyway, it’s very much on my mind to do something about Buxtehude, since generally speaking, very few people do anything about Buxtehude.”

“Well, since he died in 1704 why in the world should anyone do anything about Buxtehude? What do you want—a mass said? Flowers on the grave? And is it true, by the way…”

“Why do you always hit on the scandalous bits of every composer? Wasn’t it enough that Bach walked 200 unauthorized miles or so to study with Buxtehude? Bach! But now you’re going to dredge up the story…”

“Well, I just wanted to know….”

“Yes, he seems to have had seven daughters, the eldest of which was Anna Margareta. And yes, Handel, Bach, and a guy named Johann Matheson all got the same pitch. Buxtehude was ready for retirement, and perfectly happy to give up his post to any of the three…”

“Hah!” said Lady. “I knew it! So Anna Margareta got thrown into the bargain! And since all three skedaddled, well, she couldn’t have been too much of a beauty! My my, how the human resources profession has blossomed, over the years!”

“Surgery has done little to improve your mood,” I told her. “How would you like to go through history as the eldest daughter of Dieterich Buxtehude? Snigger, snigger, all down the centuries!”

“I would disdain to snigger,” said Lady. “And certainly not down the centuries. All right—let’s have Buxtehude, if we must. What’s it to be?”

“Membra Jesu Nostri,” I told her. “Actually, just the second cantata of the seven. You know, after the seven….”

“…limbs of Christ. But I’ve never gotten: why are the knees considered limbs?”

“Probably just to get it up to seven,” I told her. “You know, it’s one of those numbers that has all that symbolism attached to it. Anyway, whether the knees are limbs or not, the image is wonderful. ‘You will be brought to nurse, and be dandled on the knees….’ Who doesn’t wish for that?”

“It is a particularly strong post-surgical yearning,” said Lady. “Yes, dandling! Well, and is that all for the day? Surely there’s something more up that authorial or musical sleeve?”

“Well, there’s always Biber—that is, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber….”

“Dear me, he certainly went a long way to distinguish himself just Justin…”

“Wouldn’t you? Makes checking into a hotel, or a country inn, lots easier.”

“Obviously. OK—so what are we hearing from HIF Biber?”

“HIF?”

“Henry, or whatever…”

“A civil tongue,” I told her, “which is what you ought to keep. Well, how about the introit from the Requiem a 15? True, it starts out a bit slow, but after 45 seconds or so, it turns just glorious. And it’s a nice introduction to requiems, you know.”

“Am I to be introduced to requiems?” said Lady. “Are they the sort to whom a lady, or especially a Lady, might be introduced? And how much of an acquaintance am I supposed to have with them? It would make a difference, when I set out to buy the Thanksgiving turkey.”

“They’re quite circumspect,” I told her, “and really need little in the area of entertaining. And since it is a mass for the repose of the soul of the dead…”

“First dandling,” said Lady, “and now repose. Well, well, I suppose I can give it a listen. Unless, of course, you have somebody else that I’m supposed to blather on about? Really, Marc, I have just had surgery!”

“Well, there’s always Zelenka,” I started off saying.

But the Biber had done its work. I looked at her, and the old nurse in me checked her breathing: yes, the chest was rising and falling rhythmically. It was cold in the room, so I drew the blanket she had brought from home up to her cheeks. And then, since she didn’t have to answer, I asked her the question.

“Sometimes I wonder,” I whispered to her, “are you my sister…

… or my daughter?”

(Note to readers—I just got a call. She came through surgery fine….)    

                

A Month of Music, Day 2

“Well, there has to be a place in the world for pissed-off music meant for something else,” I told Lady. “Though it’s easy to forget about it, somehow….”

“Whatever do you mean,” said Lady. “And why should music be pissed-off?”

“Well, I don’t know if the music is pissed-off, but the listener…”

“Dear me,” said Lady resignedly, “and what has he done now?”

“That’s just the problem,” I told her.

“And…?”

“’What has he done now’ is what you said. And no need to specify who that ‘he’ would be! Why couldn’t he stay on reality TV where he belonged? It was a perfect arrangement for everybody. He could be there getting adulation and I could be here, ignoring him. But how do you ignore….”

“You’re becoming completely unbalanced, Marc….”

“I AM NOT!” I told her, though perhaps speaking in capitals….

“Anyway, wouldn’t it be better, given your agitated state of mind, to listen to something soothing? A Haydn quartet, perhaps, or a Mozart divertimento…”

“Oh God, don’t remind me. I have to do something about damn Josef Haydn!”

