A Tribute to Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry Oct 1926 - Mar 18, 2017 

RIP

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

I’ve wanted to write this post since I read the devastating news of his passing on Saturday, 18 March 2017.  We used to listen to him as teens and when we took up the guitar, growing up, we tried to learn his songs on the guitar.  I still have a close friend who plays the guitar very well.  He grew up playing tunes by Chuck Berry.  I was so sorry to hear of his passing, but I know none of us lives forever and at least he made it to the age of 90, which is longer than most musicians.

Now I’d like to tell you a little about his life.  He was a pioneer in the rock and roll genre.  His career spanned seven decades.  That’s a long time to play music, but that’s what he loved and it’s always nice to be able to make a living at what you love to do.  How many of us really get to do that?

I know some of you have heard some of his best hits, which are “Johnny B Goode,” “Roll over Beethoven” and “Sweet little Sixteen.”

 Chuck Berry

 

Chuck Berry was born Charles Edward Anderson in October of 1926.  He actually transformed the music industry in the 1950’s by taking R and B and creating rock and roll.  John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones and Huey Lewis were all influenced by this man who helped shape their own careers.

Chuck Berry is survived by his wife and two children.

On Saturday, April first, we start the A to Z Challenge again, so I wanted to post this now because the next post will be part of the challenge, which runs the whole month of April.  I hope to keep up with that along with working and my police class.  We’ll see how well I can manage my time and multi-tasking.  Of course, you all know determination is my theme song, so somehow I’ll manage to get it all done, I hope.  During the challenge, I'll be posting whatever crosses my mind.  Hopefully, it’ll be worth reading.

What do you think about donating your body to science?

Free clip art

A couple of people I knew have done this recently.  It’s a cheap way to dispose of your body if you don’t have the money for a burial and it also helps science research.  They can use your body to teach students about anatomy, for surgical practice, or any number of other procedures that people can study including decomposition so the information can help in solving future crimes.  You don’t have a say as to how your body is used after you die, if you do decide to donate it to science.

Not all bodies will be accepted either due to weight issues or contagious diseases.  The institution that picks the body up for science will also take care of the expenses of cremation when they’re through using your body for research.  Your ashes can then be returned to family members if that’s agreed upon beforehand.  You must take care of all this paperwork when you’re still alive.

I read that between 10,000 and 15,000 Americans donate their bodies yearly to benefit medical science.  I never knew this and thought I’d look into it after this actually happened with my friends.  Before that I never really gave this any kind of thought, or even heard of it before.

A few facts about donating your body:

You must donate your whole body in most cases, so organ donors don’t qualify.

Transporting your body to a science facility is free unless you’re being shipped to another state.

You may not qualify if you’re morbidly obese, badly damaged in a car accident, or have a contagious disease (such as tuberculosis, HIV, or hepatitis.)

The medical facility won’t pay your family for your body.

The family can conduct any memorial service beforehand, but they will have to pay for those costs.

You can’t request that your body be used in a certain way.  Science will decide.

I found all this interesting, but I always like to learn new things.

A furry friend says good bye

It’s been a difficult few days around my house.  I finally have sense enough to sit down and write a post.  My house has been filled with grief and so much sadness that I didn’t even want to get on the internet.

 Tootie is five in this picture

Last Wednesday, the seventh of September, we had to put down one of our cats.  It was time.  And though we hate to see that time come, it always does.  Animals have a shorter lifespan than us even if we wished it was different.

Our oldest cat, Tootie, has been on a downhill slide for a couple of years now.  She was pretty ill on Wednesday morning when we got up.  She had diarrhea and was meowing a lot and moving her mouth around as if she had something caught in there.  She threw up multiple times during the night.

 Tootie at age four.  Cats's always love boxes.

Hubby took off work and I had the day off anyway so we took her to the vet once they opened.  We knew she had dementia and would get lost in the house.  She also had limited hearing, which I think contributed to her being so vocal about everything.  On top of that was arthritis, so we were giving her joint medication for that.  It looked so painful for her to get up and down even with her medicine, although the situation was a bit better.  I knew she wasn’t very comfortable because she would move about the house to different spots trying to find one that suited her best.  She drank lots of water, but the vet said that was typical for an older cat on a previous visit.

