The Mother’s Day 2020 Week That Was

This edition of The Week That Was is brought to you by Cool Whip Swiggle. So fresh tasting!

The first full week of May has come and gone and we’re still under house arrest. It’s gotten a little better, as some of the local restaurants have reopened their dining rooms, although they’re severely limiting the number of people that can get in at a time, which means O’Charley’s is going to be a nut house tomorrow on Mother’s Day. The Starbucks we normally frequent is reopened, although it isn’t letting people hang around there. How much longer will this go on? I wish I knew.

Speaking of Mother’s Day, if you’re a mother, stepmother, foster mother, grandmother, aunt, expectant mother, whatever, Happy Mother’s Day. And if your mother etc. is still around, call her. As Lewis Grizzard named one of his books, Don’t Forget To Call Your Mama… I Wish I Could Call Mine.

I’ve actually started listening to some of the podcasts I’m subscribed to. That’s how boring things are. So, before I get too carried away, here’s this week’s summary.

• (Song Lyric) Sunday: Pat Boone, “Speedy Gonzales”

• Monday: Little Walter, “Shake Dancer”

• Tuesday: Harmonica Fats, “Tore Up (Over You)”

• Wednesday: Carey Bell, “Last Night”

• Thursday: Jerry Portnoy, “My Babe”

• Friday: Charlie Musselwhite, “The Blues Overtook Me”

• Saturday: “Down Home Shakedown”

After making the mistake of running a battle I had already run (albeit with different contestants), I was unsure of whether I should take the winner of the first battle (Steely Dan) and have them face the winner of the second (The Kinks). Based on some of the answers I got to that question, no I won’t. Anyway, The Kinks beat The Queens of the Stone Age, almost shutting them out.

I selected a dozen “yacht rock” hits more or less at random from a more comprehensive list that I found, for your listening enjoyment.

Answered questions such as what I can break without touching it, the most useful thing I own, the silliest reason I’ve ever gotten into a fight with someone, and if I were a snake, how long I would be. I also expressed relief and gratitude that I got out to go to the dentist and from there to lunch at Chick-Fil-A.

My new series, on Yacht Rock artists, kicked off with two from Christopher Cross, certainly one of the most iconic of yacht rock artists. I also explained (well, Wikipedia did) that “yacht rock” was a name given to the genre about 20 years after it died off. Essentially, it’s soft rock from the period between the mid-’70’s to the mid-’80’s. We’ll spend a few weeks talking about the “light rock” artists from that period.

I wrote my A to Z Challenge Reflections post and talked about what a good time I had, some of the new blogs I found, and how it’s still the highlight of my blogging year. For those of you who didn’t get a chance to do as much visiting during April, the A to Z Road Trip starts a week from tomorrow. Watch the A to Z Challenge blog for instructions. It’ll be simple this year, because there weren’t that many blogs in the Challenge, so there won’t be a formal signup or anything. We’ll just use a modified version of the original master list.

I shared a question that I’m sure has been on many of our minds with all the shelter-in-place and toilet paper hoarding.

Since I had just gone through a problem with my pharmacy refilling prescriptions that had expired and being lectured by my doctor’s office that I needed to set up an appointment, I used this week’s prompt of “write a post inspired by the word ‘help'” to complain about it.

We visited KOIL in Omaha, Nebraska, where Ai’s mother came from and who remembered the station well, and checked out their survey from May 13, 1972.

The prompt was “cave,” and I chose, rather than to look at it used as a noun or verb in English, to look at it as the imperative form of the Latin verb cavēre (“beware”) as in cave canem, “beware of dog,” and talked about all the places I saw that sign as a kid and what it usually meant.

Tomorrow’s M⁴ is “songs about Mom or family,” as determined by our guest conductor, Cynthia from CCol4him’s Claymania. We’ll do another Battle of the Bands this Friday, and it won’t have anything to do with songs called “Do It Again.” I’ve got a couple of choices for Two for Tuesday and will come up with a pithy statement for Wednesday and a radio station survey for Friday. The rest of the week will all depend on the prompts I get. Be sure and join us this coming week!

Thanks to:

• Ai
• Alana
• Ally Bean
• Arlee Bird
• Barbara
• Beth
• Beth Lapin
• Bev
• Birgit
• Cathy Kennedy
• Cherdo
• Dan Antion
• Dora
• Eli Pacheco
• Eugenia
• Frederique
• Gattina
• Hilary
• J-Dub
• Janet
• Jim
• Karen Zemek
• Kat
• Laura
• Marie
• Mary B
• Max
• Melanie B Cee
• Mike
• Mrs Fever
• Paula Light
• Robin
• Sharon E. Cathcart
• Shelley
• Stacy Uncorked
• SteampunkCowCorn
• Stephen T. McCarthy
• Stroke Survivor UK
• Willow
• Anyone I missed
• Everyone who left a “like”

And that’s a wrap on this edition of The Week That Was. See you in the funny papers!