ME TOO! PART ONE

You see it time and time again. Some woman, any woman, maybe even some woman you may know personally experiences any sort of sexual assault and as soon as she gets the courage to speak out about her experience, she's immediately confronted with opposition instead of support. Sexual assault/abuse comes in many forms (anything from some unwanted groping to being raped) and every form of sexual abuse/assault causes permanent scars. These scars aren't visible. The scars a woman carries with her from sexual abuse have been hidden away, yet under close scrutiny those scars are worn with everything she thinks, she feels and she does. All one needs to do is open their eyes and see the pain.

I totally understand why it takes some women years to be able to speak about their experience. I understand the years of self-hatred and shame they bear. I understand the feeling of knowing how speaking out will open an ugly can of worms devouring maggots and once it's open, it can't ever be closed again. I understand the feeling of knowing how some people will think you have an over active imagine, you just want to cause trouble and of course, some people will do the worst thing possible. They'll pity you and try to keep you in the "victim" box. It's especially damaging to anyone who has managed to move past being a victim to be constantly stuffed back in that cold, dark box by everyone around them.

I understand being reluctant to say anything because once you say anything, a barrage of questions follow. How could something like that happen? Are you sure it happened that way? Why has it taken you so long to say something? Why didn't you just say no? Why don't you remember all the gory details? Being the center of attention is the last thing anyone who has been sexually assaulted wants.

I understand how people question how it's possible to forgive the person who assaulted you. Forgiveness has little to do with  the person who caused you pain. It has more to do with taking back your power and allowing yourself to heal. In order to do that forgiveness is required. That forgiveness includes forgiving yourself for being too weak to stop the assault or for putting yourself in harm's way. How many times do you hear "well, she asked for it?" No one asks to be sexually abused unless they're a masochist. For most, sexual abuse is a horrifying, crippling experience and it takes a lifetime to heal.

Imagine in some cases having someone you know and trust sexually assault you. Imagine not knowing who to tell or how to tell someone because you don't know if anyone will believe you. Imagine feeling conflicted about saying anything because you know if you say anything it will cause pain for the person who assaulted you. Why in hell should that matter? Trust me, it does matter, A twisted sense of loyalty can form to protect the person who assaulted you if you know and love that person, but along with a twisted sense of loyalty a permanent sense of dread forms as well. If someone who's supposed to love you would harm you in that way, then what is the rest of the world going to do to you? What are all those faceless nameless individuals who don't care about you going to do? You feel as long as you protect your abuser, you protect yourself as well.

Being constantly on guard takes its toll on a person. Sometimes the person lets that guard down and says "what the hell!" Some people become promiscuous as a way to deal with their pain. They see having sex as a way of being in control. So the more sex you have, the more control you have. Some people turn to drugs and/or alcohol to numb the pain. In the end, nothing works. The pain stays with you staring you in the face each and every day.

I understand that it's an ugly topic to discuss. People who have been subjected to sexual abuse would like nothing more than to keep that ugliness hidden away, but the longer it's hidden away, it festers and affects how you look at the world. It affects every relationship you have and often times, it prevents you from having a lasting relationship. Many people who go through this experience spend their entire life seeking something they just don't know how to have or where to find it.

* reposted from 9/18/18

DAY 16 - 30 SONGS IN 30 DAYS

 Day 16: A song that’s a classic favorite

Glenn Frey said that originally "We decided to create something strange, just to see if we could do it," and that the song was meant to mimic the imagery of the 1965 novel The Magus by John Fowles, about a man in an unfamiliar rural setting who is unsure about what he is experiencing.

Don Henley has given a number of explanations about the song, ranging from "a journey from innocence to experience" to "a sociopolitical statement". In an interview with Rolling Stone, Henley said that the song was meant to be "more of a symbolic piece about America in general", and added: "Lyrically, the song deals with traditional or classical themes of conflict: darkness and light, good and evil, youth and age, the spiritual versus the secular. I guess you could say it's a song about loss of innocence."

The song has been described as being "all about American decadence and burnout, too much money, corruption, drugs and arrogance; too little humility and heart." It has also been interpreted as an allegory about hedonism, self-destruction, and greed in the music industry of the late 1970s. Henley called it "our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles", and later said: "It's basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about." In the 2013 documentary, History of the Eagles, Henley reiterated:

On just about every album we made, there was some kind of commentary on the music business, and on American culture in general. The hotel itself could be taken as a metaphor not only for the myth-making of Southern California, but for the myth-making that is the American Dream, because it is a fine line between the American Dream, and the American nightmare.

In a 2009 interview, The Plain Dealer music critic John Soeder asked Henley if he regretted writing the lines "So I called up the captain / 'Please bring me my wine' / He said, 'We haven't had that spirit here since 1969'" because wines are fermented while spirits are distilled. Henley responded:

Thanks for the tutorial and, no, you're not the first to bring this to my attention—and you're not the first to completely misinterpret the lyric and miss the metaphor. Believe me, I've consumed enough alcoholic beverages in my time to know how they are made and what the proper nomenclature is. But that line in the song has little or nothing to do with alcoholic beverages. It's a sociopolitical statement. My only regret would be having to explain it in detail to you, which would defeat the purpose of using literary devices in songwriting and lower the discussion to some silly and irrelevant argument about chemical processes.

