Saturday, January 25, 2025

Saturday 9

Saturday 9: A Summer Song (1964)
   
Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.
 
1) Are you enjoying winter? Or do you daydream about summer? Winter suits me. I'd rather have it 0º than 90º. On the other hand, I do daydream a lot about summer because summer = baseball.
 
2) In this week's song, trees sway in the breeze. Is it windy where you are today? No. It's very quiet.

3) There's rain outside their window. Have you more recently seen rain or snow? Snow. I like snow.

4) This week's artists are the duo Chad and Jeremy. As a teen, Chad Stuart was very versatile in the arts. While he enjoyed drawing, he showed real promise in music and won a scholarship to London's Central School of Speech and Drama. When you were a teenager, what were your best classes? English and American History.

5) Between 1965 and 1966, Chad and Jeremy played British pop stars on a variety of American TV shows, including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Patty Duke Show, and Batman. Which of those series do you remember? All of them! At first glance, you'd assume that Batman is the least realistic but no, I'd say it's The Patty Duke Show. How are "identical cousins" genetically possible?
 
6) While those TV appearances were good for the duo's record sales, they sowed the seeds of dissent between the friends. Jeremy Clyde realized he enjoyed acting far more than music and began threatening to leave the act. Chad finally got tired of dissuading him. Between Jeremy's dramatic aspirations and contract disputes, they broke up. Later they both admitted they regretted the split, but as Chad said, "we were just kids." Is there an old friend you've drifted away from but miss? My friend Barb. She moved to Hilton Head and we drifted apart. I remember her fondly but I don't really miss her. I assume she feels the same way. It occurs to me as I answer this that we didn't even exchange Christmas cards this year.

7) In 1964, when "A Summer Song" was popular, the #1 movie in the country was Mary Poppins. Have you seen it? Oh, yes! A million times! 

8) One of the biggest news stories of 1964 was Elizabeth Taylor's wedding to Richard Burton. The bride wore yellow, with yellow and white flowers in her hair. The groom wore a dark suit, red tie and yellow boutonniere. What did you wear last time you got dressed up? A coral knit pantsuit with mesh sleeves. I'm surprised that I was just about the only woman in the room wearing a bright color. Everyone else was muted or neutral.

9) Random question: When you're in the backseat, do you wear a seatbelt? Ever since I read that Princess Diana might have survived if she'd been wearing one. Her body likely wouldn't have flown into the back of the front seat with such velocity.



 

Hurt? Angry? Sad? All three!

On 1/20 I posted this photo to Facebook. It's the 2024 chocolate Advent calendar I'd just laid waste to. I explained that Corporate decreed my card shop could no longer sell them and they had to be "destroyed." Obviously by inhaling all this chocolate, I'm just being a team player.

I thought it was funny.

My aunt responded, "What a perfect way to celebrate this most joyful day!"

Since it was Monday, a Federal holiday, I clicked "like" and said: "This is the first MLK Day I've ever worked and after my shift I promised myself I'd do good by creating extra cards for Letters Against Isolation. The sugar buzz helped carry me through! Happy Martin Luther King Day."

Her response: "Who? In our home we're celebrating Donald Trump's inaugural and an end to corruption and lawlessness."

What the ever-loving fuck? Dr. Martin Luther King merits a "who?" Plus, she knows how I feel about Donald Trump. Which is exactly the same way her son, her daughter-in-law and adult grandchildren feel about him. Because of her aggressive Trumpiness, she is estranged from them. She has learned nothing from this and is working on alienating me now.

I posted chocolate. She responded by gloating about the election. She used this opportunity to hurt me. Someone who is supposed to love me went out of her way to wound me, disrespect Dr. King and ignore the service the I did in his memory.

I deleted her response. To paraphrase her, "In this home, we celebrate Dr. King." I won't have him minimized.

This made her angry and she's now ignoring me. Well, guess what: I'm angry, too.

And hurt that "being right" about Donald Trump is apparently more important to her than my feelings. And sad that she can't stop herself. I know she feels bad that she has a great-grandchild she hasn't seen and that the only Mother's Day gifts she received last year were from me (she's my godmother). 

My cousin (her son) has repeatedly told me how disillusioning it is when the woman who insisted you go to Sunday School, who extolled Christian values, just can't stop being intolerant, belligerent, racist and homophobic. I get that. The hypocrisy is stunning. 

But I will heal. I'm not letting her go. She's 78 years old. She has had health problems and her husband recently battled cancer. At this point in her life, losing me would hurt more than she knows. If I still haven't heard from her by April, when I go to the TCM Film Festival, I'll still send her a postcard and buy a souvenir. I'll still send her a birthday card and Mother's Day gift come May. 

It really doesn't cost me much to be kind. If she were to take off her MAGA glasses, I bet she'd see our relationship the same way.