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)