Favorite Far Side Cartoons join me in posting yours....just for fun!

IN MEMORY OF LAYNE LONGFELLOW, MY DEAR FRIEND with the golden voice

Dr. Layne A. Longfellow, 81, educator, writer, humorist, musician, composer and world traveler, died peacefully after a lengthy illness at his home in Prescott, Arizona, on Jan. 12, 2019. He was born on Oct. 23, 1937, in Jackson, Ohio, the son of the late Hershel and Opal Longfellow.

Dr. Longfellow was a graduate of the Jackson, Ohio, high school, Ohio University (Phi Beta Kappa, Magna cum Laude), and the University of Michigan, where he completed a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology. Following that, he received a number of post-doctoral fellowships, most notably a National Institute of Mental Health award to work with Dr. Carl R. Rogers, one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research. In his varied career, Layne taught at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and later was Academic Vice President at Prescott College in Prescott, Arizona, where he helped design a curriculum that integrated wilderness experience and academic studies.

In 1974, he was hired to be the Director of Seminars for Executives at the renowned Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, a post which led to an illustrious career as a professional speaker and seminar leader. In 1978, at age 40, Layne established his own company, Lecture Theater, Inc., a forum for the presentation of provocative issues with the help of spoken words, songs, humor, piano music and photographs.

Through his company, Layne presented well over 2,000 multi-media speeches and seminars to audiences and organizations internationally.

Layne was elected to the National Speaker’s Association Hall of Fame in 1985, and later awarded the rare and highly prized title of “Legendary Speaker” by his colleagues in the Association.

In 2007, Layne, who served as the Longfellow Poetry Ambassador for the Friends of Longfellow National Historic Association, was the host at the 200th birthday celebration of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and followed up that same year with a reading of Longfellow poetry at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Dr. Longfellow’s list of awards, distinctions and recognitions is long, as is the number of writings, both professional and popular, including articles in distinguished journals and popular magazines, books, audio presentations and DVDs.

Layne was preceded in death by his parents and is survived by his long-time companion, Neera Tandon, of Prescott. Services will be held at Mayhew-Brown Funeral Home in Jackson, Ohio, with internment in Fairmount Cemetery next to his parents.

Arrangements are pending. A celebration of Layne’s life will be held for his many friends and acquaintances in Prescott, Arizona, in April, at a date to be determined.

Psychologist Layne Longfellow is the go-to expert on how people behave in elevators. After years of research, Longfellow came up with a simple guide to "How to Behave in an Elevator," including suggestions like "face forward," "watch the numbers," and "stop talking with anyone you do know when anyone enters the elevator." While learning about Longfellow, Alex at Weird Universe compiled a collection of fascinating nuggets from ongoing research in this area:

• Studies of elevator body placement show a standard pattern. Normally the first person on grabs the corner by the buttons or a corner in the rear. The next passenger takes a  cater-cornered position. Then the remaining corners are seized, and next the mid-rear-wall and the center of the car. Then packing becomes indiscriminate.

• "When the sixth person gets on you can watch the shuffle start," says Longfellow. "People don't quite know what to do with the sixth person. Then another set of rules comes into play governing body contact."

• In an uncrowded elevator, men stand with hands folded in front or women will hold their purses in front. That's called the Fig Leaf Position. Longfellow says, "As it gets more crowded you can see hands unfold and come down to the sides, because if you have your hands folded in front of you in a really crowded elevator, there's no telling where your knuckles might end up. So out of respect for the privacy of other people you unfold them and put them at your side."

• High-status individuals are given more space. For instance, if the president of the company gets on, he gets more space.

• Men leave more space between themselves and other men than women do with other women.

I believe he was on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
talking about this very thing once. 

Goodbye, my friend!!!! See you at the Rendezvous!!!
(private joke)

SIDE NOTE:  I first met Layne in a dream and then heard him on CD Baby reading his ancestor's poetry (Henry Wadsworth) on a CD. I left a comment on the page, he responded and the rest is history. I brought him to my home town to headline a poetry festival and he charmed us all and we became friends. I typed up my dream I had had about him and it blew his mind. His life story was in the dream and all of his many accidents and mishaps that almost killed him years before. He was a remarkable man. I miss you, Layne, Voo

V
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And here's the poem I wrote for Layne
before I met him in real life.....


