The theme of today’s Throwback Thursday is hope and trust.
A fellow blogger recently shared a post about an extended act of assistance that two strangers offered to a woman in need of help after a fall.
It reminded me that there are probably thousands — or possibly millions — of similar acts of generosity and kindness which happen every day here on planet earth.
They just don’t make the news.
So I am going to make it a habit — when I read the news and become discouraged — to remind myself that there are countless mitzvahs happening all around me which I will never know about.
Even the fact that 99.99% of the time everyone stays on the correct side of the road while maneuvering big, complicated hunks of metal at very high speeds past each other is a significant testimony to how much we trust other human beings when we are out for a drive.
I first attempted to release this song several years ago, but complications at CD Baby — the company I use to distribute recordings to digital streaming platforms — led me to cancel that initial piano/vocal rendition.
Fast forward three years, and I am releasing a new version — this time recorded with my friends Molly Ruggles (playing piano and singing) and Carole Bundy (singing).
Molly also crafted our harmonies.
I co-write this song with two former bandmates, Scott Kowalik and Javier Pico, with whom I was in a pop-rock band a long time ago.
Here is a photo of us way back when…
Photo by Kymbob
Scott and Javier are on the right side, and I am leaning on Alan.
Robert sits in the middle.
That is when I still had a fair amount of hair.
I think Scott’s girlfriend at the time snapped this photo near the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
I am saddened to realize that some of the lyrics in this song (“and so we set off to fight another war…”) areeven more compelling today than when Scott (mostly the chorus) and I (mostly the verses) wrote them.
G-d only knows what will continue to unfold in the Middle East… and Ukraine… and so many other active human war zones…
I do not want my blog posts to be too discouraging, overwhelming or unhappy.
There’s already plenty of that energy in circulation here on planet earth!
That’s partly why I started sharing shorter, flower-filled Thursday Throwback blog posts this year.
And “Let The Day Unfold” offers a bit of hope and maybe even a smidge of wisdom.
I DO feel that many of us are caught in a losing battle — armored “with the righteous power of the either/or” — about all sorts of very important topics.
For example, I can easily find myself hunkering down in a judgemental, self-righteous, bike-riding, public transportation-using stance regarding our over-consumption of fossil fuels (leading to the increasingly erratic and dangerous weather here on planet earth).
But life is always — or almost always — more complicated and nuanced than a purely either/or position.
That’s why I love the yin/yang symbol — it so beautifully illustrates the concept of “both/and.”
And it reminds me that compromise is not necessarily a horrible option.
Thank you to the generous photographers and graphic designers at Pixabay.
Thank you to Javier and Scott and Molly and Carole and Doug Hammer(who recorded us and then patiently helped to mix and master this new version of “Let the Day Unfold.”)
And thank YOU for reading and listening to yet another one of my blog posts and songs!
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.
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.”
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.
I love combining the idea of a karmic wheel with the idea of us all (or many of us…) being asleep at the wheel — which is, of course, an extremely dangerous situation both for the person who is driving and also for all the other beings who are on or near the road on which this drowsy person is driving!
Because I have set up my daily life to be walkable, bikeable and/or busable (as dictated by the weather), I almost never drive a car.
Every time I am able to walk or bike from point A to point B (such as from home to Music Together classes or from home to Trader Joe’s), I am happy that I am not adding to the ever-more-precarious imbalance of greenhouse gasses in our planet’s atmosphere.
But I do ride to gigs at retirement communities in either a hybrid car or a regular gasoline-burning car — depending upon which accompanist I am working with on that day — which can leave me feeling like I am part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
I remain aware that advertising agencies, the companies who hire them to inspire/hypnotize us into buying lots of things, and our various media who feed those messages (hundreds per day!) to us have created a completely misleading narrative about how to find happiness and meaning in our lives.
And now we are living in a period of reckoning — both politically and environmentally — for all of the untruths and PSYOPs to which we have been exposed.
Here’s a fascinating example of how maddeningly f–ked up things have become here in the 21st century.
Apple, a company which prides — and markets — itself on protecting its users’ privacy recently settled a lawsuit which alleged that it, in fact, was recording its users’ conversations and sharing them with advertisers.
What???!!!
I do not have an iPhone or iWatch, but I do own several Apple laptops (going back twenty years), a couple of iPods (also going back many years), and I continue to love Apple’s GarageBand musical composition program.
What a disappointment…
Here’s an AP article/explanation from 1/2/25 by tech writer Michael Liedtke:
“Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the privacy-minded company of deploying its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on people using its iPhone and other trendy devices.
The alleged recordings occurred even when people didn’t seek to activate the virtual assistant with the trigger words, ‘Hey, Siri.’ Some of the recorded conversations were then shared with advertisers in an attempt to sell their products to consumers more likely to be interested in the goods and services, the lawsuit asserted.
The allegations about a snoopy Siri contradicted Apple’s long-running commitment to protect the privacy of its customers — a crusade that CEO Tim Cook has often framed as a fight to preserve ‘a fundamental human right.’
The proposed settlement filed in an Oakland, California federal court would resolve a 5-year-old lawsuit revolving around allegations that Apple surreptitiously activated Siri to record conversations through iPhones and other devices equipped with the virtual assistant for more than a decade.
Apple isn’t acknowledging any wrongdoing in the settlement, which still must be approved by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White. Lawyers in the case have proposed scheduling a Feb. 14 court hearing in Oakland to review the terms.”
I just checked online and learned from BloombergLaw.com that on 2/20/25, “A federal judge gave his preliminary approval to a $95 million settlement that would end a five-year class action over alleged privacy violations by Apple Inc.‘s Siri virtual assistant.”