“Surely he wrote a masterpiece or two?”

“The problem may have been that he was too nice a man,” I told her. “Has anyone ever studied how temperament modifies talent? Think of how we imagine Haydn: there he is, in his frock coat, with his wig perfectly powdered. And then there’s Beethoven—he makes Einstein look perfectly coifed….”

“ Was Beethoven really that tempestuous? Or was he just unconventional?”

“Who knows? According to some, he was good to his nephew…or at least, better to his nephew than the nephew was to him. Anyway, there are days you just have to listen to Beethoven….”

“And today was one of those days?”

“Yeah,” I told her. “And so that got me thinking about Egmont….”

“Ah, Egmont,” said Lady, perhaps suspiciously easily. “Yes, opus 84. Based on the work of Goethe, concerning the 16^th century Count of Egmont….”

“You’ve been cheating,” I told her.

She immediately took umbrage.

“Indeed not,” she said, snatching the umbrage from my lap.

“Where are you going,” I called.

“Do you think you’re the only person who can have umbrage?!” she shouted. “Well, I’m tired of it, Marc. Tired of always having to be told things. Tired of always being the straight man!”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to be the straight man,” I told her. “I didn’t come out all those years before it was fashionable just to crawl back in the closet!”

“Here,” called Lady, “Santana—catch! You want Marc’s umbrage?”

“This is ridiculous,” I told Lady. “I invite you into this blog and here you are, stealing my umbrage, and worse, completely deflecting attention from the serious business at hand. We’ve barely touched Beethoven, to say nothing of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev.”

Lady tossed the umbrage to Santana.

“Well, I don’t want this old umbrage,” said Santana. “Why should I? I have plenty of umbrage of my own….”

“Anyway,” said Lady, “I don’t see what Tchaikovsky is doing here at all. Prokofiev I get. He obviously got a bad deal all his life, even up until the day he died. Which, by the way, was the same day Stalin died. So they had to wait three days to bury him, and then guess what! No flowers—because Stalin had hogged them all!”

“Ridiculous,” I told her, “and give me my umbrage back, because now I seriously need to take it. Or have it. Whatever—that story is completely unsubstantiated.”

“Yo, Santana! Guy here wants his umbrage back!”

“Well, I don’t have any umbrage,” said Santana. “Anyway, I’m busy here, running this café. However, it’s certainly an irony that Stalin and Prokofiev…”

“That’s Prokofiev and Stalin,” I told him.

“…that they died the same day. Poor Prokofiev. He didn’t seem able to live either abroad or in Russia. He said he was miserable in Paris and the United States, but then he got slapped down, just as Shostakovich did, for writing ‘degenerate’ music. Or maybe it was ‘decadent.’ Anyway, it wasn’t music that exalted the struggle of the proletariat. So the composers’ union got onto him, and then Prokofiev had to write a letter, in which he had to renounce all his previous music. Then, he started to write an opera called The Story of a Real Man.”

“Surely you jest,” said Lady.

“Hah!” I told her. “And I thought you knew everything! All this business of Goethe and the Count of Egmont! But you don’t know a thing about Prokofiev!”

“We divided it up,” said Lady. “I wikipediaed Beethoven, and Santana wikipediaed the other. We were also busy trying to figure out how to cop your umbrage….”

“’Wikipedia’ is not a verb,” I told her.

She stuck her tongue out.

“Anyway,” I told her, “if you’re so smart, what about Tchaikovsky? What’s the skinny on him?”

“I refuse to have anything to do with Tchaikovsky,” said Lady. “I don’t approve of gay men marrying women for cover.”

“It’s that old story,” I told her. “Does a thing exist before you’ve named it? Because we can hardly say that Tchaikovsky was gay—at least the way we see it today.”

“I know all about this theory,” said Lady, “and I call it specious with a capital ‘SP.’”

“You mean a capital ‘S’”

“I mean an ‘SP,’” said Lady. “Did Tchaikovsky ever write anything serious? All that ballet stuff—The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Peeping Beauty…”

“Sleeping,” I told her. “Anyway, the man wrote at least six symphonies. One of which, by the way, Mr. Fernández would give an entire day to. Number 6—Pathetique!”

“Not convinced,” said Lady. “And I don’t see why he’s here at all.”

“Three outsiders,” I told her. “Outsiders because of temperament, or sexuality, or politics. Outsiders who chose to use—or maybe had to use—somebody else’s story. Is that why this music is the perfect music for the adolescent, or post-adolescent? Think so…. Anyway, it’s definitely music written with one fist raised in the air!”

