Black Friday, meant to divert us from depression: a wonderful holiday is over.
Or, as Eeyore might say, “If it was ‘wonderful. Which I doubt.’

No. I’m sure it was terrific for most of us.
As I am sure some of us do welcome its passing.

Black Friday, meant to distract us from depression: a wonderful holiday is over.

What do I look forward to today?
Buying food real cheap.
For the last several years, Whole Foods, then without Amazon, sold turkey for 80% off.
Great time to buy and eat; and a\lso to buy and convert into stock and the stock into Turkey Gravy for our freezers.

Just a couple of years ago I did accompany my daughter Kat to a midnight mall where she indulged herself in some of the bargains.
Chuck Berry captured that teenage angst best in the lines from “Sweet Little Sixteen,”

”Oh mommy, mommy
Please may I go
It's such a sight to see
Somebody steal the show.
Oh daddy, daddy
I beg of you
Whisper to mommy
It's all right with you"

Basically, resisting such earnest pleas impossible for a parent.

Black Friday.
An extension of Thanksgiving Thursday.

The precursor to Christmas.
The day earmarked for some of us to put up their trees.
As it was for me.

Until Kat went off to college and there was only me to set it up.
The loneliness too crushing to overcome.
Decades of ornament collecting now given away, although likely a solitary box of them escaped that fate by hiding among the two hundred other boxes, mostly books, in storage.

Somehow the sadness of the passing of that tradition conjured up this poem:

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
   But sturdy and stanch he stands;
 The little toy soldier is red with rust,
   And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
   And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
   Kissed them and put them there.

"Now, don't you go till I come," he said,
   "And don't you make any noise!"
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
   He dreamt of the pretty toys;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
   Awakened our Little Boy Blue---
Oh! the years are many, the years are long,
   But the little toy friends are true!

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
   Each in the same old place---
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
   The smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through
   In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
   Since he kissed them and put them there.

So let’s make this the Question of the Day:
What is the name of the above poem and who wrote it?
And for the smarty-pants, in what year?

_____________________________________________
Tagging Today
Friday, November 23rd 2018
My 225th consecutive posting.
Time is 12.01am.
Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 30*, cold but not as cold as yesterday.
And little wind.

Dinner is to be determined.

__________________________
Question of the Day:
What is the name of the above poem and who wrote it?
And for the smarty-pants, in what year?

___________________________
Answer to Question of Day:
Eugene Field published “Little Boy Blue” in 1888.

"Little Boy Blue" is a poem by Eugene Field about the death of a child, a sentimental but beloved theme in 19th-century poetry.
Contrary to popular belief, the poem is not about the death of Field's son, who died several years after its publication.

Field once admitted that the words "Little Boy Blue" occurred to him when he needed a rhyme for the seventh line in the first stanza.

The poem first appeared in 1888 in the Chicago weekly literary journal America.
Its editor, Slason Thompson, changed the penultimate line ("That they have never seen our Little Boy Blue") to its present form.
The poem was republished by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1889 in Field's The Little Book of Western Verse.

Field was born in St. Louis, Missouri at 634 S. Broadway where today his boyhood home is open to the public as The Eugene Field House and St. Louis Toy Museum.
After the death of his mother in 1856, he was raised by a cousin, Mary Field French, in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Field's father, attorney Roswell Martin Field, was famous for his representation of Dred Scott, the slave who sued for his freedom. Field filed the complaint in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case (sometimes referred to as "the lawsuit that started the Civil War") on behalf of Scott in the federal court in St. Louis, Missouri, whence it progressed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Field attended Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
His father died when Eugene turned 19, and he subsequently dropped out of Williams after eight months.
He then went to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, but dropped out after a year, followed by the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, where his brother Roswell was also attending.
Field was not a serious student and spent much of his time at school playing practical jokes.
He led raids on the president's wine cellar, painted the president's house school colors, and fired the school's landmark cannons at midnight.
Field tried acting, studied law with little success, and also wrote for the student newspaper. He then set off for a trip through Europe but returned to the United States six months later, penniless.

