Love Changes Everything

Our friend Tracy gave me a really nice Xmas gift: a boxed set of 3 CDs of music by Andrew Lloyd Weber. It contains the song "Love Changes Everything" from the show Aspects of Love (1989). The lyrics are by Don Black and Charles Hart and can be found at this link. I listened to the song yesterday while I was reading Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, a biography of one of the two co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. This wonderful man, Dr. Bob Smith, after his salvation from alcoholism, lived what he said AA was about: "love and service." I thought that the song, just as it is, would make an excellent one for any Christian (or other religious) worship service: "Nothing in the world can ever be the same." Once again, too, I've been captured by the eloquence and charm of the writing of Frederick Buechner in his book of daily meditations, Listening to Your Life. I recall a story by Mary Flannery O'Connor titled "Everything That Rises Must Converge," and things lately have been rising and converging and it's been a good day, a good autumn and beginning of winter. Happy Holidays and God bless.

Snow, Sort Of

Was going to the jail in New Albany this morning to visit a guy who got himself on the TV news for trying to snatch a purse. Won't go into that, but headed out on the road this morning, being assured by the weathercasters that the snow would change to rain and roads wouldn't be slick. The roads were slick. There was ice on 62. I didn't feel safe doing more than 35, and of course the TFMs were fishtailing and sliding around to my front, rear, and side, so I said hell with it and came back home. The roads did clear later in the day. We're supposed to have more snow/sleet/rain/whatever I think they call it a "wintry mix" tonight. Was able to get out tonight for a while. That lovely effect of ice on tree branches pervaded and I hope there'll be maybe a little sun tomorrow or Monday to give us some winter wonderland. (Nostalgia for the music of Leroy Anderson led me recently to purchase an album with "Sleighride," "Blue Tango," "Buglers' Holiday," and all those wonderful, lighthearted instrumental works that prefigured my love of classical music in its present form.)

Nick Robinson, one of those kids I played baseball under the bridge with over half a century ago, died. He was 67. He was a nice kid and grew up to be a good man who spent all his life in this town. A lot of my childhood pals have passed: Hambone Handlon, Butch Stoner, Hubie (Chuck) Linville ... I hope it's OK to mention their names here. I honor their memory.

And Rosie just informed me that her cousin Orville died this afternoon. And just as she said it, Rudy jumped up on the footrest beside me and snuggled against me, as he did with Orville the day he was last here. In memoriam.

Muddling Through

Late to bed tonight because of two naps today: feeling punk from the third week of a cold. One of those that's mild enough not to be laid up but strong enough to make you drag around more than usual. Have a shoulder muscle that's tensed up, so going to physical therapy in the morning to get it unknotted. We've had two weather reports of late: (1) cloudy and (2) rain. It's raining tonight. Winter solstice is on Saturday December 22 at 1:38 a.m. Short days. I've been too busy to give in to my SAD. Way it ought to be every winter! Busy helping friends Sam and Mike and David and they're helping me. Leo and Bernie and Tom and Howard and Dennis and Irene -- yes, a woman! -- are helping me with my lifelong malady -- and I think I'm helping them. Irene is a dear, dear girl who doesn't know how helpful she has been because she thinks she's a beginner but her humility is that of a saint. Afraid we lost Earl. He was going to his hometown and I hope he got there. He didn't answer or return my call. I took him to task for always taking and never giving. I should have said that doing just that has been my failing too. I made it sound too much like preaching. My pal Van De Graaf is on in the next room and I can't hear what he's saying but I can barely hear the music, which is good. This evening, went to the little town of New Marion and after the meeting drove to Versailles because I was afraid I'd run out of gas before I got back home; filled up the tank and paid for it with a credit card. Buying things on credit is entirely too easy. Have the fan on in the bedroom. Rudy is in his bed and shifts from time to time and the wicker squeaks. That and the susurrus of the fan and the music in the next room. And the sash of the window has started to bump in the wind that has come up. Now there's Pete's baritone voice again. It's a nice time of darkness and calm. Goodnight.

Writer's Block?

My passion when I started this blog was the interface between religion and politics. I am still passionate about the subject but I don't feel that I have much to offer readers. The likelihood of influencing anybody one way or the other is minuscule. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. A clause about courage follows and then another about wisdom in that petition. Don't feel all that courageous or wise these days but I'll settle for serene.

Because of activities every night which I refer to with the shorthand "90/90," I haven't watched Countdown with Keith Olbermann for many nights. I taped one recently showing the mendacity and hypocrisy of a certain official and watched it later but my heart wasn't much in it. Pointing out the mendacity and hypocrisy of said official doesn't change anything. We're enmired in the dung until -- when? I don't want to think about it. And nobody else does either.

We've had a plethora of fatuous Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel. Here's one called Meet the Santas, starring, among others, Armin Shimerman, not in his "Quark the Ferengi" getup but with his semi-baldness reminding me of someone I used to go to lunch with at my last job.

Goodnight.