The Beatles, Ranked! My Top Five

We're #1!

1
Here, There, and Everywhere (17) I can play it on guitar, I've skated to it, and I danced with many people at my wedding to it. It's everything.

2

While My Guitar Gently Weeps (8) It could have easily been my number one. First song I ever played for Will, holding an earbud up to his ear while cradling him in the NICU. I know everyone gets so excited about Eric Clapton's guitar solo in it, but to be honest, the magic is in George's composition, Paul's piano, and how well Ringo services the song with his percussion. 

3

Abbey Road side two medley (3) It is NOT cheating, as The Beatles Channel, WLAV, and almost every station that touches side two plays it to full duration. Most start with You Never Give Me Your Money, some start all the way back to Because, but everyone plays it all the way through until The End. It is a Fab Symphony. A musical journey. Another match with Sirius/XM!

4

A Day in the Life (6) I feel like I'm copying almost everyone with my top picks, but these are up here for a reason. It starts quietly with a piano intro, tells tales from a newspaper, switches to a guy getting out of bed to grab a bus and fall into a dream, and ends with a symphony and the whole band bashing the same chord on the piano until it dies out, 46 seconds later. EPIC short programs from Michelle Kwan and Jeremy Abbott. 

5

Tomorrow Never Knows (43) If a song like Norweigan Wood wasn't enough of a clue that the boy band was going in a new direction, TNK really hammers that home. 

Sirius/XM did their annual Top 100 countdown over Memorial Day Weekend. A number in parenthesis is that song's position on that countdown. It's not that I don't like Hey Jude (1), I just don't like it as much as the rest of y'all. 

Happy Christmas everyone, play these instead of "Christmas Time is Here Again."

Rethinking Jewel Tones

Life's rich palette

Jewel tones are very Christmasy! Example...

Taste: ribbon candy

Touch: hand-blown Christmas ornaments with a mirror finish

Smell: cranberry candles

Hear: Christmas carols

That's It, Just One Line - Sympathy for the Devil

I shouted out "Who killed the Kennedys?" when after all, it was you and me. 

This song deserves a deeper dive, but this line is what devastates me. It's easy to blame someone or something else when we act upon on worst instincts... 

Still feeling the anger of the elections. Four more years. 

Across the Prairie: Negro League Baseball and Touched by a Blackbird

My trip around the midwest started its trajectory back home through Kansas City, where I waited for The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum to open at noon on Sunday. We had received invitations to visit time and again throughout the years, but this was my first time on historic 18th and Vine.  The link: www.nlbm.com.

I have an interesting connection to the Negro Leagues as retired player/owner/entrepreneur Ted Rasberry was one of my clients at the Walgreens at Boston and Kalamazoo. He and I talked baseball here and there while he waited for his prescriptions to be filled and he slyly let me know one day that he was a former player. I fan girled on him in that moment, appropriately feeding his ego. Props to him for all he did for youth sports in Grand Rapids, and I'm glad to say there is a field and a youth league named after him. Whitecaps have honored him during Negro League games with replica jerseys. I thought of all the autographs on those clipboards we filed and then threw away. Oh, I found an excellent bio here. Godspeed, Mr. Rasberry. 

I was glad to see the museum was thriving. While empty when I first arrived at 11:30, there was soon a crowd waiting to get in. The site is a combination of Negro League and Jazz museums, along with a special exhibit in the lobby celebrating the voice of Kansas City by way of the black press. More on that later.

Buck O'Neil statue to greet visitors when they first arrive. He is honored as the league's best manager. 

Panoramic of the indoor field with bronze statues to celebrate the best players at each position. 

Negro Leagues honored the ladies who played, including Mamie Johnson, Toni Stone, and Connie Morgan. 

Hats and jerseys honoring each of the teams recognized in the league. This is tricky with rogue offshoots, exhibition teams, and more that laid claim to history. 

The Geddy Lee autographed baseball collection was donated by the bassist several years ago. An ardent fan of baseball (and a Detroit Tigers fan growing up as the Blue Jays did not yet exist), Lee secured many signatures from former players throughout the years and donated the collection to the museum for prosperity. Wikipedia states the initial donation was 200 baseballs; I tried to count all the balls on display, easy to say the collection has grown, and there are at least 350 on display now. 

Surprising champions for the players in the Negro Leagues were the reporters for the communist/socialist newspapers. Short documentaries were on display throughout the museum, chronicling the power of the press on MLB to integrate back in the 1940s. 

