There's Always Something...

What Makes Commercials Fun?

They're fun when they spoof realities that need spoofing. Like the current girl-craze of screaming in chorus.

SAMMY DAVIS, Jr : What Kind of Fool Am I/Music Of The Night

If I could pick one jazz artist to spend an evening listening to, it wouldn't be Frank or Tony - as much as I love both of them - it would be Sammy Davis, Jr. He died of lung cancer about 20 years ago. Big smoker. but he made historic steps in opening the entertainment world for blacks. He also did some of the best stuff that's been done.

Listen - and watch:

Pearl Harbor...

I was in Jr. High the day our teacher turned on the radio and we listened to this speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt - his  historic Pearl Harbor address. Chills ran up and down my spine.

Ronni, dean of elderbloggers brought back this moment yesterday with this rare video. Oddly, I could still recall certain lines almost 70 years later. One of the great moments of American history.

Rainbow Connection...

I know. I'm a sentimental slob. Yes, and I love Kermit the frog. And this little song has always appealed to me. Plus, I wanted to add something to your week-end happiness.

Whatever you may have on your mind and schedule, take a few minutes for Rainbows.

Jo Ann Made a Pie...

Coconut Cream, to be exact.

How Many Friends Can You Handle?

I have 72 friends. Well, that is friends as defined by my masters at FaceBook.

They are all ages. They come from everywhere. Some of them I even know. Others are friends through common interests (photography, clay), or family connections. I don't accept every invitation to be someone's friend. It depends on whether there seems some genuine reason why this person should have any interest in me.

All this is a puzzlement.

I really enjoy the contributions of some of these folks. They are intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, genuinely interesting. I like to think they really are, at least in a fashion, friends. I love discovering some contribution they have made. Even some youngsters are pretty darned interesting. Old timers generally more so.

But some of the friends are vapid. A few have, or develop, verbal diarrhea. They just can't shut it off. Others are so immature that one blushes at their actual stability. Some are unashamedly exhibitionists. A few are so opinionated, so sure of their ideas, so arrogant in their convictions that one wonders how anyone can bear to be around them. I couldn't.

Obviously I find myself disliking some of my friends. Not a good thing.

Every once in awhile I get to thinking it might be a good thing to prune my friend list. All I have to do is click the x next to a few names. It would certainly make the FaceBook experience more enjoyable. It would make friends more authentically one's friends.

At the same time, there are all kinds of folks around. Shouldn't we be open to all of them? Is friendship required?

I'm not so sure. What do you think?

Earth...

One of the strangest things I know is the overwhelming love I have for the earth itself.

When, each new season, I dig my hands into the earth - stir, probe, compress - smelling that ever fresh breath that comes only from that moist darkness, I fall in love all over again.

It never changes, only seems to increase in its intensity as the years go by and my kinship with it grows.

Activities, Communities and Meaning...

We belong to a modest number of real life communities. In addition, of course, there are those amorphous internet communities. Each of them is unique. All of them are the same.

Each feels a deep responsibility to keep us organized, active, on board, interested, entertained, committed, busy, involved. They deserve and subtly demand a chunk of time, talent and material possession. They get a bit paranoid if we drift off into our own world - or show signs of boredom.

The gracious ones accept the fact that it isn't all about them. Life is full of interesting possibilities. One possibility that has always beckoned me is that of finding meaning and fulfillment in exploring the siren calls of mysteries that surround us, call us quietly and by name = but only permit one or two spirits at a time.

Can Dead Bodies Live On?

Each morning I read Garrison Keillor's Writers' Almanac. Today's was especially meaningful as Jo Ann and I have both designated our bodies for medical research - when those two days eventually come.

Here's a poem for your reflection from Garrison, Jo Ann and me.

The White Museum

by George Bilgere

My aunt was an organ donor
and so, the day she died,
her organs were harvested
for medical science.
I suppose there must be people
who list, under "Occupation,"
"Organ Harvester," people for whom
it is always harvest season,
each death bringing its bounty.
They spend their days
loading wagonloads of kidneys,
whole cornucopias of corneas,
burlap sacks groaning with hearts and lungs
and the pale green sprouts of gall bladders,
and even, from time to time,
the weighty cauliflower of a brain.

And perhaps today,
as I sit in this café, watching the snow
and thinking about my aunt,
a young medical student somewhere
is moving through the white museum
of her brain, making his way slowly
from one great room to the next.
Here is the gallery of her girlhood,
with that great canvas depicting her father
holding her on his lap in the backyard
of their bungalow in St. Louis.
And here is a sketch of her
the summer after her mother died,
walking down a street in Berlin
when the broken city was itself
a museum. And here
is a small, vivid oil of the two of us
sitting in a café in London
arguing over the work of Constable
or Turner, or Francis Bacon
after a visit to the Tate.

I want you to know, as you sit there
with your microscope and your slides,
there's no need to be reverent before these images.
That's the last thing she would have wanted.
But do be respectful. Speak quietly.
No flash photography. Tell your friends
you saw something beautiful.

"The White Museum" by George Bilgere. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Nothin...

Townes van Zandt recorded this in a private Houston, Texas concert several years ago. There's something about it that - fascinates? - haunts? - me. I'm not sure what it is.

But it does.