I Learned Something Yesterday

Back in the 1950's Denver had several records companies including one called Bandbox Records owned by a women named Vicki Morosen. Bandbox recorded mostly local Colorado artist like Sonny Russel and his 1963 way-out rockabilly number 50 Megatons. I don't know about you but I hear him singing "50 Mill-a-ton" instead of "50 Megatons."

Well, I was blown out of bed, hit in the head
I saw three flashes of atomic red
Spun around town, shot in the ground
Swirled and swirled three times faster than sound

It was a fifty megatons
It was a fifty megatons
It was a fifty megatons hydrogen
Like they rate an atomic bomb

Well, the rocket passed me, I climbed up a tree
Just then something got hold of me and the tree
We shot on up in the stratosphere
Six thousand miles away from here

It was a fifty megatons
It was a fifty megatons
It was a fifty megatons hydrogen
Like they rate an atomic bomb

Well, I stepped from out of the rocket-ship
Three spacemen grabbed me and gave me a flip
I ran over to, the edge of the moon
The ground gave way, I fell into a deep lagoon

It was a fifty megatons
It was a fifty megatons
It was a fifty megatons hydrogen
Like they rate an atomic bomb

Well, I landed at the bottom of a deep dark crater
Face to face with a space alligator
The alligator looked at me, I could hardly see
There was another one a-floatin' and it swallowed me

It was a fifty megatons
It was a fifty megatons
It was a fifty megatons hydrogen
Like they rate an atomic bomb

It Was A Dark And Dreary Day

What you can't see in this photo is the wind and snow. Right now the wind is out of the North at 17 mph, making if feel like 17F/-8C, and the snow is blowing sideways. We need the snow but I am not happy with the wind.

Snow On Snow

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
-Christina Rossetti





Eight to twelve inches of snow fell during yesterday's all day blizzard with drifts up to two feet deep. This morning the sky was baby blue with nary a cloud in sight. It gave my husband a chance to get his snow blower out and do our walks and driveway. At one point he took his blower across the street to clear a neighbor's sidewalks after he spotted her struggling to clear them with a snow shovel. My husband is a good man.

RIP Cleotha Staples (1934-2013)

If you disrespect anybody
That you run in to
How in the world do you think
Anybody's s'posed to respect you

If you don't give a heck 'bout the man
With the Bible in his hand
Just get out the way
And let the gentleman do his thing

You the kind of gentleman
That want everything your way, yeah
Take the sheet off your face, boy
It's a brand new day

Respect yourself, respect yourself
Respect yourself, respect yourself

If you don't respect yourself
Ain't nobody gonna give a good cahoot, na na na na

Respect yourself, respect yourself
Respect yourself, respect yourself

If you're walking 'round
Thinking that the world
Owes you something
'Cause you're here

You goin' out
The world backwards
Like you did
When you first come here

Keep talkin' 'bout the president
Won't stop evolution
Put your hand on your mouth
When you cough, that'll help the solution

Oh, you cuss around women
And you don't even know their names
Then you dumb enough to think
That'll make you a big ol' man

Respect yourself, respect yourself
Respect yourself, respect yourself

If you don't respect yourself
Ain't nobody gonna give a good cahoot, na na na na
Respect yourself, respect yourself
Respect yourself, respect yourself
Respect yourself, respect yourself
Respect yourself, I mean, respect yourself
Respect yourself,yeah, respect yourself
Respect yourself, respect yourself....

Her Washington Post obituary can be found here.

Snow, Snow, Snow

And wind make everyday objects beautiful.

Lady In Red

I've been reading a book about 1950s horror comic books and the 1954 Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency Hearing that led to the censorship of comic book industry. The Horror! The Horror! has numerous wonderful color photos of the covers of the comic books which brought about the creation of the Comics Code Authority. What I found interesting is that the majority of the women on these covers are wearing red.







What does it mean? Does in represent blood and a bloody death? Are they scarlet women who deserve to die? The covers do bring to mind all those Halloween and Friday the 13th movies in which any girl who has sex dies a horrible death because she deserves to for breaking society's code which states only bad girls have sex outside of marriage. I think the color red on these covers represent all three; blood, bloody death, and the scarlet women who deserve to die.

Our society has not moved one step past this archaic view of women. Think of how easily the word slut is thrown around and how lower back tattoos on women is now described by the derogatory phrase tramp stamp, implying that any women who has one is sexually promiscuous. Of course the bar for just what is considered sexually promiscuous when it comes to women is a whole lot lower than what it is for a man. When are we as a society going to stop defining women by their sexual behavior?

