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. . . see: "POLITICS" for related links see: "PEOPLE" for related links Every President who dies in office, whether from bacteria or bullets, is regarded as a martyr to the public weal, at least to some degree. James A. Garfield, whose troubled six months were marred by office mongering, was probably helped, as far as reputation was concerned, by his assassination. --Thomas A. Bailey (19021983) American professor of history. _Presidential Greatness_ [1966]  ;void(0)) GARLAND (JUDY) . . see: "MUSIC" for related links see: "PEOPLE" for related links "Abe, you know Judy Garland is almost a sure thing if she shows up. Look at how great she was in Newport. The audience couldn't get enough of her." "What do you mean if she shows up?" "She's had all these health problems induced by her out-of-control drinking, and there's the possibility that we'll book her and she'll cancel it's always a possibility with her. If that happens, we have to refund everybody's money. We also lose the money we put up for the venue, the advertising and the promotion. It's a crapshoot with her." Abe considered what I'd just said for the briefest moment, then looked at me: "Let's do it!" I nodded my head in agreement and smiled. . . . Sitting in my temporary office in the Ice Palace, keeping tabs on audience arrival, I was summoned to Judy Garland's dressing room. What could I have forgotten? Usually when an artist summons you to their dressing room moments before a performance, it spells trouble. . . . I knocked on the dressing room door and was admitted by Judy's wardrobe mistress. "Miss Garland's quite angry," she whispered. Then she announced, "Miss Garland, Mr. Bernstein is here." Judy was sitting at her dressing table, putting the finishing touches on her makeup. The bottle of liquor beside her was almost empty. "Where are the f**kin' tissues?" she muttered, as she slowly began to rise. . . "Tell me what color you'd like, Judy, and I'll send for them right away." By now, Judy was really shaky. Freddy Fields was with her, and he helped her travel the short distance to the stage, but she couldn't negotiate the stage steps, so Freddy got under her one arm and I got under the other, and together we helped her up. We looked at each other. Would she be able to perform? Onstage in complete darkness, she stood. Then a pin spotlight hit her. Judy threw back her shoulders, walked to the mike and on Mort Lindsey's cue began to sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." There was not a dry eye in the house. All those Garland fans knew their darling was in bad shape, and they knew why. No one at the Ice Palace that night would ever forget Judy's performance. After the show, we all went back to the hotel. Judy changed then came downstairs to the lounge to unwind and have a bite. An ensemble played and Judy asked me if I wanted to dance. How could I refuse? So here I am Sid the klutz dancing with Judy Garland, who used to dance with Fred Astaire. Judy was so drunk that I had to hold her up. I was stepping all over her feet, but she was so out of it she didn't even know. How sad to see Judy like that! A great artist but a sad, lonely woman. --Sid Bernstein (b. 1918) American music promoter. _It's Sid Bernstein Calling_ [2002], "Dancing with Gerry . . . and Judy" . . see: "ANCESTORS" see: "BLOOD" see: "FAMILY" see: "ENTERTAINMENT, HOBBIES, & LEISURE ACTIVITIES" for other related links Over there [America] ... a bloodline is something you find on a pavement after a shooting. --Raymond Chandler (18881959) American writer of detective fiction. Interview, by Merrick Flynn, in the "Sun Herald," Sydney [22 January 1956]. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. --Edmund Burke (17291797) Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters. _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ [1790] This sad little lizard told me that he was a Brontosaurus on his mother's side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is in short supply. --Robert Heinlein (19071988) American science-fiction writer. _The Notebooks of Lazarus Long_ [1978] You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was. --Irish proverb I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be. --Abraham Lincoln (18091865) American Republican statesman, President [18611865]. Attributed in Jacob Morton Braude _Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia_ [1962]. The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry, is like the potato the only good belonging to him being under ground. --Sir Thomas Overbury (1581?1613) English poet and essayist. Attributed in Thomas G. Fessenden _The New England Farmer_ [Thomas W. Shepard, Boston, 1823] It is indeed desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. --Plutarch (A.D. 46?119?) Greek philosopher and biographer. _Morals_, "Of the Training of Children" . . To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit general knowledges are those knowledges that idiots possess. --William Blake (17571827) English poet. "Annotations to The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds" [c. 17981809] No generalization is wholly true not even this one. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (18411935) Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher. Quoted in Owen Wister _Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship_ [1930]. ;void(0)) GENERATION GAP . . see: "AGE" for related links Each year brings new problems of Form and Content, new foes to tug with: at Twenty I tried to vex my elders, past Sixty it's the young whom I hope to bother. --W.H. [Wystan Hugh] Auden (19071973) English-born poet and man of letters. "Shorts I" [1969] The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young. --Willa Silbert Cather (18731947) American novelist. _One of Ours_, bk. II, ch. v [1922] It is the one war in which everyone changes sides. --Cyril Connolly (19031974) English writer. Quoted by Tom Driberg in speech in House of Commons [30 October 1959], as quoted in Ned Sherrin _Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations_ [4th ed., 2008]. Come mothers and fathers, Throughout the land And don't criticize What you can't understand. Your sons and daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is Rapidly agin'. Please get out of the new one If you can't lend a hand, For the times they are a-changin'. --Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941) American singer and songwriter. "The Times They Are A-Changin' " [1964 song] (Si jeunesse savait; si viellesse pouvait.) If youth knew; if age could. --Henri Estienne (15311598) French printer and publisher. "Les Prιmices" [1594] Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world, and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In "The Rambler" (English journal), #50 [8 September 1750]. - Sacrifice used to be commonplace is America but we're a little out of practice. It's going on three generations since anyone in America was really asked to do squat, even though fake patriots love to say things like "we built this country" to separate themselves from later arriving ethnic groups as if they built anything. No, the railroads were pretty much up and running by 1980. President Kennedy's "Ask not . . . " line is a classic because there was no cynicism in it; it wasn't just political elevator music from the latest corporate empty suit to "lead" us. It was taken literally, by a generation who'd saved the world, listening to a guy who'd been there. The young men who waited on line to enlist for World War II were the children of the Great Depression. They knew about doing their share, accepting hard realities, and going to bed hungry. They got an orange for Christmas and they were damn glad to get it! It was a generation that knew dying isn't the worst thing that can happen to you. Boys as young as 16 and 17 with falsified birth records showed up just out of knickers for the honor of serving their country. If a kid today has a fake ID, it's to get into the Viper Room. But that's what the Greatest Generation wanted for their kids to spare them. To give them an easier life than the one they'd been handed. In the process, of course, they ruined them, but hey, it's like the old Chinese proverb says: "One generation plants the tree another gets the shade." And boy is there a lot of shade out there for the kids today! What's really scary about them is that they're second and third-generation lazy. "When I was your age, we didn't sit around and watch football. We played football . . . on Nintendo." But whose fault is it? How can we expect kids who've been brought up on the notion that they're more precious than anything else to suddenly understand living for a nobler ideal? Forget acting like the World War II generation, most of the kids today are such brats, they resent having to even hear about the World War II generation. Or anything before MTV. Do you know what anyone under 25 says when you question why they don't know about some monumentally important event in world history? They say, "How should I know about that, I wasn't even born!" --Bill Maher (b. 1956) _When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden_ [2002], "Volunteers" - From the earliest times, the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discoverd what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture. --W. Somerset Maugham (18741965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. _Cakes and Ale_, ch. 11 [1930] There's an uneasiness I have to conceal when I meet a child. I see myself through that child's eyes and remember how I regarded adults when I was small. They seemed a gray crew to me, too fond of sitting down, too keen on small talk, too accustomed to having nothing to look forward to. --Ian McEwan (b. 1948) English novelist. _Enduring Love_ [1998] That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next. --attributed to John Stuart Mill (18061873) English philosopher and social reformer. Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers. --Lewis Mumford (18951990) American architectural critic, urban planner, and historian. _The Brown Decades_ [1931] I've about had it with this "greatest generation" malarkey. You people have one stock market crash in 1929, and it takes you a dozen years to go get a job. Then you wait until Germany and Japan have conquered half the world before it occurs to you to get involved in World War II. After that you get surprised by a million Red Chinese in Korea. Where do you put a million Red Chinese so they'll be a surprise? You spend the entire 1950s watching Lawrence Welk and designing tail fins. You come up with the idea for Vietnam. Thanks. And you elect Richard Nixon. The hell with you. --P.J. O'Rourke (b. 1947) American political satirist. _The CEO of the Sofa_ [2001] Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. In a review of Herbert Read's _A Coat of Many Colours: Occasional Essays_ [1946], quoted in _George Orwell: In Front of Your Nose, 1946-1950: The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell_ ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus [4 vols., 1968]. The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened. --Saki [Hector Hugh Munro] (18701916) Scottish writer. _Reginald_ [1904] The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool. --George Santayana (18631952) Spanish-born philosopher and critic. _Dialogues in Limbo_ [1925] The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of their blood. --Logan Pearsall Smith (18651946) American-born man of letters. _Afterthoughts_ [1931] "Age and Death" When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. Attributed in "Reader's Digest" [September 1939], but not found in his works (ODTQ). Our ancestors used to wear decent clothes, well- adapted to the shape of their bodies; they were skilled horsemen and swift runners, ready for all seemly undertakings. But in these days the old customs have almost wholly given way to new fads. Our wanton youth is sunk in effeminacy, and courtiers, fawning, seek the favors of women with every kind of lewdness. ... They sweep the dusty ground with the unnecessary trains of their robes and mantles; their long, wide sleeves cover their hands whatever they do; impeded by these frivolities they are almost incapable of walking quickly or doing any kind of useful work ... They curl their hair with hot irons and cover their heads with a fillet or a cap. --Orderic Vitalis (1075c. 1142) English chronicler and monk. In M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_, p. 219 [2004]. O Man! that from thy fair and shining youth Age might but take the things Youth needed not! --William Wordsworth (17701850) English poet. "The Small Celandine" [1807] end page | GAMBLING - GARDENS | GARFIELD - GENERATION GAP | GENEROSITY - GENTLEMEN | GEOGRAPHY - GERSHWIN | GHOSTS - GLASSES | GLOBALIZATION - GOALS | GOD | GOLF | GOOD DEEDS - GOODBYES | GOODNESS - GOVERNMENT | GRACE - GRASS | GRATITUDE | GRAVEYARDS - GREED | GREETINGS - GROWING | GROWING OLDER - PAGE 1 (A-L) | GROWING OLDER - PAGE 2 (M-Z) | GROWING UP - GULLIBLE | GUN CONTROL & GUNS | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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