MCMLXIX #GiveThanks

It’s a time for words of thanks.

Ontario is on target to meet its objective of getting 65 percent of grown-ups before the month’s over, and there is good faith it very well outperform.

They expect that May 24, around 2,490 drug stores provincewide will offer Pfizer and Moderna. There ought to in the long run be around 280,000 traveling through the network every week, authorities said.

It is such welcome news.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-ontario-may-12-2021-cases-icu-vaccines-1.6023305

Here on WordPress, occasionally I find specific bloggers to be interesting for me.  One guy like that is Jim Adams, who has a blog and who has planned blog prompts.

https://jimadamsauthordotcom.wordpress.com/2020/11/28/domesticated-animals/

Jim has an interest in music and knowledge to share.

I recall the previous winter when my father brought up to me that the sharing I was doing online didn’t appear to be excessively important, as should have been obvious. I help out my father with his business.

https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited/

http://www.maplelawncemetery.org/24701.html

While I enjoy Facebook and Twitter, the day he offered that criticism about my content, I was a little miffed.  I know that my dad clowns, but I tried to look past that, to see if I could think of a better approach. I tried chancing to utilize the focus right now that Jim has been providing.

I’ve been blogging since MySpace, kind of a wow.  On WordPress, I have done some posting with a bit of humour to it, and in the months since my dad said that to me about how I seem on social, I eventually decided I still wasn’t too far off the mark.

There aren’t too many “rules” for running a social presence.

For November 29, 2020, Jim’s prompts include: “bird.”  The late Leonard Cohen made the song Bird on the Wire.

By the mid-1960s, Cohen started to form rock and pop melodies.  He had already written an expansive amount of writing, both poetry, and novels.

He studied at McGill in Montreal and made a name for himself through the sixties.  Cohen kind of burned out about that stuff in the early nineteen seventies, but music came to him his whole career.  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame enlisted Cohen in 2008, and Leonard Cohen got a Grammy Award in 2010.

Bird on the Wire is on the record Songs from a Room, released April 1969, and is like a poem set to the sound of Cohen’s guitar.   The title Songs from a Room is very simple, understating the mastery of the music.

Songs from a Room LP

Being able to enjoy something from the years before I was born is lucky, as hearing Bird on the Wire is an experience that has power to it, sentimental.  Strange song title, eh?  A listener feels like the hardships of life have been met by others just the same, whether more talented, or more fortunate.

Photo by Burst from StockSnap

Not to sound presumptuous, but Bird on the Wire is great that way.  Leonard Cohen got into music as a popular singer when he was losing interest in writing.  Wikipedia says that Bird on the Wire is a country song, a detail which surprises me, and reading that, I thought additionally that the song just has a simplicity that sets it apart from other country songs.

The country genre of music isn’t something I understand, and maybe neither is the language of love, but when I was in college, I got to study, one semester, Canadian music.  Country music in the Canadian Prairies is a favourite choice of many resident Canadians.

I can infer that Bird on the Wire could be a favourite of many who can remember 1969.  It was years before I was born.

There is something about cowboy music, that we’ve adopted in Canada, that reflects how life in the Prairies shaped up.  The first herders calling themselves “cowboys” got to the Canadian prairies in the 1870s, riding up from the US territories of Idaho and Montana.

The romantic image of the cowboy emerged around this American subculture.  British Columbia “buckaroos” likewise sooner or later adopted the cowboy appearance.

I doubt that Cohen identified with being a cowboy; he was a novelist, poet and musician.  He identifies, I think, with the archetype of a cowboy’s passion.  I think of the scene in the Hollywood movie City Slickers, where Billy Crystal’s Mitch Robbins character plays the harmonica at the campfire.

Curly, Jack Palance’s character, interrupts the music.

Mitch Robbins:  [Playing harmonica]

Curly:  Put that away.

Mitch Robbins:  [Stops, then resumes playing harmonica]

Curly:  I said, put that away!

Mitch Robbins:  Hey you know, the first time I tried to talk to you, you embarrassed me.  So I teased you a little bit which maybe I shouldn’t have done, so I’m sorry.

And now you’re sitting over there playing with your knife, trying to frighten me – which you’re doing a good job.  But if you’re gonna kill me, get on with it; if not, shut the hell up – I’m on vacation.

City
Slickers

Wikipedia explains that before writing Bird on the Wire, Cohen carefully structured the song, before committing it to tape.  To tell the truth, before I read Wikipedia’s description, I hadn’t thought that the song would be identified as a country song.

Cohen’s music is usually in the genres of folk, and soft rock.  Romantic country music doesn’t meld with the other interests in music I have thought of.  If Bird on the Wire is a country song, it breaks, I think, with the tradition of country music that country music fans enjoy.

It’s unique that way.  I wonder if a country song should be simple, but distinctive.  The answer isn’t straightforward.

Sometimes answers to questions like that turn up unexpectedly, even if it isn’t initially clear where to begin, to get an answer to the question.  A post like this one, doing the research and writing the content, helps me understand better something that already interests me, the music.  Also, maybe somebody else interested in this blog challenge thought to say something about this specific song.

I first heard Bird on the Wire when I was in high school, the twelfth grade or so, on a simply dubbed audio cassette.

Leonard Cohen passed on November 7, 2016 (aged 82).

I saw him once in concert.  It was terrific.

Here are the lyrics to the song, followed by the song itself, in a video.

