My About Me section is meant to provide my readers with an honest picture of myself that gives a little bit of background information on who I am and I will wrap this up with a catchy image. I am a story teller and I like to use my imagination. I am interested in many things, but a few of my favorites are watching the NFL and playing golf. I do not like onions and I always make sure that my food does not contain any. I had two wonderful parents, my dad Herb Adams was a television repairman and my mother Mary Adams was mostly a stay at home mom. They are both deceased now and I miss them.
I am a retired Electrical Engineer specialized in control systems. I held many different positions because I worked mostly as a consultant. I did work as a Substitute Teacher, for a while, but the kids were awful. I am happiest when I am writing, as this gives my life has a purpose. Forming a sentence with meaningful words that articulate my inner feelings is an everyday quest for me. Every writer needs to tell their story, and all writers have their own style. All stories starts off with characters, who are able to entertain the reader. Creating realistic lovable characters is the best way to tell a story. If you are able to develop characters that become real to you, then you will know exactly what they will do say and do next and this lets your story progress to the completion.
Writing changes everything and having the calling to create something new through the power of words is much more than just making marks on a page. Once written, a book can be used by many people to learn and be entertained. The act of writing can be compared to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as it contains an inherent fuzziness, because various people may derive different meanings from reading the same words. You can never know the true nature of written words and the best I can do is hope is that people will understand the meanings that I am trying to convey. There are no clear-cut laws on how to write and it is impossible for me to determine how my readers react to my books.
After many years of working as the guitar player and the main songwriter for The Band, Robbie Robertson took a break from music when they disbanded in 1976 and he spent a few years doing film scores for his pal Martin Scorsese who directed The Last Waltz and he acted with Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter. In 1987, he returned to pop music for his self-titled solo debut album on Geffen Records. The album won the Juno Award for “Album of the Year”, and producers Lanois and Robertson won the “Producer of the Year” Juno award, both in 1989 as there were no Juno Awards held in 1988. The songwriting was top notch, but his singing was a true surprise, as previously his only lead singing credit came on the Band’s Last Waltz album on the song ‘Out of the Blue’.
Robertson recruited fellow Canadian Daniel Lanois (of U2 and Peter Gabriel production fame) to create a new sonic landscape. While Lanois was working with U2, he invited Robertson to come out to Ireland to work in the home studio where U2 were recording, and Robertson got a chance to work with Peter Gabriel in his home studio. The album also featured many other top-notch guest stars, like the Neville Brothers, The Band’s Rick Danko and Garth Hudson, as well as studio veterans Tony Levin, Terry Bozzio and Larry Klein. Tony Levin was in King Crimson, Terry Bozzio made his name working with Frank Zappa and Larry Klein is an award-winning producer and collaborator, who has worked on numerous albums with Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Don Henley, Warren Zevon, and Celine Dion. ‘Broken Arrow’ reverberates with Gabriel’s signature Yamaha CP-80 electric piano.
Songwriters are faced with many possibilities when they compose music, and in this song ‘Broken Arrow’, Robbie Robertson decided to use the exact same note, the fifth note of sol or G for the first seven notes of the chorus to create a beautiful and haunting melody in part just by varying the rhythm of the notes. In 1991, this became a top twenty hit for Rod Stewart, peaking at #20 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart and it went to #3 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and the video features Rachel Hunter, Rod’s wife at the time. It was a staple for months on both MTV and VH1.
This album took Robbie Robertson back to his native American roots, as he was born in Toronto on July 5, 1943, to a Jewish gambler and a Mohican woman. After his father died, Robbie began spending his summers with relatives on the Six Nations reserve near Brantford, Ont., and this was his first contact with spiritual people who had this connection with Mother Earth. This song looks at issues from an Indian point of view, a perspective that opened the door for Robbie so he could go deeper into exploring his feelings of being a Native American. The Native American imagery in this song abounds, in a much more personal way than it did on the songs that he did with the Band. To native Americans, an arrow represents protection and defense and a broken arrow represents peace, reconciliation, the start of a new chapter, a time when conflict ends. The image of rain, rain clouds, or a raindrop is considered to be a positive symbol, because water is a substance of life and a bottle of rain represents prosperity.
