Today's humstle is not a song, but segments from a song. One of my favorite guys who plays music is Jesse Winchester. He did a version of Otis Jackson's Tell Me Why I Like Roosevelt in his Learn To Love It album of 1974.
Winchester chose not to participate in the Vietnam War and part of the lyrics of his updated version were: 'because I am baptized by water, but I passed on the one by fire. If you want to fight, go on and fight if that be your desire. He went to Canada, rather than being drafted into the army. I lost touch with him over the years and was saddened greatly to hear of his death this past April 11th. He was 69. Music has always been such a big part of my life and this man was near the center of it.
A little about Jesse. He's had a rather prolific career and I have many of his records. He resonated with me. The lyrics I show you today are from a song called The Brand New Tennessee Waltz.
This has been a really shitty summer for me. Through previous posts, you may have read that we have property in North Carolina and that we had enabled a couple to sort of rebuild their lives and allowed them to live rent free on the property and to make repairs to it. Last week's post, Time off, AMEN was about us needing to get away from things for a few days. We had recently lost a large segment of business that we worked really hard to get. How big a segment? Well, it was growing toward $1 Million dollars per year. The reason (or lack thereof) was also mentioned in the post, Small Man's disease. That's only about effort and the loss of money so although really frustrating, it was something I couldn't control. I tried my best but in the end, the man with the smd decided to be untruthful and mete out his revenge and anger by firing us. Nobody likes to get fired. But in particular, nobody likes to get fired when the reason given for the firing is built on emotion, ugliness and untruthfulness. As far as North Carolina, our chosen couple had scuffled prior to our giving them the opportunity we gave them. When we got down there last week, they were traveling or maybe gone but the state of the house and the property was run down to a state where we scarcely recognized it. After two years of suspecting things were not quite right, we discovered that they had probably decided to bail on responsibility and as we sat, stunned in the late afternoon sunlight, and gazed upon the lost opportunity and the treason of it all, the land cried to us and told us that it had had high hopes for returning to a former glory. Now it sat fallow and the land and the birds sang to us and begged us to make things right-- again. And we drove back to town, and cried the whole fucking way back.
But yesterday, one of the lights of my life, my 5 year old grandson by marriage, who had been staying with us for a few days, got violently ill during the day- projectile vomiting, fever and periods of disorientation. He seemed to get better as the day went on and by the time his mother came to get him, he seemed reasonable enough to go home---- until the phone rang 2 hours later and we learned that he was on his way to the Children's Hospital- that he had been unresponsive at times and developed a terrible blotchy rash. Today, he will have to be sedated so that he can have a brain MRI to confirm whether or not he has Chairi Malformation. Thanks to Google, you can look it up if you're interested. It isn't pretty.
So today's lyrics are particularly poignant;.
So have all of your passionate violins- play a tune for a Tennessee Kid. Who's feeling like leaving another town- with no place to go if he did. 'Cause they'll catch you wherever you're hid.
Another day-- Uncertain and heart wrenching and I know lots of families have their own stories to tell. Before yesterday, it was about temporarily lost opportunities, money to be spent, trying to make it right again or to make me stop thinking about smd. Those are the tangible things. Shit on a balance sheet. Even as I watch with terrible sadness but necessary detachment the news of nearly 300 people who got on a plane a few days ago and got blown out of the sky by another fuck with smd and two warring tribes that have fought each other for thousands of years, at it again, all I see a kid with some much gumption and personality sitting frightened in a hospital bed. His name is Evy. If you could say a prayer for him, I'd appreciate it. If you knew him, you'd say he is worth every penny
While he was here for a few days, out of nowhere (it seemed) he said something to me that I thought was interesting at that moment. In retrospect, it was pretty prescient; "be prepared to go outside your comfort zone."
My mom, who was NOT religious and rarely mentioned God, told me once when I thought they world was going to fall in on me, (it wasn't) "God never gives you more than you can handle."
I gotta try to get my shit together.
