ALBUMS: Songs You Know By Heart : Jimmy Buffett’s Greatest Hits (1985); Living and Dying in 3/4 Time (1974).
MVC Rating: Hits: 4.0/$$$; Living: 3.5/$$$
Middle of the road singer-songwriter. Notice I didn’t say mediocre. I admire, and enjoy, some of these Buffet hits, not just for the broad appeal and overall catchiness, but also for shrewd, descriptive lyrics such as in the rueful A Pirate Looks at 40.:
I made enough money to buy Miami, But I pissed it away so fast, Never meant to last, never meant to last.
He’s sold gazillions. Parrotheads follow and love Buffet like Deadheads did/do for Jerry Gracia and the Grateful Dead. (OK, Phish and Widespread Panic, too, sort of.) The difference in audiences may start at choice of intoxicants but goes beyond that. Buffet is Spring Break for Baby Boomers, with kids and grand-kids and coolers in tow.
I hereby declare Margaritaville to be the No. 1 all time song played by the highly tanned dude in a flowery shirt and acoustic guitar poolside at the oceanfront Holiday Inn.
Some people claim there’s a woman to blame, but I know it’s my own damn fault. (Possibly Buffet’s best line.)
Did Buffett single-handedly boost the now enormous tequila industry?
I always said Buffett made the only song reference to Hush Puppies, the shoe not the cornbread ball, in Come Monday. And he may be the only one to ever rhyme pop-top and flip-flop in a song.
So he has a lot of achievements.
But if I have to hear Cheeseburger in Paradise again, I might consider giving up one of my favorite foods. And if I have to hear Why Don’t We Get Drunk and …. again, I might consider giving up … oh, never mind.
NOTE: SInce I last reviewed Buffet in the above post, I happened on another $1 record find of Buffets album. I’m not going to give it a big review but just to say: It is not bad, a peek at him before he became famous hints of the qualities that made him famous. Those qualities are pleasant semi-story-telling songs that goes good with some beach time and beer time and the smell of coconut sunscreen.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
I’ve talked to some of my friends, jokingly, suggesting I do a ‘Lewy Mike’ stand-up comedy routine.
Here’s my routine, very much still in the early stages:
I walk out onstage to polite applause.
“Hello,” I say to the rapt, but small audience in a downtown comedy club.
“I am Mike Oliver and I have Lewy Body dementia.”
Scattered chattering, facial contortions of confusion, all related to questions along the lines of what the heck is Lewy Body dementia. I could have gone to see Star Wars over this stuff, a member of the audience might have proclaimed.
So I explain.
“It’s kind of a cross between Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.”
Oh, the audience murmers, they’ve heard of those devastating degenerative brain conditions.
“And so I ask how many of you here tonight have Parkinson’s or have a loved one with this disease.
“Let’s get a show of shaking hands.”
I peer out and notice a handful of hands in the air, shaking. All right I say.
“Now those with Alzheimers:” (long pause)
I look around. “Well, just forget it.”‘
Um. (sporadic applause, low level booing. Mayday. Mayday. The blood is leaving what’s left of my brain.)
I step up to the microphone. “Uh, can’t you see,” I plead with the audience.
“I’m dying up here.’
Well, guess that is a little dark.
But it’s dark humor, a way to chase away the blues demons. I’ve tried this act to some select friends and we’ve had a good laugh. I want to let them know this condition, as utterly horrible as it is, and I’ve cried after meeting those in late stages knowing that may be me–it will not stop the love and laughing that I adore in my life.
About two weeks ago I wrote a post entitled ‘Who Am I.’
It was loosely about a Lewy Body dementia patient, me, getting a little existential.
There’s an anecdote that comes out of writing that blog post that blows me away and I want to share it.
It probably won’t blow you away, dear readers, because it was a kind of you-had-to-be-there moment.
But anyway, the anecdote will allow me to raise the question: Are you a ‘random shuffle’ person? Or a ‘straight playlist’ person?
OK here comes the anecdote: It was a weekend day and I had a chore. Do laundry and clean up my messy room. I brought my 120GB iPod to play to make the work go easier. I turned it on to Shuffle all songs. That would be a random shuffle of about 7,500 songs.
Midway through this cleaning escapade I got an idea. One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about since being diagnosed with a fatal degenerative brain disease is my mortality, the meaning of life and, frankly, ‘Who Am I.’
