Well hey! If you thought yourself a regular follower of this space, it is true … I am not a visibly regular writer. I stated that purposefully because I do post more frequently on a private page in this blog to a small group. I keep the pages private because the subject matter is specific to us. Yes it’s true: I belong to multiple packs. Know that I haven’t forgotten you though. Here’s the deal. I’m with you, fella … Meme courtesy http://www.scumbear.com/2013/06/office-bear-is-going-on-hibernation.html Truth is, I wasn’t in the best of spaces, even prior to this pandemic business. I decided…
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Yesterday, I shared an ‘air hug’ with a woman I didn’t know. Today, I found out that there are no identified cases of this latest virus in my county. Here’s the thing. After the world stopped on 11 September, people were a little kinder: folks let other folks go first at four-way stops. Young people helped older people across the street or carried their groceries or mowed their lawns or shoveled their snow. And here we are, in the midst of something, a nearly unknown ‘thing’. People are panicked, buying all sorts of weird things that won’t keep them healthy…
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I might be a little bigger than I was when the Don’t Eat That! blog post was written. A couple years ago, I wrote a blog post with info about things you shouldn’t feed your canine family members. The post also included other tips from the site, The Goody Pet. One thing that was missing was comfort info. If you have a dog, large or small, you probably spend far too much on food, treats, clothes, leashes, collars, and maybe even mats and beds. Just like us, many dogs (or is it just mine?) like to lay on or under…
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I suppose we all were shocked to hear what happened to basketball player Kobe Bryant and the others aboard the helicopter weekend before last. As I mentioned in my last Getaway post, I had flown to Phoenix for work. I am home now, safe and sound. 1. I am grateful to have had a safe flight home. I was exhausted and pretty much the last thing I remember was the plane accelerating down the runway. The next thing I knew, we were about to land. 2. I am grateful for the people and animals that make up the larger portion…
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I sat on the side of the bed and wept. It wasn’t the first time this week, but it was certainly the longest and ugliest. I’d taken a short flight from my home airport for a week’s on-ground assignment for work. As we drove to the airport, I could see the fog ahead. By the time we got there, we were socked in pretty solid. I said good-bye to my beloved and went in. I saw a woman who had been in one of my residency classes a year or so prior; she was in a long line of passengers,…
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Journaling is not something I am particularly fond of doing. It means taking time away from whatever else I am doing to write about my thoughts, what’s happening in my brain about a thing at that moment in time. Writing journal entries in my head while I look for the journal itself and the proper writing instrument is like this … I knew that keeping up with a journal was not one of my strengths, but recently it became more than obvious through an experience that is really a different story for a different time: I had been writing in…
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It’s the 20th day and alas, we’ve reached the end of the road. For now. We’ve done jazz, gospel, industrial, instrumental, and more, which makes it difficult to come to the penultimate of such a journey. However, I think I have to give it to two of the greatest musicians of this or any other time to close out with a two-fer. Stevie Wonder, one of the most prolific writers in my lifetime, has to make it on my list. There are so many songs that come to mind, but there are three of his that mean the most. I…
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I’ll have to stick with the ‘80s for today and yes, I’m doing it … It’s the 19th day of the series, so what better day to talk about Paul Hardcastle and his runaway hit, ‘19’? Please note that the video might not play, depending on your settings, because it comes with a viewing warning. I have to say that while I also played the grooves off the 12-inch version of ‘19’, it wasn’t my most favorite song by Mr. Hardcastle. It is likely ‘Rainforest’. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTQyyOYRCxY&w=560&h=315]
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Figured I’d take it down a notch since we’re fast approaching the end of this 20-day musical journey. There was a late-70s(?) band called Japan, who were part of the UK androgynous New Romantic era sound. Lead singer David Sylvian went on to his own solo career and in the early 1980s, had several albums. In my radio station days, any cash I received that wasn’t earmarked for school-related things like bus fare (eventually gasoline for my car) or parking went to music. I went into extreme debt, shopping at Cheap Thrills Record Store (shout out to 382 George Street,…
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Another group emerging from the industrial landscape of music is Laibach. They weren’t just identified as an industrial band, but were also labeled as neo-classical and were part of the then-emergent New Slovenian Art, a political-cultural movement. Two of the founding members of Laibach were in the Yugoslavian Army; their works have been said to be fascist, but they were poking at the totalitarian regime of their era by presenting themselves as even more so. Their songs such as Life is Life and Geburt einer Nation are likely best-known, Geburt specifically, because it is a Queen cover song (One Nation,…