In Praise Of Pandora

Image by Duc Tinh Ngo from Pixabay

I am a huge fan of Pandora.

Not the woman in Greek mythology whose wedding gift/jar/box released evil sprits upon the world — along with Elpis aka Hope (“a single blessing to ease mankind’s suffering” according to a Greek mythology website I found online).

And not the jewelry company.

I am a fan of the music streaming company named Pandora.

However, I am also aware that the mythology of Pandora IS quite resonant right now.

Some days it does indeed feel like a bunch of evil spirits are ravaging our neighborhoods, our country, other countries, and our planet.

Thank goodness for Elpis ie: hope!

I had completely forgotten this crucial part of the myth — that the gods give us hope as an antidote/counterbalance to all of the evil spirits released by Pandora.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

According to the Greek mythology website mentioned above, Elpis/hope is often depicted as a young woman carrying flowers — hence the flower images in this post.

And music can inspire a sense of hopefulness in many of us — so maybe Pandora isn’t a horrible name for a music streaming company after all.

Image by Hans from Pixabay

Now you may be wondering why I am choosing in this blog post to praise the music streaming company named Pandora?

It is because they have been the most consistent beacon of helpfulness and humanity I have encountered during my five-year foray into the business of streaming music.

I wrote about them a little bit in a blog post last March.

Although they are currently part of a larger company, Sirius/XM, their cultural norms of accessibility and friendliness have not (yet) been contaminated/eliminated in a short-sighted quest for increased profit.

I love that all of the Pandora staff members with whom I have interacted are themselves musicians — and many of them use Pandora to share their own music with the world.

I have been told that Pandora listeners are located only in the USA.

But apparently some people around the world are clever enough to use a VPN — a virtual private network which, according to NordVPN “protects your internet connection and privacy online (by creating) an encrypted tunnel for your data.”

If you use a VPN, you can stream music via Pandora from anywhere there is internet service on planet earth (if I am understanding this VPN option correctly).

I think using a VPN also allows for some privacy regarding one’s internet history — which might be wise for more of us to consider using?

Anyways, back to Pandora…

The Pandora staff have created a bunch of free promotional tools which musicians like me can use — such as creating personalized audio messages to share with one’s listeners.

Image by Annette Meyer from Pixabay

One can also feature a particular song for up to two months at a stretch (six times per year…)

And every month Pandora offers two free training sessions via Zoom, which allow independent musicians to learn how to use their promotional tools and — more importantly — to build relationships with real human beings.

This is the crucial piece that so many companies seem to have completely devalued in recent years.

Many (if not most) of us human beings want to build relationships with the people in our daily lives — whether it’s our mail carrier, or a teller at our local bank, or the staff at our local grocery store, or the folks who run our favorite restaurant, or the doctors/nurses/staff at our local hospital, etc. etc. etc.

Chatbots may save money, but they do not help to build actual human relationships.

And it’s actual human relationships which tend to create a foundation of customer loyalty.

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

As regular readers of my blog are well aware, there is a steep learning curve when one starts releasing music to be streamed via companies like Pandora, Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, etc.

In addition to recording a song, mixing it and then mastering it, one also needs to get a graphic designed for it, select a company to distribute it (I use CD Baby), register it with the Copyright Office in Washington DC, and then enter it into one’s account at various organizations which collect money for the use of one’s song — including ASCAP, SoundExchange, Songtrust and the Mechanical Licensing Collective.

CD Baby used to have wonderful customer service until it was bought by another company which made a lot of changes…

And now the company which bought CD Baby — Downtown Music — is being sold to Universal Music Group (one of the three largest music conglomerates) after they were given permission from a European tribunal weighing the anti-trust implications of such a purchase.

Image by David Underland from Pixabay

G-d only knows what changes this purchase will bring into the lives of tens of thousands of independent musicians like me who currently use CD Baby to distribute our music…

Maybe UMG will use some of their enormous clout on our behalf?

Maybe they will improve customer service at CD Baby?

Or maybe they will find new ways to cheat, fleece and otherwise take advantage of us?

Time will tell…

Yet another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

I can attest to the effectiveness of Pandora’s promotional tools.

My total streams on Pandora recently surpassed 200,000.

So I will continue to use these promotional tools AND will continue to remain grateful for Pandora’s terrific staff.

