I'm up in Oakland on a Saturday night
Lord, I said I just didn't feel right
Goodnight, ladies all around
But the right one hadn't found me such a bad night
I didn't feel right
Then a friend came over 'fore it got too late
Asked me if I'd like you as a double date
My stars above, I fell in love
With the queen of the roller derby

Today it is April 7, 2011. It was the first spring-like day downtown. Many of the regulars were out at their posts.

When I was young, it was more important
Pain more painful
Laughter much louder
Yeah, when I was young

When we were children we lived in the lovely level subdivision of Don Mills, Ontario, Canada. I say level because anything upright, growing, or not of potential value to the developer was bulldozed before our homes were erected. My mother, who had a knack for such things, referred to our blessed neighbourhood as 'Sun Baked Acres.' I have thought of it by no other name since I was a child.

Every home got a wee sapling on the front lawn. Some folks seemed to get a maple-leafy affair, others got something aspen-y, and still others received a cherry blossom sapling.

The subdivision was soon filled with instant semi-detached homes, rolls of turf, and the necessary connections to power, phone, and television (antenna). There was no fencing initially, imagine that? There were no fences between the properties of various homeowners. That was looked after in short order. The local working-class English and Scottish residents formed an ad-hoc committee and had the fences up very quickly.

Right turn, enough background:

The forward thinking familes began to take steps immediately to finish the basements of their homes. Forward thinking would mean families who had 3 or 4 or 5 kids, just babies now, but not for very long.

This meant that along with tiny, closet-sized bedrooms ("at least it's MINE" would chant the so-blessed child) there would be a 'rec room.'

When we all hit puberty, and we did, with a fucking vengeance, did the spawn of that first gen, we needed somewhere to go so we could grope and neck and do all those other things that children do when the need is upon them.

The nicest and most reasonable parents let us have our 'parties' in their rec rooms. Some even provided snacks and pop. Wow. The occasional Italian family who moved in at this point didn't get this concept (truly pioneers amongst all the rest of us). Momma would send the kids to the party with a pan or two of lasagna.

Here we all are posing for a team shot in someone's basement (I think I know whose basement it is) before we got down to the business at hand.

Slow dancing was how we came to understand and know how we felt and moved and smelled in each others arms. It was intoxicating. I learned that girls were far more delicate than boys, generally speaking, and that many of them smelled so good it was enough to make my knees buckle . . . .

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now.

Bob Dylan - My Back Pages

(never dreamed I would live long enough to 'get' the lyrics to this song).

 

The masque tradition developed from the elaborate pageants and courtly shows of ducal Burgundy in the late Middle Ages. Masques were typically a complimentary offering to the prince among his guests and might combine pastoral settings, mythological fable, and the dramatic elements of ethical debate. There would invariably be some political and social application of the allegory. Such pageants often celebrated a birth, marriage, change of ruler or a Royal Entry and invariably ended with a tableau of bliss and concord. Masque imagery tended to be drawn from Classical rather than Christian sources, and the artifice was part of the Grand dance. Masque thus lent itself to Mannerist treatment in the hands of master designers like Giulio Romano or Inigo Jones. The New Historians, in works like the essays of Bevington and Holbrook's The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (1998),^[1] have pointed out the political subtext of masques. At times, the political subtext was not far to seek: The Triumph of Peace, put on with a large amount of parliament-raised money by Charles I, caused great offence to the Puritans. Catherine de' Medici's court festivals, often even more overtly political, were among the most spectacular entertainments of her day, although the "intermezzi" of the Medici court in Florence could rival them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masque

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Sebastian