Today is Jim Croce’s birthday. He would have turned 68, had he not died in a plane crash at the age of 30. His most famous songs are “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time in a Bottle” – both of them were hits and are still heard occasionally today.
There are others that are not quite as famous, including this nice You Tube video version of “New York’s Not My Home”.
Croce is another in what seems to be a long line of musicians who perished in airplane crashes. He and his guitar accompanist Maury Muehleisen and four others died when an air taxi taking them from Nachitoches, Louisiana to Dallas, Texas hit a pecan tree past the end of the runway. The weather conditions weren’t extreme or threatening. The NTSB report said the pilot had severe coronary artery disease and had run part of the way from his motel to the airport. On such mundane things tragedies pivot.
It’s hard to say if we’d be thinking about Jim Croce today had he not died so young, in 1973. We are often more impressed with musicians who live a short life of unrealized potential than we are with those who are blessed with a long life full of false starts and wrong turns. After all, the disco era was just beginning. There were plenty of chances throughout the ’70’s for everyone to make tasteless mistakes.
Name your favorite 1970’s cultural touchstone.
Trail Baboon 
it’s awful dang hard to name anything from the 70s that i would call a “favorite” – especially disco – and i have unfond memories of places like”George’s in the Park”
hot pants? no.
and he may not be a cultural icon, but met Steve in 1972 and he’s been a favorite since.
a gracious good morning to You All
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Steve is the Godfather of Goats.
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Since my children were born in 1970 and 72, other than MPR and the light rock/folk music of the era–which is the only decade of rock that I liked–it would be kid media. TV would be the four obvious: Electric Company (THE BEST), Capt. Kangaroo, Sesame Street and Mr. Rodgers (ish). For movies–Star Wars. And now completely forgotten, the Wilderness Family series, and pretty well forgotten, but it worked well with the kids. They connected the movies to NE MN. I saw Robert Logan once on Johnny Carson, who was introduced as the highest box office actor of 2-3 years in a row. Who was with me now and has a clue what I mean?
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Electric Company was indeed fantastic as was ZOOM! They have redone Electric Company and I don’t get it and s&h found it unengaging. PBS also redid ZOOM maybe 6-7 years ago and it was great-the kids from that did companion pieces to the Building Big series which I highly recommend to anyone with kids (or maybe even without) who are interested in engineering.
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When I think of the Wilderness family, I remember Cloket. Several movies then were produced, distributed, and marketed independent of major studios. So they would come into an area and do several theaters in 2-3 weeks, all promoted with one TV ad produced somewhere else. So in the string of theaters and towns was always when it was playing in Cloket.
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never saw or heard of the wilderness family, maybe i was too hippy at the time. looks lile good stuff worth revisiting. never got the disco thing i kind of switched to old jazz from miles and some of the new jazz fusion stuff he was doing but did follow the folkies and the rock that survived in the disco ball intrusion.
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Speaking as a first-generation kid with Sesame Street and Electric Company, I loved them both. Have watched the current versions. While I can appreciate that they want to change things up for “modern kids” they lack in some of the old spark. It’s not as much fun when everyone can see Snuffleupagus, and EC isn’t the same without Rita Moreno.
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Indeed, Sesame and Electric Co were fantastic. Creative, educational, good morale example without being preachy or Pollyanna.
How about Schoolhouse Rock? I still remember taking my multiplication tests and counting by fives to that jazzy tune.
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Loved Schoolhouse Rock, got the whole she-bang on dvd for the s&h-still love it!
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I have the entire Schoolhouse Rock on DVD. Loooove it! (Conjunction Junction, what’s that function?…)
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those two guys got more out of 12 strings and two voices that anyone else i ever saw. i saw them paly at the guthrie from really good seats i remember noticing the voice of maury muehleisen was like nobody else i had heard sing back up. the notes and voice he chose made it sound like a chorus was backing up jim while he was singing. he made that and the guitar parts look so effortless tha tit was amamzing. i thnk i saw them twice in jims short run and i thought i remembered hearing that maury had not died in the crash. it was a feeling of disappointment and you we were all numb from everyong biting the bullet early hendrix, morrison, joplin all in a spread of a year or so but it was obvious that croce and maury were not the druggies those other wild folk were. listen to the lyrics, listen to the harmonies the tight guitar duo, you can’t do that on drugs, these guys were out with their craft doing what they did better than most i had seen and their crash was just too bad. thanks dale for the reminder, nice choice of tunes too, i had forgotten that one and it is wonderful.
