Under the Power Lines

The bike path cuts through the north Redondo neighborhood, under the power lines.

After a long hiatus, I decided to put a bit of exercise into my daily schedule. Whew!!! Maybe I should hit the gym, where the nice air conditioning will keep my spirits up.

Well, I'm now exhausted. So, this will be another "Image of the Day" lazy Tuesday.

In choosing how I go about spending my blogging time, I focus on content generation, sharing my personal feelings about various cultural topics, putting up photos, and linking to relevant videos. I don't have sufficient time to community-building activities, like visiting other blogs and leaving frequent comments. Certainly, I enjoy many other blogs, but I don't like leaving "nice post"-style remarks. It feels slightly disingenuous and inauthentic, like chattering spam-lite.

Nevertheless, it is this type of blog browsing networking that leads to the development of a community. And, if I had a large community following, I could have a fun lazy post by writing, "A bike lane and power lines converge upon a power station. Thoughts?"

Oh well, I'm happy rambling to myself and my dozen readers. ;-)

Dance Party: May

Detail of the cover image from Sheryl Crow's "Soak Up the Sun"

It's time for another set of music flashbacks. Yeah, we've been doing a bunch of music posts over the past few weeks, but the next couple of weekends are likely to be busy for me. Therefore, since I don't want to miss out on celebrating May's music over the decades, I'm putting this post up tonight.

But it'll be just as good going early as keeping it late. And either way is better than nothing at all. ;-)

So, from '67 to '07, let's have some fun!!!

"Point of No Return" was Exposé's second hit in 1987.

What the world needs now is. . .

Dance Party: March

Cover image from Vanessa Williams' "Save the Best for Last" (1992)

It's time for our monthly celebration!

This time around is a whiplash of styles, but I love them all, for different reasons both aesthetically and personally. Whether you want to be "There beneath the blue suburban skies" or "Feel the sun on your face and tell me what you're thinking" or feel that the "Night is young and the music's high. With a bit of rock music, everything is fine", there's something for all types tonight. ;-)

And we love variety!

Image from Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" concert film (2006)

So let's listen to some music!

Springing into Spring Time

Detail of Irises (1889) by Vincent van Gogh


A Prayer in Spring
(By Robert Frost)

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.


Finally, we've made our way past winter, my least favorite season. The cold, the gloom, the lack of flowers, these all drag on me, weighing down my spirit. Writing helps alleviate the heaviness, but I hate the inefficiencies that nag at all my projects.

If I keep on blogging for a series of years, you'll recognize the seasonal pattern. But Spring is finally here!!! And I'm ready to have some fun! ;-)

Detail of Spring (1896) by Alphonse Mucha

So, let's listen to some music.

Dance Party: January

Image from Incubus' video for "Anna Molly"

It's been a while since we last celebrated with a selection of songs from over the last four decades. Well, we're starting the year off strong with lots of fun music. ;-)

I've pushed back the start date of our tour of yesterday's songs to 1967. In terms of popular music, that's where my familiarity starts to kick in. Yeah, that's definitely before my time, but I know this music fairly well because it was where my parent's album collection more or less started.

For me, the music of the '70s have realtime memories associated with them, albeit distant and dim, but the music of the late '60s don't have a strong connection, in my mind, between song and society. Nevertheless, I figured it would be fun to expand the range of our monthly festivity.

Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way" became a Disco classic.

Let's get this party started!!!