Nows and Forevers

I didn’t plan on posting about The Band two days in a row, but its last member, Garth Hudson, died today in Woodstock, New York. They’re having a heck of a concert in Heaven with Levon, Robbie, Richard, Rick and Garth.

We have a lot to thank Garth for: recording and saving all of the basement tapes with Dylan; being solely responsible for the emergence of the funky wah-wah pedal (first in this song); and helping to elevate a bar band to immortality. As Garth and the late, great Levon Helm pointed out in a documentary from the ‘90s, there weren’t a lot of rules back then so they kept trying things.

(A useful creative lesson, actually.)

My everlasting memory of Garth Hudson comes from this performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1969: At 1:40, you see him in his element.

It’s pure joy.

One of the art works that went into the public domain on Jan. 1 is “A Farewell to Arms,” the World War I epic by Ernest Hemingway that was first published in 1929. I actually own a hardcover first edition, sans dust jacket, of “A Farewell to Arms,” which I picked up for a dollar in the ‘80s when I went to a library used book sale in Connecticut.

I didn’t know it was a first edition until, one day a few weeks later, I picked it up and noticed it wasn’t a reprint and it was in great condition for being almost as old as my grandparents. No one else noticed either, although that was in the day when book dealers and others didn’t have instant access to databases on their iPhones.

Turns out I’ve read a lot from 1929, looking at this list. And some of the Marx Brothers’ best, too.

What a really oddly personal snow map. The orange blotches of intensity and projected snow depth — in the Hudson Valley, Connecticut, and northern Maine — are hitting exactly where I spent much of my life. And where most of my thoughts go, even now. #FunWithData

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Saturn in a telescope, and all I could think about is, that doesn’t look real, it looks like a picture book. I’m by no means an astronomer but I enjoy looking up at the sky. I agree with the guy I ran into last year when were both chasing the comet: There’s so much wonder in the world and you can see God’s hand in everything.

One of the best parts of living in northern Maine along the Canadian border was the lack of outside light and the ability to see the Milky Way and the Northern Lights much more often.

Here’s a combination that I wouldn’t have thought of, Burl Ives singing Bob Dylan. Spoiler alert: it’s quite good. Ives is a complicated figure, much more so than his reputation as the host of “Rudolph” would suggest. He was a folk music pioneer who worked with Woody Guthrie and Peter Seeger, really menacing actor (and Oscar winner), and someone who lost Seeger’s respect after testifying during the blacklisting.

I have an odd New Year’s tradition for the past 30+ years tradition: the first song I listen to every year is Artie Shaw and His Orchestra’s version of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Begiuine.”

It happened because in the early ‘90s, my aunt had found a bunch of my paternal grandfather’s records and said I could take whatever I wanted over Christmas break. A lot of big band, some Burl Ives and Roger Miller among the three dozen or so LPs through about the late 60s. I brought home the big band records and this was the first I put in the turntable, a little after I woke up on New Year’s Day.

I was hooked, and the habit stuck. It’s hard to go wrong with Artie Shaw and Cole Porter.

Fifty-six years ago this week the three brave men undertook up to then was the most spectacular and hazardous journey ever undertaken: Apollo 8, the first trip from the Earth to the Moon. That took a lot of planning and guts, and think about it: This is a trip that we haven’t been able to replicate since 1972, and Apollo 8 was first.

And on Christmas Eve 1968, broadcasting live the first views of Earth and the Moon, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders delivered a Christmas Eve message for the ages. It’s in my opinion one of the most powerful few minutes of live TV ever, then and now.

You see, 1968 was one of the toughest years we faced as a country, violent and tragic and full of war at home and abroad, and a Cold War and nuclear threat over us all. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were taken in 1968 long before their time and those losses still reverberate today.

But Apollo 8’s voyage ended the year with a triumph that showed spirit, grace and peace. In the words of one ordinary citizen to the crew of Apollo 8: “You saved 1968.”

I was only a little over a year old in 1968 but I had a CBS News record when I was a kid of that pivotal year and I was mesmerized by the drama and this message. I have listened to it on Christmas Eve every year since the late ‘70s.

I know it by heart, but even now, Frank Borman’s ending words in those times still catches me.

“God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”

Michael Brewer — half of the duo Brewer & Shipley — died Tuesday at age 80. Maybe you don’t know Brewer & Shipley by name but you probably know their most famous song, “One Toke Over the Line,” which I can’t believe was actually a hit.

Not only that, but it was also performed in 1971 on the “Lawrence Welk Show” in a really earnest way because apparently Welk thought it was a “modern day spiritual.”

Ah, the ’70s. where a song about marijuana, the Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight” and Rick Dees’ “Disco Duck” could all be super hits.

This is the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, the long and brutal clash between the Allied Army and the Nazis in a cold and snowy Dec. 16, 1944, and Jan. 28, 1945, along the German, Belgium and Luxembourg borders. It was a fierce counterattack by the Nazis as the Allies neared the border, and it came sadly as a surprise and trapped a lot of soldiers. That the Allies prevailed took a lot – 19,000 soldiers killed and another 65,000 wounded – but it also led to the defeat four months later of Germany.

It also cuts through my family history. My grandfather, 1st Lt. Edward A. Gough, was there and fought through the entire battle. He survived unscathed from the Bulge, at least physically. He landed a day after D-Day and served in the First Army through Normandy and that drive to the Ardennes, and was wounded in action once that September, according to the service record I have.

It’s stunning to me how quickly Americans forget their history, and fail to appreciate the sacrifices of the men and women who came before us. Even when we owe a lot to them.