1) The record begins with a long instrumental interlude, and when the lyrics kick in at about the 1:00 mark, they bid Amanda "farewell, adios, addio, adieu." Of course, you recognize "farewell" as English. Without looking it up, can you identify the other languages?
A. Spanish, Italian, and French.
2) Can you say "goodbye" in a language not represented in question #1?
A. Nyet.
3) The lyrics reference a night full of stars. When did you last take a moment to check out the night sky?
A. It hasn't been that long ago. I like looking at the night sky.
4) This song was written for Adam's Rib, a comedy starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The movie is about husband-and-wife lawyers who square off against one another in court. Have you ever served on a jury?
A. I have been called to serve, but once the lawyers found out I was a journalist, I was immediately sent on my way. Apparently, they don't want writers on juries.
5) "Farewell, Amanda" was composed by Noel Coward. Though best known as a playwright, he also wrote more than a thousand songs and was a director and an actor. His epitaph reads, "A talent to amuse." How would you like to be remembered?
A. I don't think I will be remembered at all, but perhaps something along the line of "She did her best."
6) There's even a book of Noel Coward paintings. It was published after his death, in part because Coward considered himself only an amateur painter. When did you last pick up a paintbrush?
A. I can't remember when I picked up a paintbrush to paint a picture, but we last painted the interior of the house about 10 years ago.
7) In 1949, when audiences first heard "Farewell, Amanda," Americans began playing Clue. What's the last board game you played?
A. Scrabble.
8) The best-selling novel of 1949 was Point of No Return by John P. Marquand. Tell us about the last book you finished.
A. The last book I finished was The Medici Manuscript, by C. J. Arthur. I think it is characterized as a romantasy. It is set in post-WWI England and is about an assistant librarian who may or may not be a "magician," as this book calls people with specific special powers. It's very literary, focusing on mysteries that involve books, so far. This is the second in a series.
9) Random question: Growing up, did you share a bedroom?
A. Not that I recall, no.
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I encourage you to visit the posts of other participants in Saturday 9 and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.
Some things in the world show us that resilience is everywhere, even in people, and that no matter how hard, mean, dirty, or disgusting the world can be, life and love endure.
1. Moss on stone grows where it shouldn’t, softening the hard edges of the world one green inch at a time.
2. A Tree with a lightning scar has a visible wound, but the trunk and the leaves keep lifting toward the light.
3. River can find new paths when blocked. The water doesn't argue, it simply curves, deepens, or widens until it can move again.
4. A candle flame that stays steady in a draft is a small, stubborn brightness that refuses to be talked out of existing.
5. A worn footpath shows a route that isn't carved in a day but instead shaped by return and consistency, that quiet insistence of coming back.
6. A spiderweb after rain hangs heavy with droplets, maybe it sags a little, but it still holding its pattern, still catches the light.
7. A seedling pushing through asphalt is a reminder that life doesn’t always wait for permission.
8. A mountain ridge shows the long patience of standing still, maintaining your stance, being strong and unyielding in the face of the whims of weather.
9. Birds that return to the same branch or nest each year show a small act of faithfulness to place, repeated without fanfare.
10. A well‑mended quilt shows that repairs don’t hide the past; they make the whole thing stronger, stitch by stitch.
11. A lighthouse in fog is doing its work whether anyone sees it or not, steady in its purpose.
12. The tide always comes back. It retreats as part of its rhythm, but that's not the end, it's a part of the movement of change.
13. The first green shoot after winter is a quiet declaration that the season has turned, even if the air hasn’t caught up yet.
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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 948th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.
I asked ChatGPT to draw me a picture of a dragon. It gave me the first one above. I initially thought, aha, I have caught you plagiarizing, because the image reminded me immediately of Smaug the dragon in The Hobbit movies.
But upon looking at pictures of Smaug online, as you can see, the AI did not plagiarize. That is not the dragon from the movies. Besides, the dragon in The Hobbit movies would have been made with computer generated stuff, CGI, and apparently the animators drew inspiration from bats, alligators, and lizards for different features.