The song I included at the beginning of this blog post was written for a show called FUNNY FACE which starred Fred Astaire and his older sister Adele in the1920s.

I attempted to release this version, which I recorded with pianist Doug Hammer, last year.

But CD Baby mysteriously messed up the metadata attached to the recording — listing Doug as a primary artist rather than a featured artist — and he asked me to remove it from distribution so that it wouldn’t confuse the fan base (much larger than mine) he has built for his solo piano compositions.

Sadly, I have been unable to get any definitive answer from the customer service staff at CD Baby about how this mistake happened in the first place and whether I’ll ever be able to re-release it with the correct designation (featured artist not primary artist) for Doug.

Image by Jan Van Bizar from Pixabay

Deep sigh.

Thank you to Doug for recording it with me.

Thank you to the Gershwin brothers for writing it in the first place.

Thank you to Pixabay for the lovely photos of spring flowers.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to another one of my blog posts.

You are always welcome to visit my website — willsings.com — if you are curious to learn more about my musical life here on planet earth.

I’ve begun a new postcard-writing campaign with a bunch of people in my neighborhood.

We are reminding Wisconsin voters that they have an important Supreme Court election coming up on April 7th.

It’s a small task.

But doing something — anything — to withstand/offset the chaotic cyclone of destruction being unleashed by our current political leadership helps me stay connected to a tiny sense of Elpis/Hope.

As does the melting snow outside…

And the promise of spring flowers!

Throwback Thursday #9

Image by Lin Animalart from Pixabay

One of the great things about doing a Throwback Thursday is re-visiting old blog posts.

Today I am throwing back to January 15, 2014 — and a post about seeing Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” painting in person.

I had completely forgotten this visit to the Museum of Modern Art in NYC — probably made with my friends Steve and Kate.

I had not forgotten, however, Don McLean’s lovely (and long) song about Van Gogh.

Doug Hammer and I recorded a version of this song — which eventually I hope to release.

For the time being it is accessible via this 1/15/14 blog post.

I have also included a few iris photos from Pixabay in today’s post because Van Gogh painted iris on more than one occasion..

And I am eager for spring to arrive here in New England!

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Image by Louise Stoehr from Pixabay

I have spent a lot of time shoveling snow in recent days.

Now snow is piled high on both sides of our sidewalk.

This limits one’s visibility when crossing the street…

It also makes parking a challenge for the folks who work in a nearby office building.

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

So far this winter our furnace is behaving.

And I haven’t injured my back.

And I remain grateful for food, shelter, electricity, heat and a functioning internet.

All this snow may also help our reservoirs remain in better shape as the year unfolds…

We shall see!

Image by Светлана from Pixabay

Thank you to the wonderful photographers at Pixabay.

And thank YOU for checking out yet another one of my blog posts.

You are always welcome to visit my website — WillSings.com — by clicking here.

PS: More snow (or possibly rain) is forecast in the Boston area for next week…

I Walk With Music

Hoagy Carmichael — NBC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This month’s song is a minor hit from what is sometimes called the Great American Songbook.

Composer Hoagy Carmichael and lyricist Johnny Mercer created it for a Broadway show — I WALK WITH MUSIC — which did not prove to be a success.

But it did give us this sweet song.

I discovered it when I was putting together an hour-long program of songs by Hoagy Carmichael — who also wrote the music for standards including “Georgia on My Mind,” “Stardust,” “The Nearness of You,” and “Skylark” (another song co-written with Johnny Mercer).

Pianist/producer Doug Hammer and I had a lot of fun recording it.

I just re-read the Wikipedia entries for Johnny Mercer and for Hoagy Carmichael.

I learned that — later in his life — Hoagy appeared as a songwriter character on THE FLINTSTONES animated TV show and also participated in a TV special with Fred (Mr.) Rogers.

And I was reminded that Johnny Mercer was a bit of a Jekyll/Hyde personality — beloved during the daytime and then drunk at parties saying mean things during the night — after which he would send flowers and an apology the next morning.

Johnny Mercer (from the Johnny Mercer Foundation website)

In addition to being successful songwriters, Hoagy and Johnny were also successful performers.

Later in his life, Hoagy worked as an actor in movies and TV shows, while Johnny recorded many hit singles over the years — of his own songs and as well as songs written by other people.

Johnny also was one of three men who founded and ran Capitol Records very successfully for many years.

