![]() So why has "The Merry Minuet" beaten the odds and remained funny through all these years? Few comic impressionists were as gifted as was David Frye, and if you look today at videos of his Nixon, LBJ, RFK, William Buckley and more, you'll still probably laugh at how apt his barbs were - but your children will wonder what's so amusing about the guy. Vaughn Meader's The First Family was a brilliant and affectionate send-up in 1962 that wouldn't even get a smile (much less a laugh) out of anyone under the age of 60 today. Usually nothing has so short a shelf life as topical humor. "This Land" and "Blowin' In The Wind" have a distinct advantage in that regard over "Minuet" because their themes are universal and even more because they are not humorous. "Blowin' In The Wind" is surely an offspring of the Civil Rights era, and it was the Dust Bowl and Great Depression that engendered "This Land Is Your Land" - but does anyone doubt that those tunes will be loved and sung a century from now? What was originally created to be timely can occasionally become timeless, as with those two classics.īut I doubt that Harnick could have foreseen that his composition would remain as apropos as it has. But the best topical songs seem to acquire lives of their own, or "legs" as they used to say on Broadway. The vast majority of such songs amuse or rankle (or both) for a few years and then get dumped into the folk "remainder" bin when they lose their relevance as the events and conditions that inspire them fade into newer sorrows, outrages, and idiocies. It is both amusing and disconcerting to find that a song like Sheldon Harnick's "Merry Little Minuet" that was written in 1948 or '49 as a topical comment on those times retains both its humor and its relevance more than six decades later. ![]() Why hasn’t her story ever been made into a movie? It certainly seems to have all the elements of a “Norma Rae” and “Erin Brockovich” blockbuster.Believe it or not, that was written in the 50s I think, maybe late 40s. She then filed a federal suit accusing Major League Baseball of sex-discrimination. But Giamatti died and Postema’s Triple-A contract was canceled. Postema languished several years in the minors before she was invited by baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti to umpire spring training and the Hall of Fame game. Postema holds the honor of being the first woman to officiate a Major League Baseball game, although it was in spring training, not the regular season. Wherever the 57-year-old is, she’s keeping a low profile. I found a Facebook page about her, but it basically has the information contained in her Wikipedia entry. In 2000, she was inducted into the Baseball Reliquary Shrine of the Eternals. She then quit work to take care of her father, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s. She had been forced out of the game, filed a sexual harassment suit that was settled out of court and had a number of jobs including working as a trucker, a welder and in a factory. The last information I could find on her is from after her book was published. I Googled around, but with little success. I read her thoroughly interesting book, and I would like to contact her. Whatever happened to Pam Postema? She was the gal who was endeavoring to become a major league umpire some 20-25 years ago. “But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud/For man’s been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud/And we know for certain that some lucky day/Someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away/They’re rioting in Africa/There’s strife in Iran/What nature doesn’t do to us/Will be done by our fellow man.” “They’re rioting in Africa/They’re starving in Spain/There’s hurricanes in Florida/And Texas needs rain/The whole world is festering with unhappy souls/The French hate the Germans/The Germans hate the Poles/Italians hate Yugoslavs/South Africans hate the Dutch/And I don’t like anybody very much. The lyrics are indeed appropriate to today, and here they are: I found a notation that the Limeliters also recorded it, but I couldn’t find it anywhere on their discography. The song you remember, “The Merry Minuet,” was written and recorded in 1958 by the Kingston Trio.
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