Saturday 9: I'm the Only One

Saturday 9: I'm the Only One (1993)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

Wow, a MLE song! Yay! One of my favorites!

1) Melissa Etheridge sings this song as though her heart is breaking. What's your favorite love song? Is it about falling in love, being in love, or losing love?

A. I don't have a favorite love song. But I like I Only Have Eyes for You. I think that's a lovely old song. Or Longer, by Dan Fogelberg. We had that one played at our wedding. Or We've Only Just Begun, by the Carpenters. Or Angie, by the Rolling Stones. Or I Will Always Love You, by Whitney Houston (Dolly Parton wrote it, you know).

2) "I'm the Only One" is a favorite song of American Idol contestants, having been performed four different times. If we were to have a Saturday 9 karaoke night, what song would you do?

A. Well, it wouldn't be I'm the Only One. I can't sing it. I could do You Can Sleep While I Drive if I wanted to do a Melissa Etheridge song. But I'd probably go back to the 70s and do Best of My Love or Take It Easy by the Eagles.

3) A rocker at heart, Melissa Etheridge began her career in her teen years, playing with local country groups. Which do you enjoy more: country or rock?

A. Rock. I grew up listening to country but as soon as I was old enough to find the American Top 40, that was the end of my listening to country music days.

4) In 1985, Melissa sent a demo to Olivia Records, hoping for a record deal. She was rejected. Her debut CD was released in 1988 on the Island label and went gold. Tell us about a time you bounced back from professional adversity.

A. I was fired from a job at a law firm for reasons that had nothing to do with my performance and everything to do with the lawyer and the paralegal worrying that I had realized they were having an affair. I decided not to continue in the legal field and started working as a freelance writer. While I did not make big bucks doing that, I made enough, and I was much happier.

5) In her personal life, Melissa has faced major challenges, including breast cancer and the death of her son. She credits music with helping her heal emotionally. What gives you strength?

A. My husband, family, and friends, writing in my journal, and music.

6) Melissa is a vegetarian, so her diet emphasizes plant-based foods like fruits, grains, nuts and vegetables. What was your most recent meal? Would it qualify as vegetarian?

A. My most recent meal was a Boost drink. I'm not sure what that qualifies as.

7) In 1993, the year this song was popular, a massive storm dropped a record 56" of snow in Mount Le Conte, TN. Have you done much shoveling this winter?

A. We have done a good bit of shoveling. We've had two snows. The last one dropped about 8 inches of snow and a layer of sleet/ice. It's still hanging around, but we had a warmer day today and some of it has melted off the driveway.

8) One of the most popular movies of 1993 was A Few Good Men, starring Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson, who famously said, "You can't handle the truth!" What's the most recent movie you watched?

A. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I'm watching it when I walk on the treadmill. I can't hear the TV over the treadmill, and I can make the closed captioning work on the movie on the DVD player. I can't make it work on the TV without practically doing handstands to figure it out. Frankly, I'd rather watch something else even though I love these movies, but this will have to do.

9) Random question: Dessert is on us! Describe your perfect ice cream sundae.

A. A hot fudge sundae. Vanilla ice cream, thick gooey hot fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry on top. I haven't had one since I was 12 and learned I couldn't drink milk. It is on my bucket list to find a really good one and eat it.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.  

A Snowy Sunset

Sunset, January 20, 2022

 

Thursday Thirteen #740

1. The world is full of broken dreams, lies, deceit, greed, and lust.

2. It's also full of fulfilled dreams, truths, honesty, compassion, and kindness.

3. How can it be full of bad things and good things at the same time? And are they half and half, or does one outweigh the other?

4. The bad things seem stronger, harder, meaner - and more. But surely, goodness and mercy should follow us all through our days, right?

5. What seems bad to me may seem good to others. We do not all share the same world view. Some people are fine with children starving; I am not. Some are fine with some people being treated as "less than;" I am not.

6. Are caring, compassion, and kindness lessons that must be taught, or do they come in the person automatically, a part of the DNA?

7. I wonder for how long money and material things have been more important than a person. Hundreds of years? Thousands of years? Since Cain slew Abel? Always?

8. I have walked off a job to take care of someone I loved. I hope I would throw myself in front of someone else to save them, though I also hope I'm never tested like that.

9. Everywhere I go, I see a microcosm of the world. In the grocery store, I see good people whose eyes crinkle up behind their mask so I know they're smiling. I see people who gesture for me to go first or I do the same for them. I also see angry, mean people who don't care if they hit your cart or bump into you so long as they get what they want.

10. Mean people are on TV. They are the talking heads who yell and scream and talk over other people. Television used to kind of bring people together; we all watched the same shows and could talk about the same things and have actual conversations. But now there are so many channels and so many varying points of view, no one communicates. 

11. Most people appear to be working to form a response that validates their own opinion when I speak with them, not actually listening to what I am saying. I try to listen to others - it was my job as a news reporter, after all. However, I suspect I'm guilty too of trying to form my response before I totally hear another's point of view. I shall try this year to listen harder.

12. Silence is not a bad thing.

13. We're a dying society. We are doomed, really. Don't say I didn't warn you. I feel bad for the children who will have to live with our mess.

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 740th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Turkeys in the Snow

It Snowed

This was not a pretty snow. A pretty snow has lovely large flakes that dress the trees in dainty white outfits, and then it quickly melts and one can go on about the afternoon without worry.

This was a mean snow, the front that moved through yesterday and last night. This snow came in slick and small, but with great speed. At times the snow turned into a freezing mix, then a cold rain, and then back to snow. It brought wind with it, and the trees did not dress up but instead burrowed their roots into the cold ground to hang on.

Morning brought an intriguing sunrise. I caught the reflection on the mountain tops, the snow already gone from the pines and cedars.

Around lunchtime, after listening to the winds howl and occasionally watching the snow ghosts dance like monsters in the front yard, I realized that at some point the wind had become a carver.

It left a roundish circle in the front yard, where I'd earlier seen it acting like a snow tornado, the wind whirling around as it pulled the snow up from the ground to spread it elsewhere, into drifts in the fields and along the roads and driveways.

I was sorry I did not catch it as it was making its art, that I'd instead been tending laundry or answering email, or simply staring out the wrong window.