Mood: Monday, and Song Challenge: Day 18


Garbage Patch Artwork

Mixed media, sculpture on plastic, date unknown
©Simone Spicer, US

Today, March 18, is Global Recycling Day. The link gives a lot of information about the day and about recycling in general. This paragraph in particular stood out to me: Before throwing something in the trash or even in the recycling bin, first think of ways the item could be reused. Perhaps it would be a good idea to wash out a plastic carrier bag or a zipper closure bag and use it a few more times. Or maybe it would be possible to use those plastic containers from the grocery store in the kids’ lunch boxes. And also try using that piece of aluminum foil again. Anything that can be used just two times essentially cuts the waste of that product in half!

That made me feel a little bit better that all the things I reuse at Houndstooth Hall can actually be having an impact on reducing waste.

Today’s song challenge is “a song you know all the words to.” And while I sang one word of the lyrics wrong for many years, I finally allowed myself to be persuaded that Mary’s dress SWAYS instead of WAVES in Bruce Springsteen’s carpe diem song “Thunder Road.” (I still like the visual and implication of “waves” better than “sways,” and I still disagree that we can’t say fabric “waves,” since somewhere every day someone is listening to or singing our national anthem which asks the question, “…does that star spangled banner yet wave?” It does.)

Here’s an acoustic version of the song, because I have no idea which video on YouTube will eventually be pulled due to copyright. My blog has become littered with those over its twenty years–a different kind of waste.

Mood: Monday and Song Challenge: Day 11

Breathe With Me
©Preston M. Smith, USA
oil on canvas, 2017

I’m fascinated by Smith’s work that (I think) I found for the first time today. I connected with so many of his paintings and their titles. This one felt like the right match for today’s song challenge, “a song that you never get tired of.” For me, that song is Dennis Wilson’s “Forever,” from the Beach Boys’ Sunflower album in 1970. This was a lesser-known gem Beach Boys fans and followers loved for a long time. It found a new audience when it was sung by an actor on a popular TV show in the 1990s. While considered a sweet love song, there’s a sadness woven through it within the context of Dennis’s passionate, glorious, and tumultuous life and early death.

Absolutely perfect

Minna’s Next Move

I have an important chapter to focus on today. On instinct, I plucked these three CDs out of the binder. Two were burned for me by Marika many years ago when she found out I loved “Twin Peaks,” both the TV series and its music. They are joined by my official “Twin Peaks” soundtrack, with music by the late Angelo Badalamenti and lyrics by the brilliant David Lynch. The soundtrack has only three pieces with vocals by the late Julee Cruise; Marika tracked down thirteen more for her custom CD (I’ll provide the track list below).

It’s the best music I can listen to while writing today for several reasons, but one in particular. My Director is working on a film post-production, and he’d asked The Musician to compose a haunting score. There’s probably no music more haunting than these two CDs of “Twin Peaks” music, making them surreal and ideal.

Sometime during the pandemic or post-pandemic, Marika pitched me the idea of “Ghost Girl” music, and we often sent each other song titles that on the surface were light or pop songs, but if you turned the singer or the subject into Ghost Girl, they took on an entirely new mood and meaning. Wherever she travels among the stars of the Universe, I’m betting Marika still likes hearing some good Ghost Girl songs.

Julee Cruise “Twin Peaks” Music
1. Falling
2. The Nightingale
3. Floating
4. I Remember
5. Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart
6. Mysteries of Love
7. Into The Night
8. I Float Alone
9. The Swan
10. The World Spins
11. This Is Our Night
12. The Space For Love
13. Movin’ In On You
14. Friends For Life
15. Up In Flames
16. Kool Kat Walk

I don’t have a track list for Marika’s mix CD titled Julee Cruise/Big Band, and I don’t currently have the time it would take to figure out her lyrics so I could research and identify all the songs on this CD. The mood of her work is equally haunting to the “Twin Peaks” music. The CD shifts gears on the seventh song, but it still works with the overall mood of this section of my novel.

1. Needs research
2. Julee Cruise, “She Would Die For Love”
3. Julee Cruise, needs research
4. Julee Cruise, “Questions In A World of Blue Lyrics”
5. Julee Cruise, “The Voice of Love”
6. Julee Cruise, “Bei Mir Bistu Shein”
7. Frank Sinatra, “Witchcraft”
8. Frank Sinatra, “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning”
9. Needs research
10. Glen Miller, “String of Pearls”
11. Needs research
12. Needs research
13. Frank Sinatra, “Summer Wind”
14. Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra, “Somethin’ Stupid”
15. Frank Sinatra, “It Happened In Monterey”
16. Alison Moyet (I think), “That Ole Devil Called Love”
17. Needs research
18. repeat of Frank Sinatra, “Summer Wind” (guess Marika really liked this one)
19. “Here’s To The Losers,” this version is more mellow than Frank Sinatra’s, could be James Darren playing “Vic Fontaine” on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 06, Episode 26, ‘Tears of the Prophets,'” which would be a clever move on Marika’s part
20. “Danke Schoen,” by a female vocalist; Brenda Lee did a version, but this doesn’t sound like her
21. “Fever,” most likely Peggy Lee’s version, doesn’t sound like Patti Page, and I can’t find Julie London’s rendition

