Author: Becky

Button Sunday

An acquaintance was messaging me recently about being ghosted by a friend. I usually think of that happening more in dating/potential dating scenarios, though I did once have a friend ghost me. In fact, the ghosting was so thorough, and we had such a complete lack of mutual friends or acquaintances (by that time, and we lived in different cities), that I still have no idea what happened more than thirty years* later.

Have you ever been ghosted? Did you ever get an explanation or apology? If not, do you still wonder?

*Since this was in 1988, it pre-dates social media, the proliferation of cell phones, etc. Much easier to ghost people then.

Buying a little peace of mind


When I recently listened to the double CD that includes Dennis Wilson’s solo album Pacific Ocean Blue and the tracks from the second planned solo album, the last couple of songs on both CDs had skips on them. Fortunately, I was able to find a used copy from an eBay seller for a good price. The cover of this second one is beat up–mine isn’t–but the CDs both sound fine. If you know me, you understand this is a crisis averted. This collection is a go-to for me when I need to find a certain kind of solace and peace. In the past, I have’t listened to it on my little CD player, so maybe a different player wouldn’t have had the same problems. I’ll check that out sometime later. For now, I’m good.

News came out this week that Dennis’s brother Brian, the oldest of the Wilson brothers, has some form of dementia. Since his wife, who recently died, managed his care, and the care of their children still living at home, a conservatorship has been approved by a court with the family’s input. Apparently, Brian’s still singing and playing at home, but he doesn’t always do well in unfamiliar situations or with unfamiliar people. I wish him the very best and hope there aren’t any issues within his family about his care or his money or property. Not everyone inside the Beach Boys organization as it now exists has been kind to him, just as they were often unkind to Dennis. There’ve been many books and articles written about them; no need for me to rehash it here. I simply think Brian’s life has been tumultuous, and his gifts so beautifully shared, that he deserves a gentle and loving twilight.

Now that I’ve been through my A to Z CD binders, I have plans for what music I’ll listen to going forward when I write. More to come.

A few photos of the Wilson brothers I’m mostly saving for my own future reference, though it’s interesting to see how they changed through the years before Dennis died in 1983 (drowning, age 39) and Carl died in 1998 (lung cancer, age 51).


Carl, Dennis, and Brian Wilson, 1964
©Getty Images: Michael Ochs Archives


Dennis, Brian, and Carl Wilson, 1967
©Getty Images: Michael Ochs Archives


Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson, 1977
©Getty Images: Ron Galella


Dennis, Brian, and Carl Wilson, 1979
©Getty Images: Michael Ochs Archives


Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, 1980
©Andre Csillag/Shutterstock


Dennis, Carl, and Brian Wilson, 1980
©Andre Csillag/Shutterstock

Photo Friday, No. 896

Current Photo Friday theme: Pandemic

On the Photo Friday site, when they gave the theme, they asked these questions: What subjects captivated your attention? Did the pandemic influence your photography?

Below is why I chose a current “selfie” as my photo.

The pandemic made my world smaller. Prior to the shutdown, I had a career that kept me busy 10 to 14 hours a day. Part of my volunteer work for that organization involved shooting photos of rescued dogs, cats, the occasional pig, and a few other surprising creatures, three times a week. I had plans to transition out of my volunteer photography for them so I could travel more in 2020. But early in the year, the organization laid off a majority of the staff, including me, because of the pandemic. Like many others, I quarantined. I didn’t travel. I adjusted to life without the income from the paying part of my job and without the coworkers who inspired me. My world became what was around me, so that’s what I photographed: my home, family who lives on the same property, and our dogs. I found ways to photograph my hobbies (collecting dolls, listening to music, reading, journaling, painting, homemaking, blogging), and my passion: writing fiction.

When the pandemic shifted in 2021 and the world began opening up, other than seeing more friends, not a lot changed because I decided to retire. I still don’t travel. I haven’t been bothered by the slow march of lines up and down and across my face. I didn’t care when my hair, that for twenty years had its roots colored brunette, and later to strands of brunette and blonde, became gray and white during the pandemic. I’m grateful to be here and for all that I have. I try to adapt to and deal with the challenges. I still mostly photograph what’s around me.

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®

Midweek again

Errands and other matters to tend to today, but when I strategized about writing or actually wrote, these were the playlist. Two of my favorite lyricists and artists, spanning decades of my life. I’ve also enjoyed several books about them.


Neil Young’s Harvest and After The Gold Rush, and Warren Zevon’s Warren Zevon, Excitable Boy, and The Wind.

ETA: The Z in Zevon makes it official; I’ve gone through the CD’s in my alphabetical binders and those with hardcovers that are kept in a separate box in the same cabinet. It was poignant for the last song to be from Zevon’s last record The Wind before his death, “Keep Me In Your Heart.”

Hold me in your thoughts, take me to your dreams
Touch me as I fall into view
When the winter comes keep the fires lit
And I will be right next to you

They wanted to go to a parade

Post-dating this information about the Tuesday mass shooting in Kansas City at the Chiefs’ parade after their Super Bowl win. This is part of an ongoing effort I’m making on my blog to chronicle mass shootings in the U.S.

ETA on 2/20/24 at bottom of post.

Two juveniles have been detained on gun-related and resisting arrest charges after the shooting that left one person dead and 22 others injured. Authorities said they believe a dispute among several people ended in gunfire. A news release from the Jackson County Family Court said more charges are expected, pending a continuing investigation by Kansas City police.