It truly makes one wonder how one can trust any company whatsoever…
And it confirms what my brother-in-law Andrew had started noticing many summers ago when we were camping on Cape Cod — that conversations we were having within earshot of his iPhone were triggering uncannily specific ads (directly related to what we had been discussing) on his Facebook feed.
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
Graphic design by Stephen C. Fischer
G-d only knows what our individual — and shared — karmic reckonings will be in the hours, days, weeks, months and years ahead…
Thank you to Doug Hammer for playing so elegantly and engineering/mixing so patiently on this song.
Our current political climate here in the USA continues to be extraordinarily challenging, but we did get some promising political news from our neighbor to the north recently…
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
I strive on a daily basis to find a balance between engagement — giving tiny amounts of money to political races around the country, sending postcards to potential voters in those races, writing to my elected officials, reading the news, etc. — and disengagement so that I can cultivate a little bit of optimism, hope, love and respect (which seem to be in short supply these days… at least in certain corridors of power.
Returning to my earliest blog posts has become part of the latter — soul nurturing — strategy.
I love being reminded of events which I have forgotten about — and also being reminded of how my life has unfolded/changed/evolved during the past decade.
I have chosen today’s glorious photos of iris because they are another one of my favorite flowers — especially the old-fashioned varieties.
We have a bunch of iris which grow alongside our driveway.
The purple ones have an aroma which — to my nose — smells exactly like grape soda.
Yum!
I am guessing it will be another week or two before our iris start blooming here in the Boston area… and I am waiting patiently for their aromatic arrival.
I hope you are feeling well and finding ways to savor the natural world as an antidote to all of the human-created drama which continues to unfold here on planet earth.
As I mentioned in my previous Throwback Thursday post, I am revisiting my earliest blog posts — from almost 12 years ago — and updating them a little bit.
When I was deleting files from my laptop computer earlier this month, I found a bunch of photos from when I visited friends living in Shanghai.
With my friends’ permission I have added a few of them to my second blog post, which was inspired by an interesting thing which unfolded at the bilingual school where one of my friends was teaching.
Many songs from the 20s, 30s and 40s include references to specific people, places, products and events — thus functioning as historic 20th century time capsules for 21st century listeners.
A) Mulligan Stew, I learned from Wikipedia, is an Irish-inspired recipe for a soup or stew made from whatever food items one can round up.
It was also known as “Hobo Stew” during the early part of the 20th century in the USA.
I feel a special affinity for Mulligan Stew, because it appears to be very similar to the endless soup I like to make during the winter months.
I start with cut up carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions — plus a frozen chicken thigh — and boil all the ingredients until the chicken is cooked and the carrots are starting to lose their crunch.
Then I add some cut-up garlic, fresh ginger, salt, pepper and whatever additional spices — curry powder? thyme? turmeric? one of Trader Joe’s multi-spice blends? — call out to me from the shelf.
Then I eat it for about a week — refrigerating it each night and adding more water plus additional ingredients — leeks? parsnips? kale? mushrooms? squash? rice? tomatoes? okra? tofu? canned beans? frozen artichoke hearts? leftover Chinese food? — on a daily basis before cooking it some more.
Yum!
B) Noël Coward, as you may already know, was a multi-hyphenate powerhouse — an actor-playwright-composer-director-singer from England who died in 1973 after a long and very successful career.
I have only learned and performed one of his songs — “If Love Were All” — which was part of Judy Garland’s repertoire.
But I have a Noël Coward songbook in my basement music library which probably deserves more attention in the future.
C) Wikipedia tells us that “The Beaux-Arts Ball… is the annual costume ball traditionally given by the students of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the spring…on the rue Bonaparte overlooking the Seine… Its reputation for high style, nudity, wild antics, and cross-dressing encouraged imitators in American cities. In 1931, in New York, famous architects dressed up as their buildings and today, many American architecture schools hold similar costume balls.”
I am guessing that the one in New York in 1931 is the Beaux Arts Ball to which Larry Hart is referring in his lyrics.
They sound like very creative and somewhat outrageous events!
I am happy to share that my streaming numbers have been rising on Spotify and on Pandora (which are the only two music streaming platforms I currently monitor) — so a BIG THANK YOU to anyone and everyone who have given one of my songs a listen!
I have become more and more of a Pandora fan in recent months, even though their music is only accessible in the USA (and not globally like Spotify).
I use their free option, which means that I have to listen to ads every few songs — which I often mute.
And I use a similar free option on Spotify and YouTube Music.
Even though Pandora’s parent company, SiriusXM, has been laying off large numbers of staff in recent months, the core group of people at Pandora who offer customer service and training to independent musicians like me has — so far — remained intact.
What I particularly love about Pandora is that they do not use chatbots to communicate with independent musicians like me.
Real live Pandora staff offer free training sessions via Zoom each month to encourage musicians to take advantage of their free promotional strategies which can help songs find new listeners.
I tried one strategy — creating a featured track — and the song I featured received hundreds more streams as a result.
Of course, you probably remember that all of the music streaming companies pay only fractions of a cent per stream to recording artists and songwriters like me…
But I have released 58 songs during the past 4 years, and many of these songs have each been streamed over 1000 times on Spotify and Pandora — although less often on YouTube, Apple, Amazon, and other digital music platforms…
And all of those fractions of cents DO have the potential to add up to something substantial.
So I remain hopeful that my persistence will pay off as the months and years go by — as long as we have a functioning internet, a functioning economy and a functioning democracy…
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for playing his beautiful Schimmel piano on this recording and for being very patient while we mixed and mastered it.
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