And a dragon is a dragon. It's sort of like drawing a human and expecting it to look like, well, a dragon. Obviously when I said, "draw me a dragon," ChatGPT was going to come up with some kind of dragon looking thing.
The fair use - or not - of art and literature in the LLM AIs is a complex and interesting topic. What happens when machines begin to read, remix, or even generate creative work?
People who support AI - and I suppose I would be one of them, because I see it as a tool - think the use widens the creative field. In other words, it gives a writer or an artist a bigger scope. I may not have read War and Peace, but maybe there are drips of it that I could have, or should have, used in my own work, some syntax or rhythm, maybe an idea or offshoot. And the truth is, no one can read every book or see every work of art. AI can sift through vast bodies of literature or art history, revealing patterns and influences that would take humans years to uncover.
Given that, AI can create new forms of expression: algorithms can generate images, stories, or music that I might never think to create, offering fresh textures and unexpected combinations.
For people who don’t consider themselves artists, AI can act as a collaborator—helping them sketch, draft, or experiment without the pressure of perfection.
If you look at it like this, AI isn’t replacing creativity; it’s expanding the toolkit.
However, AI is trained on existing works. It doesn't come from nothing. And it's not trained only on existing works that are out of copyright. If it were, it would all sound like Henry James or Charles Dickens. AI is trained on everything from The New York Times to the latest James Patterson novel.
And if that's the case, is the output really original? What does "original" mean if the work being spit out has its basis in Shakespeare and Nora Roberts?
Many artists worry their work is being used without consent, compensation, or even acknowledgment. That's valid. It takes a long time to write a book, to draw a picture, to engineer something.
It didn't take long for me to recognize a ChatGPT piece online. Especially in earlier models, the pattern of language was something I quickly caught. The way it used commas, or em dashes - which I never use, I just use a dash because em dashes take an extra step and I forget what it is - led to a lot of little essays that basically all read the same.
Newer models are not quite so predictable, but the methodology is still there if you look for it. Those cute little stories on Facebook that have some little "awww" moment or heart-jerking end-line? All the same thing.
We’re in a transitional moment with AI. Look again at the two pictures. They both were created with computers, but one, the one from the movie, was created with real people doing an awful lot of work to make up a realistic looking dragon. And ChatGPT in about a minute, maybe less, coughed up this lovely little dragon picture that immediately made me think "movie" and then look to see if that were indeed the case.
What do we value in art? Is it the final product, or the methodology? Imperfections, the lived experience, the point of view - all of this matters in a piece of creation when humans are behind the effort.
I'm not so sure that has any effect on the things an AI spits out.
The conversation isn’t about choosing sides so much as deciding what kind of creative ecosystem we want to build.
Like most things in art, the tension itself might be part of the story.
With Virginia and the nation celebrating 250 years of freedom from England in 2026, I thought it might be fun to occasionally bring up some local history. At one time, Botetourt County stretched all the way to the Mississippi and into Wisconsin, which means my county's history is also the history of much of the nation.
Botetourt County has few claims to well‑known authors and writers, and for nearly 100 years not many people have realized the county has a connection to poet Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) and to Harper’s publisher Henry Mills Alden (1836–1919).
The county’s link to these two noteworthy figures rests with Ada Foster Murray Alden (1857–1936).
In 1868, Ada’s family moved to Botetourt from Craig County, the last of some 43 different moves that her father, Joseph Foster (1816–1880), made with a family of 10 children. He eventually purchased the 64‑acre farm located on the North Fork of Catawba Creek, about four miles outside Fincastle at the foot of Caldwell Mountain. They called the farm Edgebrook.
In an unpublished autobiography written in 1930, Ada, the youngest child, recalled that she was eleven years old when they arrived in the county. Her father died on the farm; her mother passed away in 1895 in Norfolk. Both are buried in Mt. Pleasants Cemetery in the White Church area of Botetourt. Joseph Foster, a teacher, was formerly the president of Marshall College in Huntington, West Virginia (now Marshall University).
