Today's Saturday Song Selection is more than twenty-five years old, but it's new to me; I'd never heard it before March of this year. This one plucks a few of my heartstrings.
I've lived more than half my life within half an hour's driving distance from US Highway 90, both in Texas and Louisiana, though never near the parts of Texas where bluebonnets grow. I especially relate to the lyrics about a wife who stays home while her husband goes away to find work. I've lived through separations like that. Those were hard times. The separations would have been unbearable had we not believed we were sacrificing time together in the name of building a better future.
The song reminds me of what might have been--and what was for a period of years. I never counted on getting used to the months apart. On enjoying the peacefulness of them. On acquiring a taste for solitude. I guess that would be a whole 'nother song.
The song is "Gulf Coast Highway," performed by Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson. Thanks to toshiboss for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.
During the recovery period that followed my total knee replacement, Kim and I were inattentive to housekeeping. I couldn't stand for long periods of time, and Kim, after standing for hours at her job, spent her evenings maintaining basic home sanitation and doing all the things necessary to keep us fed. Dusting wasn't a priority. Where dust fell, we were careful not to disturb it.
The thing is, this house seems to be a dust magnet. I don't know how so much dust gets in the house. My neighbors complain of the same problem. We look around outside and see grass, green grass everywhere, no patches of bare dirt. Maybe our dust is of the educated, civilized variety that deliberately migrates to comfortable indoor quarters. I don't know, but it's a problem.
On a recent weekend, Kim and I decided it was time to do some deep cleaning. We didn't want to knock dust off tabletops and into the air, so we used vacuum cleaners--two HEPA-filtered ones with brush attachments. We carefully sucked up all that dirt and confined it in plastic bags so it couldn't escape before we disposed of it in the outside trash can. There was a lot of it--so much that we began to feel like hunters bagging prey: "Look how much I got in the living room!" We were determined, we were thorough and, afterwards, pleased but quite achy.
Two days later I sat down in our sparkling clean living room to watch television. Rays of late-afternoon sunshine beamed through the small window in the front door, and my jaw dropped open. I could not believe the galaxy of dust motes visible in those sunbeams.
I didn't think Kim would believe it, either, so I got the camera and zoomed in on the offending particles. Is this what's in the air we're breathing in a clean house? Yuck!
As appalled as I was at all the dust, I have to admit to being fascinated by the photo of the dust. I thought all dust was grey. Click on the picture to enlarge it, then notice all the colors: pinks, blues, greens, yellows. It's almost like miniaturized confetti. Or glitter--yeah, that's it, glitter. Glitter in the air, like the Pink song.
Wish I could think of it in such positive terms when I'm trying to clean shelves and shelves of books.
Helen, who writes at A little of this-n-that, ended 2015 by sharing a secret she's held since 1969: she really wanted to go to Woodstock. Her post was entertaining and awakened a similar memory I've held close to my metaphorical vest.
The year was 1967 and half the young people in the US (or so it seemed to me) were going to San Francisco to celebrate The Summer of Love. I had just left a bad marriage, taking my two small girls with me, and was working in a new job as secretary to an East Texas district judge. As happy as I was to be out from under the thumb of the husband, I sometimes felt that I was in way over my head. I'd been a stay-at-home mom and was learning that working a full-time job and then coming home to an evening of caring for energetic children was exhausting. Money was tight--very tight--so I worried constantly about that, and I worried that the job didn't allow me enough quality time with my kids. And I was lonely. Truthfully, I'd been lonely for a long time, throughout most of the six-year marriage.
I had watched with only mild interest the nightly news images of flocks of "flower children" showing up in San Francisco, but late that summer, just about the time I filed for divorce, my interest piqued, driven by one song that played endlessly on the radio. I was nothing even close to a hippie, had never done drugs nor aspired to, and didn't have one red cent available for traveling, but I fantasized regularly about joining those throngs of long-haired, bell-bottomed "gentle people" who were picking up and heading west.
Even if I'd had the means, I wouldn't have gone. I was a mommy, my girls were my life, and the proverbial wild horses couldn't have dragged me away from them. But sometimes, when it was late, when I was physically and emotionally fatigued, when the girls were wild and wouldn't settle down even after I'd put them to bed, I'd imagine what it would be like to thread a few flowers into my hair and shuck all responsibility.
It's rare today to hear that fantasy-inducing song played on public media, but sometimes it shuffles up on my iTunes. Even today it draws me into longings as deep as those I felt in 1967.