So idea in mind, I went downstairs to write, leaving the music, the iPod playing my 7,500 songs at random.
An hour, maybe two, slips by as I write on my laptop. Eventually I meander upstairs and I was stopped dead in my tracks. I instantly knew this song just now coming out of my iPod, which as you remember I had left on and had been randomly shuffling for the better course of two hours.
I immediately knew the guitar-organ opening with drum build-up and the group in unison asking a question.
The song: Who Are You?
Who Are You? That well-known song by the Who.
After catching my breath, I looked around to see if someone was pranking me.
What are the odds? I thought (maybe 7,500 to 1?) that that song would be playing. As I walked in after writing a post called Who Am I? I was actually a little shaken.
I ran and told my daughter and her friend who were in the house. But I don’t think they had the same reaction, nor friends and colleagues of mine. Coincidence they say. Funny, how these coincidences are following me around though.
So that brings me to the question about a facet of who you are? Random shuffle or straight playlist.
I’m definitely a random shuffle guy. When they invented digital music and I could load up my jukebox of CDs (about 100 at least). I put it on shuffle.
My wife complained as soon as she figured out that the nice James Taylor song ‘Fire and Rain,’ now playing, might be followed by a Rancid song (yes, Rancid, those Bay Area punksters). I liked the randomness, the expectation of anything can come next.
Catherine didn’t like so much. I never peeked at my presents on Christmas. Catherine did (and still does).
I like starting on a hike not knowing where we’ll end up.
I like taking multi-day road trips with absolutely no plans on how far I’ll get.
My grandfather, a career Army guy, had the mileage all figured out (pre-GPS) and made reservations to make sure he and grandmother had a place to stay.
I can’t tell you how many times Catherine and I would stop at motels with no vacancy and have to keep going. But that was the fun. Where will we end up?
She tolerated me and still does most of the time.
Now these orientations can be taken to the extreme, so I think we are combinations of the two but lean one way or another, some more than others.
A totally random person would presumably never get anywhere on time. (Although, I haven’t worn a watch in 50 years, and I’m not usually late). I think my random orientation has served me well as a journalist over the years. Everyday is something new at a newspaper or online news operation where I worked and still work at AL.com. <NOTE: Retired in 2019>
Reporters know that the Supreme Being laughs when we make plans. You might think you are going to spend the day researching and writing this big story, only to get tapped on the shoulder to cover a breaking story like a tornado, or major court ruling or whatever.
In fact ‘whatever’ was coined by random folks.
The nature of this blog, www.myvinylcountdown.com is a mix between random and playlist. I am reviewing on this site my 678 vinyl records in alphabetical order. Now that sounds tidy, right? Well it has the same effect as random play on the iPod. For example, I open the blog with African music, King Sunni Ade, which is followed by hard rockers Aerosmith.
I have a huge 625-song Christmas playlist in my iPod that, as my family is well aware, I have insisted on playing on shuffle for years and years (but only after Thanksgiving.)
“But Dad, I want to hear the rest of that Christina Aguilera Christmas album, I hate what’s on,’’ a daughter would say.
“Just wait sweetie, this Love Tractor track will be over in a minute and I can’t wait to see what will be next, can you?” I say, blocking their hands from the iPod controls with my arms in a style I learned watching Karate Kid (wax on wax off).
I usually won because I could fend them off just long enough for the next track and it would be the Hanson’s Christmas collection.
Saved once again to fight another day. For random play.
I’d like to put in a bottle what I am doing to fight my dementia for everyone facing what I’m facing.
On this blog, I’m counting down, in photos and words, the 678 vinyl record albums I collected mainly in the 70s and 80s before CDs and digital took over. In doing so I am reconnecting with my past, and my memory of it. I’m finding forgotten memories. I’m rediscovering good (and bad) music.
And I’m loving it.
Every day is like Christmas to me. What is the next one to review? What surprise and memory will it bless me with. The discipline of writing connects me to my mind in a way beyond speech.
I’m doing this in addition to traditional drug therapy, on which I am combining a carefully calculated mix of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s medications. That’s because my disease, Lewy Body dementia has symptoms that resemble both degenerative brain diseases.
The problem is that Lewy Body, despite being the second leading cause of dementia after Alzheimer’s, is not well known. Early diagnosis is a key to getting on the right meds because some anti-psychotic medications, used in Alzheimer’s treatment, are contraindicated and dangerous to the Lewy Body patient. There is no cure, and its cause is unknown.