 Tootie at age two

Little did we know once we left the house with her that morning that it would be the last time.  The other two cats knew something was up because they came to hang around her and watch her that morning.  Raven has been her best friend because they are both very social cats.  Koki is more of a loner and prefers to hang out by herself upstairs most of the time.  But that morning, she was downstairs too checking it all out.

 Here she is posing in the cabin we had in 2005

Once at the vet we discovered Tootie had a broken tooth.  We decided against having surgery for that because he said her kidneys were beginning to fail and she’d lost about three pounds since her last vet visit.  He told us the end was near, which means it could be weeks, or a month or two, but we had to think about her quality of life at that point.  She’d had sixteen-and-a-half years with us and had lived the best life we could give her.

 Looking majestic under the Christmas tree

Out of all the cats we’ve had, Tootie is the only one who adopted us.  When she was a kitten she came to our door in California and wanted to be let in.  She did a cute little cat dance with her fluffy tail curled in the air and repeated this performance four days in a row.  On the fourth day, I opened the door and let her in.  She walked into the house as if she’d always lived there and commenced to play with Comet, our youngest female cat at the time.  These cats played for three hours straight until they both collapsed on the floor exhausted. 

I found out later that hubby went looking for her in the neighborhood on his way to work.  She was later showing up at the house that day and he was worried about her.

 Posing on the dining room chair

The rest is really history.  She fit in good with the family becoming cat number four, at the time, and giving us two girls and two boys.  The rest of our cats were rescues.  I could go on and on with cat stories as I’ve had cats all my life and probably will have until the day I die. 

But this post is about Tootie and how wonderful she was, although we had some trying times over the last couple of years once she began to lose her mind and get bad arthritis in her legs.

This is one of my favorites.  Cats love to get on anything you put on the floor, or anywhere else.

Tootie was most photogenic cat we’ve ever cat and never has taken a bad picture.  She would also put up with me, like Raven, and let me put birthday hats on her.  She never knew a stranger either and would make friends with anyone who came to visit.  Raven is much the same way and misses her so much, as we all do.  He’s been looking for her in the house, although I know he knows she was ill when he last saw her on Wednesday.

 Tootie always seemed to know when I got the camera out.

I can’t tell you how sad and quiet it was around the house that day.  We cried most of the day and couldn’t eat.  I was so glad we didn’t have to go into work.  We threw ourselves into cleaning and cleaned the whole house from top to bottom to keep our minds busy and off things.  My house is so clean now I hardly recognize it.  But it’s so quiet because Tootie talked all the time and the other cats rarely do.

 She thinks she's hiding in this pot but still posing for the picture.

The next day it was back to work and although neither of us felt like it, it was probably what we needed to get out of the funk we were in.  We’re having her cremated so she’ll join the other urns in the house when we pick her up in a week.  Meanwhile, I hope she’s young again, free of all her woes and reunited with the other cats in the Summerland, (as I like to call the afterlife).  To me the Summerland is a wonderful place with flowers, butterflies, constant spring/summer weather, beautiful blue skies, lots of green grass and trees filled with happy birds, among other things.

 Give a cat a sack or a box and they're happy

I hope you’ve enjoyed all the pictures I picked out from Tootie’s life.  We were blessed she picked us for her human parents.  Rest in peace sweet girl until we meet again.

This was her tenth birthday

March 30, 2000 – September 7, 2016

Big Mama Pronounced Dead

Big Mama leaning over

Big Mama getting worse

 

As sad as this is to say, Big Mama decided to give up this year and throw in the towel.  I’ve suspected she was ailing all summer when the new growth was limited.  Nevertheless, I watered her faithfully, talked to her, and told her to get with it, etc.  All of my peppiness was to no avail.  She fell over in her pot a week ago.

Poor Big Mama - RIP

Now maybe these Sego palms have a life span like most living things.  After all, she isn’t a redwood tree, so how long do these palms live.  This one is about sixty years old.  I guess she was tired.  Or maybe dreading another awful winter here.  Poor thing.  I can’t blame her for that, even if I did wrap her up in extra warm bedding every year.  I never look forward to winter myself.  I’d rather go around naked, I guess, instead of bundled up in all those clothes that never warm me up anyway.