He was mentored early in his career by Yip Harburg (the lyricist who co-wrote “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” “Over The Rainbow,” “How Are Things In Glocca Morra?” and “It’s Only A Paper Moon” among many other hits).

And near the end of his own life Mercer became a fan of singer-songwriter Barry Manilow.

In fact one of my favorite Johnny Mercer songs — “When October Goes” — was created after Mr. Mercer died with music by Barry Manilow and unpublished lyrics given to Mr. Manilow by Mercer’s widow, Ginger.

Both Mercer and Carmichael kept writing songs even after rock-n-roll had significantly altered the landscape of popular music — which meant that their work was less and less in demand…

Me (photo by Stephen C. Fischer)

I take inspiration from their creative perseverance as well as from the rich legacy of hit songs they left for all of us to savor.

On a personal note, I have begun attending several open mics on a regular basis, sharing my original songs while accompanying myself on ukulele.

Performing like this has been a good workout for my brain because I now have to remember both lyrics AND chords.

It has also been interesting to see how other regular open mic attendees do (and don’t) welcome one into each musical micro-community.

The key, I think, is simply continuing to show up.

Gradually we reveal ourselves to each other through our song choices and through the things we say between songs (the open mics I attend allow a person to perform 2-3 songs per night).

And trust begins to form…

Graphic Design by Stephen C. Fischer

And curiosity begins to arise…

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

All of the venues are also registered with ASCAP, the performing rights organization I joined several years ago.

So after each open mic, I log onto my ASCAP account and enter which of my original songs I performed.

In theory this is supposed to generate a tiny stream of income for me, but I haven’t seen anything yet…

One final thing I have been appreciating about attending open mics is that they give me a chance to fine-tune the lyrics of songs I haven’t yet recorded (but plan to record with Doug Hammer later this year).

If you would like to stream “I Walk With Music,” you are welcome to click here for a link to many different digital music platforms.

Thank you to pianist/composer/producer Doug Hammer for our ongoing — and ofter very playful — musical collaboration.

Thank you to Stephen C. Fischer for his photo and design expertise.

Image by Jenő Szabó from Pixabay

Thank you to Wikipedia (to which I give a tiny financial contribution each month) for being such a useful source of information.

Thank you to all of the terrific songwriters, living and dead, whose work touches our souls and lifts our spirits on a daily basis.

Thank you to Jeno Szabo for his beautiful image from Pixabay.

And thank you, dear reader, for making it through another one of my (now mostly monthly) blog posts.

Throwback Thursday #8

Image by Shirley Hirst from Pixabay

The only flowers remaining these days in my neighborhood are chrysanthemums and asters.

They are a hardy bunch, bless them.

We’ve had a few frosts; so most bees and butterflies are gone…

I’m already counting down the days to the winter solstice, when daylight in the Northern Hemisphere will again start to lengthen!

In recent weeks I’ve re-discovered the pleasures of tea — my current favorite being Celestial Seasonings’ Bengal Spice with some honey — and soup (today chicken, squash, carrot, potato, onion, garlic and ginger, are simmering together on the stove…)

Yum!

Image by pramod kumar v a from Pixabay

I hope your Thanksgiving was delicious and calm and heartful.

Today I am throwing back to a very short blog post about why I love leading Music Together classes which features a somewhat silly song which I recorded using GarageBand on an Apple laptop many years ago.

“I’m A Baby Monkey” remains very popular with children of a certain age…

In closing, I thank you for reading this blog post and possibly jumping back to my Throwback Thursday post

My stats are fluctuating from modest (seven visitors on 11/28/25) to quite a few (55 visitors on 12/2/25).

I don’t know if my site is being hacked/scraped by some sort of bot or if these are actual visitors.

To quote singer-songwriter Iris DeMent, I’ll just “let the mystery be…”

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

May your spirits remain light as we head towards the shortest day of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere!

ps: Thank you, too, to the great photographers at Pixabay…

Under My Umbrella

Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay

Autumn has arrived in New England.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Autumn is probably my least favorite season.

Partly this is because I do not like being cold.

Partly this is because I do not like the shorter days.

And partly this is because I do not like being reminded that everything dies in the end.

I do however like being reminded of how amazing mother nature is — creating a system of fully recyclable and compostable solar collectors in the form of LEAVES!

Hurrah for leaves and photosynthesis!