my favorite touchstone was my vw trip the year i took the summer with my brother, my girlfriend and a buddy i picked up in salt lake city. we did the rockies slow motion with no hurry and in perfect weather and a nice time was had by al. met good folks camaping saw the parks for the first time, yellowstone, glacier, banff and jasper then down the west coast therough those great towns in washington oregon and then to the motherland of northen california and the wonderful places north of l.a. it was a 12 week effort that lasted me until the next year when i tried to do it in the fall after a sumer of working to have the funds to go for a while. fall and winter camping is a whole different deal. memorable but not the nirvana attained n the first trip. i try to realize i am in the midst f something wonderful while i am there these days. thats my new focus. to enjoy the moment. i am getting better at it.
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I probably watched more tv in the 70s than at any other time of my life, so there is a lot for me to choose from. The Friday night line-up that included Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, Room 222, Welcome Back Kotter, the Odd Couple (Tony Randall/Jack Klugman version) and-only if we had a babysitter-Love American Style (I don’t suppose I actually even understood that show, probably just as well) is stuck in the brain.
But iconic-Carol Burnett and company-hands down.
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Loved Carol! I have the DVD collectors edition if you want to do a marathon.
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Ooh! Pick me! Pick me! There was a time when I dreamed of being on the Carol Burnett show when I grew up. It just looked like so much fun to be on that show.
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AND you have Bob Mackey to design your gowns, how cool would THAT be!
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Oh yes; Bob Mackie gowns… forgot about those but I wonder what influence that had on me?
Tim Conway and Harvey Korman… what a hoot those two were!
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So long as I get the “Gone With the Wind” curtains and curtain rod gown, too, I’m there for the Bob Mackey. 🙂
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Tim Conway (pre-Dorf) was my hero.
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Rise and Shine Baboons:
Not much time this a.m. Off to work for a big meeting this morning.
This weird dude on an unprofessional radio station from St. Cloud, Garrison Keillor and his morning show, Prairie Home Morning Show, became my favorite 70’s touchstone. It later became a bigger deal: A Prairie Home Companion. Wire rim glasses, red socks, folk music.
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Of course, Garrison. I was going to say some people don’t remember the sixties, I don’t remember the seventies…but, yes, I had just moved back to MN when WSCD in Duluth went on the air and Garrison was the morning show. I remember the first APHC I heard, Garrison had people doing “mouth music” — I was quite taken with the sillinesss, became a total fan. Tried to tell friends back in Colorado about the show and the “commercials” (still my favorite is the Norwegian “compass” — you know, the shiny side of the snoose can so you can see who’s lost). They just didn’t understand. I think they do now.
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It was a lot like trying to explain this blog to other people who never heard the Morning Show (you are on a blog and in a book group with people who listen to a RADIO show? And it’s gone? I don’t get it).
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I’m back on the blog now, killing time while the person auditing my files is working. First anxiety, now boredom….it’ll be over soon, hope we pass….
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PASSED!
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Woo Hoo!
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Yay!
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I didn’t get on the bandwagon until I moved here in the 80s. One of my very first jobs was at Hello Minnesota that used to be in Butler Square. We sold all the Prairie Home Stuff and the tickets to the show as well. It was a great job to have because any tickets that weren’t sold by noon on Saturday were free. I went to the show alot in those days!
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VS…were you at Hello Minnesota when Connie B. owned/ran it?
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Yeppers… she and David. I was in shipping & receiving (well, mostly receiving) and it’s because of Connie & David that I got into Ukrainian eggs. It was my first holiday in the Twin Cities and I was supporting the family back then and we so poor that when we had to do a “secret santa”, I ended up doing a Ukrainina egg ornament (I had taken a 4-hour class earlier in the year to kill some time). Everyone went wild for it and so I decided that it would make a good gift for family & friends. If it weren’t for that secret santa project, the little kit for making the eggs would probably STILL be in my attic!