After You, Alphonse

I love it when I learn something new. I've been reading The Comics:The Complete Collection and I came across this:


This is a panel from a comic strip that appeared in William Randolph Hearst's newspaper the New York Journal at the turn of the last century. The strip, by Frederick Burr Opper, is called Alphonse and Gaston and it was about two extremely polite Frenchmen named, you guessed it, Alphonse and Gaston.

So, do they remind you of anyone else?

Yep, the two goofy gophers from Warner Brothers named Mac and Tosh. Enjoy.

He Said What?

During a debate on gun control Colorado State Legislator Joe Salazar (Democrat) said women shouldn't be allowed to carry guns on college campuses because they may not be able to tell whether or not they are being raped and therefore may end up shooting an innocent person.

Sexism is a child of ignorance and, as Mr Salazar has proven, ignorance is a member of no one political party. Let this be a lesson to all men is public office that it is way past time for them to be viewing women as children and not as full-fledged adults.

Find Me

I've been searching my family roots for about 3 years now and my biggest frustration has been my father's father. I found a great deal of information about his life but nothing about his death. The only thing I knew was that he died in nineteen fifty-six. Where he died, what day he died, why he died, and where he was buried were as big a mystery to me as he himself.

My grandfather was the forget man in his family even before he died. My parents learned about his death about three months after he died in an aside my aunt wrote in a letter to my father. We were living in South America at the time and at the end of the letter my aunt wrote something like, Oh, by the way, Dad died. And that was the end of my grandfather.

Fifty-four years after his death I started searching Illinois death records and, when I could not find any record of him, played with the idea of driving to Peoria, Illinois to look for him in the Peoria County records. I ran his name through the Find A Grave website numerous times. Each time, as I learned more about him, with a different set of criteria that expanded my search target bit by bit until I finally made it all of the United States. Nothing. I went to all the cemetery websites in Peoria hoping I might find him that way. Nothing. By now he was so forgotten he had disappeared.

Saturday I sat down at my computer and started searching again with a great sense of urgency. Ancestry.com, nothing. Find A Grave, nothing. The Internet. Nothing but the same old information I had already found. I went back to Ancestry.com and went through the search process category by category just in case any record was buried deep in the list of results. Nothing. I went back to the Internet, typed his name in, and again found nothing but this was new nothing as none of the results that normally came up were listed. I checked my spelling and saw I had misspelled my grandfather first name. I felt defeated. I was never going to find my grandfather.

I decided to try one more time and as I retyped his name in Google I said aloud, "Adlai, help me find you."
I pushed the enter key on my laptop. There is was, a listing for an Adlai Shannon on Find A Grave. I clicked on the link. Adlai B. Shannon, died 1956, age 70, buried in a cemetery in New Orleans. No birthday, wrong middle initial, wrong age. Is this my grandfather? I go to the Louisiana state death records index and enter my grandfather's name. There he is, Adlai E. Shannon, died November 15, 1956, New Orleans, age sixty. I silently start crying because I know my grandfather wanted to be found and that he helped me do so.

The forgotten man is no longer forgotten.

You Give Me Fever

Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
-Peggy Lee


How did I forget to blog yesterday? Maybe it is because I am suffering from pre-spring fever after noticing this on my little houseplant when I walked through my dining room yesterday morning.

Can Spring Be Far Behind?

Woke-up with this theme song playing in my head this morning.



I think I've had enough of Winter.

The Next Pope?

Now that Pope Benedict XVI is stepping down who should be the next pope? Why Father Sarducci of course!

RIP Donald Byrd (1932-2013)

Mr Byrd was one of the pioneers of a musical style now know as Jazz Fusion or Jazz Rock. His NY Times obituary is here.

What's In A Name?

So, my sister went to a poetry reading this weekend and ended up talking with an Irish poet. This native of the ould sod asked my sister what her name was and she, of course, replied, "Tara Shannon."

His reaction to this bit of information was something like, "Jezz, why didn't your mother just call you Ireland? The only thing worse would be if she had named you Colleen."

My sister, suppressing her laughter, said, "That's my sister's name."

Then they both roared with laughter. So did I when my sister told me this story.

I Guess (S)He'd Rather Be In Colorado

After two months I'm still thrilled to look westward and see the mountains. I hope that thrill never wears off.