The Voice That Makes Me Weep


Sitting in the growing darkness of this room full of flowers
Cherished books and minuscule spots of sunlight
I watch the sky outside the window change into another color
Another entity, one I do not know and of which I sometimes fear.

From the black and silver box in the corner comes your voice
Like a whisper from another time and place, speaking to me
Of tides and ships and crosses of snow
Old friends, dead and dying and people searching for their love ones
Lost forever and found again at Heaven's open door.

Heartbreak inhabits that voice. Heartbreak and hope, the sweetest of ironies
The richness of it reaches deep within my breast and shakes my heart
Like a small earthquake rumbling there below the surface of a fragile ground
The tenderness of it takes my breath away and makes me tremble at it's
Vocal touch, the emotion displayed there rushing over me like an unexpected
Spring rain running down the petals of a rose.

What is it about your voice that makes me weep? What is it about you
That makes me long for something I never had and dream of things
That never will come true? Who are you? From what star did you fall?
See? I can't even think of you without lapsing into poetry!

A new poem begins and your buttery voice speaks new life into old words
That never like this touched their readers from those long ago newly written pages
But now are like velvet swords swinging through airwave and cosmos
Simultaneously cutting open and laying bare and then healing again
With the magic of the human tear and the knowing that another heart
On another shore has felt the same loss and love that you thought
Till then, was yours alone to bear.

Can I ever hear the word Whisper! again or Silence! without thinking of you?
Can I ever hear a child's laugh without thinking of "Edith with golden hair"
And the way you laced "The Children's Hour" with love enough to fill the ocean
And make me wish I was a child again sitting on my papa's knee?

No, I am ruined. Your voice has ruined me
I do not care if I ever hear another
No matter what golden words he may speak to me or how tenderly he may
Say my name
I will only compare his voice to yours and his will pale and grate my ears.


All the tender pathos of the here and the hereafter, you say and I melt like wax
And wipe my streaming eyes with a handkerchief that's seen it's better days
A sob escapes my throat and I sit now in utter darkness as the black and silver
Box goes silent and the voice caresses only in the ring of memory
A faceless voice, unknown and distant, living in a man I've never met and probably never will.

The voice of a stranger on a silver disc reading words written by a long dead poet
One acquainted with sorrows and touched by the infirmities shared by all human hearts
Reading the contents of my own soul and speaking them out loud. Heartbreak and hope
Peace and perplexity. Joy and pain. Exquisite agonies that never found a voice till now

The owner of that instrument doesn't even know I exist, 

Doesn't know the sea of tears I've cried
Doesn't know how he has healed me in his renderings,

 Doesn't know how dear is the voice
That speaks to me of Evangeline and Hiawatha or how I sit and listen intently
Seeing in my mind's eye, the broken oar, the Wayside Inn, hearing the ebb of the tide
And imagining the approving smile of Henry Wadsworth listening somewhere in the ethereal.

He doesn't know he spends every Sunday afternoon with me
Drinking sweet tea and weeping
Like an orphaned child as he begins to read
I am only a stranger far away and never met and never known.

Yet, here, in this room full of flowers, books and broken dreams
With the afternoon shadows darkening into evening and silence descending
Into the void left by that sweet voice ringing in my ears
Once more I shake my head at the power of prose, the magic of music and the
Goodness of God who made the man who has the voice that makes me weep
And I no longer feel alone.


©by Voo
1/03/05

For Layne Longfellow, the man with the voice that makes me weep and whose voice you're hearing now. Someone I am now proud to call my friend! (That must have been God's doing!!!)

THE STORM IN ME

Storm sounds

play together

The Storm In Me

The storm in me is raging
Raging for your touch
Raging for the passion
The taste I love so much

The storm in me is rising
Rising every hour
Rising to meet you in the storm
And feel your strength and power

The storm in me is calling
Calling out for love
Calling as it's falling
As rain falls from above

The storm in me is whispering
Whispering for your kiss
Tickling down the silken throat
With the lips I love to miss

The storm in me is welcoming
As you come to me now
Come inside out of the rain
Where it's still wet somehow

The storm in me is screaming
As your love to me you give
Screaming out my soul's delight
And all my dreams relive

The storm in me's abating
Peaceful now and calm
My body now is sated
Your love it's sweetest balm

The storm in me is sleeping
To be awakened by you when
With your lightest caress, you'll make me rise
And the storm will rage again.