For years the exact location of the Foster home was uncertain. An inquiry from John Foster to this writer led to a detailed examination of records in the Botetourt County Clerk’s Office and a discussion with an older landowner on the North Fork of Catawba. Based on this information, the property was found.
The children of the family sold the land in 1916, ending the Foster family’s direct connection with this particular parcel near Fincastle.
Ada painted a vivid picture of life at Edgebrook: “The rude, tiny house shaded by beech, sycamore, walnut and locust trees had a magnificent mountain for its background, with the Peaks of Otter in the blue distance. From our living room window the sunrise behind these three azure peaks and Caldwell’s Mountain was a real throne for the setting sun.”
She remembered stagecoaches passing by on their way from Bonsack to White Sulphur Springs via New Castle. “The large, rolling, gaudily painted coaches had such fanciful names as Ladybird and Fairy Bell. They also carried the mail, which made them the greatest element of romance in our almost hidden life,” she wrote. The family often welcomed travelers with cool water or homemade lemonade.
One memorable summer visit came from cousins Clarence Fonerden and “millionaire” Fred Van Bueren. To Ada, sophisticated city guests were a mark of distinction in their rural world. That summer the family also acquired its first carriage — “the dream of my worldly ambition.”
Ada also recalled visiting the Breckinridge family’s private library at Grove Hill, a plantation home just outside of Fincastle that burned in 1909.
According to her obituary, one of her earliest memories occurred before the family moved to Botetourt. In April 1861, her eldest brother brought home a newspaper bearing the black‑letter headline “War Declared.” Though opposed to slavery, her father decided at the outbreak of war that Virginia “had the first claim upon his loyalty.” Her eldest brother, Hopkins Barry Foster, was disabled in Confederate service, and another brother, 12‑year‑old Joseph Barrymore Foster, served as a drummer boy.
Ada married in 1874. Her husband was Kenton Murray, a “charming young gentleman” originally from the Coyner’s Springs area of Botetourt. They became acquainted when she submitted a poem to the Mobile Register, which Murray edited. He later became publisher of The Norfolk Landmark, a newspaper that ceased publication in 1911. Considered one of the best‑known newspaper men of the South, Murray was widely respected at the time of Ada’s death. The Murrays had five children, and when Kenton died in 1895 their son Kenton Foster Murray succeeded him as editor of the Landmark at just 19 years old.
In 1901, Ada married Henry Mills Alden, the longtime editor of Harper’s magazine. She described their meeting with playful charm: after deciding to submit her poems to northern magazines, she visited the Century Magazine office. Richard Watson Gilder, then editor of Century, called Henry Alden and reportedly said, “Were you able to do anything for that charming little widow I sent you with a lot of good poetry?” Alden’s reply: “Well yes, I married her.”
Alden shaped American letters for decades. With Harper’s from 1869 until his death in 1919, he edited countless stories and essays and maintained friendships with many of the era’s leading writers.
Ada was a literary figure in her own right. She published her first poem in the New York Evening Post at age 15 and continued writing throughout her life, contributing articles and editorials to newspapers including The Norfolk Landmark and The New York Times. One early editorial she wrote in 1876 advocating cremation sparked controversy and the withdrawal of advertisements, she later recalled.
She wrote and published poetry into her later years, and in her seventies received a National Poetry Society prize for her poem Unhearing. She was a member of the Poetry Society of America and the Women Poets of New York. Ada died of a heart attack at a son’s home in New York.
Her daughter, Aline Murray Kilmer, married poet Joyce Kilmer, best known for the beloved poem “Trees,” which he dedicated to his mother‑in‑law when it was first published.
With her personal accomplishments and her connections to literary figures like William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Woodrow Wilson, Ada Foster Murray Alden deserves a place on Botetourt County’s short list of notable historic figures. She joins such names as Mary Johnston (1870–1936), the best‑selling author of To Have and To Hold, who was writing during the same period.