ETA: It turned out to be a much longer writing day than I expected, partially because I updated my concordance with all the new names and places that are part of Book 7 in progress. Always good to hear music from Brahms, Beethoven, Schumann, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Chopin. These CDs probably should have been used for writing a different character, but it’s okay to mix things up a little.

Mood: Monday

Today’s art is the cover on a CD made for me in 2001.


Self Portrait
pen, ink, and glitter on paper, 2001
Timothy J. Lambert, USA

Timothy was still living in NYC then, and he sent the CD in the spring/early summer of 2001, when he already had his Keith Haring Radiant Baby tattoo and before he moved to Houston in October. Below are the works he recorded, introducing me to songs he knew I’d love, or already loved, or just needed to know existed. =)

1. Wicked Little Town, Hedwig and the Angry Inch
2. Here With Me, Dido
3. I’m Not In Love, Olive
4. Take Me Down, Boss Drum
5. Lover, Lover, Lover, Ian McCulloch
6. Within Your Reach, The Replacements
7. Born To Make You Happy, Britney Spears
8. Lady Bunny Speaks Out, Lady Bunny
9. America, Simon & Garfunkel
10. Jeannie’s Diner, Marilyn E. Whitelaw
11. Move On, Boss Drum
12. Special, Garbage
13. Nightingale, Sandra Bernhard
14. Sorcerer, Buckingham Nicks (1974)
15. Nomad (demo), Buckingham Nicks
16. Gold Dust Woman, Hole
17. Thank You, Dido
18. Origin of Love, Hedwig and the Angry Inch


In the late 1990s, Jim sent me a CD of songs he chose for me. It was in a jewel box, and I later made a cover for it with stickers when I put it in my CD case. His playlist was aimed at the California dreamin’ sensibilities and memories of adolescent/hippie Becky.

1. Wishin’ and Hopin’, Dusty Springfield
2. Age of Aquarius, The Fifth Dimension
3. Better Shop Around, Captain and Tennille’s version
4. I Think I Love You, The Partridge Family
5. Sharing the Night Together, Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show
6. Kodachrome, Paul Simon
7. California Girls, The Beach Boys
8. Your Mama Don’t Dance, Loggins and Messina
9. Little Willy, The Sweet
10. Mother and Child Reunion, Paul Simon
11. Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree, Tony Orlando and Dawn
12. Don’t Pull Your Love Out, Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds
13. Temptation Eyes, The Grass Roots
14. Only 16, Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show
15. Cecilia, Simon & Garfunkel
16. Say A Little Prayer, Aretha Franklin
17. Midnight Confessions, The Grass Roots
18. I Am a Rock, Simon & Garfunkel
19. Wendy, The Beach Boys
20. California Dreaming, The Mamas & The Papas

I miss MIX TAPES! Now everybody just tells you to go look at their Spotify playlists. Not the same at all.


These CDs were part of my most recent writing playlist. No way am I choosing a song from one of their mixes, making it seem like I slighted the other. Instead, here’s a song from Wham! that gave Timothy, Jim, Timmy, and me the title of our third novel. I miss my writing partners!


Timmy, Timothy, me, and Jim back in the early part of the century?

A bit of Thursday

The good stuff: Tom worked a half-day so that he and I could go into the old ‘hood to see our friend Larry and get haircuts. Spending time with Larry is always fun and full of conversations about a random range of topics. Somewhere in the middle of it, he dropped the information that his partner has for years been a collector of Barbies. I had no idea. It sounds like the collection is one I’d be likely to drool over, so I hope to see at least some of it one day and promise not to drool on anything.

Afterward, we picked up dinner-to-go from one of our favorite restaurants and were home in time to feed the very aggrieved dogs who were sure they’d been abandoned (as if Debby isn’t here for them when needed).

The eh stuff: Not a lot of writing got done, but while I thought about writing, I did some coloring. It’s unfinished, and at some point, I got very frustrated with the pens I was using and slapped on a bunch of star stickers to cover up some of the coloring that displeased me. I don’t like that either. I’ll take a couple of days away from that activity before I decide what to do to fix it.