I am better off than I was a year ago when I was diagnosed. I felt miserable. I felt like I was antsy all the time. My arm would unconsciously slide up my side in the so-called gunslinger mode, a classic Parkinsonian symptom. But I had also had insomnia and REM sleep disorder which caused me to act out dreams, sometimes thrashing, punching and kicking. Not so great when you’re sharing a bed. Those are classic Lewy Body dementia symptoms, including waking hallucinations.
I believe I’m feeling better now because of the medication. But I believe I may also be doing well because of the value that blogging has brought to my psyche. It’s given me something fun to do while keeping my dexterity refined through typing and my memory honed by remembering and writing about remembering.
Will the meds slowly quit working, as frequently happens? Will I be unable to type at some point? That ability already fluctuates. My writing is often more coherent than my speech, I know that. Just an honest observation. In live conversations with people, I often forget names or crash my train of thought. I have to thumb through the bins in my brain to find the right words.
It’s one of the reasons I came out publicly with my disease because I want people to know what’s going on when they talk to me and not be afraid to ask me how I’m doing living with dementia. “Very fine thank you,” I say. “And what’s your name again?”
My friends and colleagues and many others I don’t know so well know it’s no sweat that I can’t remember something right away.
So long before the dementia diagnosis I had this idea of counting my records down and selling them one-by-one on eBay. It was, to be honest, a good argument over the years to thwart the pressure by my wife, Catherine, to get rid of the precious vinyl. But as you are hearing it is becoming much bigger than that. It’s a treatment. And it is also a written legacy that my loved ones can read to get a dose of me after I’m gone. If they want that dose. My beautiful daughters, young women, Hannah, Emily and Claire, don’t seem too too interested in the blog now. (Whaddya mean you don’t want to read my 1000 word dissection of the Allman Brothers’ influence on Southern rock and jam bands?).
in the future, something may resonate (or not). But i would like to leave something where they can remember and know who i was before i become not who i am.
My records represent many hours perusing record bins and many quarters and dollars, usually bought used or as cut-outs. They range from R&B, classic rock, hard core country, punk, funk, soul, New Wave, comedy, classical, folk, Americana, reggae, alternative, and jazz, both old school and modern.
Since I started in September, I have done 64 record reviews in 67 posts. Some of those posts had no album reviews as they were about other things I’m trying to write about such as basketball, journalism, and Lewy Body dementia. Sometimes, especially if I have multiple records from the same artist, I review them in the same posts.
So I have 614 reviews to go, not counting new vinyl additions my family and friends are giving me in a loving gesture to add length to the reduction in my life (and its quality) that Lewy Body will try to make happen.
That’s because I have vowed to finish this blog out.
I’m loving it.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
A photo of The Thinker by Rodin located at the Musée Rodin in Paris. Public domain Wiki
I’ve always thought of music lovers as thoughtful.
I’m not saying I’m a deep thinker, but I have thought about thinking. As I start this blog post I’m thinking about writing about thought.
Stream of consciousness, I think.
Aretha Franklin soulfully finger-wagged at her man:
You better think (think)
Think about what you’re trying to do to me
Think (think, think)
Let your mind go, let yourself be free …freedom
And John Lennon, putting his thinking cap on, sang:
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine. Living for today, because what if there is no tomorrow.
Does that mean death ends the thinking? The thoughts?
In just a few days it will be the anniversary of Lennon’s death. He was shot dead by Mark David Chapman on the doorsteps of John and Yoko’s New York City home on Dec. 8, 1980.
Are his thoughts gone? Certainly, Lennon is thought about by many people. What he once thought is known by millions through interviews, movies, and songs. On Friday’s anniversary, Lennon will be thought about more. But are Lennon’s thoughts gone? Or do they exist? Or is Lennon, perhaps, continuing his thinking in some other realm as a sentient being?
What is thought?
A building block of ideas?
A brain’s computer-like transaction responding to feedback?
A mind’s synthesis of the five senses and memory?
Thought comes from consciousness – but what’s consciousness?
Here’s the cosmic dirty little secret: No one knows.
No one: Scientists, biologists, psychiatrists, philosophers, neurologists, Albert Einstein, not even Russell Brand.
None of them can explain consciousness.
