So I have just returned from one of the most bizarre 24-hour periods of my entire life, I think.

My mom has a cat that I pawned off on her many years ago, having pretty much achieved my limit of foundlings at the time. Snow had originally belonged to a neighbor who moved off and left her to fend for herself, and after a few years of that and never allowing me to get near her, she finally made friends with me. My mom has always been a little partial to “pretty” kitties and Snow was, true to her name, a solid white semi-long haired cat who needed a home, so of course I orchestrated the whole thing and basically she couldn’t refuse, and the two went home together about, I don’t know, 14 or 15 years ago and have been best friends ever since.

I always had an idea of her age because I knew the neighbor who originally owned her fairly well and knew when she had acquired Snow, so she is pretty close to the 20-year-old mark - even older than my elderlies. And has really been in great health all this time until fairly recently when she was having some problems. But she improved and has really been doing pretty well ever since.

But we’ve, of course, known she was really, really old for a cat, and have sort of been in that trying to be prepared for her time to come any time now for the last couple of years or so. You know, you don’t want to think about it, but when I look at my oldest cat now in failing health and knowing that Snow was significantly older than mine in cat terms - well, you know.

So the other night, my mom lets me know (though I didn’t read it until yesterday morning) that she can’t find Snow. Snow has not been outside (nor even tried to go outside again but once, a long time ago) in the 14 or 15 years she’s been at Mom’s, and while she has her napping and hiding places like any other cat, it was unusual for her to not be seen before Mom went to work, when she came home for lunch, AND after she got home from work. And VERY unusual for her not to pop up when I walk in the house as I did yesterday - but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So of course, we feared the worst and knew that time had probably come; that more than likely, she had curled up somewhere and gone to sleep and just didn’t wake up.

What we didn’t count on was the cat just having VANISHED into thin air, apparently.

When I finally read the e-mail yesterday morning and called my mother and confirmed that Snow still hadn’t turned up, I thought about it for a few minutes and then knew I was getting on the road. I didn’t even call her back to let her know I was coming, I just figured I’d throw some stuff together (thinking at the time I’d come back to Memphis later that night) and drive up there and find her before Mom got back home from work. Even though Mom had said she’d already looked all over the house, though there were a few spots she hadn’t checked yet that were hard to get to without a ladder and such like that.

So that was my master plan - I figured yep, I’ll drive up there, I’ll have found her by the time Mom gets home, then we’ll bury her in the back yard or something, and I’ll drive back. Snow’s never been much of a hider and we know all her usual places plus the rare ones she does go hiding in, like underneath my bed up there among the mattress springs. I had no doubt that by the time the sun went down Thursday night, she would have been found. I was just SURE I would find her by the time Mom got home from work, but at the very least, was certain we would find her by the end of the evening.

So I get there and unlock the door and walk in.  No white cat comes out to greet me (which was really what I was hoping most, of course - that me showing up would finally bring her out - though I knew it was unlikely and was pretty sure wherever she was, she was no longer alive). I start searching pretty much ALMOST everywhere, though there were a few places I needed to look more thoroughly but couldn’t locate a flashlight. But after a couple of hours, I had done a pretty thorough search of the most probable places in the house and even some fairly improbable.

Then I went outside to look, and locked myself out of the house. House keys, car keys, cell phone, and pretty much anything I would have liked to have had for the next two hours - sitting on a chair in the kitchen. The only possible way I could have gotten back in was through the basement, but I knew the door at the top of the basement stairs was bolted and locked twice because - yeah, go me! - I’d locked it back myself after going down there to look for Snow, even though I knew good and well she couldn’t have gotten down there.

So having nothing better to do for a while, I walked around the neighborhood a couple of times looking for her. We were pretty sure she hadn’t gotten out of the house - there was one single moment she could have, but we thought it pretty unlikely too, or at least unlikely she wouldn’t have been seen doing it. Plus she’s a little skittish around people she doesn’t know. That cat getting out and not winding up practically right back on the front porch crying to get back in - also unlikely.

