my burg

Confession : I did not have a music playlist in 1960, being only 9 years old, and so I listened mainly to the records (33 1/3 LPs) that my parents played on their HiFi turntable in our home.  What got me thinking in this groove was hearing Harry Belafonte on an Amazon playlist, selected by my wife tonight. Belafonte, a famous Calypso singer, passed away in April of this year.  What's amazing to me is that hearing a just few notes and words of a song transported me sixty years back to the tunes that played in my childhood home... But I'm sad to say I'm on my way Won't be back for many a day My heart is down My head is turning around I had to leave a little girl in Kingston town (Jamaica Farewell) There was Harry Belafonte, a favorite of my parents. My mother especially liked "Moon River" by Andy Williams, and being an accordionist, she enjoyed songs like "Beer Barrel Polka", which is still sung these days at the Green Bay Packers' home games.  We ...

I enjoy reading older science fiction, from the 1940s up to the turn of the century. I especially enjoy Andre (Alice) Norton, Clifford Simak, Philip K. Dick, and many others. And of course, C. S. Lewis's space trilogy tops the list. We may think that science fiction writers in the past, when visualizing the future of western civilization, tended to portray the greatest danger facing the human race as coming from reactionary, conservative, and institutional forces. That may be the case with some authors. But I've noted in at least four works  the greatest danger was visualized as coming from more progressive -- and supposedly scientific -- influences. Here are a few excerpts...  “The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had already begun to be warped, had been subtly maneuvered in a certain direction. Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result… ...