Freedom, on display

Speaking of the press... in the lobby is an exhibit on the history of 18th and Vine, which includes the history of the civil rights movement and the power of the black newspapers in Kansas City. After watching the documentary, a man and woman got up to make an announcement: their mother, who was present, was an activist in the 60s, and had gone to jail in Birmingham with Dr. Martin Luther King in the 60s! They were all in town to celebrate her birthday and stopped in to celebrate what she had accomplished, and for some in the family, it was their first time seeing the documentary. 

I was awestruck at her bravery. How hard it must have been to stand up for what is right when those in power say you are wrong. I shook her hand, and words failed me. What do you say to someone that powerful, that graceful, that majestic? I merely said, "Bless you," and she replied, "Thank you, honey" with a squeeze. I met greatness that day and one of my flaws when awestruck, I completely forgot her name. 

It cannot be a coincidence that when I returned to my car to continue my journey home, the first song on the Beatles Channel was Blackbird. To think, I encountered one of the muses that inspired Paul McCartney. 

I add that I am probably mourning the election with you ma'am. You deserved better than this. 

Best Meal I Ever Ate, Steak

Yum

I have experienced a lot of tasty steaks in my life. What meal stands out? 

The sit-down dinner on my first night in Daytona Beach, spring break '87, comes to mind. After a 24-hour bus ride of prepackaged snacks, wine coolers, and fast food, the girls and I wanted a nice meal. We walked the strip and found a sit-down restaurant. 

I don't remember the name of the place, and being a group of teenage girls fresh off a bus, it couldn't have been high-end. Being underaged, it could very well have been just a diner or at best, a family restaurant. All I can really remember was getting a steak, potato, salad, and garlic mushrooms. Possibly a Coke. I ate every last bite.

Tired and hungry are usually recipes for a meal hitting the spot. But also, at 17, there was the power of choice. In Daytona Beach, away on my own for the first time, I got a say in where we were going, deciding what to order, and knowing I was picking up the check. 

A taste of independence in more ways than one. 

I haven't lost my preference for steak, either. It is my go-to order when dining out. I'll get a ribeye, a strip, prime rib, pot roast, medallions, or even a porterhouse if I wear my eatin' pants. 

Then again, I've been known to order the fish.

That's It, Just One Line - La Isla Bonita

"It all seems like yesterday not far away"

Across the Prairie: Modern Day Laura Musings

If Laura were a teacup...?

This entry originated as a Facebook post on August 8, the beginning of my trip as I loaded up on the Hampton Inn complimentary buffet breakfast. Suppose I should have posted this first instead of last, but glad to take the time after my trip to muse this thought, once again: 

I wonder who Laura would be in the modern era, had she been born in 1967 instead of 1867. It’s an interesting contemplation of the roots of her brilliance: was she a product of her circumstances or was it in her regardless? She loved books, music, storytelling, and her handsome hero Farmer Boy. In between teaching in rural red schoolhouses, she wrote essays and poetry. Raising chickens, she wrote newspaper columns. Sewing buttonholes and scraping together a dollar to move to Missouri, she kept a diary. And after Ma and sister Mary died, she began taking notes.

I imagine modern-day Laura would be living a life similar to one of my other favorite Wisconsin writers, Michael Perry, a guitar-playing, firefighting, farmer who built a shed in the woods in order to drink terrible coffee and write.

I’m sitting here wondering what I get out of these excursions across the plains to stare at replica cabins, musty quilts, handwritten school tablets, and broken china. She told historical fiction about the founding of our country and some of that history is problematic in our modern era; she really painted Ma with a broad, racist brush and asked Pa some hard questions about who the land really belonged to. In her version of the events in which she created the stories that became Little House on the Prairie, I am conflicted with her point of view of Indigenous People; was she othering them when she wanted the baby in the papoose, or was she, in her child-like point of view, connecting with the plight of the Osage through the baby's eyes?

I feel like these books are an important stepping stone towards dialogue as opposed to dismissiveness. After all, I do believe she was quoted as saying if she were a part of the Osage tribe, she would have scalped the first man who tried to claim the beautiful prairie from her. 

I think she leaned into compassion for the plight of the Indians during that time in history but she missed the mark; I'm also judging her 90+ years later. 

Back to her as a more spirited writer, when she wrote, she invited you to delight in a delicious drink of lemonade, find magic playing in a creek, and find a connection to her humanity from long ago.

Will never got into the books but loved the chapter when Laura got a time out for being naughty, he knew exactly how she felt. She hooked me when I picked up On the Banks of Plum Creek, where she noted upon seeing the swimming hole for the first time that suddenly, her whole skin was thirsty; I too knew exactly how that felt.

It’s remarkable that her homesteads still exist, thank goodness for land records from 1870 and 1880. Seeing her living spaces—and not some soundstage—demonstrates how the magic she saw in her surroundings was real.

Good lord, this is a ramble. Best hitch up the Bronco and hit the road.