Thanks to everyone who’s left a message or sent me one!
Yes, it’s here, the actual calendar anniversary of my birth long ago in the wartime summer of 1945 in Bryan, Texas, YE GODS!!! And here’s a picture of me (look hard) with my mother, pretty young Helen Masson from Middle River, MD, taken a short while before my unveiling as first-born son. Take a good long look: this is the woman who’s now 86 years old, lying in a hospital bed in Tucson with her pneumonia-ravaged lungs filling up with fluid and only two days ago diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer’s — and I’m in there somewhere:
WWII is winding down…
And this is me, 3.5 weeks after popping out. Doesn’t look like I’m all that glad to be here, does it? Maybe it’s the fact of being born on Nagasaki Day… I tried to find an early picture of me smiling and drooling, but they don’t show up until a few months later. Guess I was really pissed.
That is one powerful set of brows
Finally, just because it’s my birthday, I want to play some music for you. You have to click on it, though. This is my new god, Slim Doucial, one of the forerunners of what we call Cajun music today, recorded back in the late 1920’s. Listen carefully! There’s a washtub bass in there, I swear, though it might just be a wonky low string on the guitar. The song is “Chere Yeux Noirs (Dear Black Eyes),” and I think it’s positively transcendental.
Comment by Pascale Soleil
1 August 9, 2008, 12:24 pm o'clock |
Happy Birthday… glad you were born!
Comment by jeff
2 August 9, 2008, 6:46 pm o'clock |
all right you old fart, happy birthday, us leos do have to stick together, an almost sinful camaraderie, their ability for one example to separately create “leo day”, usually near a cluster of other folks cursed with the blazing sun of a birthday,leo’s need to celebrate, shamelessly i might add, being one of the fortunate few to have just passed thru , certainly the most eloquent time of the year! and just had my own Birthday. But while John and the yankees up north were celebrating” Leo Day”, we were down in the swamps of delmarva, braving the mosquitoes and denizens of the lowland forests, to do the very same thing, culturally as separate as any clan could be, but finding a way to do the same thing during the same time of the year and had the audacity to name the event the very same name, it’s mind boggling, and this evidently went on for years. So Happy Leo Day! John,… , me and kate and kate and george and joe and daneille and sandy and shaun and john and a few i can’t rememeber…. even kent, are with you buddy!
jeff
Comment by Richard
3 August 10, 2008, 9:57 am o'clock |
Happy birthday, John. Here’s hoping the coming year brings with it some peace and hope. Good music, BTW, a reminder of how music used to be part of people’s daily life and not just a commodity. Kinda like honor and truth and justice, come to think of it.
Comment by Fred
4 August 10, 2008, 9:22 pm o'clock |
Happy belated birthday!