Image by Chu Viết Đôn from Pixabay

I wrote the first version of “Under My Umbrella” while camping in North Truro on Cape Cod.

Then my friend Molly Ruggles wrote a new bridge section — which is the version she and I and our friend Carole Bundy recorded (in the player above).

You can click here to read — or re-read depending upon how long you’ve been following my blog — a short post from 9/10/24 which features the earlier (pre-Molly) version of this song.

And here is a link to the Molly, Will & Carole version in case you might be willing to play/like/share it on your favorite music streaming platform.

We recorded it with me, Carole and Molly singing plus Molly playing Doug Hammer’s Schimmel grand piano in his studio north of Boston, MA.

Thank you to Doug for his excellent engineering and music production skills.

Thank you to Molly for writing a new bridge and also a bunch of lovely harmonies for all of us to sing.

Photo by Rada Ruggles

Thank you to Molly for playing piano AND for designing our graphics.

Thank you to the gifted and generous photographers at Pixabay.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to another of my blog posts!

I remain very grateful for our wonderful WordPress community.

Deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Both Sides Now

Image by Gianluca from Pixabay

What a song!

I, like many, have long loved Joni Mitchell’s original recording of “Both Sides Now” — as well her later version with an orchestra.

Pianist (and engineer and mixer) Doug Hammer and I recorded our own version to accompany one of my sweetheart’s annual ART/Word group exhibitions.

The theme that year was BALANCE.

I was not in the greatest voice when we recorded our version, but Doug was able to polish things to a lovely sheen during our fixing/mixing process.

Image by Kanenori from Pixabay

This summer and fall I’ve been riding the train (actually the train + bus due to ongoing track repairs in Massachusetts to fix a sinkhole situation) a lot from Boston to Ithaca, NY — where a bunch of my family members (sisters, niece, grandniece, nephews, mother, and cousins galore) live.

This has given me plenty of time to gaze at passing scenery, and I have seen some extraordinary cloud formations.

At dusk they are often illuminated by the last rays of sun coming over the horizon, which makes them even more magical.

Deep breath in.

Image by Enrique from Pixabay

Deep breath out.

I love that “Both Sides Now” leaves the listener with no concrete answers.

Ms. Mitchell writes, “I really don’t know clouds (or love… or life…) at all.”

And I also love Ms. Mitchell’s description of falling in love — “Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels — the dizzy dancing way you feel — when every fairy tale comes real — I’ve looked at love that way.”

It immediately reminds me of my own history with that feeling — and how intoxicating and exhilarating it was…

Image by Duncan Dao from Pixaba

And I also remember how devastated I was when my various romances came to an end.

Ahh, love…

Ahh, loss…

Ahh, life…

Ahh, clouds…

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

What are YOUR associations with this wonderful song?

Image by MF Gallery from Pixabay

I’d be honored to read any thoughts and feelings in the comments section below.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for being such a great musical ally for three decades.

And thank you for his wonderful, well-tuned Schimmel grand piano…

Thank you to Stephen C. Fischer for designing this lovely graphic.

Thank you to the talented photographers at Pixabay.

Thank you to Gretje Ferguson for taking this photo of me many years ago.

Photo by Gretje Ferguson

And thank YOU for reading and listening to this blog post.

You are welcome to click here and stream/like/playlist/share our version of Joni’s song.

And you can click here to visit my website if you are curious to learn more about my musical life here on planet earth.

May The Bees Keep Buzzing

Image by xiSerge from Pixabay

One of my favorite bloggers is Dan Kennedy, who has worked at many different media organizations in the Boston area and is now a professor at Northeastern University.

He writes about what is happening in — and to — the media here in the USA.

I first became aware of our Boston media landscape when I worked as PR Director at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education in Harvard Square.

My boss Diane Wortis and I created (and then produced annually for five years) a day-long conference called “Arts & The Media” which allowed us to call everyone who had anything to do with arts coverage in the Greater Boston area and invite them to participate on a panel.

Image by sandid from Pixabay

This included folks from our big papers (including The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and The Boston Phoenix) — to folks at radio and TV stations, to folks who worked for smaller local papers and magazines.

Our conferences started happening as Mitt Romney’s private investment company Bain Capital was buying up a bunch of local daily and weekly newspapers in the greater Boston area and consolidating them into one company — which meant that the staff at all of these formerly independent papers was being slashed and lots of generic (non-town-specific) content was starting to be written which could be printed in many different papers within this new chain.