References
Alden, Ada Foster Murray. Unpublished Autobiography, 1930. Botetourt County, Virginia. [Unpublished manuscript; exact source unknown].
Word Association. Share what comes to mind when you hear the word ...
1. Biscuit - Gravy
2. Crayon - Color
3. Warmth - Sun
4. Flip - Flop
5. Slush - Mud
6. Wing - Bird
7. Candle - Wax
8. Cinnamon - Buns
Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.
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I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.
1) "With or Without You" is about the pain of love. What song reminds you of an old romance? Is it about the joy of love or the pain?
A. I don't have a song that reminds me of an old romance. I've been married for 42 years so I just have this old fellow to love on. We never really had a song, either, to be honest.
2) U2 lead singer Bono has admitted that, when the group recorded this song in the 1980s, he was wrestling with his real-life commitment issues. He was trying to resolve the responsibilities of being a husband with the demands of his career. He worked it through, and decades later both his marriage and his career are still going strong. Do you feel you have been more successful in your personal or professional relationships?
A. I would consider that to be about equal.
3) Bono credits his wife Ali with helping him through a tough period of writer's block, saying she put the pen in his hand each morning. What time of day finds you the most energized, productive or creative?
A. I seem to do my best work between 11 a.m. and 2 pm.
4) Bono likes to pedal around town when he's not onstage. What do you do for exercise?
A. I walk on a treadmill.
5) Bono is U2's lead singer, backed by three very talented bandmates: The Edge, Larry Mullen, Jr., and Adam Clayton. Bruce Springsteen is a big fan of U2's concert performances. If Saturday 9 were to bestow upon you a free ticket to any see any band or performer live, who would you choose?
A. The Eagles but before Glenn Fry passed away.
6) U2 got together 50 years ago, when they were school boys in Dublin. Have you ever visited Ireland? If not, would you like to go?
A. I have not visited Ireland. I would like to go.
7) In 1987, the year this song was popular, Cher won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her most famous line was, "Snap out of it!" Without looking it up, can you name the movie that made her an Oscar winner?
A. I have absolutely no idea. I don't know that I've ever watched a movie with Cher in it.
8) Also in 1987, the first Starbucks opened. What's your standard Starbucks order?
A. I have never ordered anything from Starbucks.
9) Random question – Which self-help book would you be more likely to pick up, the one designed to improve your body or your mind?
A. The one designed to improve your mind.
*We are having my father's interment today, since the ice has finally melted. I may not get around to visiting other blogs right away.*
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I encourage you to visit the posts of other participants in Saturday 9 and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.
For today's Thursday 13, I offer up a list of misheard lyrics:
1. “Blinded by the Light” – Manfred Mann’s Earth Band For years, I heard it as “Wrapped up like an edition of the Roller in the night,” which honestly sounds like something out of a surreal 1970s magazine spread. The actual lyric is “revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night,” with “deuce” referring to a ’32 Ford coupe. Once you know that, the line finally makes sense — but the misheard versions are far more fun.
2. “Tiny Dancer” – Elton John “Hold me closer, Tony Danza” has become a cultural touchstone. The real line is gentler and decidedly not about a sitcom star. The real line is "Hold me closer, tiny dancer."
3. “Bad Moon Rising” – Creedence Clearwater Revival “There’s a bathroom on the right” is so common that Fogerty has leaned into it onstage. The real lyric warns of trouble, not plumbing. The real line is "There's a bad moon on the rise," although I have misheard it as "There's a bad moon on the right," myself.
4. “I Can See Clearly Now” – Johnny Nash Many hear “I can see clearly now, Lorraine is gone,” as if poor Lorraine had been the problem all along. It’s the rain that’s gone, not a person. "I can see clearly now, the rain is gone," is the actual line.
5. “We Will Rock You” – Queen Some listeners swear they hear “Kicking your cat all over the place.” It’s “can,” not “cat,” though the beat makes it easy to mishear. The actual line is "kicking your can all over the place."