But by then, Lady had dive bombed Santana. She headed for the door, throwing my umbrage back at me as she left.

           

A Month of Music, Day 1

“OK—this isn’t starting so well,” I told my friend Lady. “As always, it sounded easy, when I first thought about it. 31 days, 31 pieces of music—simple, right?”

“Well, it should be,” said Lady. “You do know more than 31 pieces of music, don’t you?”

“Yeah, and that’s the problem. I don’t just want to do an electronic version of ‘Classical Music for Sunday Mornings.’ And God knows I don’t want to do ‘Mozart for Baby.’”

“What’s the matter with Mozart for babies?”

“You know, Mozart is not a vitamin pill. And there are at least 30,000 better reasons to listen to Mozart than the alleged boost to cognition, or whatever it is. I’m so tired of all this business of justifying classical music education based on the supposed neurological benefits. Do we study literature because of its effect on the brain? Or art? Of course not. Oh, and notice that the football coach never has to jump through those hoops….”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Well, in the first place, what to do with the war-horses?”

“War-horses?”

“You know,” I told her, “Beethoven’s Fifth, the William Tell Overture, Carmina Burana, and that damn Bolero. The problem is that some of them are wonderful pieces, but who can hear William Tell without thinking of the Lone Ranger? Anyway, I’m not going to waste one of my 31 days on Rossini….”

“We have a grudge against Rossini?”

“Not as seriously as I have a grudge against a lot of people,” I told her, “and Beethoven said Rossini’s opera buffa…”

“Ah, opera buffa,” said Lady, “not a great favorite of mine….”

“It’s just comic opera,” I told her, “unlike opera seria, which is….”

She just gave me a look.

“Anyway, Beethoven liked the opera buffa, but told Rossini he couldn’t write the serious stuff. Oh, and then there’s his reputed comment; Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on the backside….”

“OK, so no Rossini. So now what’s the problem?”

“Well, should I simply devote each day to a different composer? Sort of, ‘if today is Tuesday, it must be Fauré?’ But there’s a problem, there….”

“And that is?”

“Oh come on, does that mean that Bach and Beethoven only get the same attention as Reynaldo Hahn? I mean, I love Hahn, and I wouldn’t be without Hahn, but still….”

“I see the point,” said Lady. “So spend a week on Bach, if you’re so inclined….”

“And then, of course, there are all the composers I should like, and don’t. Which means, of course, that I’m the complete Philistine. Sorry, but almost everything I’ve ever heard of Debussy make me want to jump off the balcony, if not the nearest bridge. So though he’s important compositionally….”

“Compositionally?”

“Sorry—anyway, it’s my book, and if I don’t want to invite Debussy into it, well, so what? Mr. Fernández loves Debussy, so he can write a rebuttal, or his own damn book. Anyway, Debussy is out, and very likely so is Wagner, as well as most of the 20^th century. I might make an exception for Samuel Barber….”

“All of this,” said Lady, “is nothing more than an excuse to get down to work. You’re throwing up objections simply to avoid getting the nose anywhere near the grindstone….”

“Easy enough for you to say,” I told her. “But what about chronology? Shouldn’t we progress in orderly fashion from Monteverdi, say, to Barber? That seems like the serious thing to do…”

Lady yawned.

“Aren’t you forgetting,” she said, “that this is supposed to be fun? As in ‘not a chore?’ Anyway, how did you begin to listen to classical music? Surely your mother didn’t sit you down with a study guide….”

“Absolutely the opposite,” I told her, “my mother, by the time I came around, was considerably worn down. She had a sort idea that it didn’t matter much what you did, your child was either going to turn into a mass murderer or not. Well, she may not have been quite that loose, but still…”

“Well, so what did you listen to, early on?”

“Oddly enough, quite a lot of The Weavers, as well as Burl Ives. I think my father was into that; it was when she was alone, and very often when she was editing, that she played classical music. Mostly, of course, because it’s hard to edit if you’re distracted by the lyrics of ‘itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini…’”

“Surely you jest….”

“The fifties brought us many things,” I told her. “Including, I’m sorry to say, the infamous witch hunts, led by Joe McCarthy from Appleton, Wisconsin. And oddly, The Weavers and Burl Ives—who I always thought were hopelessly square and old-fashioned—suffered greatly under McCarthy. Nothing as seditious as a folksong, is there?”

“Folksongs? Seditious?”

