Birthday

Pop did not give me any birthday greetings this year. A first. This silence was the best birthday present I have gotten in my adult life. I suppose my turning 50 is something that we might all feel a little embarrassed about, as I still have yet to break from the nest to fly off on my own. Really, I never saw this empty fate coming when I was young and a student. I did not know it was possible to fail this badly in life, not even if you tried your best to do so. I wonder how many people are like me. What a sad demographic it must be. I imagine we must all be pitifully ugly or seriously crippled in some way.

B. B. King Dead at 89

I remember taking my swing through the blues, thinking it might be my particular niche. The Top 40 stuff certainly wasn't doing it for me. Classical music, Mozart and the boys, was good, but it wasn't really me; I guess my blood wasn't that blue. B. B. King and that sort of rocked out blues was great. I got into it for a while, thinking it might be my musical home, but I never did find that particular niche that seemed singularly mine. The Elvis world was as close as I came to feeling a musical connection in my soul, but that was as much about biography as it was the music. I concluded that music just wasn't really my way of communicating with the world. Nevertheless, B. B. King means something to me. His biography is pretty good, too.

( NY Times )

"BB King Calls This One Of His Best Performances" (Watch on YouTube)

More and More Rain

What weather! Spring or no spring. I thought that we were finally getting out of this weather system, and I expect to let the cats out today for what might be weeks of wild time out there. Wrong! It rained all night, a good stormy rain, and now it is raining all day. The thunder rumbles menacingly even now, going into noon. Sammy looks at me suspiciously, like I am doing this on purpose, and is calculating with gimlet eyes how best to get back at me, not being able to comprehend that everything I do is for love.