Day: March 24, 2024

Sunday Poser — What, Me Worry?

Fandango6 Comments

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

Are you worried about your future, personally, or about your country? What saddens or worries you about the future?

I’m not worried about my personal future because there’s simply not that much of it left. What will be will be, as they say. The only “concern” I have is which will go first, my mind or my body.

On the broader scale, however, I am very worried. I am worried that many, if not most, Republicans still support Donald Trump. He is the man who tried to overthrow an election by inciting a siege of the U.S. Capitol Building, and who has been charged with 91 felonies in four criminal cases this past year, has continued to tell The Big Lie, along with thousands of little ones, was twice impeached as president, and has literally pledged turn America into an autocracy. And Republicans have made it clear that despite Trump being considered the worst president in the history of the United States, he is their man. They don’t judge Trump, they love him.

If Trump doesn’t either get convicted and sent to jail or die between now and November 5th, I don’t see how he loses to Biden again. And then it’s all over but the shouting for democracy in America.

And on top of that, we are still doing little to address climate change. We are still in states of war for territorial gains, religious purposes, or both. Or to satisfy the egotistical, narcissistic needs of the men in charge. In the U.S. we are on the precipice of a civil war based upon political ideologies, racism, and nationalism.

Honestly, I think we are going to continue in this downward spiral until we either destroy one another and/or destroy the planet.

But it’s not for myself that I worry about these matter. I’ll likely be dead before all the shit hits the fan. But I feel bad for my young grandchildren. What kind of world will we leave them with?

Cellpic Sunday — Pyramid

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.

The photo below was taken on June 7, 2016 using my iPhone 6. My wife and I were joining our daughter, whose office at the time was in San Francisco’s Financial District, adjacent to the iconic Transamerica Pyramid, which is center stage in the photo below.

The Transamerica Pyramid is a pyramid-shaped 48-story skyscraper that is the second tallest building in the San Francisco skyline. A popular tourist site, the building stands at 853 feet (260 m). On its completion in 1972, it was the tallest building in San Francisco and the eighth-tallest building in the world. However, in 2018, the recently constructed Salesforce Tower surpassed the Pyramid’s height by around 200 feet.

While Transamerica Corporation still uses the image of the building as the company’s logo, it no longer owns or occupies the Pyramid, having moved its U.S. headquarters to Baltimore, Maryland. In 2020, the Transamerica Pyramid was sold to a New York City investor and the building is now undergoing a renovations.

Song Lyric Sunday — Teach Your Children

Fandango17 Comments

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim Adams has asked us to find a song that is about children and/or families, suggested, once again, by Nancy, aka The Sicilian Storyteller. The song I’m going with this week is “Teach Your Children” from Crosby Stills Nash & Young.

“Teach Your Children” was written by Graham Nash in 1968 when he was still a member of the Hollies. The song was recorded and released in 1970 for the album Déjà Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. As a single, the song peaked at number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts that year.

The lyrics deal with the often difficult relationship he had with his father, who spent time in prison. But Nash was also genuinely concerned that if we didn’t teach our children a better way of dealing with our fellow human beings, humanity would be in great danger.

Nash allegedly wrote the song while under the influence of hash. He taught it to the rest of the band in one day in the studio. Nash said, “When I wrote ‘Teach Your Children’ and ‘Our House,’ we didn’t know what we were doing. This sounds pretty fun, we can sing this, let’s do it! And then all of a sudden people are singing it back to me forty years later.” He noted that ‘Teach Your Children” started out as a slightly funky English folk song but Stephen Stills put a country beat to it and turned it into a hit record.

Jerry Garcia performed the pedal steel guitar part of this track. He had been playing steel guitar for only a short period of time. Garcia played on this album in exchange for harmony lessons for the Grateful Dead, who were at the time recording their acoustic albums Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty.

Here are the lyrics to “Teach Your Children.”

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good-bye.
Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

FOWC with Fandango — Share

Fandango15 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 “share.”

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, ÿplease 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.