It's funny how something I never did has held a place in my heart for nearly fifty years.
The song is "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair), performed by Scott McKenzie. Thanks to oMyBadHairDay for posting the video on YouTube.
So began Sister-Three's comment this morning on my last post, which was written three months ago. Many thanks to her and to the others of you who left notes of encouragement while I was absent from the blogosphere.
Yesterday, the last day of 2015, was the first day in months that I was able to sit comfortably at my computer desk and type a few complete, coherent sentences. "Comfortably" and "coherent" are the key words there. My old, worn-out knees were causing me so much pain that most of my thoughts weren't pleasant ones, and if a positive thought did flit across my mind by accident, I couldn't hold on to it long enough to write it down.
But that was last year. This is 2016, and things are different now. Now that the brand-new, metal and acrylic knee I acquired in mid-November has healed substantially, it has given me the gifts of diminished pain, improved mobility, and one heck of an attitude adjustment. I had never realized that pain could be so debilitating, could drive someone to such deep depression that the future looked uninviting, but I have been schooled. That darkness is behind me now, thank goodness.
An acquaintance recently told me that his father's orthopedist, discussing impending knee-replacement surgery, told him, "You're going to hate me for six weeks, and at eight weeks you're gonna love me." I now understand that completely. I'm at the end of week seven, the pain from the surgery itself is finally abating, my head has been clear of medication side effects for a few weeks, I'm off the walker and mostly off the cane, I've just resumed driving short distances (freedom!), and all of a sudden my personal skies are blue again. What a relief!
I don't want to leave this topic without saying how much my daughters have helped me in the past few months; emotionally and physically, they've been there for me, and I don't know what I would have done without them. Having always prided myself on my independence, it was difficult to acknowledge that I needed help, let alone ask for it. My girls didn't wait for me to ask. They've pitched in with the grocery shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, the pet care, the hospital stay, and miles and miles of transportation to and from doctors' visits and physical therapy. They've let me cry when I needed to, and they've made me laugh when I didn't think I could. I'll be forever grateful.
So, back to the future: I'm awake and my figurative blinds are once more open. I'm excited about blogging again, though I'll admit to being a little anxious, too, hoping the burst of enthusiasm I'm feeling today won't fizzle out before I get back into the swing of writing regularly. Thank you for continuing to check in here now and then. I hope you'll stick with me while I give it my best shot.
Happy New Year to all of you! Woo-hoo, 2016!
The song is "Believing" by Nashville cast members Charles Esten, Lennon Stella and Maisy Stella. Thanks to kaid030795 for posting the video and lyrics to YouTube.
I've skipped a few Saturday posts (also Sunday thru Friday ones), but I'm here today to share a song with you. This one's been around for about fifteen years, best I can tell, but I'd never heard it until it played in the background of a recent TV show. I downloaded it immediately and have listened to it dozens of time since then. It's a short, sweet song, sort of a little prayer like those I imagine we've all whispered from time to time. Enjoy!
The song is "Don't Let Us Get Sick," by Warren Zevon.
Thanks to This Is Not An Exit for posting the video on YouTube. Click here to read the lyrics.
This brand-new song is "All Good People" by Delta Rae.
Thanks to Delta Rae for writing it, recording it, and posting it on YouTube in response to the slayings at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
At the end of May I saw this Facebook conversation between my sister and an old family friend:
I wanted to get in on that conversation, but if I'd posted there, I'd have felt obligated to acknowledge forty-some-odd other posts by "liking" them, and I just didn't have the energy. I decided to put in my two cents here, where things are quieter.
I'm pretty sure the wild hog incident occurred in 1958, the second summer we lived in Texas and our second visit to Keith's parents' camp at Cow Creek. As former city girls, this was as close to roughing it as my sister and I had ever come, but nothing had prepared us for the wild hogs. I say "hogs," but they were pigs, really--big enough but not yet full-grown. And I say "wild" because they behaved wildly, even though it turned out they belonged to someone.
It was early summer, a month or two before my little brother was born. I was 15, my sister Judy was 11, and I believe Keith would have been about five. Here's a photo of Mother and me at the camp. Click on the picture and look how pretty she was, all happy and expectant. (She was 34. I was excited about the idea of a new baby in the family but embarrassed because people would know by Mother's obvious pregnancy that she'd been having sex at her advanced age.)