Bird on the Wire

Like a bird on the wire

Like a drunk in a midnight choir

I have tried in my way to be free

Like a worm on a hook

Like a knight from some old-fashioned book

I have saved all my ribbons for thee

If I, if I have been unkind

I hope that you can just let it go by

If I, if I have been untrue

I hope you know it was never to you

For like a baby, stillborn

Like a beast with his horn

I have torn everyone who reached out for me

But I swear by this song

And by all that I have done wrong

I will make it all up to thee

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch

He said to me, “you must not ask for so much”

And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door

She cried to me, “hey, why not ask for more?”

Oh, like a bird on the wire

Like a drunk in a midnight choir

I have tried in my way to be free

Source: LyricFind

Songwriter: Leonard Cohen

Bird on the Wire lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

https://youtu.be/BmPUu-rMpWA

Taking Steps to Infuse Life With The Ingredient of Maturity

The self-awareness in my life I am fortunate to have lends itself to taking a neutral stance. Self-awareness is one of the primary characteristics of someone acting maturely.

Years ago, in the late 2000s, when I was thirty-ish, I heard a public speaker who was talking about someone I took to be the famous philosopher of relationships, writer John Gray. The man proposing Gray’s books appeared certain about his suggestion.

Not too long before, a lady had given me Gray’s blockbuster, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. If you’re sensitive, you’ll have experienced coincidences of that same sum and substance. I chose to peruse Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and I enjoyed it enough to get intrigued to discover what else Gray had said in his books.

Photographer: Stephen Rahn

At our library, I found Gray’s very first book, which is What You Feel, You Can Heal. I read what Gray wrote about surviving homelessness when he was in the springtime of life. He talked with individuals he met en route, asking himself what was genuinely upsetting these individuals. Gray evidently thought he might be able to light the way for those struggling.

Gray thought of life experiences that he felt are universally true. He wrote, in What You Feel, You Can Heal, that when people reach their mid-thirties, it is time for them to get down to raising a dependent, whether an animal, or a person. And at the age of 42, individuals are ready to experience what it’s like to be in a community, people together forging more than the sum of their parts.

I was reading my favourite blog last night, the title Beauty Beyond Bones, and I saw she wrote she was just so tired of men who wouldn’t grow up. It didn’t sound like she was having the most splendid time at the moment.

As she is confident in saying, God is good. Beauty Beyond Bones can be found here: https://beautybeyondbones.com/

She is also a Patreon creator. Look here: https://beautybeyondbones.com/support-bbb-on-patreon/

I like reading her blog on a Monday or a Thursday evening. She also does a Wednesday evening post, where she shares recipes, but I’m not such a talented kitchen hand.

Incongruously, I’ve got an interest in Star Wars. I like cinema, I think Star Wars is absorbing, but it crossed my mind that it might not be the kind of priority that’s too impressive for someone of my level. I’m evaluating how mature I am.

I’ve tweeted a few times about Disney. I enjoyed most aspects of the task–my dear mother reading my thoughts on the Star Wars movies, told me I must be an expert! Thanks for that.

On the subject of Beauty Beyond Bones, last night that blog cast back what it’s like going into the 2020s. The author’s a beautiful young lady. Her blog has many thousands of subscribers, and of course, she doesn’t need to be concerned unduly with undeserving men.

I like reading her because she’s Catholic, and she lives in the Big Apple, and she has charm. She’s a great blogger.

There are changes I would like to make about myself, in light of the number of years I’m racking up, but I do need a strategy to get there (somewhere better than here, ostensibly). I like some of the YouTube videos about motivation or strategies to make life improvements.

Photo: Jonas Svidras @ STEP.CAMERA

You’re welcome to like, to follow and or/to comment on this post. Do take care, and may there be happy tidings.

I am grateful to the Beauty Beyond Bones blog, for its inspiration. It’s Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

Mermaid’s March 2019 WordPress Tea Party

The Little Mermaid is a site which entertains bloggers who bring together their thoughts on a theme suggested by the moderator.  These tea parties, the setting for discussion, began several months ago. The Little Mermaid is on a new site now, found at https://www.thelittlemermaid.site/tag/tea-party  For the tea party, March’s theme is fashion.

Personally, I am fashion-challenged, by which I mean I haven’t let fashion out of my bag.  I don’t have a memorable sense of fashion.

Aiming to define fashion reminds me, for example, of an Internet dating profile, where a user is invited to assess his sense of fashion in a field drawn from a list of narrow but conventional approaches.

Photographer:
Nordwood Themes

I wish I’d made the decision to dress better when I was younger.  If you don’t invest in yourself, how can you expect anyone else to?  In a media-hungry capitalist structure, it is important to be “cool” by wearing a wardrobe that both help you feel good about being seen in the street and identifies your lifestyle to people who speak with you.

I believe it’s important, and I would have liked to be more fashionable.

A rule for wear is that clothes must mostly fit.  This sounds obvious, but it isn’t necessarily easy to determine that clothes which cultivate a brand for you are far superior to dressing at random.

I am less interested in making an outfit look good than I am, I feel, non-discerning about social mores.  That’s how I haven’t let it out of my bag.

I do experience mild anxiety about looking shabby when I ought to be feeling fine, but something in my psychology prevents me from being able to coordinate a wardrobe.  That’s kind of funny, eh?

I hope you are not disappointed.  You are welcome to click “like,” to follow my blog, and/or to leave a comment.

The Little Mermaid’s tea parties provide inspiration and heighten my interest in others for who her tea parties are likewise attractive.