 Interesting to see how they grow - full of fibers

 

So here’s another plant we lost since we’ve been here now, bringing the total of special plants to about five.  This isn’t southern California.  Anything will grow there.  So really, what do I expect when living in the desert?

 Here's another shot of the fibrous inside

 And a side view -  I wonder if the Indians used this mateial for thread.

 

Looking on the bright side of things, now I won’t have to get the dolly out to move her around on the patio.  She must weigh three hundred pounds in that huge pot with all that dirt.  I’m wondering how I can keep a piece of her for a future artwork project.  My wheels are still turning on that one.  Maybe I’ll find some way she can live on in my studio.

Remembrances

I hope everyone enjoyed their fourth and had a happy and safe holiday.

July fourth is always a bittersweet day for me because my daddy died on this date in 1980.  The first few years were rough to watch and enjoy the fireworks.  Now I use the day as a remembrance day and think of old times.

Every fourth, our daddy would load all seven of us up in the station wagon and we’d drive into town to watch the fireworks at the fairgrounds.  Those were the days of sweat and slapping mosquitoes, as we ooohed and aaahed at the amazing sight overhead.  Each blast was more colorful and bigger than the last one. 

I bet my husband will also look at this holiday as I do from now on.  His ninety-six-year-old dad passed away yesterday morning.  I’m so struck by this and wondering if there’s some deeper meaning there, something I can’t see yet.  After all, what are the odds that this would happen, for our fathers to die on the same day?

When the nurse told my husband Friday that his dad had about two days left because his organs were shutting down, I knew at that moment that he would go on Saturday, July 4.

He’s very lucky he had his dad so long and the man was in good shape and rarely sick, but old age caught up with him and I think he was tired.  We could see a downhill slide from the moment he had to give up his driver’s license six months ago.  Since he couldn’t drive, he sold his big diesel truck shortly after.  His freedom had vanished.  He loved to go to garage sales every Saturday and look around the hardware store.  No longer able to jump in the truck and go, he watched a lot of TV because he’d lost the enthusiasm to tinker on things, which he’d done since I met him more than forty years ago.

He was a good man who lived a healthy, long life and was never judgmental of others.  I’m sure it about killed him to admit he finally needed a cane to steady himself.  Even then, he wouldn’t use it all the time.

I know, when I get that old, if I do, I’ll be the same way.  Somehow, it’s different to know you have a vehicle in the garage that can take you any place you want to go, even if you prefer to stay home most of the time.  It must hurt many older folks to lose that freedom and be dependent on others. 

I wish my daddy had lived so long, but somehow it was meant to be that, at age fifty-five, he would leave this world behind.

My husband will be in another state for a while sorting everything out.  I’ll be a bachelor girl for a couple of months.  We’ll see how things go and what adventures I’ll get into.  Stay tuned.

Oh no! We lost a great musician!

September 16, 1925 – May 14, 2015

RIP 

wikipedia

I read today that BB King died in his sleep yesterday in Las Vegas, Nevada.  I don’t know if any of you like the blues in the way of music but I do and have listened to this man for many years.  He will be missed because he was one of the greats.

Here are some facts about BB King you may not know.

1.)  He was born Riley B King in Berclair, Mississippi.

2.)  He was raised by his grandmother.

3.)  He bought his first guitar at age twelve for fifteen dollars.

4.)  He served in the army during WWII.

5.)  He worked as a farmer in his younger years, picking cotton and driving tractors.  A tractor accident after returning from the war made him give up farming.

6.)  He launched his musical career in the 1940s in Memphis, Tennessee

BB King - wikipedia

7.)  He hosted a ten-minute radio show on which he was known as the Beale Street Blues Boy, later shortening this to the Blues Boy and then to BB King.

8.)  Some of his hits were “The Thrill is Gone,” “3 O’clock Blues,” “You Know I Love You,” “Woke up this Morning,” “Every Day I have the Blues,” “Sweet Little Angel.”

9.)  His landmark album “Live at the Regal,” recorded in 1965, was later declared worthy of preservation in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.

10.)  By the 1960s, he was appearing on the Ed Sullivan show and The Tonight Show.

11.)  He played on a Gibson ES-355 guitar he named Lucille and said in an AP 2006 interview, “When I’m singing I don’t want you to just hear the melody.  I want you to relive the story because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.”

