Paradigms...where shift happens!

The shadows of my mind, indeed...

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The UPS guy just came and delivered a CD from “slowazon.com”. I ordered it over 3 weeks ago and it finally got here. Into the CD player with it and it’s 1965 all over again. I am only 19 idealistic years old…at a free concert back in Cabell Hall at UVa. From the stage, the crystalline voice of Carolyn Hester floats above us, a sound so delicate we are afraid to breathe for fear of disturbing the air and shattering the sound.

It was the peak of the folk music era. We thought we were out there on the cutting edge of the free thinking sixties but nobody even had a car, much less a VW bus with flowers on it. A few were into a little pot from time to time but Budweiser was the drug of choice. Most of us at UVa didn’t so much do the sixties as watch them on the evening news. Charlottesville was a difficult venue for any movement but conformity. There were a few rebels among us but this was Mr. Jefferson’s “academical village”after all and professors were still known to excuse a student from class who was not wearing a coat and tie. Our biggest concern was keeping our student deferments so we didn’t have to exchange our UVa uniforms for olive drab.

Women were not admitted to the school until 1970 so ‘out of class’ activities were driven less by social consciousness than by testosterone. Downtown by the ABC store, black men would hang out, waiting for the under 21 students (the ones without fake ID’s) to give them a couple of bucks to go in and buy liquor for them. Each transaction was furtive as if we were selling secrets to a foreign power. We were nervous, certain we would get caught and I’m sure our “connections” were snickering at the dumb ass white boys with enough money to pay someone else to buy liquor for them. Most likely it wasn’t legal back then either but nobody cared enough to enforce whatever law there was.

So what does this little trip down memory lane have to do with my new Caroline Hester CD? Not much really except that the songs playing now lit up some corners of my memory.

I cannot remember now what my dreams for the future were in 1965 but that’s probably a good thing.

To paraphrase: “That’s my recollection and I’m stuck with it….”

Do drop in and I do mean 'doo' !

Can't believe I said that, given what is to follow:

OK, you’ve heard it before but it bears repeating. Some stories you just can’t make up and the account of what happened to Nina Gambone as reported on MSNBC sure is one of them.

It seems that someone or some system picked an inopportune time, at least from Nina’s point of view, to flush lavatory waste from an airplane. A frozen glob, chunk, lump or whatever aggregation term one might choose, fell on Nina’s car last week. It crushed her roof and smashed the windshield and now there seems to be nobody to blame it on. The FAA can’t do anything since the offending aircraft is unidentified. She got no help from the fire department either. They refused to help out with removing the “space invader” because, they said, Nina’s little package from the heavens was hazardous waste.

There is good news though; since Nina and her son were not in the car at the time there were no injuries.

I suppose the other good news would have to be that she lives in Massachusetts. Imagine having that happen in Key West where the temperatures are higher.

And from an insurance point of view, how about having to report THAT claim, maybe even having your premiums increase because of it. Seems unfair somehow for Nina to have the airline and the insurance company dump on her……

That's my story and I'm sticking to it....