Where Have All the...

 

While Pete Seeger wrote and is famous for the song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", and numerous folks have recorded this song.... for ME... the version of the song that speaks the most to me is the album version by Peter, Paul, & Mary:

"Where Have All the Flowers Gone" from the original recording in the 1960s of Peter, Paul, & Mary. 

The above song came into my head while I was thinking about white grapefruit.  I believe I have mentioned this before... but I absolutely find grapefruit to be my favorite fruit out of the huge array of fruit I eat (blueberries are a VERY close second). But, in my area, it has been AT LEAST five years since we have had any white grapefruit for sale at any of the markets.  We do receive plenty of red grapefruits (and I eat tons of them), but if push came to shove.... I would rather eat a white grapefruit (technically it appears yellow, but is called a white grapefruit) over red grapefruit any day.  

I have not been able to figure out why we no longer have white grapefruit shipped to our region, but I do miss it.  White grapefruit has an extremely pleasant, slightly more aggressive "bite" to it than the typical red grapefruit.  And, I relish that bite! 

* * * * *

So.... in my mind, I was thinking about grapefruit and thinking to myself, "Where have all the....." and initially I was planning to think, "...white grapefruit gone?" but as is so, so, frequent for me, I instead thought of the Seeger song.  

I do not know if other folks do this sort of autonomic association.....and I would like to know if others do.  But.... I can say my mind so very frequently takes even the smallest snippet of spoken dialogue and associates it with lyrics in a song.  This occurs much to the CHAGRIN of my wife at times.  She and I can be talking and she will say something and it unintentionally in some fashion mimics a song I know.  

I tend to be fairly knowledgeable of most popular lyrical music from roughly ~1940s through perhaps the mid 1990s (after the mid-90s it is truly piecemeal for me in terms of knowledge of lyrics)..... although I can admit my working knowledge of the 80s and mid 90s may be a bit more limited.  I, of course, have the deepest knowledge of music from the 1960s and into the mid 1970s.  And, on top of that I know well most popular Catholic liturgical music as well..... so A LOT OF PHRASES do start songs rumbling in my mind.  This occurs probably at a MINIMUM of at least a dozen times a day.  So, I am often humming to myself (or singing to my wife in my gruff, yet sentimental voice (as my voice has been described to me by my wife)) the various songs that pop into my head.... all day long.

• Again, 11 miles this morning (~18 km).  A person who was walking at the indoor track asked me out of curiosity how much I run a week, because he has been seeing me every day.  When I told him I try to reach 55 miles a week, he shook his head.  I am not sure if he thought I was a damn fool for running that much, or if he was impressed.  He wore dark glasses so I could not read his facial expression well.  
• PCS = 7.... I am carrying a pouch of one of my aromatic blends of pipe tobacco in the pocket of my sport coat today.  The cravings have been so constant of late that I thought perhaps being able to sniff from the pouch across the day would perhaps help quell some of the intensity of my cravings.  I unzipped my tobacco pouch and took a deep inhale of the pouch's tobacco and its ephemeral beauty just before starting my early lecture this morning.  It seemed to reduce a little (a very tiny skosh... using a rather currently trendy word), the intensity of the cravings.    
• I am hoping my book (mentioned yesterday) arrives today.  I cannot wait.   
• I am needing to take a brief plane trip to Chicago later this week.  It will only be for a couple of days.  I have been thinking about seeing if I can visit the Hemingway Museum in the outskirts of Oak Park.  And, I have also been thinking about looking for a REAL tobacconist in Chicago.  I am not sure what is there anymore, and have not yet decided to explore the options.  But, I have been thinking about it.  There has to be at least one REAL tobacco shop that isn't filled with mostly vaping crap or filled with the stuff we used to see only for sale in clandestine back rooms of record stores......aka "head shops".   I am considering bringing a pipe with me to Chicago, at least for use as a "pacifier" of sorts.  But.... MAYBE there is an opportunity here.

 PipeTobacco