September 25th, 2010
UD and others…

… are about to drive to Baltimore to see:

1. the Frank Zappa statue; and

2. the Katyn Memorial.

I’ll blog about it, of course.

No comments | Posted September 25, 2010 9:30AM by Margaret Soltan | [email protected]
Categories: snapshots from home
July 28th, 2009
Broken Promises Are For…

… Assholes.

As in — Where’s the Frank Zappa statue?  I wrote about it – and my adoration of Zappa – around this time last year.  What’s up?

It’s been more than a year since the city accepted a statue of eccentric composer and Baltimore native Frank Zappa, and city officials are still not sure exactly where to put it.

The statue, valued at roughly $50,000, was a gift from a Lithuanian Zappa fan club. And officials are looking to place it in Fells Point.

Fells Point community groups approved a location at Fleet Street and South Broadway, according to Tracy Baskerville, director of communications for the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts. But the location is being reconsidered, she said.

“We’re looking for a place where people will congregate,” said Baskerville.

HUH?

I don’t mean to hound Baskerville, but PEOPLE WILL CONGREGATE WHEREVER A STATUE OF FRANK ZAPPA EXISTS.

FOOLS!

2 Comments | Posted July 28, 2009 5:47PM by Margaret Soltan | [email protected]
Categories: heroes
January 20th, 2011
In talking, just now, about Robert Frost’s…

… poem, Desert Places, I suddenly thought of Frank Zappa’s What’s the Ugliest Part of Your Body?.

I mean, it suddenly seemed a very close parallel – not in terms of style, but in terms of the idea that the scariest desert place is your own mind.

The students seemed to have heard of UD‘s beloved Zappa… Or were they just humoring her?

*******************************

And then there’s this, by Philip Larkin.

If, My Darling

If my darling were once to decide
Not to stop at my eyes,
But to jump, like Alice, with floating skirt into my head,

She would find no tables and chairs,
No mahogany claw-footed sideboards,
No undisturbed embers;

The tantalus would not be filled, nor the fender-seat cosy,
Nor the shelves stuffed with small-printed books for the Sabbath,
Nor the butler bibulous, the housemaids lazy:

She would find herself looped with the creep of varying light,
Monkey-brown, fish-grey, a string of infected circles
Loitering like bullies, about to coagulate;

Delusions that shrink to the size of a woman’s glove
Then sicken inclusively outwards. She would also remark
The unwholesome floor, as it might be the skin of a grave,

From which ascends an adhesive sense of betrayal,
A Grecian statue kicked in the privates, money,
A swill-tub of finer feelings. But most of all

She’d be stopping her ears against the incessant recital
Intoned by reality, larded with technical terms,
Each one double-yolked with meaning and meaning’s rebuttal:

For the skirl of that bulletin unpicks the world like a knot,
And to hear how the past is past and the future neuter
Might knock my darling off her unpriceable pivot.

1 Comment | Posted January 20, 2011 3:47PM by Margaret Soltan | [email protected]
Categories: STUDENTS, ud's hippie years
September 20th, 2010
UD’s beloved…

… Zappa gets his statue in the city of UD‘s birth, Baltimore.

UD will try to make a pilgrimage next weekend.

******************************

Update: Extended remarks from Professor Mondo.

1 Comment | Posted September 20, 2010 2:18PM by Margaret Soltan | [email protected]
Categories: ud's hippie years

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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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