BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:PEOPLE

SAINT FRANCIS

“Did St. Francis really preach to the birds? 
Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would 
have done better to preach to the cats.”
                        Rebecca West

**
EMILY DICKINSON & HER LOVE FOR BIRDS

“I hope you love birds, too. It is economical . 
It saves going to heaven.”

Emily Dickinson, in a letter to Mabel Loomis Todd
**
SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ

“There weren't many pathways to success for girls born 
to unwed parents in 17th-century Mexico, but Sor Juana 
Inés de la Cruz managed to transcend her origins with 
a dazzling mind and a deft pen. Largely self-taught, 
she wrote her first dramatic poem at age eight, studied
 the Greek classics, and was instructing children in 
Latin by age 13. A few years later, she joined the 
court of the Viceroy Marquis de Mancera, where she 
famously wowed a panel of professors with her expertise
 in numerous subjects. Sor Juana then entered a convent,
 where she enjoyed the freedom to pen numerous plays, 
poems, and carols, as well as the proto-feminist manifesto Respuesta a sor Filotea de la Cruz. A clash with authority figures forced her to abandon her creative pursuits shortly before her death in 1695, but she endures as one of the most important literary figures of the New Spanish Baroque.”

From INTERESTING FACTS website. 
**

AT A PARTY I INTRODUCE THE R &B SINGER SZA
TO THE ACTRESSES ZSA ZSA & ZASU PITTS

Sza,
Zsa Zsa,
Zsa, Zsa,'
Sza.
Zasu, Sza.
Sza, Zasu,
Zasu, Sza,
Zsa Zsa,

LJP

**

JOHN DONNE'S BROTHER 

"A year after joining his brother at the Inns of
Court, Henry Donne was caught harbouring a priest
in his living chambers. He was arrested, jailed, 
interrogated and no doubt threatened with torture.
He swiftly broke. The man he had been hiding, William
Harrington, might have have held out against his
questioners, but Henry's testimony did for him; in
February 1594, he was tried, convicted of treason,
and hung, drawn and quartered. Henry himself was
already long gone. Transferred to a filthy cell in
the jail at Newgate during an outbreak of bubonic
plague, he died within days, at the age of nineteen,
a lonely and unspectacular and altogether inglorious 
end.

Catherine Nicholson, reviewing Super-infinite: The
Transformations of John Donne. London Review of Books
(19 January 2023) 

**
GAEL GREENE
         
I have dedicated myself to the wanton indulgences 
of my senses. And I shall consider it fitting and 
divine if on my deathbed my last words echo those
 of Pierette, the sister of Brillat-Savarin , who 
died at table shortly before her one-hundredth 
birthday “Bring on the dessert. I think I’m about 
to die.”

Gael Greene, quoted in her New York Times obituary
(November 2, 2022)

**

ON THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR OF BREAKFAST
AT TIFFANYS

Capote
Kaput.

LJP
**



HENRY JAMES’S FOREHEAD

“…his forehead was more like a dome, it was a whole street.”
                                      Max Beerbohm

David Cecil. Max (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company., 1964)
**
HEDY LAMARR

“Thousands of people can speak dialogue competently, 
but it’s amazing how few can do a really good sex scene. 
Hedy Lamarr was the Olivier of Orgasm.”

             Mark Steyn

ON A NOTED WRITER OF POPULAR SONGS

Edward, Gus –
(I know so I do not have to guess)
Did not write ”I Can’t Tell You Why I Love You But I Do”.
(Gosh! The great stuff I can sneak into a Clerihew).

ADLAI STEVENSON

Stevenson, Adlai –
Democrats wanted very badly
For him to be President of the U.S.
It didn’t quite work out, I guess.

SIGMUND FREUD

Sigmund Freud—
Did he have sang-froid?
Perhaps his super-ego, ego, id
Allowed him to keep his feelings hid?


LJP