I guess he'd rather be in Colorado
He'd rather spend his time out where the sky looks like a pearl after a rain
Once again I see him walkin
Once again I hear him talking
To the stars he makes and asking them for bus fare

I guess he'd rather be in Colorado
He'd rather play his banjo in the morning when the moon is scarcely gone
In the dawn the subways comin
In the dawn I hear him hummin'
Some old song he wrote of love in Boulder Canyon

I guess he'd rather be in Colorado

I guess he'd rather be in Colorado
I guess he'd rather work out where the only thing you earn is what you spend
In the end up in his office
In the end a quiet cough is
All he has to show
He lives in New York City

Teflon Coated Light Bulbs Kill Chickens

I found this article in Backyard Poultry magazine. If these bulbs kill chickens how can they be safe for other living things?

There He Goes Again

American Crossroads, Karl Rove's Super PAC, had released this piece of sleaze attacking Ashley Judd, who may be running for Senate in her home state of Kentucky (she grew-up and went to college there) by using bits of out of context sound quotes to portray her as a carpetbagging, radical, Obama loving, liberal- liberal being an extremely derogatory term in KarlRoveland. Cue the music from the shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho.





So the far right is now attacking anyone who even thinks about running for public office? Before they are even official candidates? If you go to the about page of the American Crossroads website you will find these words, The people who started and support American Crossroads are united behind three simple convictions, the second being, America deserves better than this. Our kids deserve a better future than this.

I concur, America and our kids do deserves better that this and by this I mean your group of truth distorting, shameless, bullying, slimy, butt-wipes.

Downtown Denver Between 1957 and 1960

The Brown Palace Hotel's "new addition" in the left foreground,  the state capital building upper middle background, and the  May D&F in the middle of the right side of the photo.   As you can see, if you grew up in Denver,  the Hilton Hotel is missing.  It would soon be built to the left of the May D&F.  The Brown Palace new addition is now a Comfort Inn

Post Super Bowl Odds And Ends

1. Super Bowl Sunday was a big yawn for me as the game was unimportant to me (not a fan of either team) and the commercials were not up to past Super Bowl standards.

2. For all of you who care, here is the National Rife Association's "enemies" list. It is divided into five sections:

National Organizations With Anti-Gun Policies, groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, Congress of National Black Churches, National Association of Elementary School Principals, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, National Association of Police Organizations.

Anti-Gun Individuals & Celebrities, people such as George Clooney, Maya Angelou, Matt Damon, Gloria Estefan, Sandy Duncan. Sandy Duncan? The NRA is afraid of the influence Sandy Duncan has over the numerous fans of her 1970's sitcom?

National Figures such as "Ed Koch - Former Politician" and present dead guy, "C. Everett Koop - Former Surgeon General," "Michael Eisner, Former Chairman and CEO The Walt Disney Company," "Herb Scannell - Pres. Nickelodeon," and "James E. Carter - Former President." James E. Carter? Even his mama called him Jimmy.

Journalists, interesting, 12 of the 36 journalists listed are cartoonist. I guess a picture is worth 1,000 words.

Anti-Gun Corporations/Corporate Heads, groups such as American Multi Cinemas Entertainment, Inc., Argosy Casino, Kansas City Chiefs(football team), Silver Dollar City (Amusement Park), and Southland Corporation (7/11 stores). See a pattern with the organizations that are anti-gun? They have hundreds if not thousands of people coming to their businesses every day. Oh, and unlike the other names or groups on the list, corporations and corporate heads get the privilege of having their phone numbers and address included.

3. It confirmed, English king Richard III was buried under a parking lot in Leicester. Is that way cool or what?

Thank God It's Friday

Thank God It's Friday (1978)

Friday, thank God it's Friday,
Friday, thank God it's Friday,
Friday, Friday, Friday

Hey put a smile on your face
Things are coming your way
Out there somewhere tonight
It's the right time and place

Hey see the stars in his eyes
And the music in you
Tells you how you can find
Your way to paradise

Friday, thank God it's Friday,
Friday, thank God it's Friday,
Friday, Friday, Friday

Hey
(Hey-hey-hey)
Put a smile on your face
(Put a smile on your face, honey)
Things are coming your way
(Everything's coming your way)
Out there somewhere tonight
It's the right time and place

Hey see the stars in his eyes
(You see the stars in his eyes)
Tells you how you can find love

Hey
(Hey-hey-hey)
Put a smile on your face
(Put a smile on your face)
Things are coming your way
(Everything's coming your way)
Out there somewhere tonight (Oh, baby)
It's the right time and place

Hey, see the stars in his eyes
(All those stars in his eyes)
Tells you how you can find love