In his Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volume 1, Steve Sullivan theorizes that the "spirit" that the Hotel California hasn't had since 1969 refers to the spirit of social activism of the 1960s, and how disco and the related pop music of the mid-1970s had turned away from it.

The metaphorical character of the story related in the lyrics has inspired a number of conjectural interpretations by listeners. In the 1980s, the Rev. Paul Risley of Cornerstone Church in Burlington, Wisconsin, alleged that "Hotel California" referred to a San Francisco hotel that was purchased by Anton LaVey and converted into his Church of Satan. Other rumors suggested that the Hotel California was the Camarillo State Mental Hospital, which was shut down in 1997, and redeveloped into California State University Channel Islands.

The term "colitas" in the first stanza ("warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air") has been interpreted as a sexual slang or a reference to marijuana. "Colitas" means "little tails" in Spanish; in Mexican slang it refers to buds of the cannabis (marijuana) plant. According to Glenn Frey, the "warm smell" is "colitas ... it means little tails, the very top of the plant." The Eagles' manager Irving Azoff appears to lend support to the marijuana hypothesis; however, Felder said: "The colitas is a plant that grows in the desert that blooms at night, and it has this kind of pungent, almost funky smell. Don Henley came up with a lot of the lyrics for that song, and he came up with colitas."

Other interpretations of the song include heroin addiction and cannibalism. On the various interpretations, Henley said: "Some of the wilder interpretations of that song have been amazing. It was really about the excesses of American culture and certain girls we knew. But it was also about the uneasy balance between art and commerce."

*(borrowed from Wikipedia)

[Dedicated to Kinsman Hall because you can check out anytime you want 

but you can never leave...]

A TASTE OF BANGOR MAINE

I'd like to introduce you to my hometown, Bangor, Maine and in doing so, you get to meet two talented people. Josh Landry is a chainsaw artist who was commissioned by Tabitha and Stephen King to do a sculpture at their home (now a writers' retreat) on West Broadway. An ash tree that was slated for removal due to a severe insect infestation instead was turned into a breathtaking piece of art depicting some of the characters from Stephen King's books.

You also are introduced to beer brewer, Cory Ricker owner of Two Feet Brewing who has established quite a name for himself in the area. Their signature Barn Burner, a roasted jalapeno-ghost pepper dark saison sounds interesting, but alas I don't drink beer so I'll leave it up to others to try out!

DAY 15 - 30 SONGS IN 30 DAYS

 Day 15: A song you like that’s a cover by another artist

THE ORIGINAL VERSION: American R&B, soul, rock & roll singer and songwriter Wilson Pickett recorded this popular version of "Mustang Sally" in 1966 that climbed to #6 on the R&B charts and #23 on the Pop charts. It ranks on the Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

THE COVER: The Commitments is a 1991 musical comedy-drama film based on the 1987 novel of the same name by Roddy Doyle. It was directed by Alan Parker from a screenplay written by Doyle, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Set in the Northside of Dublin, the film tells the story of Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins), a young music fanatic who assembles a group of working-class youths to form a soul band named "The Commitments". The film is the first in a series known as The Barrytown Trilogy, followed by The Snapper (1993) and The Van (1996).

Producers Lynda Myles and Roger Randall-Cutler acquired the film rights to the novel in 1988, and commissioned Doyle, a first-time screenwriter, to write an adaptation. Doyle spent one year working on the script before Myles brought in veteran screenwriters Clement and La Frenais to help complete it. Upon reading the novel, Parker signed on as the film's director in 1989. An international co-production between Ireland, the United States and the United Kingdom, The Commitments was the first film produced by Beacon Pictures, which provided an estimated budget of $12–15 million. The film's young lead actors were mostly inexperienced, and were cast because of their musical backgrounds and resemblance to the characters in the novel. Principal photography took place in Dublin, from late August to October, 1990.

The Commitments underperformed at the North American box office, grossing $14.9 million during its theatrical run. Reviewers praised the music, performances and humour, while criticism was occasionally aimed at the pacing and Parker's direction. The film resulted in two soundtrack albums released by MCA Records; the first reached #8 on the Billboard 200 album chart and achieved triple-platinum status, while the second album achieved gold sales status. At the 1992 British Academy Film Awards, the film won four of six BAFTA Awards for Best Film, Best Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Editing. It also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Film Editing. The film has since gained cult status.

* (borrowed from Wikipedia)

 

DRIPPING ON MY KEYBOARD

I first became aware of my grandparent's disappointment of me when I was a teenager. It was deserved, but it still hurt when my grandfather told me his dog was better than me. I had done some horrible things and yes, I had deserved scorn, but I didn't deserve cruelty.  Now, as an adult I look back on that part of my life and I wonder why no one stepped up and saw that I was in crisis. I was struggling. Jesus, I had my first overdose back then. Was it so hard to figure out I had some serious problems? I'm not excusing my behavior because I was incorrigible. I hurt many people and I'm deeply ashamed of that and always will be.

