The late, great, John Hartford (bluegrass/songwriter) was an early musical inspiration of mine and in 1972 we were both working on our hippie persona, mine in college and his as a recording artist, releasing some of his most clever and creative albums. One of the songs on his Morning Bugle album of that year...
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Music denotes points of interest along the road of life, bookmarks if you will. We’ve all got events, significant or outright mundane, that are made memorable because of a song or piece of music that will forever elicit a memory. Since I’ve become quite a fan of randomness, here are several of mine in...
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Seeing my 10 year-old strep throat stricken niece at Thanksgiving a few days ago reminded me of my own yearly confrontation with the virus from grade school through early high school. I believe my body (the spiritual whole) has always had a bit of whimsy when it comes to what sorts of afflictions might...
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Growing up in a U.S./Canadian border city with the great wilds of Windsor, Ontario a mere few miles away, there are Canadian cultural curiosities that just seep into your life. When your frame of reference includes radio and television stations that begin with ‘C’, watching Saturday morning curling, knowing who movie host Bill Kennedy...
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After graduating college, and pondering my next move, I took a job with Bell Telephone (as it was known in 1973) as a lineman. The company was leery (as well they should have been) of a recent college graduate entering the ranks of the line crew with a degree in hand since the majority...
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Reflecting on my freshman year in college, it’s a miracle that I graduated at all because it was one long case of overstimulation, resulting in a grade point average that only a village idiot could be proud of. Sticking to task meant many things to me but studying wasn’t one of them. There were...
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I remember saying to someone when I was about 12 or so, “I think I’d like to be a comedian when I grow up”, completely naive to the fact that ascending to any reasonable level of income in that field required years of toil and followed no orderly recipe for success. But what do...
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I never quite detected any real affection from my dad (father #2) when I was a kid and, as detailed in many prior stories, he seemed to be a never ending source of disappointment. I want to believe that he loved me but there’s no concrete proof of that since deeds would be a...
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There was a time, my friends, oh what a time, when I had lots and lots of freedom to do… Nothing. It wasn’t necessarily a rewarding time in life…more like leaving the lawnmower idling in the backyard while you go in the kitchen for some lemonade. The mower sits there churning away, gobbling up...
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By the time I began my junior high school years and could articulate my thoughts on a reasonable level, I started talking to teachers. Not that often in a controlled environment like the classroom but in all the casual haunts throughout the school that would be considered their downtime areas. Between classes, after school,...
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