Will O' the Wisp, by Louis Brown

I was a little surprised that so many of our authors were not familiar with this expression. When I was a child, the Will o’ the Wisp was in the category of Jack o ‘Lantern—which originally meant pretty much the same thing, flashes of light seen over swamp land—and pumpkin. It was a Halloween word. One of our authors offered “mirage, rainbow and lightning bug” as synonyms. Exactly, they all capture the idea of a fleeting beautiful object or state of affairs that you reach out for to make real, and then frustratingly it disappears or flies out of your reach.

I would offer as synonym the pop song, “Abra cadadbra, I want to reach out and grab you.”

When I was in the eighth grade, I went to science class taught by a Mr. Schiff. I blushed when I saw him. He was tall and handsome, and I wanted him to notice me. He didn’t. He was beyond my reach, a will o’ the wisp.

I am still dazzled by the John F. Kennedy White House. A handsome well-educated Irishman from liberal Massachusetts, and the beautiful, soft-spoken well-educated Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy promoted French studies and literature. She redecorated the White House with a French accent. It was Camelot, a “Utopia,” it was perfect. Then a jerk with a rifle blows him away, and Camelot disappears. A will o’ the wisp.

Now our Republican friends insist that our presidents be ignorant, backward and hostile to public education.

Mirage is more for the west (where we reside now). Betsy lived in swampy Louisiana for 3 years. I hale from College Point which is a small hill surrounded on 3 sides by swampland, where some interesting wildlife used to reside. The rather vast wetlands up and down the coast from Charleston, S. C. If you tour them, along your path you will discover little cabins that used to house the slaves that cultivated rice, another big cash crop back in those ante bellum days. Of course, nearby cotton was king. The tour guide will point out the very shallow ponds where the rice used to grow. The cypress trees, the flowering shrubs make the area even more beautiful and mysterious.

St. Elmo's fire is a bright blue or violet glow, appearing like fire in some circumstances, from tall, sharply pointed structures such as lightning rods, masts, spires and chimneys, and on aircraft wings or nose cones.

St. Elmo's fire can also appear on leaves and grass, and even at the tips of cattle horns.[5] Often accompanying the glow is a distinct hissing or buzzing sound. It is sometimes confused with ball lightning.

In 1751, Benjamin Franklin hypothesized that a pointed iron rod would light up at the tip during a lightning storm, similar in appearance to St. Elmo's fire.

2 or 3 years ago, I did a report on male or masculine dancing, and I referred to a porno flick that I now remember the name of. The porno flick was called “Males in Motion.” Actually, it was not a porno flick though it was produced by a porno flick maker.

Actually, I was wrong, I treated masculine dancing as a brand new genre. In fact, Chippendale and Hollywood in general had male dancing pretty well developed and popularized.

We can develop the theme of disappearing aspirations when it comes to establishing an international organization with enough power to impose international peace based on a fairer economic system and cooperative governments. That is not the current situation so that we have perpetual war, in part thanks to our government’s neo-con pointless bellicosity.

© 25 March 2018

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA's. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.