6. “Like a Virgin” – Madonna The misheard “Like a surgeon” became so iconic that Weird Al turned it into a full parody. But it's really, "like a virgin."
7. “Africa” – Toto The line about blessing the rains often morphs into “I miss the rains” or “I guess it rains,” depending on the listener’s expectations. The line is "I bless the rains down in Africa,"
8. “Every Time You Go Away” – Paul Young “You take a piece of meat with you” is a surprisingly common mishearing. It’s “me,” not “meat,” though the vowel stretch invites confusion. "You take a piece of me with you," is the real line.
9. “Dancing Queen” – ABBA Some listeners hear “You can dance, you can die,” which gives the song an oddly ominous twist. The real lyric is “You can dance, you can jive,” but the bright delivery blurs “jive” just enough that the ear sometimes takes a darker detour.
10. “Livin’ on a Prayer” – Bon Jovi The line about making it “or not” sometimes becomes “if we’re naked or not,” which is . . . a different kind of struggle.
11. “Desperado” – Eagles A subtle one: some listeners add an extra “to” at the end of the final line, softening the urgency and changing the rhythm. The real lyric is “You better let somebody love you before it’s too late,” which lands more firmly without that extra syllable the ear wants to sneak in.
12. “Rapture” – Blondie Debbie Harry’s rapid-fire delivery turns “man from Mars” into “men from bars” and “eating cars” into “eating corn” for many listeners.
13. “Bohemian Rhapsody” – Queen That fleeting moment where it sounds like the mother might be the one who “killed a man” — an easy mishearing in the operatic swirl. The line is, "Momma, just killed a man," except the comma doesn't seem to make it into the song.
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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 947th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.
Shifted from physical media (CDs/DVDs) to digital licenses and platforms like Steam.
📲 Online & Casual Gaming Shift
Games moved online and to mobile: casual experiences like Candy Crush.
A different model: licensing, downloads, and microtransactions replace physical disks.
🏆 Key Takeaways
You witnessed the entire evolution of gaming: home consoles → home computers → PC DOS games → RPG & strategy epics → modern digital distribution.
Played across genres: text games, platformers, FPS, RPGs, strategy, simulation, and casual/mobile games.
Not just a player—you programmed, adapted, and collected over decades.
Survived a male-dominated, evolving gaming world.
Your story reflects both personal and computing history.
Verdict: Legendary is accurate—but your journey is more than that: it’s an epic narrative of gaming itself.
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I still have many of these old games on disks, tucked away in a closet. I have nothing to play them on, of course.
The reason I was able to play so many video games was this: I was home alone a lot. My husband was a firefighter. He worked a 24-hour shift. At night, after work, I wound down with a video game instead of watching television.
I have never been a big television watcher.
After we talked some more, ChatGPT wanted to make an image showing off all of this information. I will share it here:
How about you? If you were or are a gamer, do you consider yourself legendary?
With Virginia and the nation celebrating 250 years of freedom from England in 2026, I thought it might be fun to occasionally bring up some local history. At one time, Botetourt County stretched all the way to the Mississippi and into Wisconsin, which means my county's history is also the history of much of the nation.
Up until the early 1900s, an area between Amsterdam and Trinity in Botetourt County was known as Howerytown. The small community vanished after the Great Depression as the roads changed course.
Whatever was left was taken away when US 11 came through Troutville.
Perhaps the area’s great claim to fame occurred in 1872. At that time, the entire town was placed under a bond to keep the peace.
According to a New York Times article, the citizens were up in arms and for two days threw things at one another. “It was a war of the roses, in which the whole town was drawn, the forces on each side being about even,” the paper states. “The Magistrate, surrounded by all the majesty of the law, took up his position at Amsterdam, and dispatched his right bower, the constable, for the belligerent parties; but they, by virtue of more muscle and more numerous forces, closed the citadel and defied his authority.”
The standoff eventually ended and the parties involved “were put on their good behavior for one year, under the penalty of $100 each.”