At some point, I knew what time it was because of something I totally forget about living in the city as I do - the courthouse clock chimed four o’clock. So I watered the lawn and the plants outside, since there was nothing better to do, and looked around for other stuff to do but found nothing else I could really do to make myself useful without certain things that were, nay, inside the house that I’d locked myself out of. So at that point, I figuratively throw up my hands and take a seat in the rocker on the front porch and wait for Mom to get home from work. Once she did, aside from our break to go grab some Italian food for dinner, the search began again.

I am telling you we have looked EVERYWHERE in that house, all places probable as well as totally improbable. I have crawled up in the top of closets with ceilings taller than two of me. We opened doors and cabinet doors that have probably not been opened in three years. After I searched under the aforementioned bed again, we eventually picked up the mattress and turned the box spring upside down and looked again just to make absolutely sure. We’ve looked in the dishwasher, the washer and dryer, the stove, and every other appliance that wasn’t open anyway but just to be sure. We’ve looked in trash cans (under trash that was already in there), toilets, behind and under and top of every single thing there is in the house to get behind or under or on top of. By this morning and totally baffled, we were looking in places a mouse would have had a hard time squeezing into, much less a cat, just to be sure.

We have looked at and in and around every single inch of that house. It’s like she just evaporated.

Now, common sense would tell you okay, she just got out. But we really don’t think so (though going to keep looking). And granted, as much as we love her, if there’s a deceased cat somewhere in that house, it’d be nice to find her BEFORE she’s inevitably found due to other reasons I don’t think I have to describe in detail.

But I am 99.9999999% sure that cat is not in that house. I’m STILL trying to think of places she could be, but I swear to god I have looked at and poked around in and shined a flashlight in every single solitary inch of that house that she could be in.

And I’m almost as sure she is not outdoors. Yes, common sense would tell one that, but you just don’t know this cat. It is so very, very unlikely in her case, but even if she did, it would have just been impossible for her not to have been seen exiting the house by the two people that could have.

We are grieving and sad, of course - she’s been a part of the family for such a long time - but after the last 24 hours and much more than that, we are simply dumbfounded. I have never experienced anything like it. We’ve had a million cats (well) since I was a kid, I know what cats do. We scoured every centimeter of the house, two and three times over in most cases. She disappeared. Vanished. Again - like she just evaporated.

I of course have a LITTLE hope that she did get out and maybe someone found her and took her inside, but that cat is skittish around ALL people but us and certain members of the family - I don’t see it happening. Traffic’s not really a danger in the immediate area - we’re close to downtown, but not THAT close. Other animals - possible but unlikely, besides, she lived on the streets before, she’s not un-street-smart.

I’m just really going with the vanished into thin air thing right now, after expecting a million times to find her any second yesterday and last night, for hours. If she’s in the house, I guess we’ll find out sooner or later (sooner probably). But I can’t imagine where because I’ve been EVERYWHERE in that house now, and beyond. It beats all I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot with cats in all these years.

I wish I had a picture but I don’t seem to have one on this computer, but she’s just your basic solid white cat with orangey-sorta eyes, medium haired - mostly short, not long - not real big but not that little either.

Well, so anyway, if you’re in or around the downtown Paris, TN area and see a solid white cat - please catch her if you can, and get in touch with me, and even if you can’t catch her, please let us know where you saw her. (PS She is a total fiend for tuna.)

I don’t think she’s out there, though. I don’t know where in the world that cat is - or at least her physical self - but I’ve about decided wherever she is, it’s not anywhere in this plane of existence the rest of us are in. Jeez. Dumbfounded, just totally and completely dumbfounded here.

My pal CeeElCee brings up a good point about all the flood of e-mail marketing preceding Father’s Day (and for that matter, Mother’s Day, for the same reasons) that I’ve been thinking about myself in recent weeks, and have in the past.

We are all mostly taking it in stride and being tongue in cheek about it over there in comments, but obviously all of us whose fathers are deceased have had pretty much the same thoughts about it all, as I’m sure folks who have lost their mothers thought the same in the flood of e-mail marketing preceding Mother’s Day.