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Have you checked out Connie’s website? Google her.
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Being a child of the 70s, I was in my impressionable years when disco hit…not sure what that did for me one way or the other. I remember getting stuck in the middle of the King Tut exhibit when it was in Chicago because the power went out, waiting in line 2 hours (same Chicago trip as I recall) to see the first Star Wars, and going to see Grease 12 times at the movie theater, because if you didn’t see it then, you might not see it again unless it showed up on Saturday TV sometime (VHS was not yet on the horizon…or even close).
And speaking as one of the early Electric Company kids…I had a kid crush on Morgan Freeman mostly due to his recurring “Easy Reader” role on that show. It stuck. Still have a crush on Morgan Freeman. 🙂
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Fargo North, Decoder! I didn’t get that joke until EC was about to go off the air.
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Fargo North was my other fave (after Easy Reader) – loved the word play. Guess that should have been an early indicator of where I’d wind up as an adult…
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One of my few good calls. I watched Freeman on EC and knew he was going to be a star. And Rita Moreno was a start when she wen ton there; one of the greats; she has all the awards.
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I fell for Morgan when he was on a soap opera…don’t even remember which one, but sure remember him.
Oh, and of course, Carol Burnett and the crew…yes, Tim Conway! I think Lyle Wagoner walked past me when I was in NYC’s Saks Fifth Avenue, but I never recognize famous people even when they are right next to me. (note: in a small liquor store in Aspen CO and I didn’t notice Rock Hudson)
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I remember seeing the first episodes of Saturday night Live and was immediately hooked. Those first years were so funny!
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remember the deaf translator guy in the corner of the screen
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“OUR TOP STORY TONIGHT….”
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Did not say it at BBC yesterday, but the whole time I was listening to For Whom, I did keep thinking “Generalissimo Fransisco Franco is still dead!”
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Was that Father Quido Sarducii?
http://www.fathersarducci.com
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at least it was the same actor, I think.
Still remember the Find the Popes in the Pizza challenge.
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I kept thinking of the Franco line too.
My recollection is that it wasn’t Don Novello – he came later. The pronouncement about the Generalissimo was a running gag in Weekend Update when Chevy Chase was anchoring. I think it might have been the first season.
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Garrett Morris was the translator
right now, i am fondly remembering prices in the 70s – just had a veterinary prenatal visit for does and post-season check of Mr T – $400 – and our vet is wonderful and does not overprice.
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I don’t remember that… funny though- thanks!
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Hey BiB, just googled it, so it must be true-Minimum Wage in 1975 was $2.10/hour, a gallon of gas was $.36-current Federal Law puts minimum wage at the extravagant amount of $7.25/hour.
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so in 1970 folks getting minimum wage were paying about 17% of their hourly wage for a gallon of gas and now they are paying about 47% and there is less public transportation. “progress?”
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I was a great fan of Jim Croce. And I always aspired to a mustached like his. Thanks for noting his birthday.
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“mustache,” if you please.
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Although it does look like he has been “mustached.”
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it was the 70’s! remember the sideburns?
welcome kirkistan.
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the 70’s were a fine era for facial hair, between the Bicentennial (thanks Ben), local Centennials and general hippy-unshaved-ness, it was a very hairy time.
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Thus the musical Hair !
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I didn’t watch much TV and I wasn’t bowled over by 1970s films. What turned my crank was music. Favorite performers or groups: Bob Marley; Lynda Ronstadt; Emmylou Harris; Bonnie Raitt; Bob Dylan; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; John Fahey; and Leo Kottke. Early in the 1970s I still haunted coffee houses to listen to Leo Kottke performing to groups as light as 15 people, an intimate and thrilling experience.
And as others have said, I think of Garrison. I was a fan of his in 1965 when he edited a literary magazine, and I have followed him closely over the decades. He has helped to shape my taste in music and his peculiar way of seeing the world has surely influenced both my world view and writing style. Our lives were busy and chaotic in the 1970s, and yet the one fixed point was that our family had the radio on for virtually every Saturday broadcast of PHC.