I bore witness firsthand to the degradation of media coverage as a result of large-scale, corporate consolidation.

And twenty five years later, that trend of media consolidation has only worsened.

Image by Manfred Richter from Pixabay

All of this is to explain why I write near the end of this song — “May our press remain vital, always truth pursuing…”

Reading our local papers and nurturing relationships (via hundreds of hand-written thank you cards) with local arts writers and arts editors for over a decade helped me to understand how crucial the Fourth Estate is to a functioning democracy with healthy checks and balances.

Dan writes in his blog about what is going poorly (media consolidation continues, ad revenues drop…) and also where there are glimmers of hope via new models of local journalism.

And sometimes he weighs in on journalistic best practices.

He steered me to a speech Marty Baron gave at Brandeis University a few years ago which touched upon the fascinating topic of objectivity.

Image by Simon Oberthaler from Pixabay

Mr. Baron used to be the editor of The Boston Globe and then became the editor of The Washington Post.  

Here’s the heart of what Marty had to say:

“Objectivity is not neutrality.

It is not on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand journalism.

It is not false balance or both-sidesism.

It is not giving equal weight to opposing arguments when the evidence points overwhelmingly in one direction.

It does not suggest that we as journalists should engage in meticulous, thorough research only to surrender to cowardice by failing to report the facts we’ve worked so hard to discover…

Image by Jan Temmel from Pixabay

The idea is to be open-minded when we begin our research and to do that work as conscientiously as possible.

It demands a willingness to listen, an eagerness to learn — and an awareness that there is much for us to know.

We don’t start with the answers.

We go seeking them, first with the already formidable challenge of asking the right questions and finally with the arduous task of verification.”

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Graphic by Stephen C. Fischer

May our media in the USA stop kowtowing and collapsing… and realize that they are just as vulnerable as the rest of us to arrests in the middle of the night, arrests while we are walking from campus to our apartment, arrests while we are in a courthouse following all the rules about how to become a US citizen, arrests while we are picking vegetables, arrests while we are doing our laundry in the middle of the night.

Anothert deep breath in.

And another deep breath out.

You can click here for a link to “May The Bees Keep Buzzing” on Pandora, Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify, etc.

If you might be kind enough to stream it —and maybe even “like” it and add it to one of your playlists if you are so moved — that would be very helpful to feed positive data into the various algorithms which decide whose music gets played and how often…

Image by Medgyesi Jenő from Pixabay

I have selected flower photos from the wonderful photographers at Pixabay which I hope will help to offset the serious tone of this blog post.

Thank you to them and their skill and their generosity.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his sublime collaborative skills — both playing his Schimmel grand piano AND using his Apple computer like a 21st century wizard.

And thank YOU for listening to and reading yet another one of my blog posts!

Don’t Blame Me…

Image by Thomas Wolter from Pixabay

Greetings!

I hope this blog post finds you well.

My most recent song release — “Don’t Blame Me” — was co-written by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh.

I wrote a long blog post about Ms. Fields on October 1, 2017 which you can read (or re-read) by clicking here if you are curious.

The more I have learned about her, the more I admire her. 

And the more I perform her songs , the more I savor the ease, wit and humor in her lyrics.

Image by Thomas Wolter from Pixabay

Dorothy Fields was an extremely successful lyricist and librettist in a very male-dominated entertainment industry.

She was friends with — and sometimes collaborated with — all of the songwriters in the Golden Era of Popular Song including Richard Rodgers, Larry Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and the list (of male songwriters) goes on and on…

She had hits from the 1920s to the 1970s — and did not get discouraged (as many of her male colleagues did) when rock-n-roll began to displace her songs from the hit parade.

Image by Thomas Wolter from Pixabay

Instead she started working with a much younger composer, Cy Coleman, and had one of her biggest hits — the musical Sweet Charity — when she was 62 years old.

I, as a late-blooming songwriter, find her to be very inspirational.

I have chosen freesia for this post because I imagine she would have enjoyed their delicious fragrance ‚ and because they always seem very elegant to me.

According to her biographers, she was always very well-dressed (one grandparent was a tailor…) with separate closets for hats, shoes, active wear, evening wear, etc.

Here’s a streaming link for “Don’t Blame Me.”