Whenever I would go "home" to Maine I always spent one day visiting my deceased relatives.  My brothers always thought this was rather morbid of me, but it never struck me that way.  I ways grabbed some lunch at a fast food place and ate lunch with my father, grandfather, grandmother and aunt.  They were all buried next to each other in the same cemetery.  On one such visit, I had had an emotional awakening the entire time I was in Maine.  My feelings were raw and I needed to vent so sitting there in front of my father and grandparents who were all non-participating entities in my life growing up I blasted them with everything I had.  I'm glad I was alone because if anyone had been in earshot, they would have thought I was crazy.  My final words to my father were, "Carl Goggins, are you listening to me?" Of course, he wasn't!  He had been dead for over 30 years at that time.  My words fell on deaf ears and my tears fell on stone marker bearing his name.

My next stop was to visit my mother's parents. My heart was so heavy because I knew what a disappointment I had been to them and I had just come from having "words" with my father.  I wish I had been able to say I'm sorry to them while they were still alive.  I wish they had known the turmoil I felt inside me growing up.  I wish they knew the panic I felt.  I wish they knew that I felt I had nowhere to go and no one to talk to and how trapped I felt.  I had to keep everything inside and for a child that's a huge burden.  Eventually it's going to erupt and it did erupt.  When it did, all everyone saw was a kid acting bad and not one person questioned why I was acting that way.  I don't think anyone cared or wanted to know because no one wanted to take any responsibility.

I pulled into the small cemetery where my grandparents are buried and got out of the car.  But instead of going to their grave, I stopped dead in my tracks. On top of their headstone was a huge roll of duct tape.  There wasn't a soul in the small cemetery and why would someone leave a roll of duct tape on my grandparents headstone?  I started laughing because I have a "thing" about duct tape and I took it as my father's answer that he was listening to me. I took the roll and sat down with my grandparents and told them I was sorry for being a disappointment to them and I wept.  It hurt to say that.  It hurts to admit that I hurt so many people that I loved and I wasn't able to tell them I was sorry while they were alive.

Now, let me fast forward to the present day...my mother is 92.  I love her dearly, but we've had a what I'll call a "ruffled" relationship my entire life.  It's never been smooth.  I'm her only daughter, but I've always wondered things like why she never sat me down at a certain age and showed me how to put make up on or how to style my hair, etc. when she herself dressed to the nines and looked like a model whenever she left the house. The other day I sat down in hopes that with the time we have left together that I might try to mend our relationship somewhat and make it smoother by offering an apology.  It was so difficult for me to hand her the olive branch, but I did it. I told her that I was so sorry that I wasn't the daughter that she needed and wanted me to be.  I told her that I really wanted us to enjoy what time we had left together and that I didn't want us to keep butting our heads together all the time (that's a story for another day.) I said I didn't want to be a disappointment to her any longer. My mother sat there without any reaction whatsoever while I wept and said nothing. She said nothing. She said nothing and she has said nothing about it since. End of discussion.

I can't even begin to describe the emotions that have flooded through me lately. I feel as though she continually punishes me for things I did long ago. I know karma is a bitch, but when is enough enough? When have you paid your dues? When are you truly forgiven? I can't help, but feel that my mother's silence is her way of being cruel because at 92 she's limited in what she can actually do now. I mean she can't whack the hell out of me with a hairbrush or a wooden spoon. Oh, I guess she could try, but I'm a little faster than her. I really hate to say that I think it's her way of being cruel  because I do love her. Jesus Christ! Now, I'm crying again! And I have to go find some meme to fit this stupid ass whiny post. Blah! Blah! Blah! Oh Mildred! Dry it up! Go get a Kleenex! You're dripping all over the keyboard!

By the way, I still have that huge roll of duct tape my father gave me and I use it quite often.  Each time I use it, I think of him and I actually thank him. The last time was to tape a hole worn in the fingers of my favorite pair of gardening gloves. Don't say "get a new pair!"  I've looked and they don't make that exact same pair and that's the pair I want so when I wear a hole in the fingers...duct tape it is! Thank you, Carl Goggins!

Can I get an Amen up in here?

Addendum: written 10/23/2022 Sunday morning - My mother passed away almost six months after I wrote this blog post on 6/1/2020. Although I'm much better now grieving has been a difficult process and finding purpose in life after being a caregiver for two elderly parents for the better part of two decades of my life has been challenging. When the options are limitless, how does one choose what to do?

DAY 14 - 30 SONGS IN 30 DAYS

I learned never to say never, but I'll say it's highly unlikely that I'll ever get married again because it's not something I desire or need for any reason but since it was on the list of 30 Songs in 30 Days, what the hell...

