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Thursday, October 5, 2023

Chanson d'Automne

OAFS Photo
So yes, it's October, and for my friends in the Resistance ...

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon cœur
D'une langueur
Monotone.¹

And yes, Jean has a long mustache.

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l'heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure;

Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

That first bit was in the movie The Longest Day and also in the book by the same name by Cornelius Ryan. Messages were sent to France over the radio like this, many were just nonsense, some were actually messages. I believe this one signaled that the Allied landings were to be expected within the next 24 hours. So yeah guys, go out and blow up some German stuff.

The second bit is the rest of the poem. Ever wonder what it meant in English? Me neither, until today. Here it is, en anglais ...

When a sighing begins
In the violins
Of the autumn-song,
My heart is drowned
In the slow sound
Languorous and long

Pale as with pain,
Breath fails me when
The hours toll deep.
My thoughts recover
The days that are over,
And I weep.

And I go
Where the winds know,
Broken and brief,
To and fro,
As the winds blow
A dead leaf.²

So I started this post with a rather tongue-in-cheek attitude, then I read those words above and ...

Damn.

Things got all kinda dark and serious.

Fall is a time of mixed emotions for me, I absolutely love the season, the leaves changing color, the way the afternoon light falls upon my backyard, the fresh crispness in the air which reminds us that the cold is coming. But for now, bring in the harvest, enjoy the bounty of the earth, and, if'n you don't mind, hand me another pumpkin ale.

One of these, to be specific ...
(Source)
Don't judge, I don't drink pumpkin spice coffee or any other concoction like that, just the Pumpkinhead ale, well, pumpkin pie is nice, on two occasions, Thanksgiving and Christmas. The rest of the year it's apple pie. (No, not beer, just in the pie realm. Though apple cider ain't bad ...)

Now where was I? Oh yeah, dark and serious.

For about a decade after high school I didn't like fall, I missed playing football mostly. Then I realized that fall was awesome, fall was fun. So for nearly two decades I enjoyed fall, especially in Germany where it was the kids' soccer season. All of my kids played and I coached, refereed, and was even league commissioner one year.

It was cold, it was wet at times, but there were those days where the air was crisp and the sun shown brightly on the green football pitch. Those were superb days. We had a snack shack near the fields called the Imbiss (which is simply the German word for "snack"). Something like this ...
(Source)
Ours was rather Americanized, which was something of a disappointment, until I tried their chicken sandwich. Out of this world, even The Missus Herself has fond memories of that sandwich. (The bun was fresh and delicious and the chicken breast was an actual chicken breast, not some weird-ass patty thing which tasted "like chicken," you feel me?) Made one forget about the days where the kids were getting all wet and muddy out on the pitch. Though in hindsight, I remember those days all too well. Okay, my knees remember them.

Then just two weeks shy of Thanksgiving, one of our cats died unexpectedly. He was only five, so a holiday I truly loved was marked by tragedy.

I recovered slowly until I was enjoying fall once more, then our other German cat died. October 17th, so Halloween, ruined. But the new cats, which came home to live with us on the 20th of October made things better in short order.

I remember the boys (Pat and Tiger) but I don't let it ruin fall for me anymore. This fall, things are better, yes, we are cat-less, but we have each other. I have the better part of that deal, I have The Missus Herself, and she, well, she's stuck with me.

So I've got that going for me, hhmm, time for a Pumpkinhead, methinks ...

Ciao!




¹ First stanza of Chanson d'automne" ("Autumn Song"), a poem by Paul Verlaine (1844–1896)
² Wikipedia's translation of this poem, in a word, sucks, this one is much better and is the one I used.
Answer to yesterday's "Complete the sentence" - I Am ... all over the map.

34 comments:

  1. Go out and blow up some German stuff? Neighbor down the street have two VWs.... hmmm.....where's that Tannerite now? :) For some reason apple pie tastes better in October than the rest of the year. TV weather guessers are touting wind chill readings the next two mornings.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Oh dear, what have I done? 😎

      Delete
    2. Could it be the apples might be fresh picked?
      Don’t fret, Sarge, it’s not like you’re instigating.
      -Skip

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    3. Nailed it!

      Much fresher in October they are.

      Delete
  2. Sarge, the first part of September always brought the local fair to my town. It was usually just after school had started; one of the highlights of my young life was when I was allowed to go on my own with my friends.

    Pumpkin beer has always been a mixed bag for me. One is usually good, the follow-ons are usually not nearly as good.

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    1. Yup, pumpkin flavored beer is good for one bee. A single one is tasty, after that it gets weird.

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    2. But what do the other bees drink? Must be a small beer, no?

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    3. Little buggers get pushy if you offer it to more than one. (D'oh! Damn you Beans and your fine eye for editing. 🤣🤣🤣)

      Delete
  3. Not a fan of pumpkin beer. The pumpkin spice coffee beverages are good for teens and maybe up to early 30s, although I will admit to making maybe one a year to go along with pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. Mmmmm.... Pumpkin Pie (no whipped cream), Shoo Fly Pie, and Mincemeat Pie! The breakfast after Thanksgiving. Yes, all three. And lots of coffee, black with a tiny dollop of molasses.

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    Replies
    1. Just now it struck me, I have never had Shoo Fly Pie.

      That must be rectified!

      Delete
  4. Nary a mention that fall is also the time for hunting season to begin for many types of game? And also the end of the harvest season, which is the reason for the county and state fairs? A time to catch up on laying in firewood for the coming winter? A season for getting busy on patching roofs and painting houses before the winter weather renews its attacks on our abodes?

