Several stories recently that appeared in AL.com but not here:
Daily Journal May 30, 31, 2019
Had lunch Thursday with some friends from the West Coast. Talking about San Francisco made me nostalgic. Good conversation, good lunch at Mile End deli. It was DELIcious. (Sorry).
I’ve been stop-starting on some stories that I need to focus on. There are so many paths for me to go down, that I need a compass.
I really enjoyed the use of the phrase city-savvy in a sentence — as an alternative for streetwise. What sentence you are asking? The one I just wrote. (Sorry again).
Stay tuned for details about an after party for MikeMadness 3X3 basketball tournament. The tournament is Saturday July 20 to raise money for Lewy body research and awareness. We have raised about $25,000 overall in the previous tournaments. This will be the third and I hope we can raise $25,000 altogether this year to bring our total for three years to $50,000.
Here is officia MikeMadness page: https://mikemadness.org/
Roger Manning –346
ALBUM: Roger Manning (1988)
MVC Rating: 3.5/$$$
This is not your grandfather’s folksinger.
Roger Manning is a New York-based artist who went around the world busking — singing for donations. He comes off sounding a bit like a higher pitched kid brother of Bob Dylan.
And he’s angry and sad, good traits for street level busking. Every one of the 12 songs on this self-named album have the ‘Blues’ in the title. In other words there’s the #14 Blues, the #16 Blues, Strange Little Blues, the Pearly Blues and the Lefty Rhetoric Blues and so on.
Funny lines in many backed by a hard strummed acoustic guitar that sounds pretty much the same on every song.
From ‘Lefty Rhetoric Blues:’ Lefty folksinger rhetoric has such a boring ring, they make me sick, they oversimplify everything ….but, then on the other hand they were right about Vietnam
WIkipedia says Manning was part of the ‘anti-folk movement’ and his legal challenge in 1985 overturned New York’s longstanding ban on music in the subway, and launched the Music Under New York program. He is currently a web designer in NYC, according to Wikipedia.
Daily Summary, May 24, 2019: What is Life Edition
I have a reggae group on my blog called Black Uhuru who sing an anthem called ‘What is Life.’
What is life? I try to see
What is life? It’s unity
What is life? I try to feel
What is life? It’s really real
The term ‘life and death’ issues has almost become trite as a description because it’s tagged to issues that are not about life and death. But I think most will agree that abortion, end-of-life medical care and capital punishment are pretty solid life-death issues.
I’m not exploring all that here but I am leading up to a story by a guest writer to AL.com that is another example of why there are not black-and-white answers to all the questions about these topics.
The story excerpted and linked below is about a man, burned badly over 65 percent of his body. He wanted to die.
His case is now a case study in bioethics classes at UAB. Many thanks to Gregory Pence for sharing this remarkable and well-written piece, which opens like this:
Famous patient in bioethics, Donald (Dax”) Cowart, recently died. A high school football player from Henderson, Texas, he served as a pilot in Vietnam, after which he joined his father in real estate in Henderson.
On June 23, 1973, the two of them, while inspecting a ranch for sale, suffered severe burns from an undetected gas leak, burning over 65% of Dax’s body and killing his father.
Dax had learned about burns from his pilot’s training. Found by a farmer, Dax asked for a gun to kill himself.
Read the rest by clicking here.
It’s an issue I want to explore further at another time because those of us with dementia may face instances of chronic pain and lowered quality of living.
Pence’s column really leaves you wondering. I’m still not sure what the takeaway is in this column and that’s what makes it so provocative. It’s not a same-size-fits-all lesson here.
That’s all for now. Check out my column tomorrow on AL.com: It’s about MyVinyCountdown.com reaching the half-way point.
And, importantly, let’s remember our veterans who have died.
1:18 p.m. Update:
Another story has come through that is related to this topic: Conservative Christian anti-abortion mother of two children with special medical needs sees the nuance and strongly opposes the new law banning abortions. Story here.
