(Paraphrasing Roman satirist and poet Juvenal )… The population has become complacent and easily satisfied with the mundane — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just THREE things:
BREAD and CIRCUSES and . . . OHO
Music begins at 8:00 (on the patio)
or, in the case of less-than-desirable weather, at 9:00 (in the restaurant)
It makes me think of all the beautiful music I've heard
And brings to mind a kind of paradise
It just may be some kind of wonderland magically
Still don't know how this fortune came to me
All the things I see
When I hear the sound of your voice
When I hear the sound of your voice
If feels to me like warmth from sitting in front of a fire
Light of my life you always show the way
Gleam in your eye a spark igniting the fire inside
Burning so bright the way I feel for you
It's like a dream come true
When I hear the sound of your voice
When I hear the sound of your voice
All of my being depends upon you
That's for sure
You're my refuge in a stormy sea
The sun above that shines on me
I thought that love such as this could be found
Only in movies
Just like searching for a pot of gold
Follow the rainbow and do what you're told
Just when you think it's all been said and it's been done before
Should I explain how you're affecting me
It's not control it's more an influence over my soul
Covering all like colors brilliantly
Canvas brush palette three
When I hear the sound of your voice
When I hear the sound of your voice
Yeah. I said the Pope. Don't know why, but I dreamed the other night that I was elected Pope (and I don't recall that I was even running). Well, actually I do know why I dreamed I was elected Pope.
I recently read "In God's Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I" by David Yallop and am in the midst of "Illustrissimi: The Letters of Pope John Paul I" by Albino Luciani.
Not that by any stretch of the imagination do these things qualify me for the office of Pope. Obviously tuna salad with extra onion and two boiler-makers do indeed qualify me to DREAM that I have attained the office of Pope.
The first action that I took in my new position, if I recall the dream correctly, was RUN. I'm not sure why I ran nor why I was being chased. But run I did. And all the while I was pondering the great changes that I will make as the new Pope. I almost made sense that I was being chased in light of the radical nature of those changes.
Not sure if I would have been a good Pope. . . or a BAD one. . .
(from wikipedia.com)
"Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! ("Look! Up in the sky!" "It's a bird!" "It's a plane!" "It's Superman!")... Yes, it's Superman ... strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men! Superman ... who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way! And now, another exciting episode, in the Adventures of Superman!"
Unfortunately for we who live in 2013 American, 'truth, justice and the American way' is now an oxymoron.
". . .Beginning with the unforgettable "Green Green Grass of Home", Curly Putman has written or co-written an endless stream of smashes, including the million air-play, "My Elusive Dreams", "D-I-V-O-R-C-E", "Blood Red And Going Down", "It Don't Feel Like Sinnin' To Me, "It's A Cheatin' Situation" and "He Stopped Loving Her Today", just to name the #1's.
Curly wasn't born and raised with "great future staring him in the face," like the TV Waltons. Curly was the son of a sawmill man, reared on a mountain that bore that family name. About six or eight families lived on Putman Mountain, mostly descendants of a one-armed Methodist preacher named Jesse Putman, who first brought the holy writ to the mountain. . .
. . . After his discharge (from the service), Curly started picking with a band in Hunstville, AL, and there during one of his gigs, he met his future wife, Bernice. Soon, they started going together and were married in 1956. Thus began a long odyssey of discouragement and frustration remarkably echoed in Curly's "My Elusive Dreams: (You Followed Me To Texas/You Followed Me To Utah/We Didn't Find It There So We Moved On). The places were changed, but the pain was the same. "We moved to Chicago, but I didn't like it there too well, so I moved back to Alabama, working in the sawmill with my dad and going to trade school in Decatur, tried to learn piano tuning…anything to stick to music in some way. "We were barely getting by, so we moved to Huntsville and I went to work for the Thom Mcan Shoe Co. Eventually, Curly had a couple of songs recorded by Marion Worth and Charlie Walker, so he jumped at the chance to sell shoes in Nashville. After a short time in Nashville, however, he was transferred to Memphis. "I was so discouraged about having to leave Nashville," Curly recalls, "that I quit Thom Mcan in Memphis and went back to Huntsville and took a job in a record shop owned by a local radio personality. At night I played steel in a local band.