Day 14: A song you’d love to be played at your wedding 

Queen comments on the song:

I listened to a lot of soul music when I was in school, and I've always been interested in that sort of music. I'd been wanting to do a track like 'Another One Bites the Dust' for a while, but originally all I had was the line and the bass riff. Gradually, I filled it in and the band added ideas. I could hear it as a song for dancing but had no idea it would become as big as it did. The song got picked up off our album and some of the black radio stations in the US started playing it, which we've never had before. Michael Jackson actually suggested we release it as a single. He was a fan of ours and used to come to our shows. —John Deacon

A fantastic bit of work from Freddie really. I mean, I remember Deacy having this idea, but Deacy doesn't sing of course, so he was trying to suggest to Freddie how it should be and Fred just went in there and hammered and hammered until his throat bled, making... you know, he really was inspired by it and took it to a new height, I think. —Brian May

John Deacon, being totally in his own world, came up with this thing, which was nothing like what we were doing. We were going for the big drum sound: you know, quite pompous in our usual way. And Deakey says, "No, I want this to be totally different: it's going to be a very tight drum sound." It was originally done to a drum loop - this was before the days of drum machines. Roger did a loop, kind of under protest, because he didn't like the sound of the drums recorded that way. And then Deakey put this groove down. Immediately Freddie became violently enthusiastic and said, "This is big! This is important! I'm going to spend a lot of time on this." It was the beginning of something quite big for us, because it was the first time that one of our records crossed over to the black community. We had no control over that; it just happened. Suddenly we were forced to put out this single because so many stations in New York were playing it. It changed that album from being a million-seller to being a three-million seller in a matter of three weeks or so. —Brian May

[Freddie] would certainly fight for things he believed in. Like 'Another One Bites the Dust' which was a bit of a departure for Queen. Roger, at the time, certainly felt that it wasn't rock and roll and was quite angry at the way it was going. And Freddie said, "Darling, leave it to me. I believe in this." John had written the song. But it took Freddie's support to make it happen. —Brian May

I remember laying down the backing track with him and... he really wanted the drums as dry as they could possibly be, so I just stuffed it all with blankets and made it as dead as I possibly could and very low tuned. —Roger Taylor

Credit for the song should go to Michael Jackson in many ways. He was a fan and friend of ours and kept telling me, "Freddie, you need a song the cats can dance to." John introduced this riff to us during rehearsal that we all immediately thought of disco, which was very popular at the time. We worked it out and once it was ready, played it for Michael. I knew we had a hit as he bobbed his head up and down. "That's it, that's the gravy. Release it and it will top the charts," he said. So we did and it did. —Freddie Mercury

Use in medical training:

"Another One Bites the Dust" was used in a study to train medical professionals to provide the correct number of chest compressions per minute while performing CPR.] The bassline has close to 110 beats per minute, and 100–120 chest compressions per minute are recommended by the British Heart Foundation, and endorsed by the Resuscitation Council (UK).

 *(borrowed from Wikipedia)

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?

It always amazes me that as a child I paid such close attention to my surroundings. For example, I vividly remember the leaves as they changed colors in fall and the smell of lilacs as they bloomed in the late spring. What amazes me even more than that is every once in awhile, but not very often as a child I did as I was told by the adults in my life. Because I paid such close attention to my surroundings, I have memories with vivid details of those surroundings. When I think back to my childhood, it's almost like being there again. I can almost feel the leaves scatter beneath me as I jump in a pile of freshly raked leaves or how a McIntosh apple smells when I pick it from an apple tree.

My exposure to horticulture started early on and the neighborhood flora seemed to have played a pretty significant role in my formative years and in some of the memories I still deeply cherish. When I remember the plants growing around my house it always makes me smile even though the plants themselves weren't anything super special or rare. At the corner of my house grew a lilac bush that bloomed every May (60 years later that same bush is still there). If I close my eyes I can still smell its sweet fragrance. Nameless, naughty children would eat the blossoms. Why? Just because they could! In fact, they did many things just because they could. It's a good thing I never associated with any of those hooligans! Along the front and street side of my house grew irises and day lilies. The purples and oranges were stunning when they were in bloom, but they always remained safe from the nameless, naughty children's wrath and veracious appetite.

Early on there were two bridal wreath bushes that framed the front entrance of my house. The lovely delicate white fluffiness never lasted very long and were quite messy as the blossoms were dropped on the concrete walkway. Those bushes were removed at some point in time, but I wasn't consulted on their removal so I don't have a clue as to why they were selected for elimination.  In the back along the alley between my house and the neighbors grew a few burdock bushes. Burdocks are no more than an invasive weed, but for nameless, naughty children they were a plethora of trouble and fun rolled into one. Many a burdock from those bushes found their way into the neighborhood children's hair. They would stick like velcro and tangle long hair in merciless, matted clumps and then cause quite a little hoopla when removed.

Dandelions are also considered weeds, but they were so beautiful blooming against the deep green color of the soft, velvety grass of my lawn. I never understood how something so lovely could be called a weed. As mentioned in a previous blog post, nameless, naughty children found mischievous uses for those lovely weeds like staining white porches with them. My grandmother used to dig up the dandelion greens from her yard in the country and cook them...OMG! They used to make me gag. Now, fiddleheads on the other hand are a great treat to eat.

In the neighborhood, I remember blue hydrangeas (no one ever seemed to add any chemicals to the soil in order to turn them pink). Chinese lanterns had a firm orange ball inside that always fascinated me. The naughty, nameless children thought they were great to pelt at each other because they hurt less than pebbles and didn't leave any marks. Buttercups (why don't you build me buttercup...sorry, I couldn't help myself from singing that song and now damn it, it's stuck in my head) were used by nameless, naughty children to make predictions.