Jerry Lee Lewis — 347
ALBUM: Another Place, Another Time (1968)
MVC Rating: 4/$$$
I just got this in a bargain bin and it will be, i think, my last ‘L.’ Short review but it was inexpensive and I was becoming more curious after reading Rick Bragg’s excellent book on JLL.
This album I”m reviewing here was billed as a comeback from his rock and roll success in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It features Lewis doing ‘hard country.’
He had a great soulful voice for country as well as R&B and rockabilly. But for the sake of clarity, this album is a pure old school country music — as Bragg wrote it was not the goopy high production sound popular on the radio. It was Hank Williams country.
That’s my favorite although I do also like alt-country, a newer genre, and even some of that overproduced stuff when it is purveyed by artists like Glen Campbell.
Daily Summary May 21, 2019
Ever think about the calendar? Man if somebody hadn’t invented a calendar it would be tough sledding.
And to break it down into 12 months was genius. Otherwise we’d be dealing with one long sequential number.
“What’s the date today honey,” asking my wife.
“It’s January 2,321,300,” she smiles looking at her smart phone. “Maybe this 2.3 million weather will let up. Can’t wait for some cooler weather in the 2.4 millions.”
“And is it Monday?” I ask.
“Honey, it’s always Monday,” she said.
HEALTH: Feeling so much better today than Monday. Fluctuating going on. Muscle soreness and some odd sensations like heat on my neck and wobbly legs every now and then. But all minor invisible ailments that don’t affect me too much — except for the right hand problems.
Daily Journal May 20, 2019
So one person says there’s a Walmart commercial featuring Cocker that may have spurred some interest.
WalMart? Interesting. What song?
Another reader suggested was an American Idol singer, Wade Cotas, who did a spot-on version of Joe Cocker’s version of the Beatles ‘With a Little Help from My Friends.’ Cocker sang it at Woodstock.
(Cotas is good but after side by side watching I have to give Cocker the edge. )
Nobody seems to put more into a song than Cocker.
—–
Health-wise, I’m noticing my fluctuations. I’ll be a little shaky and a little more cloudy one day and on the next day I feel much better — almost feeling like I don’t have a disease. I am thankful for any time I get pre-disease clarity and try to time it to my work.
Sounds more difficult than it is — even though there have been some posts that I accidentally published with missing words and stuff.
Reminder Hoopsters: Assemble teams for Mike’s Madness only two months away. Here’s the link:
Woman
I’m adding a couple of songs to the chorus on a day when hundreds of women speak online at AL.com and in the pages of the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, and the Mobile Press-Register.
Woman with the Strength of 10,000 Men by Peter Himmelman
For more on Lennon and Himmelman
Add a song in comments.
John Lennon — 353, 352, 351
ALBUMS: John Lennon/Plastic Ono band; (1970); Imagine ( 1971); Greatest Hits (1978)
MVC Rating: JL/Ono– 5.0/$$$$$; Imagine — 4.5/$$$$; Hits 4.0
I’ve been putting this one off. What can be added to all that has been written about John Lennon?
He was possibly one of the world’s most influential persons. “Bigger than Jesus” he said to one reporter, describing the millions of enthusiastic young Beatles’ fans. That comment led to worldwide controversy, and John said he was just making the point about what was true. Not that it was wrong or right.
In Birmingham there were bonfires to throw Beatles records into the conflagration, fuel for the fire.
White albums turned black.
(OK, don’t call and tell me they hadn’t put out the White Album before the bonfires. It’s too good a line to let the facts get in the way. Some albums may have been ‘shattered’. Or so I hear.)
Some of Lennon’s best work, his first solo album and Imagine, the follow-up, asked the big (frustrating and depression inducing they could be) questions:
If the Beatles had more influence than Jesus or parents, and teachers — Why?
