[This is another in an occasional series on popular songs with appeal across the generations. This post will be broken into two parts; Part 2 will appear in a few days is here.]
As a kid, I once read a “funny” comic-book episode in which aliens landed in mid-20th-century America and reported back to their home [...]

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Via agent Janet Reid, whose taste in videos (even when she’s not sure what to call the thing video’d) is impeccable:

The poem, and I guess the performance, is by the poet (Taylor Mali) himself, although the video was put together by “student Robert Bruce.” As Mali’s site says:
I have no idea who he is (and [...]

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[Image: "Good and Evil," by Daniel Merriam. See the original, more clearly, at Merriam's own site.]
From whiskey river’s commonplace book (“the pursuit of fantasy“):
Writing in the Dark
It’s not difficult.
Anyway, it’s necessary.
Wait till morning, and you’ll forget.
And who knows if morning will come.
Fumble for the light, and you’ll be
stark awake, but the vision
will be fading, slipping
out [...]

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From whiskey river’s commonplace book:
The whale moves in a sea of sound:
shrimps snap, plankton seethes,
fish croak, gulp, drum their air-bladders,
and are scrutinized by echo-location,
a light massage of sound touching the skin.
The small, toothed whales use high frequencies:
Finely tuned and focused sound-beams,
intense salvoes of bouncing
clicks, a thousand a second,
with which a hair, as thin as
half a [...]

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[Note to regular readers: You may have noticed a change in my online tempo in the last week -- I sure have: my visits to your blogs are a little more erratic, my postings here a little less... I don't know... "focused," maybe?
Partly, true, my spotty attendance is because the pace of my 9-to-5 [...]

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[Image above: "The Long Haul," by artist Robert W. McGregor]
From whiskey river (italicized portion):
Excerpt from
“Sabbaths 1998: VI”
But won’t you be ashamed
To count the passing year
At its mere cost, your debt
Inevitably paid?
For every year is costly,
As you know well. Nothing
Is given that is not
Taken, and nothing taken
That was not first a gift.
The gift is balanced by
Its [...]

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[See original at toothpastefordinner.com]
From whiskey river:
Report From A Far Place
Making these word things to
step on across the world, I
could call them snowshoes.
They creak, sag, bend, but
hold, over the great deep cold,
and they turn up at the toes.
In war or city or camp
they could save your life;
you can muse them by the fire.
Be careful, though: they
burn, [...]

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[Another in a series of occasional posts about popular American songs with long histories. And if you are seeking information on the Justin Timberlake song by the same name, believe me, you are 100% in the wrong place.]
On paper, it doesn’t appear to be a “big” song. Nearly always, the arrangement features a single vocalist [...]

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RAMH has seen a boost in its site traffic over the last week — not in the number of visits to the blog, but in the number of pages read per visitor. Just as one example, over a 25-minute period last night 60 pages were “read,” all by one visitor: pretty amazing for a blog [...]

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The Missus and I saw District 9 on Saturday. I’m tempted to review it in full, but fear I’d reveal too much of its plot. So I’ll just say that District 9 is one of the, I don’t know… two or three best movies I’ve seen for the last 10 or 15 years — in [...]

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