Author: John Holton

I'm a writer and blogger who writes and blogs about things that interest me.

Share Your World For March 30, 2020

It’s another Monday and it’s time to Share Your World! Melanie has the rules and the questions over at your place, in case you’d like to play along.

Pancakes, waffles or French Toast as your breakfast favorite? Yes. All three are so good I can’t choose between them.

Do you think a person’s name influences the person they become? Sometimes. Think of the Archie comics: Veronica Lodge is spoiled and pampered, Betty Cooper has to hustle for what she has, but you could give Ronnie Betty’s name and vice versa and it wouldn’t make a difference, except now Betty would be the brat and Ronnie would be the hustler. Ditto Archie and Reggie. Jughead? Jughead’s real name is Forsythe Pendleton Jones III… well, maybe in his case. Dilbert Doiley could be Marmaduke Mason (Moose’s real name) and still be a bespectacled nerd, but I don’t think "Dilbert Doiley" would fit Moose. This has gotten really weird…

But while I’m on the subject, how many people name their little girl Ethel anymore?

Would things get better or worse if humans focused on what was going well rather than what’s going wrong? I think approaching things with the idea that there’s so much that’s right helps you cope more effectively with the things that are wrong, so I think we should start with recognizing the things that are right before attempting to tackle what’s wrong.

Is math something that humans created or something we discovered? Is looking at reality mathematically an accurate representation of how things work? I think math has always been with us in nature, and we just had to discover it. A Fibonacci series (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 etc.) can be seen when you look at the way sunflower seeds are arranged, and the Fibonacci series also leads us to The Golden Ratio. Archimedes’s constant is pi (3.1415926535…) which he found by comparing the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pythagoras came up with his theory about triangles and tuning musical instruments; Kepler charted the movement of the planets. But the seeds in a sunflower would be arranged the same way whether we had Fibonacci or not; the ratio of a circle to its diameter would be the same without Archimedes, and so on. Math helps us model what nature is doing anyway. So I do think that looking at reality mathematically is an accurate representation of how things work.

Gratitude: None of the members of my family (which is big and scattered all over the US) has come down with Covid-19.

And with that… see you in the funny papers!

Monday’s Music Moves Me: Walking

Image by Michael Drummond from Pixabay

Athena the Cat Goddess wants songs about walking, and I bet most of us wouldn’t mind taking a walk. Here are ten songs about walking.

  1. Patsy Cline, "Walkin’ After Midnight" One of the great ladies of Country music, Patsy had a #2 hit on the Country chart with this in 1957. It also reached #12 on the Pop chart.
  2. Muddy Waters with George "Harmonica" Smith, "Walkin’ Thru The Park" From a 1971 performance.
  3. Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "Walkin’ Blues" Paul originally recorded this on his 1966 album East-West, then recorded it again on his 1972 album Better Days. This is a live performance from 1978.
  4. Kyu Sakamoto, "Sukiyaki (Ue O Muite Arokou) The Japanese title means "I Look Up As I Walk," but the record company, reasoning the American audience wouldn’t be able to pronounce the Japanese title, named it "Sukiyaki." Must have worked, because it was a #1 hit for three weeks here in 1963.
  5. The Rooftop Singers, "Walk Right In" A cover of a Gus Cannon song from 1929, it reached #1 for two weeks in 1963 and sold a lot of 12-string guitars.
  6. Johnny Smith, "Walk Don’t Run!" Usually I use The Ventures’ cover, but this is the original from 1954. There’s a story that someone arranged for Johnny to have dinner with The Ventures, who didn’t know that he had written their biggest hit, and he never let on. Chet Atkins has also covered this.
  7. Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots Are Made For Walkin’" Legend has it that Frank was less than thrilled that "Nancy With The Laughing Face" was dressed like this. It was an international #1 hit in 1966.
  8. The Four Seasons, "Walk Like A Man" The Jersey Boys recorded this in 1963 on Vee Jay Records, and it was their third consecutive #1 hit (after "Sherry" and "Big Girls Don’t Cry").
  9. The Four Tops, "Walk Away Renee" I was going to use The Left Banke’s original, then saw this and liked it better. It only went to #14 on the Hot 100 and #15 on the R&B chart, but went to #2 in Canada, #3 in the UK, and #5 in Ireland.
  10. Fats Domino, "I Want To Walk You Home" Fats did several songs about walking, and this might be the least well-known of them. It was a #1 hit on the R&B chart and a #8 on the Hot 100 in 1959.

And that’s Monday’s Music Moves Me for March 30, 2020.

Monday’s Music Moves Me is sponsored by X-Mas Dolly, Callie, Cathy, Alana, and Stacy, so be sure and visit them, where you can also find the Linky for the other participants.

Song Lyric Sunday/Song of the Day: Dan Hill, “Sometimes When We Touch”

So, it’s a touchy-feely Sunday, because the prompt is "touch/feel." Here’s a song from a touchy-feely period in music, the late ’70’s.

"Sometimes When We Touch" was written by Barry Mann (who has written extensively with Cynthia Weil) and Dan Hill, a Canadian singer and songwriter who had great success on the Adult Contemporary charts in the US and Canada in the late ’70’s and ’80’s. "Sometimes When We Touch," released in late 1977, reached #1 on both the Canadian Pop and Adult Contemporary charts, #3 on the Hot 100, #10 on the US Adult Contemporary chart, and #13 in the UK.

The lyrics, from AZLyrics:

You ask me if I love you
And I choke on my reply
I’d rather hurt you honestly
Than mislead you with a lie
And who am I to judge you
On what you say or do?
I’m only just beginning to see the real you

And sometimes when we touch
The honesty’s too much
And I have to close my eyes and hide
I wanna hold you til I die
Til we both break down and cry
I wanna hold you till the fear in me subsides

Romance and all its strategy
Leaves me battling with my pride
But through the insecurity
Some tenderness survives
I’m just another writer
Still trapped within my truth
A hesitant prize fighter
Still trapped within my youth

And sometimes when we touch
The honesty’s too much
And I have to close my eyes and hide
I wanna hold you til I die
Til we both break down and cry
I wanna hold you till the fear in me subsides

At times I’d like to break you
And drive you to your knees
At times I’d like to break through
And hold you endlessly

At times I understand you
And I know how hard you’ve tried
I’ve watched while love commands you
And I’ve watched love pass you by
At times I think we’re drifters
Still searching for a friend
A brother or a sister
But then the passion flares again

And sometimes when we touch
The honesty’s too much
And I have to close my eyes and hide
I wanna hold you til I die
Til we both break down and cry
I wanna hold you till the fear in me subsides

And that’s Song Lyric Sunday (and Song of the Day) for March 29, 2020.