Thank you to the glorious photographers at Pixabay.

Image by Alicja from Pixabay

Thank you to Doug Hammer for playing piano while simultaneously recording him and me on “Don’t Blame Me.”

And thank YOU for reading another one of my blog posts.

Here is a bouquet of freesia for your efforts!

Deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

What a fragrance!

Throwback Thursday (#6)

Image by Younggeun KIm from Pixabay

One of my favorite perennials is the Bleeding Heart.

Their flowers are like origami.

How does Mother Nature manage to create such an extraordinary variety of shapes and colors out of a such a limited selection of amino acids (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine) in plant — as well as our own — DNA?

And how do the plant cells unfold in such complicated and exquisite patterns?

Today’s Throwback Thursday heads back to a November 9, 2013 blog post about how people who sing with other people — especially in choirs when they are encouraged to breath together during certain sections of the music — can end up aligning their heart beats.

Image by Younggeun KIm from Pixabay

You can click here to read more about this fascinating topic if you are curious.

It is another reminder that singing — and singing with other human beings — can be a very healthy and uplifting thing to do.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

I am most familiar with the pink + white varieties of bleeding heart, but occasionally I have seen a completely white variant in a neighbor’s garden.

It is very elegant — but I miss the pink/red part of the blossoms…

Thank you to the talented and generous photographers at Pixabay.

Thank you to Mother Nature, who keeps doing her thing regardless or in spite of the mess we humans are making in our own lives.

And thank YOU for reading yet another one of my blog posts!

Another deep breath in.

Image by Frauke Riether from Pixabay

And deep breath out.

You are always welcome to visit my musical web site — willsings.com.

And you can find me singing on various streaming platforms by searching for “Will McMillan featuring Doug Hammer.”

Throwback Thursday (#5)

Image by beauty_of_nature from Pixabay

We’ve been experiencing a cool, windy and wet spring here in the Boston area.

Today, for example, we are forecast to have 24 hours of rain plus possible gale force winds along the shore.

Yikes!

This hasn’t been very pleasant for those of us who ride our bikes from point A to point B on a regular basis.

But I think the plant world has been enjoying it — and flowers appear to be blooming over a longer period of days and weeks.

I have been very grateful for that!

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Image by Peter Kraayvanger from Pixabay

This week the allium bulbs I planted a few years ago next to our driveway have started to bloom.

Hurrah!

They are the one type of bulb I’ve planted (other than some crocus) which have managed to blossom robustly each spring.

They always remind me of something Dr. Seuss would have drawn.

I especially like the purple ones.

Today’s Throwback Thursday takes me back to a short blog post about creativity from October 25, 2013.

It’s very sweet until the end, when I realized that the open mic I mention no longer exists.

Image by Gosia K. from Pixabay

And the restaurant which hosted it has closed.

And the lovely woman who ran it recently died.

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Ahh, change…

If I needed any more reminders to “carpe diem” and seize the day, there they are!

I just learned from Wikipedia (after I went to Google and checked the correct spelling of this Latin phrase) that “carpe diem” is more accurately translated as “enjoy the day” or “pluck/harvest the day.”

Ahhhhh…

Image by manseok Kim from Pixabay

I like these more accurate translations MUCH better than the traditional one.

I associate the verb “seize” with military campaigns, kidnappings and my European ancestors confiscating almost all of what is now South, Central and North America from the folks who were once living here.

“Enjoy,” “pluck,” and “harvest,” however, all feel less violent and more sustainable to me than “seize.”

And I did, in fact, pluck two allium flowers from next to our driveway — which were part of double stems from two different bulbs — to enjoy inside.

I think allium are part of the garlic/onion/leek family — so I suppose I might even be able to dig up and eat some of the bulbs if things get dire in the future…

But for now I will remain very grateful that no animals (rabbits, squirrels, rats, skunks, etc.) have dug them up for food so that I can enjoy their springtime extravagance.

Image by Matthias Böckel from Pixabay

Thank you to the talented and generous photographers at Pixabay

Thank you to the earth and to bulbs and to rain and to the sun.

And thank YOU for reading another one of my blog posts — and maybe two of them if you click the link many paragraphs above, too!

I realized recently that I rarely include a link to my official website in my blog posts.

If you are curious, you can click here to visit willsings.com.

Happy spring — at least to those readers who live in the northern hemisphere!