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70’s movies nominated for some Academy Award that I liked:
Anne of the Thousand Days Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Five Easy Pieces MASH The Last Picture Show Sleuth American Graffiti The Sting Blazing Saddles Young Frankenstein All the President’s Men Annie Hall Comes a Horseman Being There
And my personal favorite: Bang the Drum Slowly
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All favorites of mine as well. I remember laughing so hard when I saw Blazing Saddles for the first time (also in the Grand Theatre in Northfield) that my side hurt!
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Sometimes a Great Notion–early Paul Newman I think. That was memorable, too.
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Good list, Clyde. I amend my report about not finding movies that stirred me in this decade.
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Just remembered a TV show we tried to always watch: All in the Family. Before my dad gave up booze, he used to needle me during family dinners like Archie needled the Meathead. Then he went on the wagon and our meals suddenly became civil.
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Sounds trivial now, but Star Wars was huge on my horizon when it came out. I had been a tv Star Trek fan prior to that and when SW opened, I was blown away. I saw it at the Grand Theatre in Northfield, MN and then proceeded to go the next night and the next night and the next night. It was just beyond anything I had ever seen on the big screen before!
OT — thanks, Steve, for opening your bungalow to us yesterday for Blevins. My dogs were glued to me, smelling Katie when I got home — and MiG… they love the Bakerville biscuits. I had a terrific time – what a great group of folks!
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Thank you, Sherrilee, and everyone else who came and made it so pleasant. Katie will never forget you now.
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Ah, I was a great SW fan, too!
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Morning–
I have a pictures of my Grandfather playing Uncle Sam at the local mall in 1976. I remember the Bicentennial being a big deal…
Sesame Street was hard to get down in our valley… don’t think I ever saw Electric Company… I do remember Welcome Back Kotter, Adam 12, Dragnet sometimes… Bonanza…
YES to Carol Burnett… The Smothers Brothers, The Hudson Brothers, Sonny and Cher… all those cheesy variety shows…
I used to see a purple AMC Javlin parked on the street by our church every Sunday morning and I thought that was the *COOLEST* car ever! Probably rusted into a heap by 1980…
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The Hudson Brothers! Good call!
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yep i had forgotten the hudson brothers
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I don’t even remember the Hudson Brothers. Who were they?
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Also search for the Imu guy… 🙂
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The Everly Brothers had a variety show, too.
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Vegas, Gremlins, Javalins, the Ford [WHAT]
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vw thing
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The Ford PINTO. How could I not come up with that? And I see it was made from 1971 to 80. So the perfect 1970’s American crap car.
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When I met Kelly in 1986 she was still driving a Pinto….
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The Ford Pinto had a really remarkable feature no longer seen on passenger cars: the gas tank that exploded upon impact.
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Good morning to all,
The 70s was not the best time for music for me. I had been very interested in music during the the 60s and 50s, but in the 70s I was concentrating on my new family and trying to find work. My favorites from the 60s were gone or past their peak. I didn’t completely stop following music, and I do remember hearing a great concert by Honey in the Rock during the 70s. In the 80s, when I moved to Minnesota, my interest in music picked up and I started following the Twin Cities music scene and listening to Dale and Jim Ed and the music they played as well as catching the tail end of the big years of the West bank music scene in Minneapolis.
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phil haywood, dakota dave hull, peter lange, leo kotke, greg brown, good corner for music
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Doonesbury appeared in the St. Paul paper early in the 70’s and hooked me immediately as a young teen with subversive tendencies. There was nothing else like it in the funny pages. I used to cut out the strips and save them in a shoebox.
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zonker tanning i had a roomie just like him
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Bloom County misses by one year I see, 1980 was its debut.
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Loved Bloom County. I think I still have a stuffed Opus around somewhere.
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Lynda, I’ll meet your Gary Trudeau and raise you one Dick Guindon! Talk about a bellwether for the culture! His cartoons were so spare but would have one, two or three features that just screamed 1970s!!!
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Carp… not just for breakfast anymore!
I had two favorite Guindons. The first was a picture of the Foshay tower w/ the IDS tower in the background. The caption was “The tallest building in Minneapolis and the box it came in.”