Who else is gonna bring you a broken arrow
Who else is gonna bring you a bottle of rain
There he goes moving across the water
There he goes turning my whole world around
Do you feel what I feel
Can we make that so it’s part of the deal
I gotta hold you in these arms of steel
Lay your heart on the line this time
I want to breathe when you breathe
When you whisper like that hot summer breeze
Count the beads of sweat that cover me
Didn’t you show me a sign this time
Who else is gonna bring you a broken arrow
Who else is gonna bring you a bottle of rain
There he goes moving across the water
There he goes turning my whole world around
Can you see what I see
Can you cut behind the mystery
I will meet you by the witness tree
Leave the whole world behind
I want to come when you call
I’ll get to you if I have to crawl
They can’t hold me with these iron walls
We’ve got mountains to climb
Who else is gonna bring you a broken arrow
Who else is gonna bring you a bottle of rain
There he goes moving across the water
There he goes turning my whole world around
Turning my whole world around
Turning my whole world around
Turning my whole world around
Turning my whole world around
Written for Song Lyric Sunday where the prompt is Breeze/Cloud/Sky/Wind.
The House of the Spirits is a semi-autobiographical novel by Chilean author Isabel Allende that was first published in 1982. Clara del Valle the main character, has paranormal powers and she starts keeping a detailed diary of her life after the priest accused her of being possessed by the devil. Clara can predict the future, interpret dreams, and move furniture around telekinetically. The temporal structure of the novel is a flashback of a family saga that spans four generations of the Trueba family, however events are not recorded chronologically, which makes following the plot a bit complicated. It focuses primarily on the lives of two women in the clan, Clara del Valle and Alba de Satigny, and the connection between them. The story of this family is pieced together over fifty years, from the early twenties to about 1974, after Clara’s husband Esteban and her granddaughter Alba refer to these journals.
Clara starts out as a young girl, and she receives a new pet, which is an enormous dog that she names Barrabás. Clara gets a premonition of an accidental death in her family, and not long after, her sister Rosa the Beautiful dies, after accidentally poisoned by a swig of brandy that an assassin intended for her father to take, a hopeful Senator running for office. Clara watches the autopsy that is done on her sister and she is traumatized and stops speaking. The man Rosa was about to marry, Esteban Trueba is a miner who lives in poverty. Esteban is broken when Rosa dies, and he devotes his life to rebuilding his family’s no longer occupied estate and plantation. The tenants fear Esteban’s iron fist, quick temper, and voracious sexual appetite, which tempts him to rape every peasant girl on the property and one of them is Pancha Garcia, who gives birth to their son, Esteban Garcia.
Esteban spends time at a local brothel where he meets an ambitious young prostitute named Tránsito Soto. He lends her 50 pesos to seek her fortune in the big city, and she promises to repay him some day. Esteban the elder goes back to the city after he receives a letter from his sister Férula with the news that their mother Dona Ester is dying. When she passes away, he resolves to fulfill her dying wish for him to get married and have children in a nuclear family. Esteban approaches the del Valles to request Clara’s hand in marriage. Clara accepts, having just predicted her engagement two months before, and she finally comes out of the mute spell she was in for the last nine years.
Clara’s muteness and her psychic powers kept her from having any friends, but she grows up to be a charming but very odd young woman. Clara and Esteban get married and they seem to get along OK, but Clara’s constant companion the dog Barrabás collapses with a knife in his back in the middle of their engagement party. He dies in Clara’s lap, and gets blood all over her dress. Clara becomes close friends with Esteban’s sister, Férula, and invites her to move into their new house, a colonial-style mansion that Esteban designs to look as European as possible. Clara gets pregnant and has a baby girl named Blanca. Clara gets pregnant again and she announces that she’s going to give birth to twins named Jaime and Nicolás, and Esteban gets mad that she doesn’t want to name one of the boys after him. Esteban goes to a brothel in town called the Christopher Columbus and meets Tránsito Soto there, to his surprise.