We didn't know that marauding pigs had invaded the camp while we swam and played all afternoon in cool, brown creek water. When we climbed up the bank at the campsite, they greeted us, oinking loudly, racing here and there, rooting around in our overturned ice chests in search of one more morsel of food. They had already eaten everythingwe'd brought. (I think Judy was right about the number of pigs, but the way they were running around, it's easy to see why a little kid like Keith might have thought there were more of them.)
With dusk approaching and nothing left to eat for supper, the men talked each other into catching one of the pigs to roast. They found some rope and, through trial and error, eventually set up a respectable snare. They had plenty of time to work on it; the pigs didn't seem to be as afraid of us as we were of them and continued running around, making serpentine paths through the camp area. It didn't take too long before one pig stepped into the noose, and Judy or Keith or somebody pulled the rope and caught it, by one hind leg if I recall correctly. One of the men struck the trapped pig with an axe, and the other pigs went nuts.
You never heard such squealing.
That's when the men shooed us women and children away from all the unpleasantness. We didn't want to be there anyway while they finished killing the injured pig, then butchered it. I don't remember seeing the sheriff Keith mentioned, but I do recall encountering the old farmer as we walked down the narrow dirt road away from camp. He wore overalls, a long-sleeved shirt in spite of he heat, and a dirty, floppy hat. He had a shotgun propped over his right shoulder. He looked at us suspiciously as he passed by, striding quickly toward the camp, but he didn't say a word. Neither did we.
We didn't walk much farther after that, just stood around and toed the loose dirt while we speculated about what was happening between the men and the farmer. By the time one of the dads walked close enough to see us and shout for us to come back, the farmer was gone and so were the pigs, except for the one that was just being hoisted over the fire. Later that night I heard some talk about money that had changed hands: the agreed-upon market price of one half-grown pig minus the estimated cost of the groceries they'd consumed.
It would be another 14 years before Deliverance would come out in movie theaters, but I've seen that film half a dozen times since then, and the old man in it has always made me think of the scary-looking old farmer we met the day of our wild pig adventure. I've never forgotten the chaos or the squealing or the creepy feeling of waiting on that dirt road while the sun sank lower and lower in the sky. I remember that captured pig, too. I didn't intend to eat a bite of it, considering its unfortunate demise and the fact that I'd never before eaten meat that I'd met personally in its live form. It took a while for the pig to cook, though, and hunger, along with a sensational aroma, overcame my convictions. Best pork I ever ate!
******
If you can't see the Deliverance video below, click on Watch on YouTube. (And don't worry, this is the Dueling Banjos scene where the old man dances, not the horrible "pig" scene.)
Thanks to Floris Verschuren for posting the video on YouTube.
On days when I walked the six blocks home from Phelps Elementary School alone, I sometimes sang out loud to pass the time. My favorite songs were hits from the radio, and in fourth grade (1951), one ballad dominated my repertoire:
When I think of this song, what I hear in my head is Johnny Ray's voice, but what I see in the visual part of my mind is a tree-lined sidewalk on which a skinny, blond-haired, nine-year-old girl swings a plaid, plastic book bag, paces each saddle-oxford-clad footstep to the beat of her inner music, and belts out the lyrics as unselfconsciously as if no one could possibly hear her from behind fluttering curtains and open windows.
It may be a sad song, but those memories are happy, happy ones.
**********
The song is "The Little White Cloud That Cried," performed by Johnny Ray and The Four Lads.
Click here to read the lyrics.
Thanks to MrSherco12 for posting the video on YouTube.
I was first introduced to Rod McKuen's music in 1967 by the man who would later become my second (and last and best) husband. On the drive home from our first date, Richard plugged an eight-track tape into his car stereo, and the car filled with the sound of waves splashing on the beach, the gentle, seductive voice of McKuen himself, and the swelling music of the Anita Kerr Orchestra. That tape was The Sea. It made me appreciate Rod McKuen. More than that, it made me appreciate Richard because he could appreciate Rod McKuen.
Poet and songwriter Rod McKuen died on Thursday at the age of 81. So many of his songs provided background music for my life. My favorite of all of them was this one:
The song is "Jean," written by Rod McKuen.
Thanks to bernieb48 for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.
Today's Saturday Song Selection, as well as last week's, was introduced to me by FX's Sons of Anarchy. I don't watch the show (missed too much of it to start), but my daughter and granddaughter are loyal fans. Twice recently I've passed my daughter's bedroom and been captivated by the music coming from her TV. Both times she was watching SoA.