My other favorite was a drawing of a man sitting in front of the tv holding a smoking shotgun. The tv is blown to smithereens. Standing nearby is the wife (presumably) talking on the phone. the caption is “Nothing much… Earl just shot JR.”
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My favorite Guindon (of so many!) is a sketch of a car at the curb, a car with a flat tire. This indignant man has just wadded up a dollar bill and thrown it, bouncing it off the tire. The caption: “Another liberal throwing money at a problem.”
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My favorite Guindon – I actually looked for it on December 11th, but couldn’t locate it – was a guy pulled over by a cop, looking out his window, and the window and a little space across the windshield are the only places not covered by snow. And the cop is saying, “If this is a car, I want to see your driver’s license. If it’s not, I want to see your building permit.”
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Guindon was the essence of Minnesota to me when I moved up here in the 70’s.
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My favorite Guindon:
A dumpy guy standing there holding a sunflower. The caption, “OH, Hiram. A single perfect sunflower.” The dumpy people and the facial expressions made it.
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Doh! just checked Wikipedia which states the first ever Far Side ran January 1, 1980, so not a contender.
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I think of the seventies as kind of a repressive time. There had been a big effort to make changes in the direction our country was taking in the 60s and that slowed down in the 70s instead of moving forward. However, all of the hippies didn’t become yuppies as some people might think. The struggle for change continued, but it wasn’t as visable.
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To my mind, Jim, you are talking more about the 80s than the 70s. In the 70s the cultural wars were still red hot because so many young people still thought they could change the world. The 70s were a period of liberal national politics. Richard Nixon put forward proposed health care legislation that would look communistic to today’s right wing.
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Steve, I guess my memory isn’t very good regarding the 70s. There was a decline in some of the things I participated in during the 60s, but mostly I was very alienated, myself. I think that was because I didn’t see the liberals being very liberal and the people to the left of liberal, who serve to push the liberals forward or keep them honest, were still not being taken seriously and still aren’t taken seriously. There should have been a very big change in American foreign policy and it still hasn’t happened
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Very good point, Jim. Do you remember why liberalism turned angry (and occasionally dangerous, like in Madison WI bombs)? Liberals had been fighting the Vietnamese war for years and years, and still the thing dragged on. I fought against that war for eleven years. We started with silly visions that a few protest marches would reverse national policy. As the dreary years passed and we were still mired in the rice paddies, more and more liberals got cynical and radical. I don’t condone it. But things happen when you spend so many years getting nowhere with the democratic process.
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I think I have already said too much. I appreciate the way things a discussed with humor in this blog and I don’t want to go too far into dark areas.
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My apologies.
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aw cmon guys thats what i’m here for . a little remminissance about when we used to be somebody. war protests, nixon watergate, spiro agnew, the cause we all knew, the coming of disco, we have to be able to talk about it all. remember those hippies who 5 years later were wearing the platform shoes and the silky polyester shirts with cartoon illustrations over the collars of the leisure suits. ans we wonder what happened to the cause, we got cught up in looking ssoooooo good man.
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70 to 75 was a very difficult period in which to teach HS. 76 to 82 was about the best. Kids in the early 70’s had been taught that schools, government, teachers, authority was bad and to be resisted.
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And we live with the vile residue of all of that today. We have the reappearance of life-threatening childhood diseases today because medicine (like every other institution in the US) lost its credibility. Parents who distrust the advice they get on immunizations are holding their kids back from that, which endangers us all. We who hated the war began by hating and distrusting out political leaders because they were so obviously lying to us, but soon the cynicism spread to business leaders, the clergy, teachers, lawyers and virtually every other group.
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what group deserved a pass? you have to question stuff. i can see some teachers who have not become jaded by the administration needing to pass the required bs standards of today in classrooms of 30 something students with no money for materials thanks to the legacies of the no tax heros in office today. but clergy, business leaders, politicians, lawyers, nobody there i am willing to trust any further than i can throw em. there are good ones but rare entities that need to be singled not assumed.
saw pawlenties write up in yesterdays paper about his ordinary childhood and the reviewer states that the only surprise is his heavy religious conviction. george bush the second? god gets 35+% in the poles. i suspect his secret religious fervor may be ambition driven but i am suspicious
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Nobody gets a pass based on whatever group they are in. However, just because someone is in a group doesn’t mean that they are automatically suspect. (Well, except those folks who go around chanting vile things at the funerals of our servicefolk!)