Clara’s parents die in a car accident, and Clara’s mom Nívea is beheaded in the crash. Pregnant Clara drags Férula out to find the head, and they return to the house just in time for Clara to give birth to her first child, Blanca. Nana, the del Valle family maid, comes to live in the big house on the corner. Clara starts to hold weekly séances, attended by all sorts of spiritual eccentrics, like the three Mora sisters, who become her close friends. Férula’s feelings for Clara border on passionate love, and she and Esteban develop a rivalry over Clara’s affections, both being obsessed with Clara, and start to get jealous of each other. Eventually Esteban catches Férula sleeping in bed with Clara, and kicks her out of the house. Férula puts a curse on Esteban and disappears. Blanca meets Pedro Tercero García the son of Pedro Segundo and they fall in love, but decide to keep their relationship a secret from Blanca’s family.
Blanca gets pregnant, but Esteban tells her there was a huge earthquake that he has killed Pedro Tercero and he forces her to marry the French count Jean de Satigny. Blanca leaves the count and she gives birth to her daughter Alba. Férula’s ghost appears to the family at dinner one night, so they know she’s dead. Clara and Esteban find her body in the run-down apartment in which she’d been living. Clara dies on Alba’s seventh birthday, after making all the necessary preparations, holding little Alba’s hand. Alba grows up to be a solitary child, enjoying painting and imagining stories. Having little money, Blanca joins a pottery shop to make ends meet by teaching handicapped children and she starts dating Pedro again. I have had enough and if this story interests you, then go get the book. I never read House of the Spirits and I probably never will, but mostly I hope that I didn’t make too many mistakes in my synopsis.
Today is the find Clara & Esteban from House of Spirits love theme on Love Is In Da Blog and we are asked to find an exotic love song and/or write a Katauta poem. I think it would be exotic to bathe with someone in the sea, so I am choosing the Savage Garden song ‘Truly Madly Deeply’. I would like to go to Belize and check out a Mayan sweat bath, which was a type of sacred sauna that they used to help keep themselves healthy and treat myself to this exotic purification ritual. Savage Garden is a duo that formed in Logan City, Queensland, in 1994, and they achieved international success in the late 1990s and early 2000s with their two #1 hit singles, ‘I Knew I Loved You’, and ‘Truly Madly Deeply’. Their other hits ‘To the Moon and Back’ reached #24, ‘Crash and Burn’ also got to #24, ‘The Animal Song’ went to #19 and ‘I Want You’ peaked at #4. Savage Garden’s ‘Truly Madly Deeply’ is a great love song and the duo of Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones recorded this song in Sydney
After spending eight months away from his family and his then-wife while he was living in a one-bedroom apartment in Kings Cross with Daniel Jones to record this debut album, Hayes was inspired him to write a song that would express his feelings about life, but this song actually started out long before they began recording this album and it was originally called ‘Magical Kisses’, which the pair wrote together and then reworked into this tune. The name Savage Garden was taken from the Anne Rice novel Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles #5), specifically the passage, “In the Savage Garden you shine beautifully, my friend,” which describes the landscape inhabited by the vampire. Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones had a seemingly uncanny ability to create pop hits, because of their shared devotion and love of music which brought the pair together, and their unique collaborative effort led to the creation of truly eclectic and exciting material.
Hayes writes melodies and lyrics, and Daniel Jones, the band’s guitarist and keyboardist, creates instrumental sound. This passionate love song took off in America after a radio station in Dallas added it to their playlist and when it hit #1 in the US, it was the first Australian record in 15 years (since Men at Work) to achieve the US top position. Savage Garden were one of the most successful Australian bands of all time, but in 2001 the band went out on top when they felt that they had lost the magic in their musical relationship. Jones walked away and he has avoided the limelight ever since.
I’ll be your dream, I’ll be your wish, I’ll be your fantasy
I’ll be your hope, I’ll be your love, be everything that you need
I love you more with every breath truly, madly, deeply do
I will be strong, I will be faithful ‘cause I’m counting on
A new beginnin’
A reason for livin’
A deeper meaning, yeah
I wanna stand with you on a mountain
I wanna bathe with you in the sea
I wanna lay like this forever
Until the sky falls down on me
And when the stars are shining brightly in the velvet sky
I’ll make a wish, send it to heaven and make you want to cry
The tears of joy for all the pleasure and the certainty
That we’re surrounded by the comfort and protection
Of the highest powers
In lonely hours
The tears devour you
An’ I wanna stand with you on a mountain
I wanna bathe with you in the sea
I wanna lay like this forever
Until the sky falls down on me
Oh, can you see it, baby?