Today's song reminded me of this photo I took about two years ago:
I realize that two crows do not a murder make, but there's an evil, persuasive, talking crow in the song that I imagine looks very much like the one perched above. The same evil crow laughs and flies away later in the lyrics, so the photo covers that idea, too.
If you're one of those people who was thrilled (as I was) at the tingling of your spine when you first read Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven," I think you'll be as enthralled as I am by the story, lyricism and imagery of this song. Please give it a listen.
The song is "Come Join the Murder" by The White Buffalo & The Forest Rangers.
Ever since I retired, I've had a heck of a time keeping up with what day of the week it is. It's as though all my calendars have been replaced by long, skinny ones made up entirely of Saturdays and Sundays. Fortunately, the TV schedule is fairly well embedded in my brain, so as long as I can remember what I watched the night before, I know what day yesterday was and can extrapolate the current day from that.
Until recently. The timespan between Christmas Eve and today has messed up my system. The TV schedule has been shot to smithereens with reruns and specials, making it completely unreliable, calendar-wise. Also, many of my family members who work during a normal week have been home for the holidays. That, too, has played tricks on my cerebral day-tracker.
But...ve haf vays of deducing the unknown. The subject of this morning's daily email from BookBub was "Your ebook bargains for Saturday." "Yes!" I said out loud with a minimal fist pump, then jumped right to the task of choosing a Saturday Song Selection.
Today's tune is one I downloaded only about three weeks ago. It's a new song of the genre my generation used to call belly-rubbing music, and it's perfect for a rainy day like today--even if you aren't slow-dancing.
The song is "Make It Rain," by Ed Sheeran.
Click here to read the lyrics.
Thanks to Rammus for posting the song on YouTube.
It's been sixty-six years since my first-grade classmates and I gathered with children from other classrooms to sit around a huge, brightly decorated Christmas tree in the school hall and sing Christmas carols. The memory is as strong as ever. If I close my eyes and listen to children's voices singing one of the first carols I ever learned, I can almost recapture the magic I felt as a six-year-old back in Missouri.
I hope you have a store of happy memories from your own past Christmases, that each year you take them out and hold them lovingly, the same way you revere the fragile tree ornaments that have been in your family for years. Even more, I hope this Christmas will bring you the opportunity to create some new magical moments with the people you love.
"Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night."
_____________________
The song is Bethlehem Lullaby, performed by the AJ Choir.
Thanks to klingen 75 for posting the video on YouTube.
In the fall of 1973, I moved with my husband and daughters to Farmingdale, New York. If I'm remembering correctly, that's the first place we ever lived where cable TV was more prevalent than rooftop antennae, so, like a good neighbor, we signed up for it. HBO was part of the package. On the day the cable was hooked up, I was quite shocked to turn on a movie (Serpico, I believe it was) and hear Al Pacino drop the F-bomb several times in succession right there in our living room. (Hm. Hadn't thought about it, but HBO may be partly responsible for the potty mouth I struggle with daily; I've always blamed it on my old friend Jude.)
My husband didn't like to go out to the movies, mostly because he couldn't smoke in the theater, but he did enjoy watching popular films on TV. The rest of the family did, too. Many nights found us all curled up together on our family-sized, orange crushed-velvet sofa, eyes glued to the latest offerings on HBO.
A few of those movies still stand out in my mind forty years later, mostly because of the feelings they evoked at the time. One that moved me profoundly is Buster and Billie, the story of a popular high-school boy (played by Jan Michael Vincent) who unexpectedly falls in love with the shy, good-hearted town slut, a relationship that eventually leads to harsh consequences for both of them.
Do you remember that movie? If you saw it, I'll bet you do. And I'll bet you still remember the theme song and that hearing even a few notes of it calls up feelings of sweet, sweet love and heartbreaking sadness. Listen and see what you think:
The song is "Billie's Theme" by Hoyt Axton.
Thanks to Skye Moppit for posting the video on YouTube.
Click here to read the lyrics.
It's getting late, just enough of Saturday night left to post a Saturday Song Selection if I hurry. Sometime, somewhere, I read the lyrics of tonight's song described as "an exploration of woman's vulnerability"--or other words along those same lines. Vulnerability is one of several possible answers to a question that's on my mind tonight, a question about why someone I know makes some of the choices she does. Not that it's any of my business when it comes right down to it.