They can describe it. They can look at brain wave patterns and watch brain activity on fancy machines. They can see parts of the answer through the windows of their disciplines. But no one can explain the process by which people and other living things are turned on, animated, for many years before the switch gets turned off. No one knows for sure if the light dies or goes somewhere else, or even where the switch is.
Comedian Steven Wright once joked: “In my house there’s this light switch that doesn’t do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Madagascar. She said, ‘Cut it out.’”
Writing in the magazine Philosophy Now, Philip Goff says we may not even be asking the right question:
It is sometimes said that consciousness is a mystery in the sense that we have no idea what it is. This is clearly not true. What could be better known to us than our own feelings and experiences? The mystery of consciousness is not what consciousness is, but why it is.
Yes, why. That’s always been the killer question, right? Van Morrison on one of his lesser known albums sang: “It ain’t why why why. It just is.”
Which seems to be similar (in tone anyway) to what Descartes said hundreds of years ago. sounding to me like he was being plagued by questions from philosophy students.
In my recent review of the Brains, I wrote that the Atlanta band’s hit song, ‘Money Changes Everything,’ is one of my Top 10 or Top 15 rock songs of all time.
Well that might have been a little hyperbolic.
It made me think of all the songs about money. Money alone. I think my ‘money’ song will be strong up against other money songs but when you talk all-time I realized how big a universe that is. There are tons of money songs alone and some very good ones. Here are just a few:
Money for Nothing by Dire Straits.
Money by the Flying Lizards (and others, including Beatles.)
For the Love of Money by the O’Jays.
Money by Pink Floyd.
Take the Money and Run by the Steve Miller Band.
She Works Hard for the Money by Donna Summer.
I think my favorite song about money will remain the Brains (and/or) Cyndi Lauper’s version of Money Changes Everything. But not sure the song ranks in the Top 10 or 15 all time list. As for the money list I admire the Dire Straits tongue in cheek piece. Pink Floyd’s is a classic, and I really like the O’Jays tune.
But sticking with my Brains here.
If you have other suggestions, I’d love to hear from you in the comments
In song, The Who asked ‘Who are You’? Black Uhuru asked ‘What is Life’? Frank Zappa said, ‘Help I’m a rock.’
Some of you have pondered this question, I’m sure. Others think it is silly because it has no set answer.
As some of you know, I have Lewy Body dementia. My brain neurons are dying, being killed over time by excess proteins. There is no known cure and its cause is unknown. But it’s the second leading cause of dementia after Alzheimer’s.
So the question for me is pertinent .
As I have written earlier I am literally, albeit slowly, losing my mind. Does that mean every day I am a little less of myself? Or that I am myself at all?
What if my perception of myself is widely different from what others see. It could be a horror movie: ‘Invasion of the Alpha-synuclein Proteins.’
David Hume
Justin Caouette posting on the blog A Philosopher’s Take, asks if we rip a page out of a book, is it the same book? How about a chapter? How about if you blot every word out with Wite-Out?
Philosopher David “Hume says that all that “we” are is a bundle of perceptions at any given reference point, according to Caouette. “The ‘self’ for Hume, when perceived as something fixed through time, is an illusion. Strict identity claims are simply false when talking about ourselves as persisting through time. The bundle of perceptions changes with each experience, therefore, there is no one enduring ‘self’ that persists through each experience.”
So minute by minute we change. But is he saying we are not who we are two minutes earlier? Yes and no. I think.
Here’s more; “When I say “I will go home in an hour” I’m referring to the bundle of perceptions that is related by past experiences to the bundle that will walk out the door. I may be wrong in my claim that ‘I’ will leave in an hour (I may take longer or turn in sooner, but, I will leave at some point), the ‘I’ is simply a quick and fast way of identifying who will walk out the door.”
So I’m following this, sort of. He brings up Alzheimer’s (I wish Lewy Bodies would be mentioned in conjunction with Alzheimer’s as another leading cause of dementia.)
“One need not have a fixed memory or even a good one to be a person or a self on this account. This gets us around those who have Alzheimer’s. They are still persons on this view.”
That’s nice.
For me this is all a Catch-22 because I am actively losing the thing, my mind, which interprets my perceptions, of which I am a downsizing ‘bundle of.’
I may soon be asking ‘Who are you?’ to loved ones. But I won’t be meaning it in a philosophical way.
So before this part of me goes away, I am thinking a lot about who I am..