You don’t have to close your eyes
It’s standin’ right before you
All that you need will surely come
Ooh, yeah
I’ll be your dream, I’ll be your wish, I’ll be your fantasy
I’ll be your hope, I’ll be your love, be everything that you need
I’ll love you more with every breath truly, madly, deeply do
I wanna stand with you on a mountain
I wanna bathe with you in the sea
I wanna lay like this forever
Until the sky falls down on me
I wanna stand with you on a mountain
I wanna bathe with you in the sea
I want to live like this forever
Until the sky falls down on me
Written for Love Is In Da Blog 2021 Great Love Stories Clara & Esteban from House of Spirits love theme where we are asked to find an exotic love song and/or write a Katauta poem.
The breeze felt good and there was not a cloud in the sky, then the wind picked up. A downdraft of cooler air moved in and the sky became all dark, and just then, I felt a cool rush of air before the rain started coming down. After 30 minutes, the clouds lifted from sky and the sun returned and the itsy-bitsy spider crawled up the spout again.
Last week we had General Length or Size of Things, and everyone was supposed to choose a song that contained one these prompts Long/Short/Small/Tall in either the title or the lyrics. This week we have the weather-related prompts of Breeze/Cloud/Sky/Wind and the song that you choose must contain one of these prompt words in either the title or the lyrics. Take some time to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this music challenge, and even better, read as many of them as you are able to as you will probably find many enjoyable songs and it is quite possibly that you will learn a thing or two. Share your music with others and post a video, try do some research and let everyone know something about the song that you post. Tell everyone why you like the song, whether it was a hit, or what you think the song is about. Show the lyrics, let’s all listen to our favorite songs and explore some new music. Try to find a song that fits the prompt, then write your post and create a pingback, or you can just place your link in the comments section.
Here are the “rules”:
• Post the lyrics to the song of your choice, whether it contains the prompt words or not. If it does not meet the criteria, then please explain why you chose this song.
• Please try to include the songwriter(s) – it’s a good idea to give credit where credit is due. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be.
• Make sure you also credit the singer/band and if you desire you can provide a link to where you found the lyrics.
• Link to the YouTube video, or pull it into your post so others can listen to the song.
• Ping back to this post or place your link in the comments section below.
• Read at least one other person’s blog, so we can all share new and fantastic music and create amazing new blogging friends in the process.
• Feel free to suggest future prompts.
• Have fun and enjoy the music.
I am writing about the Robbie Robertson song ‘Broken Arrow’ today. Next week, I will be writing about the song ‘The One That Got Away’ by P!nk. The upcoming prompts will be:
March 7, 2021 – Cappuccino/Coffee/Expresso/Latte/Mocha
March 14, 2021 – Anguish/Misery/Torment
March 21, 2021 – Hop/Jump/Leap/Pounce/Spring
March 28, 2021 – Endless/Eternity/Everlasting/Forever/Infinity/Omega
My new trimmer came yesterday. I saw it on TV and I ordered one probably about a month ago. I used to get my hair cut every six weeks, because I don’t like looking scraggly, but with the Covid around, I only had one haircut last year and that was in August. I don’t go any place, so I figure that I can get away with not having my hair look that good. I am not very happy with my new trimmer and I may not be using it again, except I do like the way I can use it on the hair that grows on my earlobes, because it works much better than a scissor or trying to use my nose hair trimmer there.
I did a decent job and my cousin helped me trim the back of my neck, which was very thoughtful of her. I took the guard off so I could trim my sideburns, which had grown very long and then I put the trimmer down to see how it came out. My cousin picked up the trimmer, not realizing that I removed the guard and she cut a patch of my hair that went all the way down to my scalp, so now it looks like I have a hole in my head in that spot that she cut. She apologized, but the damage was done and it is not all that noticeable, but unless I want to cut all of my hair down to the scalp, I will just have to wait for it to grow back. Several strands of long hair are covering up the bald patch, so it is not the worst thing that has ever happened to me. However, I am going to declare a moratorium on doing any more self-hair styling for now.
