Until yesterday I only knew a little about a song called Alice’s Restaurant ... the end of it is the only part I remember. But yesterday I learned that it’s a story about some events that started on Thanksgiving Day, 1965. (You can find the story here on Wikipedia.)
It’s a long song — more of a funny story than a song — but here you go, Alice’s Restaurant, by Arlo Guthrie:
A friend introduced me to the movie Home for the Holidays many years ago, and it’s still the best Thanksgiving movie I know.
The more I thought about it, the more I thought that the word pericarditis sounded familiar, so I searched an electronic diary I used to keep and found this entry from January 3, 2008:
“I don’t remember the whole dream, just the very end, where I woke up with the word ‘pericardium’ in my brain. There’s nothing too peculiar about this except for one detail: I don’t remember ever hearing that word before in my life.”
“Later in the morning I looked it up online to see if I made it up, and it is indeed a real word. Even cooler is that it’s related to the chest/heart, where my niece hit me. Wikipedia says it is ‘a double-walled sac that contains the heart and the roots of the great vessels.’”
“I'm not saying that I've never heard this word before, only that I can't consciously recall hearing it before, and I had to try several spellings before I got it right. What I’m saying is that my conscious mind didn’t know the word, but my dreaming mind did.”
The dreaming mind and subconscious in general fascinates me.
On Sunday, November 3, 2019, I had just finished lunch, looked at the clock, and saw that I could fit in about an hour of work before the Broncos game started. I was looking forward to see how Broncos’ quarterback Brandon Allen would do in his first career start.
A minute later I had severe chest pain. At first I thought I was having an allergic reaction to lunch — Wolfgang Puck’s potato soup, which I’ll never eat again — but I quickly realized it was something heart-related.
So I eventually got myself to the hospital. Because of the way the pain instantly came on I was guessing blood clot, but the doctors think it’s something called Pericarditis, as explained in this image.
(The last song I heard before going into the hospital was Someone Saved My Life Tonight, and while the lyrics don’t fit the event, I was hoping the title would be a good match.)
This is one of my favorite road signs in the world, the sign that points you to Los Alamos, New Mexico. For whatever reason, being in New Mexico is one of the things in life that makes me happy.
Back in 2014 my family took a vacation together. We spent thousands of dollars doing all sorts of different things, but in the end, my favorite part was sitting on a couch one evening in Santa Fe with my niece and watching cooking shows. In small part this was because my sisters were angry with each other, and it was nice to get away from that tension and just relax with a nice person who had no agenda.
When I saw this image last night it reminded me not of the negatives of that vacation, but of the positives of spending time with people who have no agendas other than the wonder of the universe, and of how I’d like to spend the time I have here on Earth.
From this people.com story:
When Mary Steenburgen woke up from minor arm surgery in 2007, her brain was “only music,” an odd result that lead her to a new songwriting career — and one that may earn her another Oscar.
The actress, 66, said that her brain felt out of control immediately after surgery.
“I felt strange as soon as the anesthesia started to wear off,” she told IndieWire. “The best way I can describe it is that it just felt like my brain was only music, and that everything anybody said to me became musical. All of my thoughts became musical. Every street sign became musical. I couldn’t get my mind into any other mode.”
(In a slightly related story, Scientific American has an article titled, The Hidden Dangers of Going Under.)
This is the view you get when you go to the bathroom at the top of Rocky Mountain National Park, and you come out and everyone else is gone (and your camera lens is scratched).
“Honest, hopelessly romantic old-fashioned gentleman seeks lady friend who enjoys elegant dining, dancing and the slow bloom of affection.”
~ Claire Cook, Must Love Dogs (a favorite movie, and I’ll read the book this winter)
“It’s a bit of a riddle, but other people in your life have to be who they are so you can be(come) who you are.”
~ me, November 21, 2015
I became a fan of Mike Barr’s paintings back in 2016. This one is called Autumn Rain, but I actually like his darker, evening paintings even more.
From a story of how an 82-year-old woman with dementia improved significantly by changing her diet:
“A change in diet, which was comprised of high amounts of blueberries and walnuts, has proven to have had a strong impact on Sylvia’s condition that her recipes are now being shared by the Alzheimer’s Society ... Sylvia also began incorporating other health foods, including broccoli, kale, spinach, sunflower seeds, green tea, oats, sweet potatoes and even dark chocolate with a high percentage of cacao. All of these foods are known to be beneficial for brain health.”
“Mark and Sylvia devised to diet together after deciding that the medication on it’s own was not enough, they looked into the research showing that rates of dementia are much lower in Mediterranean countries and copied a lot of their eating habits.”
“Anything beautiful is worth getting hurt for.”
~ Prince (on New Girl)
For the zillionth time yesterday a doctor said, “This (medical condition you have) is very rare, but, well, there it is.” Mast cell disease continues to be the gift that keeps on giving.
I’ll guess that I’ve spent at least two or three months of my life living in a particular hotel in Virginia Beach (including finishing the Scala Cookbook there), and this photo/painting is an ode to that place.
“A month ago I went on a juice cleanse. You know what it cleans out of you best? The will to live.”
(I don’t know the original source of that quote, but I posted it on Facebook six years ago when I was living on my gallbladder/gallstones diet.)
Back on November 18, 1999, twelve students were killed and 27 were injured in the bonfire collapse at Texas A&M University.
Continuing my olde-tyme movie theme this week, in the movie Vision Quest, Matthew Modine — also known as Eleven’s father in Stranger Things — was 25 years old when the movie was filmed, though his character was supposed to be an 18 year old high school senior. And Linda Fiorentino was 26, when her character was 21 (“I’ve been 21 since I was 14”). I probably first saw this movie at a theatre in College Station, Texas.
Whenever I think of Madonna’s song Crazy For You, I think of this movie. Here’s the official video release of her song on YouTube, which is composed of scenes from the movie.
Here’s a good article titled, When You’re Hooked On an Abusive Partner and Scared to Walk Away.
As I get back into “book writing” mode, it’s funny to find notes like this that I left for myself:
TODO: Edit this text ruthlessly when you’re feeling better.
I was so sick during the last few months, I have no memory of writing that.
~ a note from september, 2016