“Surprisingly. After all, when you sing, ‘this land is my land, this land is your land,’ well…has anyone ever sung ‘this land is Monsanto’s land?’”

“That actually might not be a bad idea….”

“Well,” said Lady, “since you obviously are turning just a bit chicken-livered about this whole project, why don’t you simply invite whatever composer is hanging around, over there in the dining room of Fortaleza Street? You know, if you really can’t decide, well, let it be open mic. What’s wrong with that? After all, I do it every Tuesday night at the café….”

“Well,” I said, “if it got me off the hook of deciding on one masterpiece and throwing out the other, it would be worth it. And it is, after all, how I came to so much music….”

“So, folksongs?”

“Hmm…folksongs. Wonder what Alfred Deller is doing, at the moment.”

“I’m right here,” said the disembodied voice. “nor did I think anybody at all remembered me. It happens, you know. They tell you that you are immortal, that you’ll never be forgotten, and now, who remembers Deller? Or my son? Or both of us together, since we often sang together….”

“Oh dear,” said Lady, “is it really starting? And who might these dellers be?”

“Not dellers, Dellers. And they have every reason to be a bit miffed. Alfred was the father, and Mark was the son…but they both were countertenors, which at the time was a bit of an eye opener.”

“Countertenor?”

“It’s a man who is singing in the traditional female vocal range. And please, don’t get me started on whether it’s falsetto or not. You never, ever want to get into vocal production, because singers have the weirdest ideas about what it is, or what it isn’t. Somebody or other—Renée Fleming, I think, but anyway, somebody famous—seriously thinks that to produce a beautiful, pianissimo high note, you have to pitch the note through the tiny little indentation of the nose as it curves towards the cheek. Physiologically impossible, of course, but who cares? However she does it, or thinks she does it, well it’s glorious. And of course, could I do it?”

“Am I, or am I not, to be allowed to speak?” Said the querulous Deller. “I have been, after all, dragged from the dead. Though I must say, I was hardly the only male alto around: in fact, it was often said that if they had allowed women in the cathedral choirs, there would have been no male altos. But as it was, there were many of us….”

“So there were,” I said. “But you were one of the trailblazers, weren’t you? And now, we have people like David Daniels and Philippe Jaroussky, but you were standing out there, quite alone, and doing your thing….”

“The Deller Consort,” said Deller, “we were pioneers in the early music field.”

“You were,” I said, and thought, but did not say, that his voice had been sadly surpassed by our current generation of countertenors. “Well, shall we listen to something? How about ‘She Moved Through the Fair?’ It has to be one of the most haunting songs in the world. And then, what about some Vaughan-Williams? It doesn’t seem right to slight poor Vaughan-Williams, who did so much to save and preserve English folksong. Though really, I think I’d do ‘Silent Noon,’ since it’s so beautiful, and such a good interpretation of the text of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. And then, of course, we’d have to do “Orpheus with his Lute…”

“What? I thought it was just five minutes a day! Three songs? That’s already 15 minutes!”

“Bother,” I said, “I knew this project was unfeasible from the start. Well, have another glass of wine. Oh, and I suppose I should pour another two for you?”

There was no response, as the music soared, but at the end, Deller and Vaughan Williams had finished their cups.  

      

First Sweden, Now Russia

“It’s just not right,” I said, as I often do, to Lady. “First there were the tragic events in Sweden, which caused me to search endlessly on the internet, to make sure that ABBA was unaffected….”

“But nothing happened,” said Lady.

“Exactly,” I told her. “And ‘nothing’ is a very terrible thing, fully and as potentially dangerous as ‘something,’ which can also cause untold anguish. Indeed, I have suffered through ‘nothing’ thousands if not millions of times in my life. I sit, for example, at my computer, preparing to emblazon the world with my words, and what happens?”

“Let me guess,” said Lady.

“I look around my apartment, and where have all the intentions of doing a little cleaning….”

“I do understand,” said Lady. “At any rate, the Swedes are quite all right. Although I’m sure they’re grateful for your concern….”

“So if that wasn’t bad enough, I now have a monga.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in monga,” said Lady. “You once described it as a mythical though dreaded disease occurring when one raindrop descends on a Puerto Rican.”

“That’s profoundly politically incorrect,” I told her, “which probably means that yes, I did say it. Anyway, whether I believe it or not, here it is. In that sense, it’s just like the political situation, or perhaps the terrible events in Sweden. I can’t believe Donald Trump, so why shouldn’t something have happened in Sweden, even though I don’t believe….”

