Happy Holidays!

Today is Christmas, one of the winter holidays! Woot! Hope the holidays are good for you, and you are enjoying them with (or without) family and friends! Usually we all have a good meal for Christmas dinner, and I'm definitely looking forward to that.

Here's some music to enjoy while doing whatever you are doing on this Christmas day! (or any other day, really ).

The Ramones - Merry Christmas (I don't want to fight tonight). The band that helped started some of the music I really got into... Punk! New Wave! And this song could, unfortunately, represent a lot of people's holidays with friends and family. Heh. Pogo all around the room!

New! And Old!
A few days ago one of the advocacy groups I'm involved with and following led me down a rabbit hole to another advocacy area which I'd never even knew about, ever. And it's IMPORTANT. I'm sure many of you know about this, but I didn't realize that there were groups fighting Ageism, fighting against the images our society (and many other societies) make about old people, and how societies treat old people.

Artwork from Growing and Older (link below)

What a great rabbit hole! I'm just getting started and already much of the stuff I'm learning from these groups has lifted up my spirits, making me feel as good about myself and what I can do. I'm setting some possible goals, new goals for the next few years. Good stuff! Below are some of the sites I've found. There is much more out there, for sure!

Old School: A Hub for Age Equality and Ageism Awareness

Ageing Reimagined

Growing and Older

Creative Crones

Advantages of Age

Seeger in Barcelona!

I recently came across this story/legend/truth/I dunno about Pete Seeger. Seeger was, apparently, invited to perform in Barcelona, Spain in 1971. Spain was still under fascist rule by Francisco Franco. Seeger was told not to play any songs on a list that the fascist government devised. Most of the tunes were Seeger's most famous ones. So Seeger went on stage and just strummed his banjo, and, the whole 100,000 people audience sang all the songs!

Pete Seeger, 25 years old or so, entertaining laborers, soldiers, federal workers, and Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the president of the USA, in 1944. Photo from wikipedia, by Joseph A. Horne - Photograph by Joseph A. Horne. Via Library of Congress site, Public Domain, Link

Placone's Right

Ron Placone recently wrote a piece on his substack entitled 'The Disdain Towards Culture Should Bother You'. I think he's making the right point here, and his article is worth a read.

Placone acknowledges that the US has always had a disdain for art, creativity and culture but that disdain has grown recently. He says,

The US is arguably the only industrialized nation that sees art as a luxury instead of part of what it means to be human. We spend about 1/10th the amount that other industrialized countries do on arts funding and even that figure is misleading because most of that 1/10th goes to the military.

We value creativity about as much as a gas station does. People of the United States have made incredible cultural contributions to the world and have done so in spite of its societal outlook, not because of it.

A Picture I took last June. Red Roses! Just 'Cause!

King of Pain

A few days ago I was listening to the 'radio', or, Pandora, actually. Pandora had created a playlist of early 1980's songs for me and I was jamming and having a blast. Nikko and I were dancing, yes, he dances. Then a Police/Sting song came on: 'King of Pain'. I'd not heard it in a long, long time.

The Police, King of Pain

Napalm Sticks

I paid almost no attention to the recent elections in the USA. Both 'major' candidates make me ill, and I will do my best to pay NO attention to Trump, just as I did in the past, ohh, 30 years. As for the Dems, and Kamala, they'll get no real support from me, just a shrug of 'eh' about whatever they do. Yes, they might do some 'good' things, I guess. It'll be by accident, or as a way to manipulate people or give their donors something they wanted that the populace likes too. With the Dem leadership as it stands now, they surely won't do anything good for the working class. Sounds kinda like they were before FDR took over and read the writing on the wall.

A couple of weeks or so ago I read this poem, called McGenocide, by Caitlin Johnstone (Snoopydawg also posted the poem here, on this site). It really hit me hard, maybe because of reading the book, Bringing Mulligan Home, about the man trying to find out why his father (who fought on Okinawa in WWII) was like he was.

Something good: A rose from our garden. Yes, it's flowering NOW, the pic was taken a few days ago. Admittedly, we haven't gotten below freezing this fall, yet. And usually we do that in mid September. A couple nights ago we hit 33 as the low, but... that ain't below freezing yet!

Halloween!

It's Thursday and Halloween! Halloween, as celebrated in the USA, is my favorite holiday for several reasons: 1. pumpkins and haunted houses 2. costumes and decorations 3. parties and/or trick or treat and candy! 4. It's often a great time of the year, season-wise, not too cold, not hot, colorful...

Yep, Halloween!

Sleeping in the Headlines

I came across this headline the other day, ''Such low energy': Trump relentlessly mocked for once again falling asleep during trial'. It made me laugh. I can think of several reasons for him to fall asleep: the trial is boring, he's old, he's on the campaign trail and is tired, he's old, boring, old, tired... Ohh wait, that describes his arch enemy, Biden, as well.

For example, 'Joe Biden Appears To Fall Asleep On The First Day Of COP26' (from 2021). Biden gets excuses from the press, which Trump basically doesn't get, because the press likes Biden; here's an example about the COP26 meeting, a video that the BBC ran with this headline 'COP26: Was US President Biden asleep or just resting his eyes?' To me, it looks like he's falling asleep and an aide woke him. But what do I know? Maybe he was just resting his eyes.

Like this? Image from here on pinterest.es.

CityRocks and Privateers

I think the stress of the last few weeks has finally caught up with me. My thoughts and mind are completely blank it seems, and I can't get around that right now. So, let's do some fun music and this open thread is OPEN!

In Hungary there is/was this 'thing' called CityRocks (youtube channel). It's basically a flash mob, 500 musicians or so, that get together and play songs. They started in 2017. And... they rock .

Here they are playing some Queen - 'We Will Rock You!' And all I got to say is DRUMS!

Dance and Sing in Russian!

I was gonna write a bit about the economy. But, there were some minor panics in the family arena: nothing major (parents' tax return from the accountant was late, one of their car's wouldn't run (until my husband touched it, then it ran!)); all hands on deck were needed for a few days. And then the new war (Hamas/Israel) started and I'm... yea. I just want to get my comfy-est blanket wrapped around me, put it over my head and mumble once in a while. Maybe I'll eat a gallon of ice cream too. Or this great apple tart Hubby made me. I'll peek out when something good happens, like, Halloween or something.

I think I'm getting too old, or I just don't watch enough current thought-manipulation, err, main stream media. All I could think when the Hamas/Israel thing started was, 'Ahh, now 'they' have another war! And we can all forget about the Ukraine thing which wasn't going so well! Just in time. Imagine that!' And, 'How did this Hamas stuff happen without the intel in the USA, Nato, Israel, not knowing?' I mean, apparently Egypt knew, and tried to tell them. So, were those poor people who died so awfully just sacrifices to gin up enthusiasm for a new war, which is really horrible, frankly? Am I too cynical?