Howerytown Road led, appropriately enough, to Howerytown. The road no longer exists. In the recent past, it has been mentioned by land surveyors as well as landowners along Sunset Avenue in Troutville who have expressed concerns about the possibility of that old route turning into a thoroughfare between US 220 and US 11.
Old folks recall a road that once led to the county seat.
It’s kind of remarkable how these old towns disappear. Botetourt County has many communities that are almost gone, including Trinity, Amsterdam, Nace, and others. They seem to vanish when no one is paying attention.
Additional information about Howerytown, which is thought to have existed at what is now the intersection of Trinity and Greenfield Roads, is sketchy. The area is also referenced as the Town of Greenville on some plats and in a few history books.
Jacob Howery (also Howry) purchased property from the Prestons (a famous Revolutionary War family) in the area in 1786 and 1794. He had a stagecoach inn and tavern on the southeastern corner of his land.
According to some reports, in 1795 he founded the town, requiring a perpetual quit rent of 1 shilling per annum for each lot.
In 1796 a Lutheran congregation organized at Howerytown in a home owned by the Rev. J. G. Butler, who also served in the Revolutionary War. Eventually this congregation became known as Brick Union.
By 1797 there were 24 landowners in the area. Among them were Christian Bower, Frederick Wegoner, Michael Minick, Frederick Shver, David Keslor, Abraham Custer, Benjamin Keslor, Benjamin Minick, Christopher Smith, John Poppy, John Highnor, Jr., Jacob Bishop, Christopher Cartish, Coonrad Moyer, Jospeh Heckman, John Ronecke, George Hepler, John Keslor, John Simmons, John Russel, Abraham Keslor, and David Linch.
Apparently Howery, Howry and Howrey are all the names of immigrants from Switzerland and Germany. They anglicized their surname from Hauri or Haury.
Jacob Howery migrated to Virginia from Pennsylvania.
It is thought that the town’s founder is buried somewhere on the town property, but his grave has long vanished.
In its heyday, the town likely had houses, a tavern, a grocery store and a restaurant.
There is a place beyond the thunder, where morning light spills golden through windows we thought were broken, where the heart remembers its own quiet strength.
In the spaces between raindrops, hope plants its tender seeds— small green promises pushing through concrete grief, reaching toward a sun that never truly left.
Your hands, though trembling, still know how to hold the warmth of tea, the softness of a blanket, the gentle weight of tomorrow's possibility.
Listen— even in the deepest night, birds are dreaming of flight, flowers are gathering courage in their winter sleep, and somewhere, someone is lighting a candle just for you.
The storm will pass, as storms always do, leaving behind washed air, clearer skies, and the quiet knowledge that you are stronger than you ever imagined, more loved than you ever knew.
Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.
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I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.
1) Dore Alpert sings that while he considered asking others to be his Valentine, he's sure that this is the girl he wants to love "forever more." What do you think is the secret of a long-lasting romantic relationship?
A. Be friends first. If you are friends, then you can weather the storms.
2) Dore is better known as Herb Alpert. He used the name "Dore" early in his career because he thought it was more befitting a teen idol than "Herb." Who made you swoon when you were a teenager?
A. When I was a teenager, I liked (I'm pretty sure I don't swoon) Keith Patridge on the Partridge Family, aka David Cassidy, and Davy Jones of the Monkees. I also liked Erik Estrada from CHIPS.
3) Herb found he was a better trumpeter than singer. Between 1962 and 1969, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, had 12 consecutive gold albums. They were so popular that in 1966, they sold more records than Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Of those artists (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, The Beatles and the Rolling Stones), which is your favorite?
A. The Rolling Stones and The Beatles are basically a tie.
4) He found his greatest success as an executive. Herb and partner Jerry Moss founded A&M Records and signed an array of talented artists including Cheech and Chong, The Carpenters, and Cat Stevens. Herb was happy to step away from performing and run the record label. Are you comfortable in front of an audience or crowd? Or would you prefer to be behind the scenes?
