LOVE AS I LOVE

Originally released in 1965, this song has walked with me for a long time.

THE PINEY WOOD HILLS

I'm a rambler and a rover
and a wanderer it seems
I've traveled all over
chasing after my dreams
But a dream should come true
and a heart should be filled
and a life should be lived
in the piney wood hills

I'll return to the woodlands
I'll return to the snow
I'll return to the hills
and the valley below
I'll return like a poor man
or a king if God wills
but I'm on my way home
to the piney wood hills

I was raised on a song there
I done right I done wrong there
and it's true I belong there
and it's true it's my home

From ocean to ocean
I've rambled and roamed
and soon I'll return
to my piney wood home
Maybe someday I'll find
someone who will
love as I love my piney wood hills

I was raised on a song there
I done right I done wrong there
and it's true I belong there
and it's true it's my home

I'll return to the woodlands
I'll return to the snow
I'll return to the hills
and the valley below
I'll return like a poor man
or a king if God wills
but I'm on my way home
to the piney wood hills

FOR MY DAD ON FATHER'S DAY

My dad was born right before World War I in 1914. He died in the morning on St. Patrick's Day in 2003, a few days before the war in Iraq began. He had a paper route as a boy during the Depression. He was the president of his high school class in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He moved to Los Angeles, California, in the late 1930's. At the end of World War II, he served in the Navy in payroll on Treasure Island on San Francisco Bay. His first career was in insurance. His second career was as a systems analyst for Standard Oil of California. He retired at 60 from the same oil company, which had changed its name to Chevron. After he retired, he and my mother lived in a little house on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Gualala, California, until my mother's unexpected death in 1994. He loved baseball, growing flowers and artichokes and raspberries and New Zealand spinach, carving, solitaire, God, ice cream, my mother's cooking. He wrote an autobiography in the last years of his life and dedicated it to his only grandchild, my nephew. He loved life. The last time we saw each other felt peaceful. It was his 89th birthday, about a month before he died. He is buried next to his parents and next to my mother in a cemetery in Minneapolis.

Thank you, Dad, for your encouragement and support. When I was a child, I thought of you as Babar, the wise and kind elephant father.

TALKING CORNEL WEST BLUES

Many thanks to the anonymous commenter who left a link to a Norval Morrisseau site yesterday on my December 7, 2007 post. It takes a moment to download and then you'll either hear Neil Young singing "Heart of Gold" or a song from "Sesame Street" accompanying the slideshow.

And thanks to Alive On All Channels for the link to a lengthy article by Jeff Sharlet about Cornel West from which this quote from Ralph Ellison came:

"The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by consolutaiton of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism."











Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues. You can tell by the way she smiles.
(Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Visions of Johanna," Blonde on Blonde, 1966)

Thanks to mum for her sense of humor.

(This all began with late afternoon light, looking south)

DOING THE BEST YOU CAN / SOMEONE TO LOVE / HAPPY TO BE ALIVE / IT'S ALL RIGHT / LIVE AND LET LIVE

This song, a collaboration by Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne in 1988, came along just exactly when I needed to hear it. I know I wasn't alone in that experience.

Watch for the rocking chair at the end of the video (3:08), rocking with nothing in it except a guitar.

Correction: I changed the date above from 1990 to 1988. Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 was released on October 18, 1988. I had forgotten that there were two Traveling Wilburys cassettes. It was Vol. 3, dedicated to Lefty Wilbury aka Roy Orbison, that was released in 1990.

TRICKSTER

As I was walking in Big Rock Garden yesterday, two Steller's Jays skipped up close to me on the fence at the side of one of the trails. White Eye stood still long enough for me to get a grainy photo.

If you have 6 minutes, listen to the song after the Sony commercial.

MORNING FOG / STARRY PATH

If you have the time, listen to Emmylou Harris sing a Bob Dylan song that R loved:

Every Grain Of Sand

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light,
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

Copyright ©1981 Special Rider Music

It's a song I love, too.

BELLINGHAM BAY / ISLANDS / MURAL

Yesterday while out walking with a friend, I was surprised and delighted to see the new mural painted by Thomas Wood, a Bellingham artist, as the backdrop to small outdoor music stage at Boulevard Park on Bellingham's waterfront. In addition, Tom painted a smaller mural on the other side of the backdrop wall. The new music stage was privately funded in memory of Mark Witter, a local musician.

Below are three small images from the stage backdrop-sized mural, a wondrous art and music history pastiche which includes images taken from Tom's lifetime work as a printmaker and painter. If I didn't live in Bellingham, I would travel to see this mural. It speaks of the power of art and music and people and animals and love.