In a stream of consciousness writing exercise, you are not allowed to look up any information, it is supposed to be your thoughts as they flow out of you, but the only thing that I had that fit this prompt was pigsty, and since I have never been to a place where pigs are kept, I wanted to make this a tribute to Pigpen. I apologize in advance for my writing not being a real stream of consciousness today, but even though I knew this story, I made a conscious decision to cheat with this post and look some stuff up, only to make it a more fitting tribute.
Ron McKernan was given the affectionate nickname of Pigpen because of his unwashed demeanor, his funky hygiene habits, but most people say that his grubbiness was charming. Ron was gifted his nickname from a girlfriend who thought that he was similar to the unkempt Charles Schultz character Pig-Pen in Peanuts, who was always drawn surrounded by a permanent cloud of dust. Ron McKernan embraced his bodily funkiness, along with his disheveled look and unorthodox approach to life and sanitation and this became his trademark. His greasy black hair covered up his acne scarred face, and he often wore a leather vest over a dirty tee shirt, accompanied with unwashed dungarees. Pigpen looked like a Hells Angel, and they even made him an honorary member. Ron McKernan’s outwardly appearance may have been seen as being menacing and this might have put off some people, as he looked hard on the outside, but underneath his gruff biker exterior, he was a kind, soft man that had a heart of gold.
Pigpen grew up listening to the blues and his father was a boogie-woogie pianist and R&B DJ on Berkeley radio in the early ‘50s, known as “Cool Breeze”. He had a fantastic collection, so Garcia would go over to Pigpen’s room, to listen to records and he said that it was like going to a ghetto, because Ron was always leaving empty beer cans and whiskey bottles all over the place. They would sit in his room for countless hours and stuff was thrown around everywhere. Pigpen had a habit of just wearing a shirt and his underpants and he always had a bottle of wine under his bed. His mom would come in about every five hours to see if he was still alive and Jerry thought that was hilarious.
Beatrice becomes one of Dante’s guides in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy, but is this the same Beatrice Portinari who resided in Florence. Dante reveals that he saw Beatrice for the first time when his father took him to the Portinari house for a May Day party. They were children at the time, he was nine years old and she was eight. The second time they met while walking on the street in Florence, they were adults, and Beatrice the emerald-eyed beauty, turned and greeted Dante before continuing on her way. Dante was instantly smitten and never forgot her after this meeting even though he married another woman, Gemma Donati, in 1285, with whom he had three sons and one daughter. Dante loved Beatrice from a distance, they had little to no contact with one another and Beatrice Portinari probably never had any idea of the depth of his passion for her. Beatrice died at age 24 in 1290 without Dante ever seeing her again. Rarely has a woman served as such profound inspiration for a writer, and yet he barely knew her. Yet she was to become one of literature’s most famous figures, as Dante dedicated most of his poetry and almost all of his life to her. Beatrice is more than a simple muse. She is an idealized love, the kind of love that transcends physicality.
Dante wrote a chronicle of his relationship with her in La Vita Nuova, which translates from Italian to be The New Life that was published in 1294. It is an expression of the medieval genre of courtly love in a prosimetrum style (a text composed in alternating segments of prose and verse). The work tells the story of Dante’s encounters with and love for Beatrice, culminating in her early death and its effect upon him. Dante tells of his meetings with her, praises her beauty and goodness, describes his own intense reactions to her kindness or lack of it, tells of events in both their lives, and explains the nature of his feelings for her. When Dante was informed of her death, he vows to write nothing further of Beatrice until he writes “concerning her what hath not before been written of any woman”. Dante was able to fulfil this promise many years later, when he composed The Divine Comedy where he articulated his exalted and spiritual love for Beatrice.
