M is for the many things she gave me

I’m happy to note that my mom is alive and well in North Carolina. She’s turning the big EIGHT-OH this year.

It’s quite convenient, my in-law’s birthdays and my parents’. My mother is a decade older than my mother-in-law, and if my father were still alive, he would be a decade older than my father-in-law.

Carol, her brothers, and their spouses planned a surprise birthday party for my mother-in-law last month. It was a surprise because it was almost a month after her actual birthday. We used the birthday of one of her sons, Dan, whose birthday was April 1, as the ruse to get her to Brooks Bar-B-Q, where her siblings, other family members and friends were all gathered. It was great fun, especially when her husband read this poorly constructed letter from an insurance company indicating that she (rather than her policy) would be terminated. (You had to be there, I suppose.)

My sisters noted Father’s Day when I first became a dad, so I think it’s only fitting that I give kudos to Leslie and Marcia.

Then there’s my wife, but since I’ll be talking about her soon, we’ll keep that in abeyance.
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Best wishes and prayers to these folk.
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Will Gay Prof lose his gravitas now that his mom is visiting?
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And aprops of Stevie Wonder’s 57th birthday, I was listening to some of his tunes, and what significant lyric gets stuck in my head? “Do you want some can-day? Do you want some hon-ey-suck-le?”

ROG

Not so little Stevie

Wonder-ful

Before I got a CD burner a year or so ago, I used to make mixed cassette tapes from my albums and CDs. I made one of Stevie Wonder songs that did not appear on a Stevie album for my friend Donna George (who unfortunately died of cancer a couple of years ago.) Think I’ll make a mixed Stevie CD soon. After all, he is 55 today. “Gee, 55, gee, double nickel,” as the bingo caller in Charlotte, NC used to say when I lived down there in 1977.

Stevie’s new album, A Time to Love, which has been on my Amazon wish list for over a year, was finally released on May 3. Since his 1995 album Conversation Peace, he’s put out a 2-CD live set, a 2-CD greatest hits, a 4-CD box set, a couple of songs on the Bamboozled soundtrack, and a single-CD greatest hits. He also produced a tribute album to himself called Conception. So this is his first CD filled with new material in a decade.

According to Yahoo, Stevie “also appears on” 463 albums, as producer, or performer on vocals, keyboard or harmonica. He worked with Quincy Jones, Paul McCartney, Jermaine Jackson, Whitney Houston, and many others. He also appears on the Rent cast album. Some of the selections I’ll put together will be from a series of tribute and/or benefit albums, such as Tribute to Curtis Mayfield, Inner City Blues (Marvin Gaye), Gershwin’s World, Nobody’s Child (Romanian Relief), and America: A Tribute to Heroes, which shows his sense of musical history as well as his heart.

BIL John

Speaking of heart, my brother-in-law John Powell would have been 45 tomorrow. He died three years ago of colon cancer. He was one of the greatest boosters of my relationship with Carol with our various ups and downs before we got married. I’m only sorry he never got to meet his niece Lydia.

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