Day 875: Where is Uren?

Laetitia decided to return to Saskatchewan.  Her cousin Sophie from Alberta suggested that the trip should include Chaplin Lake and Nature Center and as an afterthought said, “While you’re there, you ought to go to Uren.“  When Laetitia and her group went there they found only a “T” intersection of secondary roads.  A quick check on the Internet revealed that Uren is one of Saskatchewan’s ghost towns.  Later in a bar in Chaplin, Laetitia heard a story about a man from Arkansas who was in the area camping and was told by someone back home to go to Uren because a lot of pretty girls lived there.  When he asked directions from a teenager on a bicycle he got a sarcastic reply based on Uren’s current lack of waste disposal facilities.  It inspired the limerick of the day.

When an Arkansas man from Van Buren
In Saskatchewan asked, “Where is Uren?”
The boy said, “Here it’s found
Mostly on the ground
Where it isn’t especially endurin’.

Day 874: Squeeze Please

Granny and “The Girls,” as she calls her circle of friends, recently returned from an overseas trip.  When Laetitia met her at the airport, she was fuming.  The rows were packed so tightly together, she said, that she needed a shoehorn to get into her seat.  It inspired the limerick of the day.

Those clueless airline CEOs
Who in coach squeeze together the rows
Should be forced to take flights,
Their coach class overnights,
Crammed in seats with knees pushed next to nose.

Day 873: Bird in a Guilty Cage

Laetitia’s Uncle Ralph wasn’t an especially good singer but he loved to sing anyway, especially songs that annoyed her Aunt Margaret.  One of these was the “Cream of Wheat” song that was a radio commercial when he was a child.  The other was his version of the Bird in a Gilded Cage that he made up words for.  It went, “She’s only a bird in a guilty cage and her ears they are green and black.”  He never got beyond the first line before Aunt Margaret’s protests shut him up.  Just for fun, Laetitia decided to continue the theme and finish the song and she condensed Aunt Margaret’s protests into a limerick.

It’s “gilded,” not “guilty,” I say
And green and black ears, by the way
Are just too absurd
For this hapless caged bird
Who’s a trophy wife on display!

Day 872: Carmen Contradanza

Laetitia took a tour group to the opera, Carmen, at Gran Teatro de la Habana in Cuba.  It was a great production — Cuba is filled with talented musicians and singers who start at a very young age.  The opera has a Cuban connection.  George Bizet borrowed Carmen’s opening area, La Habenera, from El Arreglito, a Cuban contradanza writen by Spanish composer Sebastian Yradier after he visited the country.

Carmen’s La Habenera, Bizet
Wrote in France, land of brie and bidet.
He cribbed stanza for stanza
A Cuban contradanza
A practice not rare in his day.