12.)  During his life he won fifteen Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the R and B Music Hall of Fame.

13.)  In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number three in a list of 100 greatest guitarist of all time.

 BB King restaurant sign in Memphis, Tennessee - wikipedia

 

14.)  In the 1990s, he launched a chain of blues clubs bearing his name across the US, featuring live bands and a full menu of southern-inspired comfort food.  There are still restaurants in Memphis, Nashville and Orlando should you be in such places and enjoy this cuisine.

15.)  There’s a Delta Blues Museum in Indianola, Mississippi to preserve BB King’s legacy and values.

16.)  King was a licensed pilot and few himself to many of his gigs until age seventy.

17.)  He was known for appearing in 250-300 concerts a year up into his 70s, only then cutting his workload down to 100 concerts a year due to declining health.

18.)  During his life, BB King inspired many musicians, including Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jimi Hendrix.

19.)  He preferred to appear onstage wearing a suit or tuxedo, patent leather shoes and diamond rings.

20.)  He stayed away from drugs and alcohol but loved to gamble and frequented Las Vegas when he could.  How many musicians don't use drugs and alcohol?

21.)  He was married and divorced twice, fathering fifteen children.

He was 89, so at least he had a nice long life and lived it his way.  I have to admire people who can do what they love their entire life and make a good living at it.

Do you like blues music?  Have you ever seen BB King in concert?

Click here to listen to “The Thrill is Gone.”

Do you believe in Reincarnation?

My grandmother did and I tend to lean that way myself.  This is a fascinating subject to me.  While we have no proof, and are unlikely to receive any, many small children know things they couldn’t possibly know that happened decades before they were born.  What’s to be made of such stories?

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense that a soul would get a do-over to do better in the next life.  I’m not one to believe that if you don’t get it right, you’ll spend eternity in hell.  If that’s the case, how merciful is the creator?

The thought of bad people going to hell is an enticing one when you think about murderers and psychopaths who can’t reform, but then the world will always have evil characters in it, so maybe these types also get to do it all over again.  It makes you think, doesn’t it?

After all, nobody is perfect, so just where do you draw the line for indiscretions that will still allow your soul to be admitted into heaven on your first attempt?  No, I’m not a Buddhist, but Buddhism teachings do make a lot of sense in some areas.

Then there’s the feeling of déjà vu that happens when you go somewhere that you know you’ve never been, but you know where everything is.  Has this ever happened to you?  It’s happened to me a couple of times.  The scene also gave me goose bumps because it was creepy to know all that stuff and know I was in a strange place.

On a different tack altogether, perhaps you create your own heaven and hell.  The concept for everyone could be different because we all have different things to fear, or different ideas of what the perfect place is.  Has anyone thought about that?

I know this is a controversial post, but I bet it’ll make you ponder some deep subjects for a while and question yourself as to where you stand on this issue.  Is your soul reborn into a new body, do you live through someone else in a future life, or is that it – dead is dead - and you’re shuffled off to heaven or kicked down to hell?

Too bad the lady’s dead

I’m actually quite upset over this, voicing this to my neighbor in language not fit to post here.  She laughed because sometimes I surprise her, but we can and do talk about all issues.  I’m going to miss that when I move.

Most of you reading this will probably say, “Big deal.  It’s only a plant.”  But to me it is a big deal because this is the oldest plant I had.  I’ll give you a brief history of this lady’s tragic life.

I rescued her from the garbage room right after I moved to California in 1979.  She was small then and I’d have to dig through a ton of old pictures to find a photo, so I borrowed one from the net for this shot.

Elephants Foot

Believe me the box of old photos I have is one of those large dish packs that’s about twenty by twenty and three feet high.  I don’t have time for digging in there right now.  This was all before they invented the digital camera.  One day when I have spare time on my hands, I want to scan most of those pics into my computer.  However, there are so many I don’t know if I’ll ever have that much free time.

We lived in a condominium complex back then.  Our neighbor had thrown the plant in the garbage room wanting it to go out with the trash because she was tired of taking care of it.  She laughed when she saw it sitting on our patio.  “I wondered who would rescue that plant,” she said.