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VS is right, tim. No group deserves a pass, and yet cynicism has gone too far. There is no respect for authority now. The GW Bush gang, in fact, automatically assumed that experts were all equally crooked and felt justified in blithely blowing off anything they said. There is such a thing as expertise and authority well earned and the credibility that comes from decades of high professionalism, and any society that cynical distrusts all experts (like Global Warming critics do now) is headed for trouble.
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aw shucks, Clyde, thanks. I was in high school from ’76-79.
One of my college profs told me that shortly after my class graduated, things again changed and an education became more of a means to make money (which was also part of the deal when I was in school, but not the whole deal) and less of an end in itself. I blame Reaganomics.
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I am not surprised that I get condemned out of hand for having been a teacher. From 1968 to about 78 it was by the liberals. And then from Ronald Reagan on it has been by the conservatives.
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“I blame Reaganomics.” That’s an excellent observation, MIG. Up until the 1970s, the middle class had done better each year than in the year before. I used to look at masses of students protesting the war and thinking, “They aren’t worrying about getting a good job.” But Reaganomics saw the beginning of the huge shift so that the middle class was exploited by Wall Street and the banks to feed odious excess in fortunes for the top 1 percent or so.
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I have to say that the single cultural touchstone figure of the 1970s was, for me, Richard Nixon. I didn’t actually “hate” him (I’m inept at hating), but I loathed that man as I have loathed very few persons in my life. The greatest TV miniseries I ever saw was the Watergate story–the real thing, served up in small doses day after day in the media. Those of us who were there were utterly fascinated and absorbed by the drama of this despicable human being, the most powerful man on earth, actually destroy his career and relinquish his grasp of power. It seemed too good to be true, and then one day he was circling the toilet, headed for the drain, and it was one of the most wonderful feelings of my life. His demise was a victory for most of what I value in my country (and it was a damned close call, in case you don’t know).
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bush chaney and carl rove make nixon look like the inept schoolboy he was. dangerous but inept.
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I remember the Watergate hearings so well. I was taking a summer school class in AP History that summer and the teacher actually dragged a TV into the room almost every day so we could watch the hearings. I remember thinking at the time that this was democracy in action, when even the president could be brought down if they committed wrongdoing!
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But it was SO close VS! He almost didn’t hand over the tapes to the Supreme Court, and later lamented the fact he had complied. He came within inches of refusing to let go of power in spite of the vaunted “democratic process.” And that Plumbers gang was far more insidious than is generally known. They were right about to assassinate an obstreperous newsman, Jack Anderson, when other problems got in the way. They had plans to seize student radicals and hold them in secret locations.
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Being slightly younger, what I remember of Watergate is from the perspective of a kid in her early elementary years. I remember asking my mom what the big deal was about a gate that held back water and why did we have to hear about it (along with seeing pictures of kids in refugee camps in Cambodia) every day. I also remember asking my mom if she was going to vote for Ford and her trying to explain how he was going to become our president without being voted in – which just seemed wrong to my then 7 or 8 year old mind. I knew that Mom didn’t think much of Nixon (or Ford), and was pretty happy when that era ended.
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The thing about Nixon was that you knew what you were dealing with, he was not a guy you wanted to have a beer with, you knew full well he was not in this for you personally-and yet, he was the guy who broke the great silence with the Russians and the Chinese I think that was huge.
I have serious concerns about this whole-“somebody just like me for President” thing. As was noted on some commentary somewhere-heck no, I don’t want somebody just like me running this country, I want somebody a WHOLE LOT SMARTER for that job!
My entire childhood I saw assasinations, riots and tear-gas/billy club riots–I have never had any interest in being in a crowd and waving a sign. This weekends events have only reinforced that idea for me. That’s all I have to say about that.