Field then set to work as a journalist for the St. Joseph Gazette in Saint Joseph, Missouri, in 1875.
That same year he married Julia Comstock, with whom he had eight children.
For the rest of his life he arranged for all the money he earned to be sent to his wife, saying that he had no head for money himself.

Field soon rose to city editor of the Gazette.

He became known for his light, humorous articles written in a gossipy style, some of which were reprinted by other newspapers around the country.
It was during this time that he wrote the famous poem "Lovers Lane" about a street in St. Joseph, Missouri.

From 1876 through 1880, Field lived in St. Louis, first as an editorial writer for the Morning Journal and subsequently for the Times-Journal.
After a brief stint as managing editor of the Kansas City Times, he worked for two years as editor of the Denver Tribune.

In 1883, Field moved to Chicago where he wrote a humorous newspaper column called Sharps and Flats for the Chicago Daily News.
His home in Chicago was near the intersection of N. Clarendon and W. Hutchinson in the neighborhood now known as Buena Park.

The Sharps and Flats column ran in the newspaper's morning edition.
In it, Field made quips about issues and personalities of the day, especially in the arts and literature.
A pet subject was the intellectual greatness of Chicago, especially compared to Boston.
In April 1887, Field wrote, "While Chicago is humping herself in the interests of literature, art and the sciences, vain old Boston is frivoling away her precious time in an attempted renaissance of the cod fisheries."

Also that year, Chicago's National League baseball club sold future baseball Hall of Famer Mike "King" Kelly to Boston, and coincidentally soon after, famous Boston poet and diplomat James Russell Lowell made a speaking tour of Chicago.
"Chicago feels a special interest in Mr. Lowell at this particular time because he is perhaps the foremost representative of the enterprising and opulent community which within the last week has secured the services of one of Chicago's honored sons for the base-ball season of 1887," Field wrote.
"The fact that Boston has come to Chicago for the captain of her baseball nine has reinvigorated the bonds of affection between the metropolis of the Bay state [sic] and the metropolis of the mighty west; the truth of this will appear in the mighty welcome which our public will give Mr. Lowell next Tuesday."

Four months later, upon Kelly's first return to Chicago as a player for Boston, Field would speak to "Col. Samuel J. Bosbyshell, the Prairie avenue millionaire."
Bosbyshell said, "I like Mr. Kelly better than I do Lowell.
When Lowell was here I had him out to the house to a $3,500 dinner, and do what I could, I couldn't get him waked up.
He didn't seem to want to talk about anything but literature.
Now, when I'm out in society I make it a point never to talk shop, and Lowell's peculiarity mortified me. If it hadn't been for [Chicago humorist] Frank Lincoln, with his imitations and funny stories, the dinner would have been a stupid affair.
But Kelly is another kind of man; he is more versatile than Lowell.
I don't believe he mentioned books once during the four hours we sat at dinner last Saturday evening. Nor did he confine his conversation to base-ball topics; he is deeply versed in turf lore, and he talked most entertainingly of the prominent race horses he was acquainted with and of the leading jockeys he has met."

Field first started publishing poetry in 1879, when his poem "Christmas Treasures" appeared in A Little Book of Western Verse.
Over a dozen volumes of poetry followed and he became well known for his light-hearted poems for children, among the most famous of which are "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" and "The Duel" (which is perhaps better known as "The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat").
Equally famous is his poem about the death of a child, "Little Boy Blue".
Field also published a number of short stories, including "The Holy Cross" and "Daniel and the Devil."

Field died in Chicago of a heart attack at the age of 45.

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Good morning on this Friday, November 23, day after Thanksgiving.
We talked about Black Friday, King Kelly. “Little Boy Blue,” and Eugene Field.
It’s a holiday.

Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?

See you soon.

Love

Dom