My mother’s alive and well, thanks (and a frequent reader & commenter here, and regular Internet user).

But what if she weren’t? Not to mention the fact that HER parents have been gone for ages; one for nearly as long as I’ve been alive.

I had a long conversation for the first time in several months with my former longtime co-worker, who lost her very elderly and extremely ill dad last summer. One of the things she and I have always had in common is that our fathers’ birthdays and Father’s Day always fell on the same week (as does her birthday). So this year, she is experiencing the June double whammy I have been for the last four years.

I get that it’s all about marketing, I understand it. And I know you can’t please everyone. I mostly - like I said - take it in stride and just overlook it. Normally it doesn’t bother me THAT much.

But it ALWAYS gets my attention, because of the circumstances - and it’s NOT the kind of attention marketers are striving for with those Mother’s Day and Father’s Day suggestion e-mails.

And I guess what kind of bugs me is that it seems like those holiday marketing e-mails are greater in number at Mother’s Day and Father’s Day than most other holidays, even Christmas. And while I do realize it’s all about the marketing, and I understand why it’s a necessary evil - it just seems like it might be a little better if many of these e-mail marketers scaled back their holiday marketing pummeling for those two holidays for the very reasons I bring up.

You hit someone like me on a bad day in a bad year - last year, not so much; this year, every day is a bad day - and tick them off, the results are never going to be good.

Again, I don’t have that big a chip on my shoulder about it, really. Generally, I’m pretty laid back and easygoing and not all that touchy about most things, I just have to work a little harder at it when it comes to this. And for the most part, the ones that come from Amazon and places like that, I mostly just overlook and hit the delete-delete-delete without much more of a thought.

Though the point is, there IS a thought… and it’s not the one they want me to have, that they’re intending with their marketing campaign of those holidays.

I have many, many e-mail boxes so I get TONS of these mails, and even more tons that aren’t coming from more traditional Internet marketers and are coming from the mega-spammers.

So it’s there that I take out my frustrations when I feel like it - which, this year, has been rather often. So depending on what kind of mood I’m in at the moment - well, let’s just say there’s several e-mail spammers that have been getting “My father’s been dead for almost four years, go away” e-mails back.

Not that they care, the mega-spammers. I can’t really say I haven’t thought about doing the same with some of those Amazon and other e-mails though.

Marketing’s marketing, and there’s no simple answer, I know.

But fair warning, marketing e-mail spammers and marketers of the non-spammish kind: Today would have been my father’s 66th birthday, so I might be a little less nice than “go away” today. Apologies in advance.

You can have your home baked bread and other foodie fineries. In MY version of heaven, there is always the smell of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls baking.

And West Tennessee BBQ cooking. And my dad’s hamburgers on the grill.

There is also a never-empty casserole dish of my mom’s asparagus casserole. And billions of my grandmother’s pecan pies, and it’s perfectly okay if I eat all the pecans off the top if I want to.

Yeah, so my Mom opened up an e-mail the other night to find that she was the beneficiary of thousands (or millions?) of dollars left to her in the late Luciano Pavarotti’s will.

The persistence of that particular flavor of spam scam really amazes me.  How many years has that thing been going around the ‘Net?  Do people really still fall for it?

I think my favorite influx ever were the ones in German that were coming to one of my Gmail boxes for a while.  I don’t speak nor read German, but I could pick out enough words and deduce from the format that it was the same old same old.  Heh.

My hometown (one of them) newspaper publishes a little blurb every day of “25 years ago”, “50 years ago”, and “75 years ago”, highlights and snippets from that day’s edition in those time periods of the paper.  Lately there’s been some 90-something years ago ones, too, that I’m not really sure what happened to do because they were there for a few days, and now they’re not.  But anyway.