    But, yeah, fall is a wonderful time.
    John Blackshoe

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah yes, hunting season. We used to go out in search of the fabled white tailed deer, though my mother claimed we were just going out to find a good place to cook our lunch. Yup, we'd bring the Hibachi along with a selection of good meats to consume.

      My mother was absolutely correct.

      Delete
  5. I am so glad you cleared that up - "Yup, pumpkin flavored beer is good for one beer. A single one is tasty, after that it gets weird."
    It really does. I stick to what's call "Florida Man" double IPA from Cigar City Brewing. I think it's pretty local, so sorry, guys and gals.

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    Replies
    1. I was enamored of IPAs, and even double IPAs, for a season, then I grew tired of them. Right now I'm on a bit of a Kölsch-kick (if you'll allow the use of such a phrase). Often local beers are awesome but it's always a matter of taste. A fellow likes what he likes and if someone else doesn't, well then, more for the fellow that does.

      Delete
  6. Fall has always been a mixed bag. Start of school, start of being tortured, start of sitting in class wondering why I just didn't get it. And start of PE which meant 'Pick on the bEans' for far too many of my students. On the other hand, I quite enjoyed the fall after school was gone, doing camping and fighting (though fighting in the winter was much preferred) and other fall activities.

    As to pies, pumpkin with a tad extra spices cooked in, cinnamon (both regular and Saigon (which is a hotter version,)) cloves and a touch of nutmeg. Apple, also, of course, with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. Thanksgiving usually has Apple and Pecan Pie, while Christmas has Cherry and Mincemeat (the one with the brandy in it, please,) while New Years has Banana Pudding (hey, wife is Southern and I have learned to kind of like it) and then something else.

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    1. Saigon cinnamon?

      Must ...

      Have ...

      No really, it sounds excellent.

      Delete
    2. We always use, in the Beans House, both cinnamons. Usually in a 2 to 1 ratio. I buy both from Sam's as they have good prices on spices. Don't know what you have in your area, you may have to buy it on-line. Or go to a restaurant supply store or some place that sells bulk spice (don't go to a specialty store, they'll charge you an arm and a leg for small amounts.)

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    3. Whole dried or powdered? (I gots to know. Dirty Harry reference.)

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    4. Dried and powdered. Big bulk container for regular 'mon, a pound or so in weight, and a glass container for the good stuff, about 4-6 ounces. Price is double for the Saigon over the pound of regular. We go through 1-2 containers of each a year or so, depending on how much baking we do.

      As to your comment, I've never seen a whole dried cinnamon ever. Are you feeling okay as that's two massive grammar/spelling errors today, unless you intentionally left out the comment in "Whole, dried or powdered?" How do you get a whole dried cinnamon home? Have you seen the size of the sheets of cinnamon bark when they first snag them off the tree?

      Delete
    5. I meant the wee sticks, not being much of a cinnamon gatherer, I didn't have clue one.

      Delete
  7. As to Jean is against the wall and the Chair has a long mustache (or something like that,) first read about it in "The Longest Day" and then was reintroduced to it in the excellent "Red Dawn" from the 1980's. Which is, sadly, a far too relevant movie these days. Insert US Fed Gov for the Cubans and Soviet Russians...

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    1. Oh yes, that bit was in the movie wasn't it? Excellent, much better than the remake. (Of course, what original movie is not superior to the "Hollywood, we're too stupid to have original ideas" remake?)

      Enemies of the Realm, that's what the current lot is, doesn't matter which party they belong to, they're all feckless twerps and traitors.

      Delete
    2. There are a lot of excellent vignettes in the original "Red Dawn," which, of course, is what makes the movie so poignant. We all need to be Wolverines.

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    3. Combining thoughts; the two leaders of the Wolverines were hunters "Our Dad brought us up here..." teaching the others to hunt as well. Imagine the scale of the problem in Occupied France had the French the same percentage of hunters we do. One figure I saw was something on the order of 12 million deer/elk licenses issued annually. Regardless of the number; every fall a LOT of Americans set out to kill large mammals with rifle fire. Even a tenth of whatever that number is, should give tyrants pause.
      Boat Guy

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    4. Yes, it should. But our tyrants may be too self-deluded to heed such things.

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    5. Not just 'Deer Stand' hunters but stalking hunters. There is a difference. Old school stalking hunters whose deer camp during the season probably was an old US Army tent from WWII or the Korean War. And they probably (it was implied) did some poaching as a family (again, it was implied that they were well fed but not well off.)(Except for the monster truck, but, well, there are ways of doing that on a cheap budget if you're willing to fix it yourself.)

      Stalking hunters. Auto mechanics. Play physical sports. Real camping. Woodscrafts. Basic (and some advanced) survival. Taught logic and tactics in play and at school.

      Any wonder why all of these are basically now not taught in school and in Scouts? And why the eneMedia and Hollyweird have such a hatred for 'yokels,' 'survivalists,' 'preppers,' 'hunters,' and other old-school activities like working on one's car?

      Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but I'm at least a conspiracy hypotheticist. (Kind of hard to prove via circumstantial evidence as They keep hiding the actual evidence to prove the hypothesis and make it a theory.)

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    6. I don't have the patience to be a stand hunter. Never did, I'd make a terrible sniper.

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    7. You're young yet, Sarge; there's still time.
      BG

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    8. And not quite as mobile as I used to be ...

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  8. Here in Wisconsin, we have a strong German heritage. But, we are a different place than Germany. If I went to Mr. Bratwurst, and asked, " May I have a bratwurst, please? ", would sell something I would recognize as a bratwurst?

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    Replies
    1. That depends, or, auf deutsch, es geht um die Wurst.

      Delete

Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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