Oh, hello, June. I was waiting for you.
We have had the strangest time since you were last here, and I am ready to put your spring hood and sing songs with rhymes of Croon, Moon and Melodie. I can’t wait to see that you are in point on June 20 to mark the summer equinox and a pirouette very slowly in the summer.
This month, we will let the Gemini and June cancer shine. I saw an online astrological analysis which indicated that they are the funniest signs of the zodiac. Pursue. Show us. We could all use a laugh.
Many funny people were born in June. Gilda Radner is one.
Many talented people: Marilyn Monroe,, Paul McCartney.
And many contemplative people: Harriet Beecher Stowe,, Dalai Lami.
Also the June bug. Formal name, genus Phyllophaga. This fat and purple beetle of the plant. Very diverse, the June bug, at least 800 species. The larvae – these white larvae that we dig into the garden – have lived in the ground for three years. Underground, they nibbled on the roots of plants and crops (especially potatoes, strawberries, corn, pastures and lawns.) In May and June, they hatch like beetles to live for a year.
The June insects are nocturnal, so when we intend to whistle the hot nights, they make their way through the shrubs, the trees (in particular oak, nut and maple) and flowers (favorites are chrysanthemums, coreopsis and color). Turnabout is a fair game in the world of mother nature. Ask birds, toads, rodents and small mammals and they will tell you that June insects are tasty meals.
I suspect that June insects are frustrated artists because light attracts them, especially white light. They are attracted to the porch reverbs and fires. I wonder, under these spotlights, if they do not also recite Shakespeare Soliloquies and surrounding tunes.
June brings the boring sounds of the summer – mowers, blowers and Edgers – but also happy outdoor sounds and this unique season, “Play Ball!” June is full of baseball. And the baseball tradition is full of “Casey at the Bat”, a comic ballad that has become immortal.
Not long ago, I gave a reading of this poem for an audience. It’s fun to read aloud with your clan rhymes and its vigorous rhythm, and it’s fun to hear too, because it evokes memories of the summer game.
“Casey”, the original title, was published on June 3, 1888 in the examiner of San Francisco. He was written by Ernest Lawrence Thayer under a pen name. This is the only thing that Thayer is known and even those who love the poem rarely know the name of the author.
Thayer was born on August 14, 1863 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, from a wealthy family. He graduated from Magna Cum Laude in philosophy of Harvard University in 1885. William JamesPhilosopher and psychologist, was his teacher and his friend. Thayer was editor -in -chief of the Harvard Lampoon where William Randoph Hearst was the commercial director.
Hearst gave him a job as a humor columnist at San Francisco Examine. He worked there for two years, including a season as a baseball journalist. The last play he wrote for the newspaper was “Casey”, relatively unknown until the Vaudeville interpreter William de Wolf Hopper made it famous.
For most of his life, Thayer moved away from the poem – even contemptuous. He came to consider him as more favorably as authorities, authors and poets praised him. A Yale teacher called him an indigenous masterpiece with a clear presentation of the psychology of the hero and the psychology of the crowd.
Martin Gardner Published “The Annoted Casey at the Bat”, and that’s all we would like to know about the poem and the author. But the poem alone is sufficient; Do not forget the opening lines and let it transport yourself to the summer of the past:
“The prospects were not brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;
The score was four to two with one more round to play. »»