Been listening to this guy a lot lately. Rob Blaine was recently voted vest guitarist at the International Blues Challenge! Overall he finished in third in the Challenge. More later on his album Big Otis Blues and the Blues Challenge!
So Who do I think I am? My ancestry comes from all over the Europe!! Over the last fifteen years or so Kathy and I have done a lot of genealogical studying of our family trees, her tree, due to her great skills at genealogy, has many, many more branches than mine!! My ancestors I’m convinced were in the 1800’s equivalent witness protection program! But actually I don’t think it’s that bad so let’s see where those roots reach. On my father’s mother’s side they reach into Saxony and Dresden, Germany. We have a picture of my great-grandfather Herman Meyer in his uniform – he was in the king’s guard! The Meyer family came to the US in 1912. Herman had come a year earlier and according to what I’ve heard he had to get out of Germany, but the relative who told me that wouldn’t tell me why!!! (But I do know that there were some racy pictures of Herman in his house on Walters Avenue in Delanco) My great grandfather and grandmother both became citizens in the 1940s. wonder why?? Now my father’s side also comes from Germany but where I’m not sure! But I do know that his grandmother was from Switzerland and the Haechler family came to America in 1882! So that side of my line is German and Swiss!!
So yesterday I noticed an album on the ZenV that I had downloaded one Blues Wednesday and then never listened to it! The album was Exodus the 2008 release from Roger Hurricane Wilson so today I gave it a listen and boy am I glad I did! Exodus is Wilson’s eighth album. His music is electric blues tinged with some Americana but Wilson’s great guitar shines through the whole album! Here’s what some pretty good bluesmen say about Roger:
“That boy knows what he’s doing!” ~ Hubert Sumlin ~
So this morning after the Phillies season came to an inglorious end last night, I started thinking about the team and the franchise. The franchise has lost more games than any other franchise in sports history having broken the 10,000 game mark a few years ago! Being a Phillies follower for the last 50 years (is that possible?) I’ve seen my fair share of those loses! Including those 23 in a row and 1972 when the team won 54 games and Steve Carlton won 27 of them! I’ve seen the team go from worst to first from 1992 to 1993 only to have the dream season destroyed by Joe Carter. Then there are the World Series appearances the first in 1915 and it would be another 35 years they returned in 1950 and another 30 years until they won their first World Series in 1980. Since then the team returned to the series in 1983 only to win the first game and then lose the next four games to Baltimore! It was another ten years until the return in 1993 only to have the dream season end the way it did! The Giants this year remind me a lot of that 1993 Phillies team a bunch of players that had played for other teams and together they clicked and won it all!
So last night was one of those nights when real life takes over from music listening and blogging. About six to eight weeks before my son Peter and Missy’s wedding, Missy’s brother Will was in the hospital and being treated for pneumonia when the doctors discovered spots on his lungs and he was diagnosed with Stage Four lung cancer. It appears to be mostly in in one lung and at that point it was unknown whether the spots on the other lung were cancerous. It was hoped that it was not and then the bad lung could be removed. When the other lung was biopsied it too was cancer. Will, a non-smoker, was a classmate of my son Andrew and is 28 married with a cute little boy. After some radiation treatments it appears that there is no more cancer in the one lung and the tumor in the other appears to be dead and has shrunk 30 percent! It’s hoped that it will keep shrinking to the point that an operation to remove it may be possible! Last night we attended a fund raiser for Will and Nicole at Prospectors in Mount Laurel. There were many baskets to be raffled off, a band and an outpouring of love for Will!! One of the things that Will an Nicole have learned during this ordeal is that there is not a lot of funding first for lung cancer and more specifically for this type of lung cancer. Here is an article about lung cancer Understanding Lung Cancer and here’s a Facebook page WTF(Where’s the Funding for Lung Cancer? which links back to this page.
One of my favorite teller of stories of the common folk was Harry Chapin. His song “Mr Tanner” is a great example of the kind of songs I like a story about a real man based on an article Harry read in the paper about the bad reviews the artist received. I know this song was very personal to Harry and he sings it with such feeling because of his bad reviews!
