Dunkin' Treats and Song of the Month

 It's a pretty, clear, cool and windy day outside this afternoon on Halloween Eve, and I am now sitting in the dining room at my Chromebook writing this.  Melissa just drove me over to our nearby Dunkin' for some of their fancy coffee and a half dozen doughnuts, all set up while Jewel's big hit Standing Still was being piped through the store's sound system.  Afterwards, I finished my daily foreign language copying sentence-by-sentence...it's fun to see how much I can put together and derive meaning from.  So today I'll be mentioning my "song of the month"for October 2025: Garbage's There's No Future in Optimism.  It's the fourth straight month I've picked this British alternative rock group, fronted by Shirley Manson, for the honor.  Starting with the repeated phrase "If you're ready for love", Shirley then goes off on a message of standing firm in creative love in the face of social disruption and societal breakdown: the ultimate "drop out" song.  The most profound lines in it are, "There is no future that can't be designed

With some imagination and a beautiful mind"  The idea Is that none of us have to ride the momentum thatcan build up hatred, protest and adversityif we allow for that to happen...we can simply stop on a dime and turn around.  Since I don't see anything of value being released during the next two months in 2025, I'm guessing that There's No Future in Optimism will be my Song of the Year for 2025.  It's a song that I think the Beatles could have made into a hit back in 1969 had they not broken up and if George Harrison...whose voice resembled that of Manson's...had written it and promoted its recording.  After all, that was the time right after John Lennon proposed to Paul McCartney that the band members each contribute four tracks to their next album...and Paul was too exhausted from his daughter's recent birth to seriously consider it. I could have done well with the Fab Four remaining a unit and coming out with a few relatively mediocre albums over the next two or three years...oh, well.  As for Yours Truly, I am bent on recovery from my October 24th surgery, and am subsequently being stubborn in pushing for a better, longer, and higher-quality existence during the time left for me here on Earth.  God bless all of you...

People in Groups: Always a Power Struggle

In the preamble to the first Lord of the Rings movie, Fellowship of the Ring, the "Lady of the Woods" elf Geladriel (played by Cate Blanchett) explains the origin of the conflict about the special Ring of Power that the evil spirit Sauron used to bind under his domination all of the rings he "gifted" to the different nations of beings.  To the nine men-kings he bestowed each with a ring, for more than anything they coveted power.  Yet upon each's passing, they found themselves completely bound to Sauron, abject slaves to his will. Still, to the extent that they could strike terror in the hearts of ordinary people, I suppose that they would have derived much pleasure from this evil bullying.  I think J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of this fantasy series, had much insight into the basic, rank human nature that is much more universal among our species.  The truth is that you can't get three people together into a group without them sorting out their respective ranks...from top to bottom.  I'm not just theorizing this: I've lived it, going on 69 years come this October.  Barbara Streisand once sang, "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world."  But beyond the benefits and protections that an advanced civil society can bestow on me, I find it annoying, demeaning and stifling to find myself entangled within groups...and I'm sick of that sorting of pecking orders. Just before the Beatles broke up in late 1969, there were two group meetings, one on the 8th and the other on the 20th.  In the earlier meeting, John Lennon made the all-too-reasonable proposal that he, Paul and George each be accorded four songs on their future albums, with one or two given to Ringo. Paul, full of his perceived role as the the group's leader, rejected John's offer.  After Lennon's successful concert adventure a few days later, he announced his "divorce" from the Beatles on that second meeting twelve days later.  There was a flexibility, a willingness to work things out, in Lennon's original proposal, but people stuck in their minds with power aren't rationally reasoning things out.  The general problem I personally see in this translates into all social situations, whereby there are individuals consumed with their own sense of standing within the group, and they will sabotage any meaningful input from me while putting me down in what they regard as my "proper place". I am so sensitive to this that I don't even want to "show up" in some of the gatherings offered at church or in connection to the Parkruns I frequent...and when I was at the post office I tended to avoid union meetings: now it's retirement reunions I steer clear of.  But you know, I can always attend and just sit in the back and keep my mouth shut or just engage in small talk...

Melissa and I Attend Our Second Candlelight Concert

Last December 17th Melissa and I went to downtown Gainesville to attend a Candlelight Concert at the Hippodrome Theater...click HERE to read the article I later wrote about our experiences then.  This evening we went back down there to the same place for yet another concert, this one a tribute to the Beatles.  The featured string quartet performed their renditions of several Beatles hits and is based in Jacksonville...I recognized most of the players from before.  I was seven years old when I heard my first Beatles song, I Want to Hold Your Hand, which the Fab Four, as the Beatles were often dubbed, performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964...our Candlelight Concert musicians performed this one as well.  They also went through several years and albums, doing Help!, Michelle, Eleanor Rigby, Here There and Everywhere, I Get By With a Little Help from My Friends, All You Need is Love, Penny Lane, Hey Jude, Lady Madonna, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Blackbird, Come Together and Here Comes the Sun. The audience was very enthusiastic and appreciative of this show, as were Melissa and me.  They are quite the talented and inspired musicians, these four, and we look forward to another visit with a different theme.  The only drawback I saw was the tight, restricted parking available downtown...even the quartet commented on that...

Following the Beatles' Get Back Documentary on Disney Plus

I have been pleasantly surprised by the Disney+ premium streaming channel since subscribing to it.  Being a stalwart Winnie the Pooh fan, I had missed the old movies as well as the television series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which aired in the 1990s and coincided with Will and Rebecca's early childhood...Disney+ carries it all.  The other day we sat down and watched the Broadway production of Hamilton on this channel...what an experience! And now Peter Jackson's project of Get Back, as he has reedited the material used for the 1970 movie Let It Be, has been on it since Thanksgiving...I've been watching just a few minutes at a time because of its intensity.  It's very strange seeing John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, all still alive, young and sitting around together (with Yoko Ono naturally at John's side), joking, eating, jamming, and arguing as if it's all going on right now in the present.  And, knowing the eventual fate of these sessions, filmed and recorded in January 1969, that would ultimately produce their final album release, Let It Be, I find it intriguing as to how the four interacted with one another...I'm starting to form my own opinions. So far I've noticed that it wasn't all doom and gloom in the studio as I had been led to believe: there was a lot of positive musical energy here.  But the brief time I have watched it has also been typified by a frantic, chaotic procession of one song after another with no discernible direction or coherency.  Hopefully, Disney+ will keep Get Back on their lineup at least long enough for me to get through it all as I take in bite-sized portions on more or less a daily basis.  As for this blog, I plan to devote a day each week discussing it, along with other things Beatles: stay tuned...