
I have a habit of saying to people, “I’ll see you next week (or whenever), God willing and the creeks don’t rise. They may be rising at this very moment, as we are having rain, rain, rain. Hard, driving rain. How I love it!
I thought I’d miss the sound of rain pounding on our metal roof up north. But sitting at my studio next to our bedroom window, I’m experiencing the same wonderful euphoria as the rain pounds insistently on the siding of our condo.
How lovely after 3 hot, dry weeks, to be inundated with rain! I think the trees and grass and little gardens in our neighborhood are saying, “Thank you!” I know I’m saying “Thank you, Lord, for the rain!”
We see entertaining sights every day around here. A flock (gaggle, herd, litter?) of wild turkeys bopped across the road in front of our van yesterday. The funny wild turkeys are determined and stolid in their appearance and gait. They remind me of quintessential tourist ladies–grasping their shopping bags and bopping in look-alike groups around the boutiques at Wisconsin places like Minocqua and Lake Geneva.
Today our son Eric showed me how to access any old tune and musical artist on You-Tube. Eric said, “What do you want to hear?” and I answered, “Ghost Riders in the Sky” a la Frankie Laine. (Always the western nut!)
What a nostalgia trip! Although pop music is not my favorite genre, I used to enjoy it years ago when lyrics and melodies were discernible–when you could walk away from your radio humming a tune!
I loved the romantic songs of the 40s and 50s, and the ballads of the 60s and 70s. After the years of Frankie Laine, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Perry Como, I feasted my ears on Peter Noone (of the original Herman’s Hermits), Glen Campbell, Harry Belafonte, and (YES!) even Johnny Cash. Daytime radio was fun in those days, and a great adjunct to scrubbing floors and folding laundry.
Now I turn on the radio, and get mostly noise. My great love is classical music, and some of that is available on WPR (Wisconsin Public Radio) but the beautiful moments are interspersed with talk shows that make me want to throw up. So instead of throwing up, I play my IPOD which is loaded with Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, artists like Luciano Pavarotti, and others of their ilk.
However, one lately discovered older pop singer, Gordon Lightfoot, sits by my computer and when I’m in the mood–for instance, right now–I play him. I bought Lightfoot’s CD titled “Summertime Dream” for The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald–one of my pet research subjects. But all of the ballads on this CD are worth listening to. The ballad singers knew how to say something of substance in many of their tunes.
Now Gordon has sung through his selections, and the sky is clearing. I’m going out in search of a rainbow, and maybe some more wild turkeys! Life is good!
Margaret L. Been–All Rights Reserved
Read Full Post »