“That makes no sense,” said Lady.

“Exactly,” I told her.

“Anyway, what I really should do, since Tuesday morning is the new Monday morning…”

“What?”

“Presidents’ Day,” I told her. “Anyway, I should get right down to work, even though what I really want is to go back to bed. But now it’s time to put aside our grief…”

“Grief?”

“Sweden,” I told her, “how it afflicts the mind, and indeed the spirit. Well, we have to carry on. Now then, there’s excellent news! An eye-stabbing flash of light in the vexing question of Russia and the Ukraine!”

“Yes?” asked Lady.

“You know, of course, that we have to move on. We can’t dwell on these dark events forever. Though I just read this, in The New York Times:”

In a Twitter post on Monday, he accused American journalists of glossing over a dark and dangerous situation in Sweden. “Give the public a break,” he wrote. “The FAKE NEWS media is trying to say that large scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully. NOT!”

“A courageous stand,” said Lady. “Wonderful to know that our president will not step down, or step back, or step wherever. The Swedes must be breathing a sigh of relief, knowing they have so ardent a champion in the White House….”

“One begins to wonder,” I told her, “if the atrocities in Sweden were all a red herring. Or perhaps it’s that damn FAKE NEWS media that is trying to deflect attention from Trump’s remarkable success, based on the well-oiled machine he has created from the ruble….”

“Marc, you’re wandering….”

“Russia,” I told her. “You remember, the little problem of Russia and the Ukraine. Though in fact, the Ukraine is considerably more affected….”

“Marc?”

“Anyway, we’re well on the way—quite far down the path, actually—to a true and lasting peace!”

“So what happened?”

“Well, here’s The New York Times again, if you trust that dirty rag….”

A week before Michael T. Flynn resigned as national security adviser, a sealed proposal was hand-delivered to his office, outlining a way for President Trump to lift sanctions against Russia.

“Whew,” said Lady. “Well, that’s definite progress indeed!”

“Mendacious tongues,” I said, “which are absolutely the worst tongues of all…”

“How they have afflicted me, my whole life,” said, nay cried Lady, “I hardly walk out the door, in the morning, and there they are!”

“Mendacious tongues,” I said, “with their corollaries, tainted minds, are questioning the whole affair, since the plan is put forward by a rather shady character, Felix H. Sater.”

“And what has Mr. Sater done, to earn his place in the shade?”

“Well, we can start with this:”

After the lawyers got involved, Trump said he barely knew who Sater was. But there is voluminous evidence that Sater, a Russian emigrant, was key to channeling Russian capital to Trump for years. Sater is also a multiple felon and at least a one-time FBI informant.  

“Lovely,” said Lady, “nice to know we’re getting help from multiple felons. Ah well, any port in a storm! OK, so why were the lawyers involved?”

“It all was a messy little business down in Soho,” I told her. “You know, after the string of bankruptcies, Trump got involved in building a luxury condo / hotel down in Soho, to the annoyance of all the artists down there. But the project hit some bumps, especially in the downturn of 2008 and 2009….”

“Well, well,” said Lady. “And any idea what the plan might entail? The plan to bring peace to the Ukraine and Russia?”

“Well, first the authors allege that they have incriminating stuff on the president of the Ukraine….”

“I recoil in horror,” said Lady, “though indeed it took me quite a moment to realize that I had. Never having recoiled for any reason, you know….”

“And then they go on to this:”

Essentially, his plan would require the withdrawal of all Russian forces from eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian voters would decide in a referendum whether Crimea, the Ukrainian territory seized by Russia in 2014, would be leased to Russia for a term of 50 or 100 years.

“How can you ‘lease’ a territory as large as the Crimea for 50 to 100 years? And why do I feel rather doubtful about the validity of any ‘referendum’ that might take place?”

“Well, it’s all very strange,” I told her. “Anyway, could I interest you in making a little donation to my latest charity? I’ll be going forward with it on Facebook in just a few minutes, but if you’d like to prime the pump, with a donation of 500 dollars or more, I’ll send you a complimentary T-shirt! Just my way of saying thank you….”

“And what would that be?”

“’I stand with Sweden!’’ I told her. “After all, if they can go against the Swedes, for God’s sake, who among us is safe!”

“Ahhh,” said Lady, “do you never rest, in your efforts to cozen the weary?”

“Never,” I told her. “In fact, I wake each morning, filled with dreams of cozening!”

Funny…

Well, she was here, just a minute ago….