I always get a kick out of it (especially the “75 years ago”, that stuff is downright hilarious sometimes) and read it every day.  And it’s especially neat to me because a lot of days my dad or his siblings, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, other relatives, and even sometimes I will be in there (though not all that much for me, since we moved elsewhere when I was 13).  It’s usually a nice few minutes out of my day every weekday, and pretty neat to read things that were in the paper 25/50/75 years ago like my dad playing football or baseball, my grandmother’s piano recital as a young girl, things like that.

So yesterday I’m reading the “25 years ago” column and - this being the end of the school year - the local high school had selected the members of the varsity cheerleading squad for the next year, and I’m reading the names, all of whom I knew because I either went to school with them or knew them from other local activities during the time I grew up there until we moved.  I was reading, in particular, the names of the girls I actually did go to school with, the ones who were in my class.

Then I glanced at the “25 years ago” again.  And then it slowly dawned on me that those girls were the SENIOR cheerleaders on the upcoming year’s squad.

Nope, it just hadn’t really occurred to me that next year will be 25 years since I graduated from high school.  A quarter of a century.  Yuck.  And just where did that time go?

I’d be stunned, but I’m too old and tired to be stunned.  Pardon me while I go take a nap now.

I haven’t been able to post on any Blogger blogs in months, so I’m probably about to adopt the annoying habit of turning my intended comments on peers’ Blogger blogs into posts on my own blog.*

So, my response to Mike over at Chez Bez is: Non-Southerners**. It came from the Times, after all!

Shoot, everyone knows you if meet a new adult person down here, “What do you do for a living?” is going to follow soon on the heels of (if not before):

“Where are you from?”

“Where’d you go to college?”

“Are you married?”

“Do you have children?”

“Where do you go to church?” (in some circles, anyway, and…)

“Can I get you (some ice tea, a beer, a coke, etc.)?”

And some more, of course.  Nosy or not, I expect some of my kinfolk would have sniffed that it’d be considered rude and impolite NOT to answer those questions.  Folks in the South are just that way.***

* (Fortunately this is now a minority as most have moved to WordPress or otherwise, whew.)

** (Nope I didn’t say Yankee… but I could have. Or Midwesterner or West Coaster or whatever, natch.)

*** (Not saying I agree, mind you.)

P.S. Hee.

I am so woefully behind after only a week of ignoring my feed reader and trying to catch up in bits and pieces, I may never catch up. In my mostly absence from the blogosphere the past week, there’s been a bit of a dustup going on around some of my main haunts, now reported in Nashville’s City Paper, that’s the type of thing I normally wouldn’t pay much attention to or have much of a public opinion on, but in this case I kinda do. A couple, actually.

Nashville is Talking and Volunteer Voters - the two WKRN blogs involved and from whence this whole thing started with contributing WKRN news analyst Steve Gill basically calling for their jobs on a live radio show yesterday - both have a good roundup of links to the various discussions all over the past two days. Some of the commentary that resonated most with me and shouldn’t be missed came from my fellow bloggers Slartibartfast, Ginger, and Katherine Coble, among many others. The initial flames on the fire were apparently due to some remarks Gill took exception to, made by Carter about our military.

Slartibartfast fairly well summed up most of my own thoughts on the matter, aside from the fact I do not generally listen to or read Steve Gill. But I agree with what Slarti said both on his blog and in some comment discussion around various NIT-involved blogs, and will go a step or two further here.

For one thing, regarding Carter’s statements about our military - in the course of all the other discussions going on elsewhere, I have read some statements about our military which I’m sure are well-meant and with good intentions, but are just a little too unrealistic. While I might not exactly put things quite the way Carter did, he’s still basically right. Military service is an honorable profession, and the human beings serving in the military are worthy of honor and respect, but not beyond reproach.

Carter said yesterday:

When we say over and over that “the troops” are a breed apart and require our unquestioning and automatic support and reverence, what happens is that whatever these soldiers are ordered to do, right, wrong or indifferent, is, by virtue of the soldiers involvement, beyond reproach. Critics of this war thus precede with trepidation and equivocation.

Well, I’m not gonna do it. Do I respect the troops and their service? You bet I do. But I am not going to sit and talk to whomever happens upon this blog like a child on Christmas morning.