Will Durant, channeling Aristotle in his definitive ‘The Story of Philosophy’ said ‘we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.’
So who are you? Who am I?
Parent, weekend athlete, storyteller, son, daughter, music lover, prankster, hiker.
I am shouting for more funding for research, for more awareness of Lewy. Some believe the 1.4 million number often used to describe how many are affected now is vastly understated. Some whom are diagnosed with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s may actually have Lewy body dementia and there are some treatments for these diseases that are contraindicated for another and could be life-threatening. OK, believe it or not that’s one thing. Two more.
Staying alive is important to me — but with my faculties intact. Right now I struggle to write this because my fingers don’t glide along the keys like they used to. It’s part of the disease which affects me physically as well as mentally. I have set up this blog to review my 678 records (vinyl) that I have collected over the years. This has been a way to stay connected to my past and remember my love of music and music collecting. I look forward to trying to post every day, if not more. Be sure to check out the About Me page, and click on the post’s title if you want to comment.
Now third is having fun. I want to chronicle and laugh about things I still remember. My music, my basketball, my family, my years in the news business. That’s fun for me and hopefully will tie into my second rationale.
So I’m not really a fan of AC/DC.
I don’t own an AC/DC album. Of course I know their music as did every teen (male?) in the late 70s with a car radio (w/power booster and 6X9’s in the back). My younger brother whom I’ve mentioned before in these blogs had the album ‘Back in Black,’ if not more. I always thought AC/DC was like asking for a drink of water and receiving a firehose to the face. Some folks like that.
But I did have some records that have a degree of separation connection to the band.
Malcolm’s younger brother was in the band, Angus (the guy in shorts). But his older brother, George Young, along with friend Harry Vanda were founders of the Easybeats, sort of the Australian Beatles. And they were good. Really good, way back when. Friday On My Mind was an international hit.
They later, Vanda and Young, formed Flash and the Pan and they were good and weird. Very weird.
George, who also produced a number of AC/DC albums, died only about a month ago. I haven’t seen a cause of death reported. I have albums — which I will review as I have been in alphabetical order — of Flash and the Pan and the Easybeats.
The Easybeats video that follows is an old favorite of mine. Stay with it until the end and you’ll know what I mean when I say I hope he has kneepads on.
There’s also a good documentary on Australian rock from the Easybeats to AC/DC.
Yesterday, Saturday Nov. 4, 2017, I was playing in my weekly Old Man Hoops game and I did a wrap-around-the-back fake pass on the way to a left-handed layup attempt. That’s right attempt. I blew the layup.
Million dollar move, 10-cent finish as they used to tell me on the playground.
My basketball buddies, however, are used to seeing my wrap-arounds, and my elbow passes, and my nutmeg dribbles through the defender’s legs.
Showing these ‘trick’ plays too many times, as I certainly have, diminishes the surprise factor and thus the play’s effectiveness. My percentage effectiveness is about 50/50 and that may be way generous to myself.
In real coached basketball if you did a move like an elbow pass and it flies off into the bleachers, the coach would give you some bench time for sure.
But in the relatively uncoached version of Old Man Hoops, of which I am the oldest player at 57, I’ve got the senior citizen greenlight card that allows me 100 percent interest free validation for anything I do, stupid or not. Of course the ‘playground’ consequences of failing to complete a trick play or two means your teammates may quit throwing you the ball.
Winner Mike’sMadness to raise money forthe Lew Body Dementia Associationn was UAB’s team. Average height was, oh, 6’8”. Me out front in the middle (the short guy) am 6 feet tall so you can see that height estimate was no exaggeration. My team never played UAB though, guess they heard about my wraparound.
But back to yesterday’s around the back wrap. I can’t even remember who was guarding the play, a fast break, whether it was James the doctor or Owens the DJ or Justin who works with me at Alabama Media Group. (Or Dan or Dennis or or Rodney), I can’t even remember who was on the other team sometimes.
But anyway I wrapped it around the back, which makes the ball invisible to the defender for a nanosecond. The hope is to make the defender think you are throwing a behind-the-back pass and force the defender to commit to another player who is hopefully streaking down the court beside you (hopefully 2 teammates, one on each side for options.)
Anyway, as I have said, I cleared some space with the fake, put it up with my left off the backboard, but it bounced off the front of the rim, no score.
A play that was very forgettable.
But it led to me today to thinking about another play long ago that I still remember in vivid detail. Probably because it replays in my head all of the time.