©By Voo
Feb 2, 2019
8:02 p.m.

WE BECAME STRANGERS

 We Became Strangers

If I knew the reasons

I wouldn't be writing this poem

I'd be writing love songs

And publishing them up in a tome

If I knew the wherefores

I'd be fixing them all everyday

If I knew the whys

I'd know how to make your love stay

If I knew the answers

I'd lock all the questions up tight

If I saw this day coming

I'd chain the day up in the night

But I never saw it

And I never questioned your whys

Nor conceded your wherefores

Nor answered your questions with lies

But the day is now here

And I'm watching my life walk away

And I'm begging inside

But my lips have no words left to say

I thought we were lovers

And lovers forever till death

But all of your love died

As you exhaled that love out in your breath

It is my fault, I know that now

Just like I knew it when

You asked me to be true to you

And not look at other men

But I was greedy and I was wrong

And I gave my love away

For I was lonely and I needed you

And you were always away

Then in the process of our lives

Our hearts gave up and cried

And all the sweetness of our love

Just laid down and it died

And now we're strangers just as surely

As though we'd never met

Even though our hearts still feel

And our hearts can't forget

You turn and wave and I wave back

As tears roll down my face

You board the plane and fly away

And leave a lonely place

It's cold here in our empty bed

It's cold inside of me

Why couldn't we learn as we went

Why couldn't our eyes see?

It is too late, it's just too late

I whisper to myself

We've used up all the love we had

And there is no love left

I lie and cry and hate myself

I hate what I've become

I wish I'd had more time with you

To make this house a home

But you are gone now far away

Away from heartache's dangers

And I am here to think about

How lovers became strangers

If only I......I cry out loud

Had heard when your heart would sing

But I never listened and then it stopped

And you took off your ring

Now it's too late, you've lost your song

You'll find some other ears

And she will love you like I could not

While I drown in my tears

In my confusion and my grief

I do not hear the clock

I do not hear a car door slam

I do not hear the knock

And you are there in my doorway

You've set off the alarms

But I don't care for up I fly 

And you take me in your arms

I can't leave you, you say to me

For what would this world be

If you were not here in my life

What good would living be?

My love, my love, I say to you

I pray forgive my sin

And forgive mine you say to me

And we fall in love again

This time we'll do things differently

We vow to one another

And I hear your heart sing out to me

As two strangers become new lovers

Oh, love it is a precious thing

Guard it night and day

Don't let it cry and fade and die

And don't let it walk away

Who knows if it will dare return

To the place it felt alone

Who knows if it will see it's truth

And find it's way back home

©by Voo

January 30, 2019

4:58 a.m.

I CALLED UNTO THE NIGHT

 this music inspired the write

please play now

I Called Unto The Night

I called unto the night

And night was silent

I called unto the winds

They wouldn't blow

I called unto my love

And love was hiding

I asked the sky to find him

It said "No"

I asked the underworld

If he was sleeping

If he had fallen

Dying like a leaf

I begged for hope

But there was no hope offered

No angel came

To comfort me in grief

I called to science to help me
And to magic
I couldn't live without him
Or his love

I called to love itself
And it was listening
There in the secret place
It dwells above

I called unto the sun

It wouldn't shine

But shrank and hid itself

Behind the moon

I prayed unto the heavens

They were distant

But love whispered "Have some faith

You'll see him soon"

I called within my dreams

And there I found him

Laughing with the smile

 He often wore

I called his name

And up the trail he hastened

Grabbed me in his arms

There at the door

I woke in morning

And he was not there with me

I looked for him on ocean

And on land

I sought his face

Without his love to guide me

But all I held

Was just my empty hand

I called unto the night

And then it answered

"Nothing in this life

 Is as it seems"

"You'll never find your love

When you're awakened

For he is waiting for you

In your dreams"

And so I slept forever

As the night fell

And covered me with stars

From heaven's skies

And saw my love

Just waiting in the distance

With all the love I longed for

In his eyes.

©by Voo

Jan 29, 2019

11:40 a.m.