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.
I was busy today celebrating Father’s Day with my two kids and their families. I was going to take some photos of the park we took the grandkids to play at before going out to a restaurant for a large famiky lunch. But I do want to post anything on my blog that has pictures of my actual family members. So I decided, instead to go back through my archives and found this photo from August of 2013.
My wife and I were on one of our semiannual cross-country drives we took when we were still bicoastal. We stayed in Moab, Utah while visiting Arches National Park and some other state parks outside of Moab.
I remember seeing this poster of sign outside of a travel agency in the town and thought it was not only helpful, but quite witty.
As usual, all photos used on this blog have been resized (shrunk) to make them load more quickly and take up less space in my WordPress media folder.
Our host for the weekly provocative question challenge is Jewish Young Professional, aka JYP. This week she asks us to…
…share a fun fact. It can be one you learned recently or one you’ve had in your mental trivia database forever. Bonus points if you share the source/reference.
Facts? Ha! Don’t you know we live in a post-facts world these days? Facts, truth, and reality don’t matter anymore. If we don’t like what we hear or read on the news, we simply call it “fake news.” We live in the world of alternative facts. Or facts that are altered to fit someone’s beliefs or perceptions.
Comedian Bill Maher often prefaced something he was about to say with this disclaimer: “I don’t know this for a fact…I just know it’s true.” And then there is “truthiness,” a word first coined by another comedian, Stephen Colbert, a number of years ago. Truthiness is the quality of seeming to be true based upon one’s intuition, opinion, or perception without regard to logic or factual evidence. It’s when someone feels, believes, or wishes that something is true even when it is not supported by the evidence.
We have become a society where truthiness trumps truth. We are so partisan that both sides — particularly the Republicans — have their own sets of facts and swears by them.
For example, in the 2020 presidential election, seven “swing” states attempted to submit fake electors: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In these states, groups of Republican officials and activists falsely claimed to be the legitimate electors for Donald Trump, despite him losing the popular vote in those states to Joe Biden. They signed and submitted certificates purporting to cast their states’ electoral votes for Trump, even though Biden was the actual winner. This fake electors scheme was a key part of Trump’s broader efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
In another very recent example, on June 11th, the World Bank noted in a published report…
The global economy is stabilizing, following several years of overlapping negative shocks. Despite elevated financing costs and heightened geopolitical tensions, global activity firmed in early 2024. Global growth is envisaged to reach a slightly faster pace this year than previously expected, due mainly to the continued solid expansion of the U.S. economy.
On the very same day, Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House tweeted on X…
“Everything President Biden has touched has been a disaster. We’ve got to revive the American economy again.”
There are what the Republicans call “facts,” and then there is reality.
So the one fact that I want to share is a quote from Edgar Allen Poe, who wrote…
“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
Except that in today’s post-facts world, with deepfake audios and even videos, perhaps Poe quote should be updated to…
Believe nothing you hear and nothing that you see.
For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim Adams has asked us to find a song that was played on the UK shows Top of The Pops or Ready, Steady Go suggested by Willow of willowdot21. As an American, I’ve never seen (or even heard of) either show. When I Googled “Top of the Pops,” I learned that it was a British music chart television program, made by the BBC and broadcast weekly between January, 1 1964 and July 30, 2006.
The program was the world’s longest-running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One. Each show consisted of performances of some of the week’s best-selling popular music records. It turns out that Dusty Springfield’s “I Only Want to Be with You” was the first song featured on TOTP, so that is the song I’ve chosen to feature this week.
“I Only Want to Be with You” was written by Mike Hawker and Ivor Raymonde. The song was Dusty Springfield’s debut solo single. “I Only Want to Be with You” peaked at number 4 on the UK Singles chart in January 1964 and number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Before going solo, Dusty was a member of The Springfields with her brother Tom. When Dusty went solo, her manager, Philips A&R director Johnny Franz, was looking for a song that “put this girl into the charts.” Dusty had already recorded nine solo tracks, none of which was deemed the right vehicle to launch her solo career. Hawker submitted “I Only Want to Be With You” to Franz, who, along with Dusty, approved the song, which Springfield recorded in October 1963.
In the U.S., Dusty Springfield was the second artist of the British Invasion, after the Beatles, to have a hit. This song is about a girl who has finally found the guy of her dreams — or at least she thinks so. It’s very much a teenage crush song in the same vein as many of the girl group songs Springfield loved. When she came to America and began her solo career, Dusty took more of a pop/R&B direction inspired by groups like The Shirelles and The Crystals.
Here are the lyrics to “I Only Want to Be with You.”
I don't know what it is that makes me love you so I only know I never want to let you go 'Cause you started something, oh, can't you see? That ever since we met you've had a hold on me It happens to be true, I only want to be with you
It doesn't matter where you go or what you do I want to spend each moment of the day with you Well, look what has happened with just one kiss I never knew that I could be in love like this It's crazy but it's true, I only want to be with you
You stopped and smiled at me Asked if I'd care to dance I fell into your open arms And I didn't stand a chance
Now, listen, honey, I just want to be beside you everywhere As long as we're together, honey, I don't care 'Cause you started something, oh, can't you see? That ever since we met you've had a hold on me No matter what you do, I only want to be with you
Oh, you stopped and you smiled at me Asked if I'd care to dance I fell into your open arms I didn't stand a chance
Now hear me darling, I just want to be beside you everywhere As long as we're together, honey, I don't care 'Cause you started something, oh, can't you see? That ever since we met you've had a hold on me No matter what you do, I only want to be with you
I said, no matter, no matter what you do I only want to be with you
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 “persuade.”
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.
This, That, and the Other 