If a yellow glow could be seen when holding the flower under someone's chin then that meant crazy things were going to happen. If I remember correctly, the predictions were as naughty as the children were. Of course, none of this ever pertained to me! The neighborhood maple trees turned brilliant shades in the fall and when the leaves started to drop, we raked them up into the huge piles to jump in and the cherry trees a few houses up from where I lived had gnarly diseased branches that nameless, naughty children used to chase other children around with claiming it was dog poop on the branches. Those nameless, naughty children seemed to be like the hoards of "walkers" from The Walking Dead...what a menace they were! I can't help, but wonder what naughty things they do now as naughty, nameless adults!

While I was looking at pictures of various plants that are indigenous to Maine, I discovered one of the weeds/plants from my childhood days that grew everywhere. Luckily, none of the nameless, naughty
children ever tried to do anything with the berries other than pick them and throw the ripe juicy berries at one another. I tend to think someone must have told us that they were poisonous, but I have no clear memory of any such warning. The bittersweet nightshade plant is in the tomato family, but is highly poisonous. Wow! I'm almost in a state of shock that I never pushed the envelope and tried eating one or that my brothers didn't hold me down and stuff a few in my mouth to chew to see what would happen. The possibilities really make me cringe! I guess it really is true...ignorance is bliss and what you don't know can't hurt you. Those naughty, nameless children were invincible!

*repost and edited from April 1, 2019

DAY 13 - 30 SONGS IN 30 DAYS

 Day 13: A song you like from the 70s 

Edgar Holland Winter (born December 28, 1946) is an American musician. He is a multi-instrumentalist, playing keyboards, guitar, saxophone, and percussion, as well as singing. His success peaked in the 1970s with his band the Edgar Winter Group and their popular songs "Frankenstein" and "Free Ride". He is the brother of late blues singer and guitarist Johnny Winter.

Winter was born to John Winter II and Edwina Winter on December 28, 1946, in Beaumont, Texas. Both he and his older brother Johnny were born with albinism. By the time he left the family home, Winter had already mastered numerous instruments and reading and writing music.

Winter and his wife, Monique, live in Beverly Hills, California. The couple have no children. Winter stated in an interview: "I can see how that would be a wonderful rewarding thing, but I think there are enough people in the world" and that "it might have been more problematical if I had children with a career and all of it. I tour all the time. If I were to have children, I would want to be home all the time."

* (borrowed from Wikipedia)

MESSAGES FROM ABOVE

 Every now and then I pay attention to billboards I see around town, Here are a few I've seen in my travels around the Redneck Riviera:

It looks like we might still be fighting the Civil War here.

Didn't anyone tell these folks the war was over in 1865?

That doesn't look like one nation under God to me.

This one gave me the creeps. Okay, I get it! Don't sleep with your baby!

You might smother your baby, but come on, a billboard?

What happened to common sense?

It looks like we have a local syphilis problem!

So go to your doctor.

Get some penicillin. End of story!

Oh yeah! We definitely have a syphilis problem

when I see at least 5 billboards in a few miles. 

So go see your doctor and stop spreading 

that stuff around you nasty scum buckets!

This one just seems crazy to me! I know there's people out

there who don't vaccinate their children, but they usually live to regret it

as soon as their child gets one or more childhood diseases.

I've never known anyone who gotten these things listed here from a vaccination.

When I was a child how childhood diseases were handled was if there was an outbreak of measles or chicken pox, you'd expose your child to them to get them over the disease. One winter when I was very young. I don't think I was even school age yet, I was very sick. I had one thing right after another. By Christmas, I was so weak I had to be carried downstairs to open my gifts. The one thing I didn't have that winter was chicken pox.

I saved that honor until I was 28 years old and my husband gave me a helluva case of chicken pox when he came home on leave. That's a post for another time...

I guess what I want to say here is why wouldn't anyone want to protect their child against getting this disease or any other disease? Any medicine has a risk of having a side effect. Does that mean don't take it? You take it with caution. You educate yourself. You arm yourself with the facts and then you do what you think is best. Some people think putting an unvaccinated child out in this germ filled world is what's best while others want to do everything they can do to safeguard their child. What do you think?

An afterthought: Don't schools require vaccinations in order to register your children for school? Is the way around that requirement to homeschool your children? These children are not only high risk to catching childhood diseases as adults, they also develop no social skills because they grow up being isolated from other children. Wow! Wow! Wow! And again wow!

* Repost from Oct 29, 2019

DAY 12 - 30 SONGS IN 30 DAYS

 Day 12: A song from your pre-teen years

Although "For What It's Worth" is often considered an anti-war song, Stephen Stills was inspired to write the song because of the Sunset Strip curfew riots in Los Angeles in November 1966, a series of early counterculture-era clashes that took place between police and young people on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, California, the same year Buffalo Springfield had become the house band at the Whisky a Go Go. Local residents and businesses had become annoyed by how crowds of young people going to clubs and music venues along the Strip had caused late-night traffic congestion. In response, they lobbied Los Angeles County to pass local ordinances stopping loitering, and enforced a strict curfew on the Strip after 10 p.m. The young music fans, however, felt the new laws infringed upon their civil rights.

