One sad story and a lot of silly songs. Real November weather is here at last--chilly and damp. A bear's been seen, not far from here. People are counting the days for open bear hunting. Well, the ground and leaves are no longer dry. Bears don't like fires.
The November poem prompt series is not going here. It will be available in print, for a price. That doesn't make it quicker to write; Book Poems require more editing than Blog Poems.
I will not be publishing chapbooks on Amazon. I'm not ruling out the possibility that someone else may want to publish my chapbooks there, but I'm not, because they actively discriminate against people who are not working "in the cloud." We have to keep things OUT of "the cloud," in order to maintain a livable world and a viable Internet. Too bad about Amazon, and any other big companies that may be investing in "the cloud"...they say the bigger they come, the harder they fall. Clouds are notoriously unreliable foundations for anything.
Child Safety
Warning: this is an extremely sad story. No silver lining in the black clouds whatsoever.
Deja Coleman did two things wrong: she married a bad man and stayed with him, for money, and she had too many babies. Worse than that, from the babies' point of view, she was a victim of modern social planning and the urban lifestyle. No family farm. No extended family. "Nuclear family" can be moved wherever corporate bosses want them to go, never mind how traumatic that may be for the children. In a natural family, when one parent is missing, the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins step in. In a "nuclear family" there might be, but there probably isn't, a family friend who can help one parent cope with three little children. The Colemans did not have such a friend. As a result, you can read the story at the link: baby died of neglect.
Society owes Deja Coleman an apology. There are two valid ways to deal with a neighbor who is about to collapse under the strain of keeping three small children without adult help. One is to step in and be that adult help; one is to say she must have done something horrible in a previous life, and leave her and the children to their fate. Then there's what a bloated Welfare State actually did for the Colemans--project resentment of women, of mothers, of "protected minority" ethnic groups, onto Mrs. Coleman, and go into a spasm of blaming, judging, and abuse.
A commenter said that this wouldn't have happened to her because she's White. Commenter probably hadn't yet heard the things people said about, and to, Lindsay Clancy, who is White and was upper-middle-class and even pretty before she became the zombie we've all seen on TV.
Music
Lots of silly stuff came in, some punk...whatever. Mad Mix R Us.
Charlie Drake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRniKsa5kls (Probably politically incorrect. This web site hereby promises to feature any serious music video sent to us by an Australian Aboriginal reader, subject to the limits of our contract.)
Rolf Harris.
"Brian Hyland." What made this silly song so popular (and controversial) was that fashion victims my age really did find themselves buying, and wearing, things that they really felt exposed indecent amounts of skin. Gradually the itsy-bitsy bikini swimsuits led to women's developing the fortitude to tell Madison Avenue "You don't tell ME what to wear."
Roger Miller.
Not long enough to give anybody much of a workout, but one of Dolly Parton's last clown acts:
Ray Stevens.
Coldplay. (Warning: link opens one of those endless YouTube playlists. You decide how much you want to listen to.)
David Saville.
Sheb Wooley.
The Merry Macs.
The Kingsmen.
Dallas Frazier.
Allan Sherman.
The Playmates.
The Coasters.
Alvin and the Chipmunks. I know all of you Nephews know that only in jokes do chipmunks grow up to be gray squirrels. I'd even guess that most of our foreign readers know that chipmunks are a separate species. I'm not sure that the person who put the video together knew.
"Melissa Lynn."
Bobby Pickett.
Peter & Gordon.
Sam the Sham. Good one for discussing with young women how the "protection" line of talk about hatecrimes against women is a large part of the problem.
Rick Dees.
Loudon Wainwright.
'Napoleon XIV."
Phil Harris.
Duane Eddy.
Jerry Reed.
Elmo & Patsy.
Alpamayo.
Queen.
King Kurt.
The Clash.
Disney.
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