The Jackson County Family Court said in a statement that the juveniles were charged Thursday and are being detained in the county’s Juvenile Detention Center.

Among the victims is radio DJ Lisa Lopez-Galvan, who was killed at the site. The other 22 victims range in ages from 6 to 47, at least half under the age of 16. Children’s Mercy Hospital reported the youngest patient they received was six.

Several firearms were recovered.

Missouri currently has no age restrictions on gun use and possession, although federal law largely prohibits minors from carrying handguns.

A detailed account of Missouri’s gun laws (or lack thereof) can be found at this ABC link.

ETA 2/20/24 from The New York Times:

Two Missouri residents were charged with murder connected to the shooting after the Super Bowl parade in Kansas City,, Missouri, Jean Peters Baker, the Jackson County prosecutor, announced on Tuesday.

The men, Dominic Miller and Lyndell Mays, began arguing as the rally dispersed, authorities said, a dispute that quickly escalated when both men pulled out guns and began firing at each other. A bystander was killed by the gunfire.
…
Both of the men facing murder charges were wounded by gunfire and remain hospitalized. Prosecutors said more arrests were possible.
…
Two days after the shooting, two teenagers were charged with resisting arrest and “gun-related” offenses. The teenagers have not been publicly identified and could eventually be tried as adults after a judicial process that can take days or weeks to decide how they should be tried.

Tiny Tuesday!


Eighth row on the floor. Back in October of 2020, I was going through bins of stuff that I’ve collected since I was a teenager, and that’s when I found these tucked into some other stuff. A day can simultaneously seem like one of the best and worst of your life, but I was relieved to see I still had the tickets. Time has given me perspective, and you know what? The day still has that best/worst feeling. Fortunately for me, feelings can be processed through fiction and have a little less power.

Speaking of writing, the recent playlist.


Rufus Wainwright, Want One; The Wallflowers, Bringing Down The Horse and (Breach); Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot; Hank Williams, Icon; Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson Presents Smile, a 2004 collection of 17 works Brian created for the unreleased Smile LP in the 1960s and an accompanying booklet. Though many of the songs were later released on other Beach Boys albums, these versions are more like what Brian planned before his breakdown. The collection is a gift for fans and critics who always regretted that Smile wasn’t released.

These last two will start the Tuesday writing playlist.

Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue, a 2-CD set that includes POB plus 4 bonus tracks, and a second disk, Bambu, the Caribou sessions, that includes 18 works Dennis intended to be on his second (unreleased) album, plus a bonus track of the late Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters) adding vocals to “Holy Man.” This was a beautiful composition Dennis wrote with Gregg Jakobson. Dennis and Gregg left it off POB because they never wrote lyrics, and Dennis died in 1983 without producing a second solo album. In 2008, when it was decided to put together a second album of Dennis’s music, Jakobson commissioned Taylor to write lyrics and add vocals to “Holy Man.” The first time I stumbled over the song, Taylor’s voice sounds so much like Dennis’s that I wondered how I never knew Dennis put vocals to it. A little research enlightened me that the vocalist and lyricist was Taylor. When Taylor died in March of 2022, it was a huge loss to music; to me, it felt like losing a part of Dennis again.

My second album of the day will be Paul McCartney and Wings, Band on the Run. Originally released in 1973, this one is the 25th Anniversary Edition, and includes a second disk with more than 50 minutes of voices of the band and some of the celebrities on the cover along with previously unreleased versions of some BOTR tracks. This year, the 50th Anniversary Edition has come out with more extras. (I don’t have it.)

Here’s the posthumous Dennis Wilson/Taylor Hawkins collaboration on “Holy Man.”

Mood: Monday

For today’s art, please click here to see Kathie McCurdy’s Pennies in the Fountain from 2012.

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. In a later search, I found McCurdy’s art, linked above.

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.

If you find a penny, do you pick it up? 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.

Hearts and no flowers

A few of my little stone and crystal friends because the Internet is full of hearts right now.


Labradorite and rose quartz


A couple of river rocks


Healerite and goldstone


Black moonstone and amethyst


Amazonite and white banded carnelian

They remind me there are so many variations on love in the Neverending Saga. Love can be…complicated.

The perfect music for writing on an overcast, drizzly day when my characters are grappling with love and all it demands and provides is music by the great Texas blues guitarists, the Vaughan brothers. I’ll always miss Stevie Ray and wonder what music he’d have created if he hadn’t died too soon. The biography Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan, by Alan Paul and Andy Aledort, is a good account of him if you like biographies. Many years ago, I wrote a musician who turned his life around from a very dark place, and Stevie Ray Vaughan later proved to me that not only could it be done, he dedicated so much time to helping others who grappled with addictions.


Jimmie Vaughan, Strange Pleasure; The Vaughan Brothers, Family Style; Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Greatest Hits, The Sky Is Crying, and The Real Deal: Greatest Hits 2; various artists including Jimmie Vaughan, A Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan.

ETA: Oops, missed one. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble’s In Step.

In the live version (below) of “Look At Little Sister,” watch for the smoothest guitar switch ever after a string breaks (around 2:40). I freely confess to having a moment like this in the Saga as tribute to Stevie Ray and the guitar techs who make live music fun for us all. I’m so glad Tom and I (with Lynne) got to see Stevie Ray in person after we moved to Texas.