As time went on, we bought a house, moved, and repotted the plant.  It grew, obviously happy with its placement in the yard under some trees.  The root ball (body) increased from about six inches in diameter to about twenty-four inches in diameter.  Eventually it grew too tall, so we had to move it out a tad because it was touching the tree branches.  We repotted the lady several times over the twenty-five years we lived there.

When it came time to leave and move to the desert location we now occupy, I couldn’t leave her behind.  She towered over my head by then, obviously in love with California as much as I was.  The lady was specimen quality.  Everyone commented on her beauty.  So I loaded her, and other plants I wouldn’t leave behind, onto a trailer and a friend drove them to our new home.

Well the first catastrophe happened when the wind snapped her off about halfway down.  This occurred on the drive when she was on the trailer.  Poor girl.  I still have this top portion and intend to use it in an art project someday.

 This is the lady to the right of the door (in happier times a few years ago).  This was after she broke off twice and before the top froze causing her to sprout in other places.

The first winter we were here, she was caught up in the wind again, snapping her green bladed fronds off, leaving her about three feet high.  I felt terrible, but she wanted to live and started to sprout in funny places then.  At this time, I realized she was a lady, but a headless one now.  See the picture below.

 Elephants Foot - See her arms?

I’ve done my best with protecting her over the years.  In the desert where the weather is harsh and brutal, I kept her in the shade of the patio and close to the house.  I watered her good in the warm months and I always wrapped her well every winter.  In the spring, I trimmed off the old, dry fronds and new ones always sprouted – until this year.

But I wanted her to live.  I continued to water, talk to her, and didn’t give up all summer.  However, now it’s the end of August and there’s not one little sprouted green blade anywhere on her body.  I’m going to have to announce defeat this time and resign myself to the fact that she’s gone and has lost the battle with the elements.  That’s what I was spouting off to my neighbor about.  We had such a horrible winter with record-breaking temperatures and snow.

This is the poor lady after last years winter

 As goofy as this sounds, I feel like giving her a burial and not just hurling her over the back wall into the desert, or putting her in the can at the curb.  She’s been with me too many years for that kind of disposal.

I don’t want to live in a place where I have to cover plants and worry about their welfare ever again.  I’m done with that and I can’t wait to get the heck out of here.

In Loving Memory

Tracy Lynn Wooley

1962 - 2013

 

I live in a small town and we have a neighborhood market here.  Several markets have come and gone, but this one has made it, which is a good thing because the closest store here is about eight miles away.  The fellow who opened this one has another one that is very successful in a town about thirty minutes away, so I guess he knows how to run a business.

 

Many of the people in our little town shop at this market.  It comes in handy when you don’t want to drive to the nearest chain grocery store, or run out of something you need for dinner.  The prices are competitive and he keeps the store clean and stocked well.  It has a nice produce section as well as a deli and everything else you’d expect to find in a larger chain grocery store.  The staff is wonderful and friendly.

 

I wanted to acknowledge a sweet girl who waited on me and my husband at various times since the market opened two years ago.  She has recently passed away, leaving me feeling stunned and very sad.  She was so friendly and always smiling, knowing all the customers by name.  This was a shock since we’d seen her in the store a few days before.  We will miss her.  I’m writing this post as a dedication to her, someone who should still be here.  She was only fifty-one-years old and left us way too soon.  May she rest in peace.

 

I’ve had such a week with trying to finish up my family book, keeping in touch with an ailing friend, a cat with allergies, and taking on another bout of taking are of my neighbor’s cats and garden again so she can go hiking.  Sometimes I wonder why she can’t stay home more and what she’ll do once I move.

 

This news about Tracy was such a blow.  I always enjoyed going in the store and chatting with her a few minutes.  You never know how short life really is and the last time you’ll see somebody.  Give thanks for your friends and loved ones.  No one lives forever, not in the physical sense anyway.

Remembering John Lennon

Photo Courtesy Wikipedia



An open-minded, peaceful soul and great songwriter met his premature demise when Mark David Chapman shot him to death on the day on 1980. I hope this lunatic and deeply troubled human being rots in jail.


All John wanted is a peaceful world as we all do, but unfortunately, that is too much to hope for on this planet. The world is a place in turmoil. There have always been wars and always will be because we have never learned to settle things in a peaceful manner.

Here is his song "Imagine" if you care to listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xB4dbdNSXY