Day: October 29, 2023

Sunday Poser — The Good Old Days

Fandango4 Comments

For today’s Sunday Poser, Sadje wants to know…

Do you think of your past as the “Good old days”?

From a short-term perspective, I think of the days before January 14, 2023, the day I fell off a ladder and broke my left hip and my right humerus at the shoulder, as the “good old days.” I was able-bodied, could walk without a cane, and had full movement of my right arm and shoulder, without pain and fatigue.

I could go on long walks with my wife and our dog. I could ride my e-bike, sit in a car for more than an hour without my leg aching, and be able to get down on my hands and knees to play with my grandkids. So yes, relative to 2023, 2022 was the good old days.

But that’s not the question Sadje is really asking, is it? I think she’s asking about our more distant past. Like when we were growing up or as younger adults. I would say that those were simpler times. Our world was much smaller back then. There were no 24×7 cable news networks bombarding you with constant and almost instant bad news. There was no internet, no Google, no social media spreading misinformation and/or conspiracy theories. People wrote letters and called friends on the phone to share what was going in their lives.

I won’t go so far as to say it was all peace, love, and kumbaya back in the day. But it seemed to me that, perhaps with the exception of race relations in the U.S., we were less divided, less intractable, than we are today.

I don’t know. Maybe I am looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Or maybe I’m looking at the present and future through shit-stained lenses. But I believe I’m standing at the precipice of the fall of the democratic republic of the United States and of our home planet’s ability to support and sustain human life.

So yes, from that perspective, the past is, indeed, the “Good Old Days.”

Cellpic Sunday — Mission Accomplished

Fandango9 Comments

John Steiner, the blogger behind Journeys With Johnbo, has this prompt he calls Cellpic Sunday in which he asks us to post a photo that was taken with a cellphone, tablet, or another mobile device. He invites us to participate in this cellphone photo prompt by creating our own CellPic Sunday post and linking it back to his.

My cellphone photo for this week has a rather mundane story that goes with it. My wife invited our daughter’s husband’s mother to our place for lunch this past Friday. Her husband just had a stroke and he’s temporarily in a rehab facility while he is recovering.

My wife decided to make a chicken salad for lunch and sent me to the grocery store Thursday morning to pick up everything she needed. At about 3:00 on Thursday afternoon I heard her say, “Shit, I forget to tell you to get scallions.”

I got to the store and started looking for scallions in the produce department. I remembered buying scallions before but I couldn’t remember what they looked like. I thought they looked like small onions and found shallots but not scallions. I texted my wife asking if she meant shallots. “No! Scallions!” was her reply.

I saw a store employee stocking ginger root in a bin and asked him where the scallions were. I don’t think he spoke much English because he pointed to the fresh seafood counter. “No, not scallops, scallions. They are in the onion family.” He nodded and took me over and showed me leeks.

I texted my wife and asked her if leeks were okay. “No! Leeks are not the same!” I responded, telling her they didn’t have scallions. She texted, “Baby onions or spring onions. Long and very thin.”

I continued my search through the produce section and wondered if green onions could be what my wife wanted. So I took this photo with my iPhone and texted it to her.

She texted back, “That’s fine.”

Mission accomplished!

Song Lyric Sunday — Colorful Artists

Fandango14 Comments

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday theme, Jim Adams’ has asked us to find a song by an artist or group that has a color in their name. The group I’m going with is the Moody Blues, but the song I’m going with, their earliest hit record, was recorded by a group that was the Moody Blues in name only, not the Moody Blues group that most people are familiar with. That song is “Go Now!”

Before Moody Blues band members Justin Hayward and John Lodge, who became the primary songwriters in the group, came along, the driving force behind the Moody Blues band was Denny Laine.

Laine played guitar and sang lead vocals on most of the band’s songs, including this one. When Laine first heard the Bessie Banks January 1964 recording of “Go Now,” written by Larry Banks (Bessie’s husband) and Milton Bennett, he immediately told the rest of the band that they needed to record the song. They did in November 1964 and it became the first and only “big hit” from the original Moody Blues, reaching number 1 in the UK Singles Chart and peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Without any hits after “Go Now,” Laine left the band to set up his own Electric String Band in 1966. He later joined forces with Paul McCartney in Wings. Enter Hayward and Lodge, and with three of the five original Moodies — Mike Pinder, Ray Thomas, and, Graeme Edge — emerged a new Moody Blues with elements of folk rock and psychedelic styles different from the band’s rhythm and blues focus under Laine.

With the new lineup, the Moody Blues continued to perform “Go Now!” for a short time, until they began writing their own material. The band realized that continuing to play rhythm and blues covers without Laine, whose voice had been well-suited to that style, was not working. Hayward stated that the band continued playing “Go Now!” after he and Lodge joined, with different members attempting lead vocal, but that it never sounded right, so they stopped performing it live.

Laine, on the other hand, continued to perform the song in concert during his years in Wings.

Here are the lyrics to “Go Now!”

We've already said "goodbye"
Since you gotta go, oh you'd better
Go now, go now, go now (go now, ooh)
Before you see me cry?

I don't want you to tell me just what you intend to do now
'Cause how many times do I have to tell you darlin', darlin'
I'm still in love with you now
Whoa oh oh oh

We've already said "so long"
I don't want to see you go, oh you'd better
Go now, go now, go now (go now, ooh)

Don't you even try?
Tellin' me that you really don't want it to end this way
'Cause darlin', darlin', can't you see I want you to stay, yeah

Since you gotta go, oh you'd better
Go now, go now, go now (go now, ooh)
Before you see me cry
I don't want you to tell me just what you intend to do now
'Cause how many times do I have to tell you darlin', darlin'
I'm still in love, still in love with you now
Ooh ooh ooh
I don't want to see you go but darlin', you better go now

Here is the Bessie Banks original recording:

And here is Denny Laine singing lead with Paul and Linda McCartney and Wings in 1976.

FOWC with Fandango — Radio

Fandango12 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “radio.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.