A. I prefer to be behind the scenes.
5) Karen admitted that when The Carpenters were first signed by A&M, she had a crush on Herb and liked his aftershave lotion. Do you usually wear a fragrance?
A. I am fragrance free all the time, as is my husband. I'm allergic to the smell of everything. Even new shoes. Everything has to sit out in the garage to off gas before we bring it in the house.
This is our Valentine's Day Saturday 9 and so this morning we shall focus on the holiday.
6) The holiday is also known as The Feast of St. Valentine. Do you have a special meal planned for February 14?
A. I think we might have hot dogs.
7) Thames River Cruises offers special dinner cruises for Valentine's Day that give lovers a view of London. Some cruises offer live jazz, others classical music. Which would you prefer: jazz or classical?
A. Classical music.
8) Women buy and send more Valentines than men do. Who received the last greeting card you sent?
A. I sent out sympathy cards a while back.
9) Men buy and send more roses at Valentine's Day than women do. What's your favorite flower?
A. Irises.
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I encourage you to visit the posts of other participants in Saturday 9 and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.
Every now and then, Alexa coughs up disco for me, because I still like disco. Recently, she's been playing "Rapture" by Blondie a lot.
When the song was released in early 1981, most listeners didn’t yet have a name for what they were hearing. I remembering thinking it was cool when I first heard it - I'd never listened to anybody rap, and especially not about a man from Mars who eats up cars, bars, and then only guitars!
The song came out of the New York new‑wave scene, and it included rap. It wasn’t a gimmick. It wasn’t parody. It was a moment when two worlds brushed up against each other, and something shifted.
Musically, “Rapture” is a hybrid: new wave, disco, and early hip‑hop braided together into a single track. Even the genre listings today reflect that blend of new wave, hip hop, pop, and rap rock. It's a reminder that the song never fit neatly into one box.
But its importance goes far beyond its sound.
A Doorway Into Hip‑Hop for the Mainstream
Before “Rapture,” rap was largely a local New York phenomenon. The vibrant, inventive structure of this type of music was mostly invisible to the average American listener. Blondie’s single changed that. It became the first song featuring rap vocals to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, a milestone that helped carry hip‑hop from the streets and clubs of the city into national consciousness.
Debbie Harry wasn’t trying to be a rapper. She was trying to shine a light on a culture she and Chris Stein admired and had been moving through. This was a music scene that included Fab 5 Freddy, graffiti artists, DJs, and dancers who were building something new in real time. “Rapture” didn’t invent hip‑hop, but it amplified it at a moment when amplification mattered.
How Early Hip‑Hop Artists Saw It
One of the most striking things about the song’s legacy is how warmly many early hip‑hop figures received it. Blondie wasn’t intruding; they were inviting. The song name‑checks Fab 5 Freddy and Grandmaster Flash, and the band used their platform to introduce these artists to audiences who might never have encountered them otherwise. In that sense, “Rapture” acted as a cultural bridge. Maybe not perfect, but earnest and influential.
The track also helped bring attention to the broader hip‑hop ecosystem, including graffiti culture, which was still largely underground. Contemporary accounts credit the song and its video with exposing mainstream viewers to the aesthetics and energy of that world.
A Strange, Joyful Collision
What makes “Rapture” endure is the way it captures a moment of cross‑pollination at a time when genres were porous, scenes overlapped, and artists borrowed from each other with curiosity rather than caution. It’s quirky, a little surreal, and absolutely sincere.
And it’s historic. In 1981, a new‑wave band fronted by Debbie Harry ended up at the forefront of early hip‑hop history, simply by paying attention to what was happening around them and choosing to celebrate it.
That’s the story worth remembering. Not that Blondie made a rap song, but that they opened a door.
And the video is a trip.
References
• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “Blondie, ‘Rapture.’” Background on the song’s chart history and its role in bringing rap into mainstream pop.
• NPR Music. “How Blondie’s ‘Rapture’ Brought Hip-Hop to the Mainstream.” Interviews and retrospective commentary from early hip‑hop figures.