On Saturday, November 12, 1966, fliers were distributed on the Sunset Strip inviting people to join demonstrations later that day. Several of Los Angeles's rock radio stations also announced a rally outside the Pandora's Box club on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights. That evening, as many as 1,000 young demonstrators, including future celebrities such as Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda (who was handcuffed by police) gathered to protest against the curfew's enforcement. Although the rallies began peacefully, trouble eventually broke out. The unrest continued the next night, and periodically throughout the rest of November and December, forcing some clubs to shut down within weeks. It was against the background of these civil disturbances that Stills recorded "For What It's Worth" on December 5, 1966.

Cash Box said the single is a "throbbing, infectious protester circling 'round the current happenings in Cal."

"For What It's Worth" quickly became a well-known protest song. In 2006, when interviewed on Tom Kent's radio show Into the '70s, Stills pointed out that many people think the song is about the Kent State shootings of 1970, even though its release predates that event by over three years. Neil Young—Stills's bandmate in both Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY)—would later write "Ohio" in response to the events at Kent State.

An all-star version of "For What It's Worth", with Tom Petty and others, was played at Buffalo Springfield's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997; Neil Young did not attend the event.

The song is a staple of period piece films about 1960s America and the Vietnam War, such as Forrest Gump, and often used as a common shorthand to quickly establish the atmosphere of 1960s counterculture movement and protests.

The song appears in the intro to the 2005 film Lord of War, showing the lifecycle of a bullet, from manufacture to firing.

On August 17, 2020, Billy Porter sang "For What It's Worth" for the 2020 Democratic National Convention backed by Stephen Stills on guitar, a nod to the song's resurgent use in the summer 2020 American protests.

 * (borrowed from Wikipedia)

OVER THE RAINBOW

BootsandBraids stated in a comment yesterday that I was brave, but while I may have spent my whole life being fearless I'm also foolish to cast caution to the wind as many times as I have. I'm lucky nothing bad has ever happened to me in any of these lapses of judgment on my part. I need to think before I act in the future. So for what it's worth I want to thank you for helping me define and clarify my actions.

The other night while chatting with a friend I had an amazing lightbulb moment. Suddenly everything became crystal clear, but in doing so it didn't make me feel better it made me feel empty. You see, I was told to trust my instincts, but to that I replied trusting my instinsts was the fastest route to OZ there is. Are my instincts really that bad? That flawed? I guess what I meant by that is with me you get a guaranteed adventure and who doesn't want an adventure? Adventures are full of fun and fantasy! It made me really sad because that's all there is...I'm just a bunch of adventures and nothing more. I'm Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds!

I want to be more than just Dorothy following the Yellow Brick Road or to be more than just Alice in Wonderland. I don't want to be just someone's adventure. Yes, adventures are great and we remember them always, but they end. The conclusions live on forever but here I am alone. I want the adventures to end or I want to find another adventurer...the male version of me. Is there one? Geez! I've been searching a very long time and that unicorn is an elusive creature. The next time I write I'll fill you in on what I've encountered to date.

DAY 11 - 30 SONGS IN 30 DAYS

 Day 11: A song you never get tired of

"Gimme Shelter" was written by the Rolling Stones' lead vocalist Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards, the band's primary songwriting team. Richards began working on the song's signature opening riff in London while Jagger was away filming Performance with Richards' then-girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg. In his autobiography Life, Richards revealed that the tension of the song was inspired by his jealousy at seeing the relationship between Pallenberg and Jagger, and his suspicions of an affair between them.

As released, the song begins with Richards performing a guitar intro, soon joined by Jagger's lead vocal. Of Let It Bleed's bleak world view, Jagger said in a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone magazine:

Well, it's a very rough, very violent era. The Vietnam War. Violence on the screens, pillage and burning. And Vietnam was not war as we knew it in the conventional sense. The thing about Vietnam was that it wasn't like World War II, and it wasn't like Korea, and it wasn't like the Gulf War. It was a real nasty war, and people didn't like it. People objected, and people didn't want to fight it ... That's a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It's apocalypse; the whole record's like that.

Similarly, on NPR in 2012:

It was a very moody piece about the world closing in on you a bit ... When it was recorded, early '69 or something, it was a time of war and tension, so that's reflected in this tune. It's still wheeled out when big storms happen, as they did the other week [during Hurricane Sandy]. It's been used a lot to evoke natural disaster.

The song's inspiration was not initially Vietnam or social unrest, however, but Richards seeing people scurrying for shelter from a sudden rain storm. According to him:

I had been sitting by the window of my friend Robert Fraser's apartment on Mount Street in London with an acoustic guitar when suddenly the sky went completely black and an incredible monsoon came down. It was just people running about looking for shelter – that was the germ of the idea. We went further into it until it became, you know, rape and murder are 'just a shot away'.

