SHAKE YOU DOWN

 

From My Vault In Memory of Layne Longfellow

 

In Memory of Layne Longfellow

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 catercorner 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.

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 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

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!!!)

SUNDAY NIGHT- FALL BACK- MIGHTY SAM- CHANGE THE TIME BLUES (well, it's Saturday night this year but hey...)

start music now. yes...Now

Mighty Sam McClain
When the Hurt is Over

"Sunday Night- Fall Back-Mighty Sam-Change The Time- Blues"

Raining.........

Six o'clock

On a Sunday evening

Or it would be

If the dadblamed government

Would stop changing the time on us!

Hell, I was late yesterday

When it was actually six o'clock

How can I keep from being late today

When it's only five???

Damn. Damn. Damn.

(Sorry, Lord)

But You know how I get

When they change the time on me......

I get frustrated and mad

More so than usual

But You already know that, don't You?

I am truly a mad woman

In every sense of the word.

I went to a concert last night

The sweetest, bluest, broken-hearted-est

Lonely singer singing the most gorgeous

Soft, down and dirty, fact of life songs

You ever heard

At least when you could hear what he was saying

Over the crash and tumble of beer bottles

Falling down those crazy steep tiers

Of the auditiorium that made me think

Of some kind of M.C. Escher drawing

Lord, forgive me

But I was almost wanting and waiting

To see someone go head first down those tiers

Into rock and roll Hell

I just didn't want it to be me.

Mighty Sam, Mighty Sam!!

You're tearing me up, son

But I can't stop listening to you today

Your blues stained voice is the perfect soundtrack

To the way I feel

And how is that, you might ask?

I feel like kicking something.......

I feel like punching somebody.....

I feel like crying and screaming

And making love to somebody

Is that too much information? Sorry.

No, I'm not! Why should I be?

It is what it is.

I had almost stopped writing

I don't know why I'm writing now

Maybe I need to..........

Vent, rant, rave, yell, pray

I don't know

I feel crazy a little bit

It was cold while ago, now it's hot

The weather can't make up it's mind either

Evidently..........

How do you expect me to make up mine?

I just want to sing and dance

In any kind of order at all

And not any specific kind of song and dance

Just as long as it's with someone I like

And someone that likes me

But there doesn't seem to be anybody like that

Around right now

Dammit!

I sure am cussing a lot today, ain't I?

Does that mean I'm a bad girl?

Or a good girl feeling bad?

The crazy thing is that I am actually feeling good

So why am I feeling so bad?

See? I told you......

It's that damn time changing thing!

It makes me crazy

It makes me confused and lost

In need of being found

And I couldn't even go to church this morning! 
'Cause my damn car is broke down ......again

Just got it out of the shop last week

And towed it back in to 'em yesterday

That car hates me

Hates me cause I won't wash it

And I won't wash it cause it won't run!

Stupid car.

Stupid life

Stupid government

Stupid time change!!!

The only good thing right now

I can think of

Is Mighty Sam McClain

Singing on the stereo

And really, he's already run his race

And is gone on up to Heaven

Where all good little blues boys and girls go

When they've run out of songs....and blues

That surely ain't me, is it?

I am just full up with songs and blues

And frustration and mean madness

And Snicker Bars and papaya juice

And a long rainy night looking in at me  

Right now outside my window

Wondering why the evening news is on now

Instead of the real six o'clock?

(The night don't know neither.)

Well, I reckon that's all I got to say

Ain't nobody listening no way

But Mighty Sam

And he can't hear me so well

Where he's at on the other side of the sky

I wish he could

I sure would love to sing with him

Show him how it feels to really have the blues.....

Woman-kind of blues

The kind of blues no man would ever understand

'Cause let's face it....

Like Latimore said, it's usually a man 

That walks in bringing the blues anyway

Always acting like he don't understand....

But we know he understands 

Even when he plays dumb as a door nail

And innocent as the driven snow

He knows. He knows.

I'm sure it was a man

Who came up with this time change nonsense too!

No woman would do something that stupid

'Cause women have to get up at the crack of dawn

And cook and clean and get children out of bed

And get dressed and made up to look good

To some late rising man who never notices her anyway..........

Damn. There I go again......

Maybe I should go to bed and wait for tomorrow

Wait for tomorrow like I do everyday

Like I always will
And always have

And I'll get re-adjusted and fall in line again

And get my silly self straightened out 
Like Latimore wants me to

And all will be well again

In Heaven and on Earth

Until I get my heart broke again

And my car won't start

And I hear another blues song on a rainy Sunday evening

And the powers that be....who we all know are Not women..........

Will change the damn time again!

Sigh
dammit...........

©by Voo

November 4, 2018

7:22 p.m. or 6:22 p.m. or 5:22 p.m.
Who knows?

poor sad Voo
poor poor mean, mad
sad Voo

😒😁😜😆🤔😢😜🤔🤣🤣🤣

      

Latimore....... who wants to straighten out
what he made crooked in the first place.....

😜😜😜😜




EXTRA added bonus for ya!!!!

And the man I went to see in concert that night.....lawd have mercy!!!