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Okay MIG, I understand. On the other hand, I must say I was very impressed when hundereds of thousand, maybe more than a million, people in Bolivia turned out to support their President when there was an attempt undermine him by regressive elements or so it seemed.
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Thanks, Jim.
Was thinking of you on the drive home as I was listening to my latest book on cd, 1491, about civilization in the Western Hemisphere before the arrival of Europeans. I think you might enjoy it.
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The video is offline; says restricted access and sends us to You Tube…
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They are fun to watch… got a link to Cat Stevens too. He is another good musician that I was thinking of lately…
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Joan Baez turned 70 yesterday.
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“The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.”
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Thanks for the memories, everyone! For me it was Joni Mitchell, early 70s anyway. She was my idol, I bought every new album and memorized every song listening to it in my tiny duplex on the California coast.
And my series of VW vans, which come to think of it lasted till the early 90s.
I can’t get a bead on the latter 70s for a touchstone – I was moving around a lot, trying to find myself. For me, the late 70s did seem more repressive than the first half, as Jim said above — maybe because I’d left the freewheeling coasts and had decided to settle down a bit. I remember being disenchanted with the whole yuppie notion, thought I could be a hippie type forever… Then I met Husband, a perrenial hippie who learned how to make money, so I guess we’re yuppies. The Bobs come to mine First I was a Hippie, Then I was a Stockbroker, Now I am a Hippie again.
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My copy of Court and Spark is so worn you can almost see through it.
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but they knew i was nuts no more if or and or buts
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Prodigiously talented. Imagine being able to be one of the greatest singers of an era and to just walk away from that and become a huge success in art.
It is fun to imagine her story. She had a baby when she was a student and put it up for adoption. One day the (then) young woman decided to learn something about her birth mom. Can you imagine what it was like to research your birth mom and learn that it was Joni Mitchell?
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That sounds like something I would wake up from and say, “I just had the weirdest dream.”
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The book “Girls Like Us” is about her, Carly Simon, and Carol King and is an interesting read. I love Joni Mitchell’s music and my albums have been replaced with CD’s.
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Thanks for the heads up on the book, R.
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Another two thumbs up for “Girls Like Us” – I enjoyed it quite a bit and if anyone wants to borrow it, I now own a copy thanks to the dog chewing on the library book!
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If I haven’t read it by our next BBC, I’ll take you up on it, VS.
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Madras skirts, peasant blouses. Frye boots. Earth shoes.
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!es, yes, yes, and yes — I’d forgotten about the Frye boots!
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id forgotten earth shoes
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REally, really, really mini skirts (I could sew one out of 1/2 yd of fabric)!
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“who wears short, shorts?” me, me, me!
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If you dare wear short shorts…
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well, maybe I would if I wasn’t spending so much time sitting at this desk…….
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hot pants – ugh!
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I wrote a long tirade on all this and the news and then decided the mostly light mood was the better option today, going back to different times and thinking how they impacted us and help makes us who were are, hopefully, without apology. I am off, well that, too, but off into the snow.
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“Who can turn the world on with her smile….”
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Nowww, that sounds vaguely familiar :)!
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Anna – more money pouring into BB today – doing my best to keep my blog buddies employed! Now I just have to get the thing set up tonight so teenager can write her paper. I remember back in the 70s if you handed in a typed paper you were just showing off. Now you CAN’T turn in a handwritten paper!
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Thanks for doing your part to keep me employed. 🙂
I remember being told by my AP English teacher that we had to type a certain number of our papers for her so we’d be ready for college. Man that was a pain…we only had a manual typewriter at home. I was pretty fast on an electric, but it might have been faster to write the papers longhand than type on my mom’s old portable…
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Been meaning to write this for a couple of days now—Krista, wherefore art thou?????? Did you get the job?
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Yes, Krista, check in please!
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Just noticed Steve’s reference earlier to Guindon — loved Guindon… I remember one where entire bar full of people look down and realize they are all wearing the same Frye boots… 🙂
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I can’t believe that no-one has mentioned Harry Chapin. My very pregnant wife and I saw him in Watertown, New York in the early 70’s. “The Cat’s in the Cradle” made a profound impression on the father-to-be.
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