I hate to tell you this, my friends, there is no Santa Claus. There is no Santa Claus and the military is comprised of human beings who are worthy of honor — but not beyond reproach.

The military men and women I know are tough enough to withstand my words. They will hear them and either consider them, dismiss them or take them to heart just like anyone else.

He’s right, and bottom line, those serving in our military are just that - human beings. Not saints who are infallible, not superheroes. Human beings. Worthy of respect and honor, but human beings all the same.

My grandfather served in the Navy in World War II. More topically to this discussion, my young cousin, now in his twenties, went straight from high school into the Marines and was in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11, and later in Iraq. He finished out his time and came home, and I am thankful for that. And no matter what I think about the war itself - I haven’t said, now have I? - I am proud of him. He did what he was supposed to, and he did a good job of what he was supposed to.

They were/are both good men, but again, just men. Not superheroes with magical superpowers. They are heroes to me because I love them and because of who they are, but they were/are still just men and human beings like everyone else.

As Slarti said in his post to Steve Gill:

What you are doing is not what our soldiers fight and die for.

And he’s absolutely right. My beloved grandfather, my cousin, and millions of others fought, and sometimes died, for freedom of speech and the right to have an opinion in this country, among other things.

And that doesn’t mean just Steve Gill’s opinion and only other opinions like it.

In short, Steve Gill, you should be ashamed of yourself. All this hoopla is little but total grandstanding BS, and calling for people’s jobs over a difference of opinion is a sissy thing to do and deserving of NO respect or honor. (I’m pretty sure my grandfather would agree that it’s a sissy thing to do, if not have said it himself. My young cousin is a good kid but has a bit of a mouth on him, and would probably just say you need to get yourself a hot, steaming cup of shut the f*ck up.)

And - my other opinion, on an entirely unrelated note - Steve Gill, your website is much too busy with junk all over it, nearly impossible to read without getting a headache, and is simply technically and graphically horrific. Even if I wanted to read it regularly, I don’t think I could because there’s so much crap all over the page it’d be sending me into seizures, and your post text is simply awful. Take a cue from the tech gods behind Nashville is Talking and Volunteer Voters, or Bob Krumm, and clean it up. Jeez, what a terrible mess your blog is. Ugh. Seriously.

Yup, we are now a two silver Nissan family. She was wanting a silver Mini Cooper for a while, but I kinda think the new Versa is a better deal given various circumstances (and especially for hauling anything around). Plus it’s kinda similar to the Mini anyway, especially from the back and front. Cute little thing, huh?

A continuation of the previous post…

Sometime in the early to mid-Seventies, I started working my way towards what was really going to be “my” music and the music that was going to do some serious influential damage (heh) from then on. I already had some definite opinions and likes and dislikes, but hadn’t really quite found my niche yet. I was still listening to a lot of current radio, watching a lot of American Bandstand and The Midnight Special and other music TV of the day, and still being a preteen and in elementary school, was at the time immersed in the usual bubblegum and teen idol stuff like most girls that age. I loved the Bay City Rollers, and no, I’m not too proud to admit that the first concert I ever attended was Shaun Cassidy, okay?

Throughout a lot of those years, Dick Clark and others often had music retrospective specials of all sorts on TV, and if one was on, we were usually watching it at my house. Nostalgia for the Fifties was kind of popular by then (a lot of that due to the TV show Happy Days being on at the time), and so a lot of the content of these music specials were already being referred to as “oldies”; thus I got to see a lot of, both old clips and current performances, of many of my parents’ favorites like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, et al.

As far as bands and artists from the British Invasion years, sure, I’d already had a lot of exposure, mostly thanks to the aunts who were teenagers in the Sixties. But in the midst of all the Beatlemania going on at their house, there was an awful lot I’d not really had proper introduction to.

And it turned out that many of those were the ones that extended and increased and fed my music addiction the most. In a HUGE way.