The recording features guest vocals by Merry Clayton, recorded at a last-minute late-night recording session in Los Angeles during the mixing phase, arranged by her friend and record producer Jack Nitzsche. After the first verse is sung by Jagger, Clayton enters and they share the next three verses. A harmonica solo by Jagger and guitar solo by Richards follow. Then, with great energy, Clayton repeatedly sings "Rape, murder! It's just a shot away! It's just a shot away!", almost screaming the final stanza. She and Jagger then repeat the line "It's just a shot away" and finish with repeats of "It's just a kiss away". When speaking of her inclusion in the recording, Jagger stated in the 2003 book According to the Rolling Stones that the Rolling Stones' producer Jimmy Miller thought of having a female singer on the track and told fellow producer Nitzsche to contact one: "The use of the female voice was the producer's idea. It would be one of those moments along the lines of 'I hear a girl on this track – get one on the phone.'" Summoned from bed around midnight by Nitzsche, Clayton – about four months pregnant – made her recording with just a few takes and then returned home to bed. It remains the most prominent contribution to a Rolling Stones track by a female vocalist.

At about 2:59 into the song, Clayton's voice cracks under the strain; once during the second refrain on the word "shot", then on the word "murder" during the third refrain, after which Jagger is faintly heard exclaiming "Woo!" in response to Clayton's powerful delivery. Upon returning home, Clayton suffered a miscarriage, attributed by some sources to her exertions during the recording.

Merry Clayton's name was erroneously written on the original release, appearing as "Mary". Her name is also listed as "Mary" on the 2002 Let It Bleed remastered CD.

The song was recorded in London at Olympic Studios in February and March 1969; the vocals were recorded in Los Angeles at Sunset Sound Recorders and Elektra Studios in October and November that same year. Nicky Hopkins played piano, Jimmy Miller played percussion, Charlie Watts played drums, Bill Wyman played bass, Jagger played harmonica and sang backup vocals with Richards and Clayton. Guitarist Brian Jones was present during the early sessions but did not contribute, Richards being credited with both rhythm and lead guitars on the album sleeve. For the recording, Richards used an Australian-made Maton SE777, a large single-cutaway hollowbody guitar, which he had previously used on "Midnight Rambler". The guitar barely survived the recording before literally falling apart. "[O]n the very last note of 'Gimmie Shelter,'" Richards told Guitar World in 2002, "the whole neck fell off. You can hear it on the original take."

 

*(borrowed from Wikipedia)

THE BRICK WALL

Sometime after my divorce in 1998, I tried online dating with no real success. I likened it to repeatedly beating my head against a brick wall. So why am I even comtemplating doing it again? That's a very good question! I guess the best answer to that is that I'm either a glutton for punishment or that I have some eternal optimism buried deep within me. Since I decided to throw myself into the meat market again, I decided to share a few of my online dating stories from back when I did this the first time. 

Actually, I responded to this gentlemen’s ad online. The words he had written tugged at my heart and I felt almost duty bound to respond. After e-mailing and talking on the phone for several weeks, one Saturday evening about 6:30 p.m. he called me and asked me out to dinner. I explained I had been cleaning house all day, hadn’t even had a shower yet and was worn out. He said it didn’t matter and to just throw on a pair of jeans and we’d have casual dinner. Although it was on the spur of the moment, I love spontaneity, so I accepted with the stipulation he had to give me at least an hour to get ready. His drive to pick me up would be at least that long, so he said that wouldn’t be a problem.

As he drove, he called me on his cell phone a few times with the last time being about 10 minutes from my house. We talked until he arrived at my place. During this last conversation he told me he was allergic to strawberries and had inadvertently consumed some in a drink the day before and had broken out in a rash. This was not a problem and I asked him out of concern about the allergy and how he treated the rash. He also, at this point mentioned that his office staff referred to him as looking like a retired football player. That certainly wasn’t a problem. That just meant he was a rugged man. Well, let me tell you that when he got out of his car I almost fell over. If it had been daylight, he would have blocked out the sun!

When Jimmy Johnson was the coach for the Dallas Cowboys, he had a thing for BIG men on his offensive line.....somewhere in the neighborhood of 350lbs each. This guy made them look tiny!!!!! Okay, I’m not into looks and knew I could handle sitting through dinner with this man so his size was unimportant, but when we went inside the restaurant and I saw his allergic reaction, I lost my appetite. I’m no doctor, but whatever was all over his skin was more than one day old. It was scaly patches covering all visible skin with some of the patches having scabs. Not to sound gross, but some patches had scabs that were open and looked like they were oozing. Now, being the person I am...I could have probably even handled that, but as he sat through dinner telling me what I should and shouldn’t do with my poor dismal life and nothing I said was right in his eyes, he suddenly transformed from a very sweet, compassionate person I had gotten to know on the phone to an overbearing egotistical tyrant.

Everything I had done, he had done better. I got to the point where I just wanted to get through dinner and go home, but he had other ideas. He prolonged the agony by insisting on dessert which included showing me a portfolio of pictures of his ex-wife he still had in his wallet. He took extreme pride in pointing out how good she looks in a bikini. I sat in amazement wondering how much more I could tolerate when he started telling me he couldn’t stay out late because he had to fly out to DC early that next morning to testify before the Congress or Senate on some subject. At that point I was so tone deaf, I really couldn’t do anything more than try to imagine this HUGE OOZING male sitting in front of them speaking about anything. I smiled and told him I would make sure I turned the TV on in the morning so I could watch him testify......needless to say, he never appeared on TV and I never got asked out for a second date. As broken hearted as I was, I managed to pull myself together and struggle onward to be captivated by the next perfect man.