Poet and politician Dante Alighieri was a Guelph, when the Guelphs split into two factions, the moderate but disaffected faction (White Guelphs) and the pure papal extreme faction (Black Guelphs), so the Blacks continued to support the Papacy, while the Whites were opposed to Papal influence, specifically the influence of Pope Boniface VIII. The White and Black Guelphs were rival parties in medieval Germany and Italy which supported the Holy Roman emperors and the papal party respectively. Dante was one of the supporters of the White faction opposed to Pope Boniface VIII., and in 1302 he was exiled when the Black Guelphs took control of Florence. He ended up on the losing side, and he was ordered to pay a large fine, after he was accused of corruption and financial wrongdoing. He did not pay the fine, in part because he believed he was not guilty, and in part because all his assets in Florence had been seized by the Black Guelphs. He was, therefore, condemned to perpetual exile, and if he returned to Florence without paying the fine, he could be burned at the stake.
Dante wrote The Divine Comedy poem in 1306, because he was alone, after being banished from Florence, probably trying to get his head around everything that has happened. He wanted to explain how it feels to be kicked out of your own home and lose your family and all your possessions. He must have felt incredibly lonely and lost during those months, and it must have been hard for a man like him to lose his freedom, his financial independence and to never be able to go back home again. He started off his poem explaining the misery of a lost man, and he ended up leaving us with the most incredible analysis of all sorts of political and ethical problems of his time, so much so that today we can still relate to what he wrote.
Beatrice becomes Dante’s reason for continuing his journey through hell, and she is why Dante made it through the underworld in the first place, by sending Virgil, the Latin author of The Aeneid as his guide down to help him. Her love for him got him through hell and on to the next chapter of his journey. Beatrice is seen in Dante’s Purgatory when she comes to him in a griffin drawn chariot. She comes down to Dante wearing a white veil representing faith, a green cape symbolizing hope and underneath the cape she wore a robe of flaming red signifying burning love. When she first arrives, she comes to Dante in a harsh approach, trying to get a confession out of Dante, and she mentions to him that he cannot continue his journey if he is not happy and cleansed.
Beatrice comes to him and lets him know that Virgil can no longer help on his quest, and he cannot leave limbo. Beatrice speaks to Dante and tells him to not weep about the fact that Virgil cannot help him on his journey anymore, but that he should look forward to the next point in his journey. She tells Dante to wash himself in the waters of Lethe around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness. This will cleanse him and take away his sins. She also mentions that the waters of Euone the fifth river of Eden at the top of Mount Purgatory will help restore good in Dante as when someone bathes in them, this will strengthen the memories of the good deeds that they accomplished in life. Beatrice guides Dante through the nine celestial spheres of Heaven, to the Empyrean, which is the abode of God.
Today is the Dante & Beatrice love theme on Love Is In Da Blog and we are asked to find an Italian love song and/or write a Palindrome poem about love. I am going to write about the Billy Joel song ‘Scenes from an Italian Restaurant’. In this song ‘Scenes from an Italian Restaurant’, Billy Joel recounts an evening out at his favorite joint, which blossoms into an examination of life. This seven-minute epic came out on his 1977 studio album The Stranger. The middle part of this song was called ‘The Ballad of Brenda and Eddie’, who were these two people that happened to peak a little too early in life. Billy composed the music first, which in this case was inspired by The Beatles, specifically the suite of songs on their Abbey Road album where a few unfinished tunes were put together to create the coherent piece titled ‘Golden Slumbers’, which was linked with ‘Carry That Weight’ and followed by ‘The End’. Particular chords and other bits and pieces of the song ‘Scenes from an Italian Restaurant’ slowly came together to eventually culminate in one of Joel’s most enduring classics, which was produced by Phil Ramone.
This song was never released as a single, even though is a beloved Joel classic by his fans, and largely considered to be one of, if not, his best songs. The average marriage in the United States lasts 8 years, which is the average time from marriage to divorce. The average time between marriage and separation is 7 years. The math just doesn’t seem to add up in this song, as Brenda and Eddie were going steady in 1975, and then they got married and saved up some money for a couple of years, so how could they have gotten divorced in 1975.