I'd post a link to the lyrics, like I usually do, but I haven't yet found any accurate ones online. That's okay. Joe Cocker didn't seem to know them all that well, either, and it's still a great song.
The song is "Just Like a Woman," performed by Joe Cocker.
Thanks to Steve Walker for posting the video on YouTube.
A couple of years ago my cousin Karen sent me a manila envelope full of letters I'd written to her between 1955 and 1957. Deep down I'd always known I was a geeky, awkward adolescent, not one of the cool kids, and any shred of doubt I might have had about that was erased when I read those letters nearly sixty years after I wrote them. This one, dated Jan. 15, 1957, is a good example:
At my current age I don't have the patience to turn that letter upside down and all around to read what I wrote back then, although the straightforward, left-to-right section in the bottom left-hand corner jumps out at me: "You bet I saw Elvis on T.V. the other night. I wouldn't have missed it for anything."
I was not alone in the geeky department. Karen wrote back to me in invisible ink, as evidenced by my next letter to her, dated January 24, 1957:
See how I oh-so-cleverly replaced all the punctuation marks with the spelled-outnames of the punctuation marks? Gah!
Anyway, here's a translation of the second paragraph of the second letter: "I guess I haven't told you about Springfield's new Teen Town, have I? I really like it! We have dancing, ping pong, and bowling. There is also a television set. It is open on Friday and Saturday nights from seven to eleven o'clock. Most of the time we use the juke box for music, but once a month we will have a dance band. There is a snack bar where we can get hamburgers, hot dogs, potato chips, candy bars, ice cream, et cetera. We can also get almost any flavor of pop for a nickel. The first night of Teen Town they had free cokes and potato chips. Tommy [my ninth-grade boyfriend] drank nine cokes that night. It opened January fifth and I have gone one night each weekend since then. I sure do hope it succeeds."
The letters may be those of a silly little girl, but it was the budding young woman inside her who showed up regularly at Teen Town. What I've remembered all these years isn't the junk food or the ping pong or the bowling. On the rare occasions when Teen Town has crossed my mind since the last time I was there, what I've remembered is slow-dancing with Tommy to this song:
The song is "Gone," by Ferlin Husky.
Thanks to Michael Daigle for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.
Nine years ago today much of the nation was glued to the TV, watching in disbelief as conditions in New Orleans continued to deteriorate following Hurricane Katrina. I was one of those watching, almost unable to comprehend that that kind of horror was happening less than sixty miles from where I sat safely in my house.
Many of the people who evacuated New Orleans ahead of the storm came here to wait it out. A lot of them are still here. Many others, those who had stayed in New Orleans and were trapped there when the waters of Lake Ponchartrain breached the levee, eventually were rescued and boarded buses to whatever towns or cities had indicated a willingness to take them in and help them out. One such place was Houston:
Today is my mother's birthday. If she'd lived, she'd be 91 years old, which seems odd, since I can reach into my heart and pull her out at any age I remember her, but I can't imagine her being as old as 91. I don't think she'd have liked it much; the aging process was always her enemy.
Sixty years ago, when she was 31, she was the working mother of two daughters. She'd been divorced from our father for six years, and some of those years were lonely ones. In that summer of 1954 she played one record over and over. She said it was her favorite song and explained to me one day why the little things, the daily kindnesses a good man might show her, were more important than any material things.
Mother remarried in 1957, and she and my stepfather had a son together the following year. She lived until 1999, long enough to see her children grow up and to know and love her grandchildren and her first four great-grandchildren. I'm pretty sure she's still keeping tabs on all of us, including the little ones she never got to meet in person.
I don't know if this song remained her favorite for the rest of her life, but the fact that we had that little talk about it way back when has always made it special to me. A loving, lasting memory is the best kind of little thing.
The song is "Little Things Mean a Lot" by Kitty Kallen.
Thanks to robynfentyfan for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.
I've cooled off since my last post, so I don't think this one will turn into a rant, but I still need to talk about what's been weighing heavily on my heart. So, let's play What Would You Do? Imagine this scenario:
Every so often you meet with a group of women you've gotten to know and like. You get together for a specific purpose. This isn't a coffee klatch or a social gathering, definitely isn't a political event. Up until now the group has been focused and cohesive, the participants respectful of each other and supportive of the work you're all trying to accomplish. It's a fairly diverse group, and you don't know much about each other's world views. Opinions haven't come up for discussion because they don't matter at all in the context of these meetings.