DAY 10 - 30 SONGS IN 30 DAYS

 Day 10: A song that makes you sad

Yusuf Islam (born Steven Demetre Georgiou; 21 July 1948), commonly known by his stage names Cat Stevens, Yusuf, and Yusuf / Cat Stevens, is a British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His musical style consists of folk, pop, rock, and, later in his career, Islamic music. He returned to making secular music in 2006. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.

His 1967 debut album and its title song "Matthew and Son" both reached top ten in the UK charts. Stevens' albums Tea for the Tillerman (1970) and Teaser and the Firecat (1971) were certified triple platinum in the US. His 1972 album Catch Bull at Four went to No.1 on the Billboard 200 and spent weeks at the top of several other major charts. He earned ASCAP songwriting awards in 2005 and 2006 for "The First Cut Is the Deepest", which has been a hit for four artists. His other hit songs include "Father and Son", "Wild World", "Moonshadow", "Peace Train", and "Morning Has Broken".

Stevens converted to Islam in December 1977, and adopted the name Yusuf Islam the following year. In 1979, he auctioned all of his guitars for charity, and left his musical career to devote himself to educational and philanthropic causes in the Muslim community. He has since bought back at least one of these guitars as a result of the efforts of his son Yoriyos. He was embroiled in a long-running controversy regarding comments he made in 1989, about the death fatwa placed on author Salman Rushdie in response to the publication of Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. His current stance is that he never supported the fatwa: "I was cleverly framed by certain questions. I never supported the fatwa." He has received two honorary doctorates and awards for promoting peace as well as other humanitarian awards.

In 2006, he returned to pop music by releasing his first new studio album of new pop songs in 28 years, entitled An Other Cup. With that release and subsequent ones, he dropped the surname "Islam" from the album cover art – using the stage name Yusuf as a mononym. In 2009, he released the album Roadsinger and, in 2014, he released the album Tell 'Em I'm Gone and began his first US tour since 1978. His second North American tour since his resurgence, featuring 12 shows in intimate venues, ran from 12 September to 7 October 2016. In 2017, he released the album The Laughing Apple, now using the stage name Yusuf / Cat Stevens, using the Cat Stevens name for the first time in 39 years. In September 2020, he released Tea for the Tillerman 2, a reimagining of his classic album Tea for the Tillerman to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

 * (borrowed from Wikipedia)

DAY 9 - 30 SONGS IN 30 DAYS

 Day 9: A song that makes you happy

*It has become a tradition for many classic rock and adult album alternative radio stations to play the song each Thanksgiving. Despite its use of the slur "faggots", radio stations generally present the song as originally recorded, and the Federal Communications Commission has never punished a station for playing it. When performing the song in later years, Guthrie began to change the line to something less offensive and often topical: during the 1990s and 2000s, the song alluded to the Seinfeld episode "The Outing" by saying "They'll think you're gay—not that there's anything wrong with that," and in 2015, Guthrie used the line "They'll think they're trying to get married in some parts of Kentucky", a nod to the controversy of the time surrounding county clerk Kim Davis.

By the late 1970s, Guthrie had removed the song from his regular concert repertoire. In 1984, Guthrie, who was supporting George McGovern's ultimately unsuccessful comeback bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, revived "Alice's Restaurant" to protest the Reagan Administration's reactivation of the Selective Service System registrations. That version has not been released on a commercial recording; at least one bootleg of it from one of Guthrie's performances exists. It was this tour, which occurred near the 20th anniversary of the song (and continued as a general tour after McGovern dropped out of the race), that prompted Guthrie to return the song to his playlist every ten years, usually coinciding with the anniversary of either the song or the incident. The 30th anniversary version of the song includes a follow-up recounting how he learned that Richard Nixon had owned a copy of the song, and he jokingly suggested that this explained the famous 18½-minute gap in the Watergate tapes.

Guthrie rerecorded his entire debut album for his 1997 CD Alice's Restaurant: The Massacree Revisited, on the Rising Son label, which includes this expanded version. The 40th anniversary edition, performed at and released as a recording by the Kerrville Folk Festival, made note of some parallels between the 1960s and the Iraq War and George W. Bush administration. Guthrie revived the song for the 50th anniversary edition in 2015, which he expected would be the last time he would do so. In 2018, Guthrie began the "Alice's Restaurant: Back by Popular Demand" Tour, reuniting with members of his 1970s backing band Shenandoah. The tour, which features Guthrie's daughter Sarah Lee Guthrie as the opening act, was scheduled to wrap up in 2020. To justify bringing the song back out of its usual ten-year sequence, he stated that he was doing so to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the film version of the song. The tour ended in 2019 and was later confirmed to have been Guthrie's last; he suffered a career-ending stroke in November of that year and announced his retirement in October 2020.

* (borrowed from Wikipedia)