It was the time I juked Chris Gatling, a former NBA player who was in the league for more than a decade.
The first round pick in 1991 of the Golden State Warriors, he averaged about 10 points and 5 boards over his career. One year in Dallas he was 19 and 8.
So I’m living in the San Francisco Bay Area and working in Oakland. The date is fuzzy but probably 2004-ish. I was working at the Oakland Tribune, which as a benefit helped subsidize a membership to Club One Fitness. It was a really nice gym a short two blocks away from work. I saw Danny Glover there a few times and Billy Joe Armstrong with Green Day. But not on the basketball court.
There was a game every noon hour during the week. Occasionally you would see current and former Golden State Warriors players like Jason Richardson, Chris Mullin, Adonal Foyle or Chris Gatling. Most like Mullin and Richardson were working on shooting or other drills. Others like Foyle and Gatling would come play in the pickup games, which were at times very high level from my perspective.
Foyle was a Colgate graduate and an NBA center, whom I talked to several times. He was intelligent and fun to play with as he would do all the things his Warriors coach would never let him do, like shoot three-pointers and dribble the length of the floor. Always laughing it up. In reality he could have just stood under the rim and dunked the whole time.
Gatling on the other hand was kind of aloof, didn’t talk much. I remembered him from when he played as the guy who had a steel plate in his head, apparently from a childhood accident.
OK, that’s a lot of build-up for a play that happened more than a decade ago and lasted all of 3 seconds.
I do have to say here that I was in my mid to late 40’s and probably in the best basketball shape of my life as I played full-court basketball outside and inside about 3 or 4 times a week. I also could shoot fairly well which made up for other deficiencies and got me into games I didn’t have any business being in.
Anyway I got in a game and Gatling was playing on the other team. I had the ball on a fast break, a teammate of mine filling the lane on the right but no one is on the left. Gatling, somehow, had beaten us down court and was basically waiting for us, looking to swat whatever ‘weak ass shit’ I was going to throw up. (That’s what he looked like he was thinking anyway, I’m not sure he actually verbalized those words. He didn’t have to.)
Did I mention that he was 6’ 10” tall?
I was dribbling with my left, watching my teammate to the right out of the corner of my eye.
I turned my head to look at my teammate while simultaneously picking the ball up and going around my back. Gatling bit and committed to the guy he thought I was throwing a behind-the-back pass to. That split second the ball goes behind your back, the defender is confused. Where is the ball? Did he just throw it to his teammate behind his back?
So still with my head turned to look at the guy I was using as a decoy, I kept the ball. It went from left hand, around the back to my right hand which touched it to my left hand for a lefty lay-up. Gatling’s ball swatting arms never really got close.
Some of the small crowd of ballers waiting for next game fell out laughing and whooping. I snuck a peek at Gatling jogging back down to the other end. He seemed unperturbed as was his demeanor, thankfully.
Did I mention he was 6’10”?
And that was it, one of my hoops dream memories. I will post more here from time to time.
I don’t know what to make of this thing that just happened — this ‘God thing,’ as my Presbyterian pastor wife Catherine would say.
I’ll admit up front that I’m uncomfortable talking about God. I’m private about my beliefs, though, as mentioned above have been a pastor’s husband for many years. Mainly, I’m uncomfortable because God is, well, hard to explain, at least to my degenerating brain. But I do believe in Her.
As many know I have Lewy Body dementia and I’m using this blog to promote awareness of this disease which has no cure. The backbone of the blog, which I started several weeks ago, are reviews of my vinyl record collection. The number of records I’ve collected over the years is 678.
I have pledged to review them all, disease be damned.
I referenced a well-known study, called the Nun’s Study. The study found that positive thoughts or some other unknown brain stimuli may help avoid the ravages of Alzheimer’s and presumably, other dementias. Even when later autopsies found brains filled with the plaques and tangles that indicate Alzheimer’s disease, some of those nuns showed no symptoms during their lives.
I find this very positive and have mentioned the study before about how I hope my brain can develop ‘workarounds’ to stop or mitigate the damage by Lewy bodies, those unwanted proteins that are killing my brain cells.
Then, scanning the NYT article about the nuns, a number jumped out at me. From the New York Times (the circle is mine).
So got that? The total number of nuns in the study? 678.
Whoa. 678..
That’s the same number of albums I own and will review on myvinylcountdown.com