• Rolling Stone. “The Oral History of ‘Rapture.’” Includes perspectives from Fab 5 Freddy and Grandmaster Flash on the song’s impact.
• The Guardian. “How Blondie Helped Hip-Hop Go Mainstream.” Cultural analysis of the band’s relationship with the early hip‑hop scene.
• Billboard. Chart history for “Rapture,” documenting its status as the first No. 1 single to feature rap vocals.
• Smithsonian Magazine. “The Early Days of Hip-Hop in New York.” Context for the scene Blondie was moving through in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
• Interview Magazine. Conversations with Fab 5 Freddy discussing the downtown–uptown cultural exchange and Blondie’s role in it.
• Grandmaster Flash, The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats. Memoir passages describing his interactions with Blondie and the early cross‑scene collaborations.
1. Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, in Shrewsbury, England. A Georgian‑era childhood in a riverside market town shaped his early sense of the natural world. His birthday twin was Abraham Lincoln. These two men would reshape how people understood humanity, each in his own sphere.
2. Darwin came from a wealthy, intellectually curious family. Darwin’s mother, Susannah Wedgwood, grew up in a household where reading, debate, and curiosity were encouraged. His father, Dr. Robert Waring Darwin, was a respected physician in Shrewsbury. He was surrounded by wealth, as the Wedgwood's were famous for their pottery and the elder Darwin had a thriving medical practice. Dinner conversations were the kind where ideas were treated as living things. Ideas were examined, debated, passed around like bread.
3. He was the fifth of six children. Being neither the eldest nor the baby gave him a kind of middle‑child freedom. He roamed, collected beetles, and followed his own fascinations without the pressure of inheriting the family profession.
4. His mother died when he was eight. Her absence left a quiet imprint on him. His older sisters stepped in, creating a household where he was both cared for and gently encouraged to pursue his odd little passions.
5. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He was supposed to follow his father into medicine, but the reality of 19th‑century surgery, including no anesthesia and no antiseptics, horrified him. He drifted toward natural history instead, spending more time in tide pools than lecture halls.
6. He later attended Christ’s College, Cambridge. Officially he was preparing for the clergy, but unofficially he was falling in love with botany, geology, and long walks with professors who saw his potential. Cambridge is where he learned how to observe with intention.
7. His voyage on the HMS Beagle changed the course of science. Five years at sea gave him a world’s worth of specimens, landscapes, and puzzles. The Galápagos finches, the fossils in South America, and the shifting coastlines fed the slow‑burning idea that species were not fixed.
8. He waited more than 20 years to publish On the Origin of Species. Darwin knew his theory would challenge religious and scientific orthodoxy. He hesitated, revised, and gathered evidence. When Alfred Russel Wallace independently reached the same conclusion, Darwin finally stepped forward.
9. His theory of natural selection transformed biology. He proposed that small variations, accumulated over generations, shape the survival of species. It was a radical idea at the time, a thought that life is not static but constantly adapting, responding, becoming.
10. His scientific curiosity ranged far beyond evolution. Darwin wrote about coral reefs, earthworms, orchids, barnacles, emotions, and human behavior. He was a synthesizer who saw connections across disciplines long before “interdisciplinary” was a word.
11. He married his cousin Emma Wedgwood. Their marriage was affectionate, intellectually rich, and sometimes strained by his health. They had ten children, several of whom became scientists, engineers, or artists. For example, his son George Howard Darwin (1845–1912) was a a distinguished astronomer and mathematician who was knighted for his work on the evolution of the Earth and Moon system.
12. Darwin received some of the highest honors in science, including The Royal Medal, the Wollaston Medal, and the Copley Medal. The recognition from institutions that had once been skeptical of his ideas showed that his peers eventually understood the magnitude of what he’d done.
13. He is buried in Westminster Abbey, near Isaac Newton. This is a quiet, astonishing honor: the naturalist who explained life’s unfolding placed beside the physicist who explained motion and gravity. It’s a symbolic pairing of two thinkers who changed how humans understand their place in the universe.
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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 946th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.