The song opens up with a couple on a date in an Italian restaurant, they are old friends from school and they look over the wine menu. After they catch up on what is going on in their lives, talking about their jobs, families, old clothing styles, music, cold beer and reminiscing about romantic teenage nights, they start talking about Brenda and Eddie who were a popular couple that everyone knew from their High School. They recount how Brenda and Eddie were madly in love, and they were the king and queen of the prom and they were going steady involved in a teenage romantic relationship where both partners committed to date only each other. Brenda and Eddie decide to marry, but everyone said they were crazy, thinking that Brenda was much too lazy, and that Eddie would not be able to support her in the lifestyle that she was accustomed to, but they got married anyway. Their marriage starts with everybody wavin’ Brenda and Eddie goodbye.
Unfortunately, Brenda and Eddie’s marriage falls apart, after they spend a lot of their savings on an apartment, which they decorated with plush carpeting, some paintings and a water bed. The lack of money causes a big strain on their relationship, so they begin to fight and then the tears of regret sink in, where they both feel like they made a mistake. After their marriage fails, Brenda and Eddie are still friends, but they are both out into the dating world again, which is why the “king and queen went back to the green”. They realize that they can “never go back there again”, things have changed so much since the times when they were both greasers, all they can do is try to pick up the pieces of their broken lives. The couple in the Italian restaurant, are wishing the best for Brenda and Eddie, but they don’t know any more about them. They have covered everything they know about Brenda and Eddie and they figure that it is time to wave Brenda and Eddie goodbye, so they can concentrate on which wine they should select for their meal.
A bottle of white, a bottle of red
Perhaps a bottle of rose instead
We’ll get a table near the street
In our old familiar place
You and I, face to face
A bottle of red, a bottle of white
It all depends upon your appetite
I’ll meet you any time you want
In our Italian Restaurant
Things are okay with me these days
Got a good job, got a good office
Got a new wife, got a new life
And the family’s fine
We lost touch long ago
You lost weight I did not know
You could ever look so nice after
So much time
Do you remember those days hanging out
At the village green
Engineer boots, leather jackets
And tight blue jeans
Drop a dime in the box play the
Song about New Orleans
Cold beer, hot lights
My sweet romantic teenage nights
Brenda and Eddie were the
Popular steadys
And the king and the queen
Of the prom
Riding around with the car top
Down and the radio on
Nobody looked any finer
Or was more of a hit at the
Parkway Diner
We never knew we could want more
Than that out of life
Surely Brenda and Eddie would
Always know how to survive
Brenda and Eddie were still going
Steady in the summer of ‘75
When they decided the marriage would
Be at the end of July
Everyone said they were crazy
Brenda you know you’re much too lazy
Eddie could never afford to live that
Kind of life
But there we were wavin’ Brenda and
Eddie goodbye
They got an apartment with deep
Pile carpet
And a couple of paintings from Sears
A big waterbed that they bought
With the bread
They had saved for a couple
Of years
They started to fight when the
Money got tight
And they just didn’t count on
The tears
They lived for a while in a
Very nice style
But it’s always the same in the end
They got a divorce as a matter
Of course
And they parted the closest
Of friends
Then the king and the queen went
Back to the green
But you can never go back
There again
Brenda and Eddie had had it
Already by the summer of ‘75
From the high to the low to
The end of the show
For the rest of their lives
They couldn’t go back to
The greasers
The best they could do was
Pick up the pieces
We always knew they would both
Find a way to get by
That’s all I heard about
Brenda and Eddie
Can’t tell you more than I
Told you already
And here we are wavin’ Brenda
And Eddie goodbye
A bottle of red, a bottle of white
Whatever kind of mood you’re in tonight
I’ll meet you anytime you want
In our Italian Restaurant
Written for Love Is In Da Blog 2021 Great Love Stories Dante & Beatrice love theme where we are asked to find an Italian love song and/or write a Palindrome poem about love.
Harold Ray Ragsdale better known as Ray Stevens is an American family-friendly entertainer, a country and pop singer-songwriter and comedian who has won several Grammys for comedic hits such as ‘Gitarzan’ and ‘The Streak’ as well as ‘Misty’, and this one ‘Everything Is Beautiful’. He wrote the uplifting song as the theme for the 1970 TV variety show called The Ray Stevens Show. He wanted to write a very special song, so he went down into his basement for about three days, and there were crumpled up papers all over the place, but eventually he got the idea for this song he wrote it in about 45 minutes. This was released in 1970 on his Everything Is Beautiful album and the single reached #1 in the US and it charted #6 in the UK. Stevens is probably better known for his novelty recordings, like ‘Ahab, The Arab’, and ‘Harry The Hairy Ape’ and he may hold the record for writing a song with the longest title ever, ‘Jeremiah Peabody’s Poly Unsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills’.
