Author: John Holton

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

Share Your World for September 21, 2020

It’s that time again! Melanie has the weekly list of questions for us to answer, and she also has the rules for this little exercise over at her place.

This week is the last week that Roger is supplying questions based on the Harry Potter series of books. Unlike the producers of the Harry Potter movies, he chose not to come up with two sets of questions for the final book in the series, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, one set for part 1 and the other for part 2. So here are my responses to the questions he posed…

Have you ever driven the wrong way on a one-way street? How did this come about? One of my first business trips was to a client in Canton, Ohio. I landed on a Sunday night at Canton-Akron Airport and picked up my rental car. I went outside and discovered that it had been snowing pretty heavily all day. So here I am, a relatively new driver (six months), in a city I have never been to, driving a car that I’m not familiar with, on roads that are covered with snow. The directions I got were to drive out of the airport and turn left, so that’s what I did, not realizing it was a divided highway and I was driving the wrong way. I got close to half a mile down the road when I realized I was looking at the backs of all of the signs. Everything turned out all right: there was literally no traffic, so I was able to do a 180° turn, get back to the airport, and get myself on the right side of the highway, all without causing myself bodily harm or having to explain how that happened to the authorities.

As a kid, did you ever decide to run away? Did you have a plan? Take a pet? Sandwiches? I think I threatened a time or two, but never actually got around to it. I remember the kid down the street (whose father had a heart attack and dropped dead in the hardware store not long after my own dad died), who was a friend of my brother’s, showed up at the back door with all of his worldly possessions (including a picture of his dad and a statue of the Blessed Mother) in his wagon and announced that he was leaving home. Mom, who had already been through nutty stuff with all of us (our way of mourning), invited him to dinner, called his mother and told her he was with us. After dinner, he went home, pulling his Radio Flyer behind him.

You suddenly found you have a hidden talent for playing a musical instrument. What musical instrument do you hope that accompanies your talent? Any particular song? I’m assuming you mean besides the guitar, harmonica, and bagpipes, all of which I either play now or have in the past. Having given this some thought already (one of the ways I get myself back to sleep in the middle of the night), I’d say the tenor saxophone, like the guy in Steely Dan’s "Deacon Blues."

Come to think of it, we had a piano around here for years, and I could kick myself that I never taught myself how to play. Oh well…

Do you accessorize with jewelry? No. Mary and I don’t own any, really. We have our wedding rings and her engagement ring, locked away somewhere, but we never wear them. We figure that after almost 43 years people can figure out that we’re married.

And that’s it for the Harry Potter questions. Now for the regularly-scheduled ones…

What ingredients go into YOUR favorite salad? Jell-o, fruit cocktail, and whipped cream. Served on a waffle with chocolate sprinkles.

If you care to, share something that really irritates you. The Liberty Mutual commercials with Limu Emu and Doug. The emu’s fine; it’s Doug I’d like to garotte…

What are your favorite ‘lounging around the house’ items of clothing? A golf shirt, a pair of "workout pants" (for all the working out I do — ha ha), and a pair of New Balance walking shoes. Note that this is what I wear every day, regardless of where we’re going or what we plan to do.

I’m actually grateful for a couple of things:

  1. The weather has been superb.
  2. We lost electricity about 11:00 this morning, and when it came back on, WordPress saved what I was working on.
  3. I won a year’s worth of LastPass Family, and Mary seems pretty excited about learning how to use it, so maybe we can start using more complex passwords (I already do, but she doesn’t).

See you in the funny papers!

Monday’s Music Moves Me: Autumnal Equinox

Image by Valiphotos from Pixabay

I’ll be honest: I had a hard time getting it into gear over the weekend. I spent most of the day yesterday trying to put together an appropriate playlist for today, and I couldn’t. It just wasn’t coming to me. I finally said "aah, I’ll just do it in the morning."

I’m glad I did, because I found some great music this morning, starting with maybe the best laugh I’ve had in weeks…

Then, I found this one-hour playlist put together by YouTube user Jake Westbrook of "vintage fall/autumn music."

And a second, "jazzy" playlist from YouTuber lyon, who looks like they have several others besides this. Check out their user page. This is about 22 minutes.

One more, because there are a bunch out there, this one by Odessa Hott, that’s also about 22 minutes. She also set up her playlist on Spotify, but regrets that the second song on the video isn’t available there.

So, that should give you enough music to keep busy for a while. That’s Monday’s Music Moves Me for September 21, 2020.

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

Song of the Day: Robert Palmer, “I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On”

When "I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On" came out in 1986, people seemed upset at the dancers and Robert Palmer’s "backup band" in the video, as I remember. It was written by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and done first by Cherrelle in 1985, where it scored highly on the Billboard Hot Black singles chart (#8) and Hot Dance Club play chart (#6). For Palmer, it was the fifth single released from his 1985 album Riptide, and reached #2 on the Hot 100 and #4 on the Cash Box Top 100.

Song Lyric Sunday/Song of the Day: Bruce Cockburn, “Lovers In A Dangerous Time”

Jim’s theme for this week is "music by Canadian musicians." I have Arlee Bird to thank for introducing me, in a way, to the music of Bruce Cockburn (pronounced "Coburn"). A while back, every time I’d publish a playlist and solicit the name of other songs that fit, Arlee would almost always suggest a song by Cockburn. Having learned that he was from Ottawa, Ontario (Canada’s Washington, DC) sealed the deal.

Cockburn wrote "Lovers In A Dangerous Time" and recorded it on his 1984 album, Stealing Fire. It was a Top 40 hit for him, peaking at #25 on the Canadian charts in August. YouTuber Robin Gladstone has this to say about the song six years ago:

He wrote this while walking with his then five year old daughter. He was gloomy about the state of the world and wondered how it would be for her in coming years.He was inspired by her innocence and fascination with the world.

The song has also been done by Dan Fogelberg on his 1990 album The Wild Places, and by Barenaked Ladies on the 1991 Cockburn tribute album Kick At The Darkness.

The lyrics, from AZLyrics:

Don’t the hours grow shorter as the days go by?
You never get to stop and open your eyes
One day you’re waiting for the sky to fall
The next you’re dazzled by the beauty of it all
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time

These fragile bodies of touch and taste
This vibrant skin, this hair like lace
Spirits open to the thrust of grace
Never a breath you can afford to waste

When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time

When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Sometimes you’re made to feel as if your love’s a crime
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
Got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight

When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time

Lovers in a dangerous time

Lovers in a dangerous time

Lovers in a dangerous time

Now for a bonus, here’s guitarist Lenny Breau, who was born in Maine but lived in New Brunswick and Manitoba and is in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. He starts with an improvisation followed by Toots Thielemans’s "Bluesette."

And that’s Song Lyric Sunday and Song of the Day for September 20, 2020.