Again, much like the previous post, most of these clips were shot before I was born or soon after, so certainly none of them I witnessed at original broadcast. I picked up on all of these a decade or a little more after the fact, mostly when parts were shown during the various music retrospective specials as mentioned above. But I think with the exception of the Yardbirds video, these are all the same ones I initially saw that whet my whistle for more, and eventually led to all of these bands heavily influencing my tastes for years to come.

The Rolling Stones (You probably knew this was coming - much more a Stones girl than a Beatles girl):

The Kinks (OH yes. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. And much like the Stones, a hometown fave among my musician pals):

The Who (I should probably add here that I’ve seen Quadrophenia probably 200 times… and Tommy almost as much):

The Animals (as well as Eric Burdon and War, and whatever other variations can be had and heard):

The Yardbirds - and how often have you ever seen Jeff Beck playing an acoustic guitar?!?!?!!!! Which is why I picked this clip, but I had never seen it before now:

UPDATED:  I gotta add this one ‘cos it’s my favorite:

Ah, but it wasn’t all about the British Invasion either. I bought my first Jefferson Airplane LP at ten years old, I think, and to this day, Jorma Kaukonen is a fave all-time guitar player of mine:

Next and final post in this brief series - there’s just no turning back from the thing of epic proportions that’s about to come. Don’t touch that dial.

Get a cup of coffee or your beverage of choice and prepare to sit a spell. We’re going to be a while here.

I pulled an all-nighter Thursday night working and had an hour or two to kill before starting the Friday workday, so I indulged a bit in a fave activity of hunting YouTube for music stuff I remember from the past but hadn’t seen in a while, or at least stuff from the same time period.

I started collecting some links and then, when I was finished, I looked at it all and just kinda went whoa. Completely accidentally, I had somehow managed to basically assemble all the pieces of the puzzle - or at least the major ones - of my lifelong addiction to music, which began as a very young child.

There are, of course, thousands of other associated pieces I haven’t collected here; virtually everything I have ever listened to helped to formulate my musical tastes and feed the addiction as an adult, certainly. One of my most beloved genres today, as an older adult, is Australian garage rock of the late Seventies and Eighties - but in the U.S., you didn’t hear or see most of that stuff back then, and I wasn’t introduced to a lot of it until the big boom of the Internet, years after the fact. But a lot of that old Aussie stuff was heavily influenced by both British and American punk rock, old British Invasion and American surf music, and the Motor City Sound in Detroit, so in a way, it was sort of all related to what I grew up with anyway.

But all these YouTube videos I have collected here in this and the next two posts - yeah, these are pretty much the very most major pieces that created the foundation of my music junkieness (and my own musicianship, occasionally) as a young adult through today.

In the final and third post, I have collected stuff I either witnessed on original broadcast or is from the same specific time period. The ones in this post and the next one, I obviously did not see at the time they were aired because as far as most of them are concerned, I wasn’t born yet (with the exception of the Raiders, in which case I might have just been born).

And most of this first group is way before my time, but it’s important I include them. I have often said that my biggest musical influence of all was my father, who was also sort of a music junkie in his time when rock & roll was still brand new. It was stuff from his collection I heard the most before I started making my own decisions about music (at three years old, heh). My dad had a tremendous stack of 45 RPM records and LPs and was a musician himself, as was my uncle, and my dad’s first cousin was a DJ on local radio for many years, and my mom’s a music fan as well.

I get it from all of them, but it was my father and I who were most alike in music junkieness of sorts. I just took it to the next level and eventually became way more deeply immersed in the addiction than he ever was. (And some might say far more out of control, given the amount of recorded music I have amassed and things I’ll do to see my favorites play live, like take off to L.A. or Chicago at the last minute.) ;)

Must start this off with The Man himself, Mr. Chuck Berry - blurry video, but this is my favorite. We had the original Chess CD in that stack of 45s, and it probably got played in my record player a decade and a half later as much as it did when my dad was a teenager.

My dad played piano as well as being a drummer, and monopolized the family piano as a teenager, learning how to play every single thing Little Richard ever did.