In the song ‘God’ I think Lennon is saying you can’t count on many things. For him, he feels safe and happy with himself and Yoko
‘God’ comes with a recital of what he doesn’t believe in. Here’s a random mix, but it sure seems to be his intention to say I don’t believe in anything or anybody: I don’t believe in Zimmerman: I don’t believe in Beatles; I don’t believe in I-Ching; I don’t believe in Buddha… And so on (Zimmerman is the birth name of Bob Dylan). He ends this piano-backed ballad declaration of adoration for Yoko witth what he does believe in: “Yoko and me, that’s reality.”
John also wrote “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” Sounds like he’s not a big believer in the God presented by various churches, Islamic mosques and Jewish synagogues.
But in a video clip, Lennon was asked about death. Standing by two cars in a parking lot, he got into one and then into the other saying death is getting out of one car and into another, he said.
I am giving the basically untitled first solo album a rare 5 stars. Ironically I can’t listen to it a lot. So much emotion is layered into that album. Lennon was using primal scream therapy and shows off his angst-ridden screams several times through-out, especially on “Isolation,” ” Found Out’ and “Mother.’
Sample lyric: ‘Mother, you had me, but I never had you.’
His mother was struck and killed by a car at a crosswalk in 1958; His father was a Merchant Marine who was not home much and finally quit coming home at all. So John was raised by his aunt. John’s edge was nicely counterbalanced by McCartney’s silliness. Both had amazing songwriting abilities — though despite Lennon/McCartney being on most of the credits, in the later years, they filed their songs separately. In other words, John wrote “Day Tripper” for example, and Paul wrote. “Get Back.” But all were credited with Lennon/McCartney.
Who moved my clock? Daily Journal May 15, 2019
Up until recently. We had a clock that was on a piece of furniture near the front door. It was a special little table clock, simple elegant and it kept good time. It was a gift from me to Catherine so many many years ago.
Recently, we cleaned up and partially reconfigured some rooms, adding decorative paintings and such. This happened a few weeks ago upon the arrival of my brother David and sister-in-law Lori Oliver. They help throw things out and put stuff in other spaces and stuff like that. Well in the process, they moved my clock.
I can’t say I was much help …I kept saying looks like a good day to go for a walk. But back to my clock.
For years, this clock has been over by the front door and every time i’d come down the stairs, I’d see the clock. Always there to glance at, quick time.
But now that it’s gone its usual place — it’s just two steps around the corner on the fireplace mantle — I keep looking for it.
It’s kind of like tricking myself when I set the clock ahead 10 minutes to get my carcass out of bed.
Again it’s practically autonomic in that your body starts reacting, adrenalin infusion even before your brain tells you ‘Relax, you built 10 minutes extra time into the wake-up program. ‘
Oh yeah! I smiled.
Then I started wondering.
Now I’ve been trained to look at that clock. As hard as I try not to look at that clock — because I know it’s not there — I still can’t help looking for that clock as I amble down the stairs. But every time I look for that clock. I’m aware that I’ve been lured, again, into a habit that I can’t stop.
When I started my first newspaper job at the Birmingham News in 1982, I was paid as a ‘part-time’ correspondent to cover Etowah, Calhoun and Talladega counties. Catherine and I rented a cheap house in the woods of Jacksonville off of Nesbitt Lake Road. The house had no central heat.
Space heaters were set up in some of the rooms. The rooms were tasty warm but the hallway was freezing. Whenever we had to get up for a glass of water, use the restroom or grab a late night stack, we had to come out into the 40-degree hallway which we responded to by autonomically clinching. Over the months this became ingrained. When I was promoted and we moved to Birmingham, we found a house with central heat. But guess what?
For months thereafter as we went out into the hall we would clinch, bracing ourselves for the expected chill.
Even our dog Pavlov got involved. Joke. Seriously our dog Maggie liked the warm rooms better but her first priority was to find humans wherever they might be.
So I’m left with the thought that I may be conditioned like in these examples to react a certain way under certain conditions, even when unnecessary. I guess PTSD would be an example of a cause for a harmful type of this kind of pre-conditioning. I imagine we all have layers of this preconditioning, reaction to ads, politics, and music to name a few.
I think we may move the clock back.