In any case, even that ended the day on a much higher note than how I started it, dealing with the frustrations of canceling a website I’m tired of overpaying for and no longer using. Technology…. I understand exactly how this woman feels.


Photo © My Computer Works®

Mood: Monday


Sidewalk Penny Painting
oil on canvas, 2017
©Judith Rhue, USA

Today is National Lost Penny Day, and I started my online search for art with pennies. I was mostly scrutinizing paintings of fountains, and in my brief quest, I noted that artists who paint fountains seem not to include coins in the water.

This observation led me to the realization that in life, I don’t trust fountains that don’t have at least a few pennies thrown in. Do all the humans who look into that fountain lack the urge to make a wish, express a hope, dream the impossible? That fountain must have an off-putting vibe.

Along the way, I found the above painting. I always like abstracts, because they give the viewer so much space to see and feel what’s true to their nature or experience. Also, I liked what Rhue wrote with this painting: “I pick up pennies that I find on sidewalks. Do you?”

Yes. Yes, I do. I have great affection for the simple penny and oh, my, the places it may have been and the hands that might have held it. A penny is full of endless stories and connections.

I say a penny is never lost, merely on a journey we don’t know about… And just like that, a character is tapping on my brain.

Mood: Monday


The Primrose Girl
oil on canvas
William Ward Laing, English, ca 1873 to 1902

Today is National Primrose Day for the flower lovers among you.

I didn’t watch the Grammys last night, but congratulations to Miley Cyrus for her first Grammy wins, Best Pop Solo Performance and Record of the Year, for her song “Flowers.” I read a brief history of the song at some point recently. It originally had a sad trajectory, then somewhere in the process she turned it into a song of empowerment after a broken relationship. That and being catchy definitely worked to the song’s advantage.


Fun photo thinking back to that day in October 2009 when my Miley Cyrus doll and I went shopping. Now I wish our nearby antique mall still existed. Debby and I loved browsing there. It was a great place to find unique gifts. Too late, I realize I could have had a lot of fun posing my dolls among the antiques and collectibles. Missed opportunities.

The way I’m structuring the seventh novel in the Neverending Saga is tricky, and I’m working it out as I go. Even if it has to change, I’m going to be thinking of “Flowers” when I get to the character who’s made some big changes in her life between the sixth book and this one. I want her to have that spirit.

ETA: Oh, for crap’s sake. Just read this reference on a post-Grammy sum-up of how well women fared in the awards last night: –From Eilish’s heart-stopping performance of “What Was I Made For?”—wearing cat’s-eye sunglasses and a 1960s sweater like Peggy Olson from “Mad Men”—

If only they’d done their homework, they’d have understood Billie Eilish’s outfit was a tribute to Barbie, the film, and the Barbie doll. The photo from the Grammys:


Photo by Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse, Getty Images

Eilish was wearing classic Barbie!

Poodle Parade Barbie, my 1995 reproduction of the 1965 original


Shared this version because the film version makes me cry, and I still haven’t seen the movie yet.

Run to you


The most recent play list: Diana Ross and the Supremes 2-CDs, Anthology. Not really sure why they were in the middle of the “T”s but they have now been relocated correctly in the CD binders. Also listened to the Trio CD from Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris.


Forthcoming: U2’s Achtung, Baby 1991, and Pop, 1997.
I didn’t lose any U2 albums in the flood. What I had was on cassettes long ago and long gone, including Rattle and Hum, which I’ll likely get again. I must have something in iTunes–Oh, yes! The one everyone with an iTunes account received free in September 2014 before it was released that October, Songs of Innocence. I remember the bitterness from people who aren’t U2 fans having it downloaded into their iTunes without their consent. I also have “Invisible,” the RED edition, in iTunes.

I have no beef with U2. Sometimes I agree with their messages; sometimes I don’t. Some of their music resonates with me, some doesn’t. I used a tear of their sheet music to get a lyric for a painting I did a couple of years ago. Afterward, I was thrilled to remember I have a brother-in-law who loves U2, so I offered, and he gave a home to, the painting. That made me really happy, because I love him and respect what U2 means to him.

I’m making great effort not to amplify what distresses me most in the world. I’m trying to make my little world, including Houndstooth Hall and its writing sanctuary, as well as this blog, places where I feel safe. I can’t always shut down my anxieties and distress over global events, politics, war, and hate. I can only try to manage them. I appreciate the people in my life who understand this isn’t a new struggle for me, but it has been exacerbated by several factors in recent years.

I saw this the other day and it resonated, too. Doing my best.

Below, one of my favorite U2 songs, is supposed to be about a guy who’s fallen in love and is a little overwhelmed by it. But it always makes me think of a message my mother once sent to me through Tom:
“Tell Becky to stop trying to save the world.”