In the fall of 1963 Curly's luck took an abrupt change for the better. While visiting Nashville, during the annual DJ convention, he ran into Tree Publishing company executive Buddy Killen, whom he had known slightly in earlier days. Buddy casually mentioned that Tree might have a song plugging job open after the first of the year. "I came to talk to Buddy and Jack Stapp (the owner of Tree) and started working for them in January of 1964
"I guess I learned as much about writing by plugging songs for Tree as anything else I've ever done," says Curly. Yet month after month was passing and nothing was happening save a few small, inconsequential records. Was the elusive dream about to become undone altogether?
Then, one day about a year later, a bit of sheer magic struck. "One Sunday afternoon, I came up to Tree's office. No one was around. I just started fooling around and suddenly it fell in place. The surprise ending about dreaming made the song. I guess I worked on it for about two hours. I felt like I really had something, because it touched me very deeply. But, I didn't know how commercial it was because it was such a down-home song." The down-home song was "Green Green Grass of Home.
"I played the song for bunches of people over five or six months before it was ever cut, first Johnny Darrell," said curly. Then things began to happen. Porter Wagoner covered the Darrell record and had a top five country hit. Then, Jerry Lee Lewis had a chart record on the song. Tom Jones heard Jerry Lee's cut and was so impressed that he recorded it. His record became a top five pop smash in the united stated and number one almost everywhere else. The Tom Jones record sold between ten and twelve million copies throughout the world. Since then, over four hundred other artists have recorded the song in most of the world's major languages.
Since "Green Green Grass of Home," Curly's songs have been recorded by multitudes, including Charlie Rich, Tammy Wynette, dean martin, Wayne Newton, George Jones, Charley Pride, Conway Twitty, Dolly Parton, Bobbie Gentry, Glen Campbell, Nancy Sinatra, Roger Miller, T.G. Sheppard, The Kendalls, Andy Williams, Jim Nabors, Issac Hayes and Millie Jackson, Johnny Duncan, Bobby Vinton, John Conlee, Roy Clark, Elvis Presley, George Jones and almost every other country artist of consequence. And still, he continues to write, patiently and well, unable to fill the melancholy hole in his heart that refuses to ever let him rest satisfied and content to rejoice in a job well done. . ."
(from Illustrissimi by Albino Luciani [Pope John Paul I])
[from a letter to G. K. Chesterton. . . ]
". . . Progress that involves men who don't recognize a singe Father in God becomes a constant danger: without a parallel moral progress, which is continuous and internal, it develops what is lowest and cruellest in man, making him a machine possessed by machines, a number manipulated by numbers; he becomes what Papini called 'a raving savage, who, to satisfy his predatory, destructive, and licentious instincts, no longer uses a club, but has the immense forces of nature and mechanical invention to draw upon.'
Yes, I know there are plenty of people who think the opposite of this, They consider religion a consoling dream, invented by oppressed people who imagine another world, a non-existent world in which they can later find what is stolen from them today by their oppressors. These oppressors have arranged the whole thing for their own benefit, to keep the oppressed underfoot and to quieten the instinct towards a class struggle, an instinct that, were it not for religion, would urge them to fight.
It is no good reminding these people that the Christian religion itself favours the revival of proletarian awareness, that is exalts the poor and foresees a just future. . ."
". . .Oh, I was probably one of those rather stiff people from the suburbs - I think some of us did understand, and we kept coming back for more, and more, and more. I remember being very upset when they finally finished their stint at the Garrick Theatre and went back to LA. I felt as if the real heart had gone out of New York City, and I had to get back on with my conservatory music training life, which seemed very dull after this. . . "
“. . . A couple of years ago, when I heard that Frank was ill, I called him up. For 14 years we had no contact at all. He invited me to the house and we enjoyed some really nice visits with each other. Last June ('93) he called and asked if he could sample some of my stuff. I was shocked because I hadn't touched a pair of mallets since March of '77. I ended up practicing for 14 hours, which was all the time I could get together in the context of my life now. I spent four days at Frank's house sampling. This was really a miracle for me - that I could be reunited with him and still have something to offer. . ."
(btw, Ruth is at 2:54)
