And even though they don’t sound half bad; I on a daily basis have to put up with every Tom, Dick, and Harry wanna be “singer” on the NY shuttle between Grand Central and 42 Street. You feel stuck because a lot of them are just noise makers and you are now a captive audience stuck hearing their noise.

You want to do this? Good, do it some where folks have the option to walk on by. Not where they are stuck listening to you.

“Sound of Music | Central Station Antwerp (Belgium)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k

It’s staged for commercial purposes but it’s such a delight to watch the plants reveal themselves and the onlookers to notice and enjoy.

I can cue this up almost any time and smile.

“The Sound of Music” film is still worth watching for its own value and to realize how much we’ve lost as a culture since it came out.

It sort of reminds me of the time a spider during grade school invaded my drinking straw. I still don’t know if a spider bite is fatal. But I know mine is.

I just had that ear-worm extracted at the emergency room.

Now, it’s back again.

However, Rainbow ain’t his song alone. Not while Judy Garland and, I would say, Eva Cassidy recordings are still around.

Eva Cassidy, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rd8VktT8xY

As it happens, I discovered Eva Cassidy in a record store on Hawaii, the Big Island. She’s like Iz in that she was a local sensation (Washington DC), an astounding talent on the natch, but she could never be marketed properly. Both could pierce your heart straight through with just the way they sang.

In Cassidy’s case she died of melanoma at 33 and only broke out because her manager sent a posthumous tape to a DJ in the UK. He played it, listeners went wild, and Eva Cassidy finally got the global hearing she deserved.

Her version of Sting’s “Fields of Gold,” was so good even Sting, not a humble man, had to give credit.

Eva Cassidy “Fields of Gold”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UVjjcOUJLE

I’m the kind of guy who looks at battleship row on December 8th and says, “It looks like we need to build a fleet around aircraft carriers.” Mourns for the dead, and figures out the best way to avenge them is learn the lesson that the nation that launched a six deck strike on their neighbor should have already drawn. The day of the battleship was over.

And says, “Thank you, Japan, for turning a 17 knot fleet into a 30 knot fleet.”

Basically, I know how to lose. My Marine drill instructors made sure of that. They also made sure I knew how to win.