The membership of the group hasn't been constant; participants come and go as their personal lives and choices dictate. So far that's kept everything fresh and interesting. This time there are two new participants. You don't know them, and they don't know you, but in the first half hour one of the new women begins a diatribe about the immigrant children who are coming into America illegally, "bringing strange diseases" that could wipe us all off the face of the earth, and the other new participant joins in, tsk-tsking and contrasting those children against her own immigrant ancestors who followed all the rules. The rest of the group sits in shocked silence. You think to yourself, Why are we even talking about this? This has nothing to do with why we're here.
Newbie No. 1 opines that the parents of those children should be charged with child abuse for sending their children here alone. Another participant reminds her of the dangers the children face in their own country and of the Jewish families who sent their children to other countries in World War II to prevent their being rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Not to be deterred, Newbie No. 2 makes a hand gesture that encompasses the whole group and states, "If they want to come to this country, then the husband and wife need to stay together, work hard, save a little money and then come here legally, the way all of our ancestors did."
A lovely, sweet-natured African American woman has heard enough. "Hah!" she exclaims. "My ancestors didn't come here illegally. Mine were brought here against their will and forced into slavery."
On that note the off-topic discussion ends and the group gets back down to business. But just barely and without the usual enthusiasm. Without knowing or caring who agrees with the newbies and who doesn't, the long-time participants glance at each other, and the expressions on their faces show that they all agree on one thing: something ugly and smelly is now floating in their metaphorical punchbowl.
The second and third meetings are the same. At various times, with no prompting whatsoever--completely off the wall--Newbie No. 1 launches into tirades about welfare recipients, children who get free lunches at school, children who benefit from school supplies donated through the local "Stuff the Bus" program, and on and on about poor people in general. Newbie No. 2 backs her up: "There's no reason for anybody to be poor in this country," she begins. "Three things are all you have to do: graduate from high school, marry the baby's daddy, and stay off of drugs. That's all you have to do." She is a font of advice, having also shared earlier which two shows your children should watch on television and why, in general, children should not watch TV at all, because, you know, "crime and murder and now the gays are kissing."
So, back to you. Let's say you hear all this stuff and you want to speak up. You'd like to express a different viewpoint right here and now, but you know that this is neither the time nor the place. This is not why you're all here, and the entire discussion is inappropriate. Adding your own opinions to the mix would only get the group further off task.
Let me be clear: I'm not asking for your opinion on any of the social issues that were raised, and if you give it to me anyway, I will probably delete it. I'm fed up with listening to partisan opinions. What I'm asking is, would you a) speak up and debate the issues, b) tell the newbies that this is not the right venue for discussing those issues, or c) "be polite" and remain silent, knowing that the offenders might assume you agree with their derisive remarks and offer more of them? And, if your choice was to remain silent, would you feel like a coward and a hypocrite?
*******
This morning, looking for a link to the What Would You Do? show, I came across the video below. The compassionate store customers in this video gave me hope. One of them even gave me a title for this post.
It's been 15 days since my last blog post. For the first few days of that time I felt that I didn't have a single interesting thing to say. Then, after a series of events, I found myself in a situation where I had too much to say--but I wanted to scream every word, not write about it.
While I'm trying to collect my thoughts into a coherent post, I'll share with you a song I discovered only this morning. It isn't the most melodious tune I've ever heard, and the party scenario doesn't exactly fit, but the lyrics are right-on. They say precisely what I wish I'd had the courage to say.
The song is "Your Racist Friend" by They Might Be Giants.
PLEASE click here to read the lyrics.
Thanks to Nester Beauregard for posting this video on YouTube.
One of my favorite family photos is one I never saw until summer before last when my stepsister gave it to me. It's a picture of her paternal grandfather, an old Kentucky farmer, resting for a moment while working in his field.
Otto J. Hofmann - 1868-1939
I love pictures that show people in their natural environment, as opposed to all stiff and proper in a formal studio setting. Another reason I love this one is that Otto bore such a close resemblance to his son Tommy, my stepfather:
Thomas J. Hofmann - 1913-1996
In honor of these two gentlemen from Kentucky, today's Saturday Song Selection is a bluegrass number, another in the recent series of "old man" songs:
The song is "Old Man and His Fiddle" by Michael Cleveland and Larry Sparks.
Thanks to Marvin Nicholson for posting the video on YouTube.