Beauty is a relative notion that involves a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, but this especially relates to sight and we use this term to measure things against each other. Something that gives intense pleasure or leaves you deeply satisfied and is thought of as being enjoyable, would be considered to be beautiful. In the fashion industry, the idea of beauty is always shifting, as what looks good today maybe passé tomorrow. Beauty is said to reside in the eye of the beholder, because it cannot be judged objectively so you may see something that you feel is beautiful, and this same thing may not appeal to another, thus beauty is actually created by observers.
This song gives the listeners an affirmative way of looking at all the aspects of life to create harmony, peace, tranquility and bring back those halcyon days to restore the human spirit. It talks about God and heaven and it contains a Biblical quote based on Jeremiah 5:21, “There is none so blind as he who will not see”, which basically states that people will ignore facts even when they are staring them right in the face. It is a song of hope that can get you through dark times, letting you believe that the “world’s gonna find a way.”
Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red and yellow, black and white
They are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world
Everything is beautiful in it’s own way
Like a starry summer night
On a snow covered winter’s day
And everybody’s beautiful in their own way
Under God’s Heaven
The world’s gonna find the way
There is none so blind
As He who will not see
We must not close up minds
We must let our thoughts be free
For every hour that passes by
You know the world gets a little bit older
It’s time to realize that people lies
In the eyes of the beholder
And everything is beautiful in its own way
Like a starry summer night
On a snow covered winter’s day, ah, sing it children
Everybody’s beautiful in their own way
Under God’s Heaven
The world’s gonna find a way
We shouldn’t care about the length of His hair
Of the color of His skin
Don’t worry about what shows from without
But the love that lives within
And we’re gonna get old again now
Everything is gonna work out fine
Just take a little time to the look on the good side my friend
And spittle in out in your mind
And everything is beautiful in it’s own way
Like a starry summer night
On a snow covered winter’s day, ah, sing it children
Everybody’s beautiful in their own way
Under God’s Heaven
The world’s gonna find a way, one more time
Everything is beautiful in its own way
Like a starry summer night
On a snow covered winter’s day
What is a tie dye
Tie dye is something that was started during the Corona crisis, by people who were at their wits end and they began folding and twisting their nickers.
2. What is a raglan sleeve
This is worn by astronauts inside their spacesuits.
3. What is seersucker
This is another name for a Dad joke.
4. What is meant by a dropped waist
This is what happens before you flush.
5. What is a yoke collar
This is an egg in the hole where you cut a hole in the center of a piece of bread and butter it up and then drop an egg into a hot pan.
6. What is meant by pigeon toed
This is a condition that develops from doing the Wang Chung too often.
7. How many pleats are in a kilt
This depends on how fat your bottom is.
8. What is bias binding
This is similar to the interlocking hand grip that is used on a golf club.
9. What is Velcro
This is an improvement on the original Sticky Wicket.
10. What is twill webbing
This is when a baby duck imprints itself on you, because it thinks that you are its mama.
The rose bushes lay a siege with velveteen petals and curved thorns. The artificial humanoid was at it again and since he was just here last month, I don’t think that there really is a need for him to be trimming everything so often. I understand that he enjoys his work and I am not saying that he is not great at what he does, but yesterday he woke me up when he was using those hedge trimmers. I know that there are over 500 houses in this home owner association and it is a lot of work trying to keep up with everything, but Fridays are the only days that I am able to sleep late and I guess I am just grumpy today.
I image that it would be quite a challenge to reach up and around all of the tall shrubbery and the way he was able to remove all of that mistletoe from the trees was a monumental event, but I think this guy is not happy unless he is trimming something. I should let him cut my hair, as God knows I could surely use one. He is not the brightest bulb on the tree, although I guess I would consider him to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but the other day when he was trimming the apple trees and all those bees started chasing him around was really a sight to see.
Written for Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie First Line Friday hosted by Dylan.
