1. I have a 3BT makeup to write.
I think it was on Monday. Bill Davie posted on Facebook that he was going to perform, almost out of the blue, a Treehouse Concert on Tuesday, on December 14th.
Bill's been on a hiatus from performing. He took time away to focus on writing, hoping some new songs would arise within him, and on continuing to seek relief from the chronic pain he suffers in his back.
On Monday (I think), though, he picked up his guitar (named Woody) and playing his guitar felt really good and pretty much on the spur of the moment, he announced that he'd be live on Facebook on Tuesday.
I jumped on his livestream and Bill looked stoked. He was happy that he had a set of songs ready to go, but even more, he was happy to have so many virtual listeners, many of us longtime friends, back in the Tree House.
Bill got underway with one of his classic tunes, "Learn to Say Goodbye" and played a stirring set of everyone's favorites, including "The Only Magic I Know", "The Lone Ranger in the Moon" and others. He read inventive and unsettling poetry by Gregory Orr.
When will Bill return with his next Tree House concert?
That is unknown.
Performing on Tuesday evening was definitely a jolt of joy for Bill.
It's not clear at all, though, how often he can go to this well.
2. Snow fell most of the day today in Kellogg. I'm glad I didn't have anywhere to go on I-90 where a semi jackknifed and cars slid off the road, bringing traffic to a standstill at times.
All I had to do was shovel snow. Three times? Four times? I'm not sure. I do know this: by shoveling more frequently, I save myself and my back from the strain of shoveling deeper snow
3. I went to bed earlier than usual and listened to Episode 4 of Slate's podcast, One Year: 1977.
This episode move in three directions, dealing with three stories that broke on August 16, 1977.
First, it covered the media nuttiness that broke out when Elvis Presley died, with special focus on The National Enquirer's mission to obtain a photograph of Presley in his open casket at Graceland. In case you've forgotten, the Enquirer was successful.
Second, it was on August 16, 1977 that a Federal District Court ruled in 16 year old Deborah Lipp's favor that a New Jersey law compelling her to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in her public school classroom was unconstitutional. For refusing to get up from her desk and stand for the Pledge, Deborah Lipp was harassed, threatened, bullyragged, and demeaned. This part of Episode 4 features Deborah Lipp as a 60 year old looking back on all the torment she endured for asserting what she saw as an assertio of her right to free speech.
The third part of this episode looked at how on August 16, 1977, astronomers in Ohio received a signal that just possibly was sent by intelligent life in another part of the universe. Verifying that it came from extraterrestrials was impossible, but in a year that brought both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind to our nation's movie screens, the story was a compelling one. Those interviewed in 2021, looking back on this momentous occasion in 1977, were fascinating as they addressed the question of whether intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe and, if it does, what that 1977 signal to Earth might have been trying to communicate to us.
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