Etta sings of impossible choices

Still gasping in Pasadena, the heat, the thing, that wouldn't leave.  Etta James with the chilliest blues was the morning jukebox song.  Meaning of this?  At first, I just listened.  The original recorded version - the shortest - seemed the best choice for clarity of sound and its massive lack of ambiguity. 

We all receive great sacks full of what is unrequested and unwanted, bad surprises and situations harder than we ever dreamed we could handle.  Wiser minds than my own discovered, promise,  that each circumstance brings a gift that is greater than its burden.  It is a lesson, in my case, of slow dawning.  We are called again and again to bear what could be called unbearable.  We are not asked if it is convenient or if it fits into our life or our plan.  It arrives, no return address, and redefines inconvenient, the bomb that blows everything apart.

Over time my gratitude list has as a constant the fact that I'm still here.  Many are not and I don't take for granted or trivialize the fact of resilience.  Though I no longer choose to go back to the sites where, for a time, hope disappeared, when I hear Etta James sing of making what seems her better choice, I get it.  How do I unknow, unsee, unexperience THIS?  I don't know how we do it, just that we do.  And I say, "Thank you."

Unknowable landings

Milton Glaser speaks to us about fear of failure, a theme to contemplate as the world has just seen NASA/Jet Propulsion Lab successfully land its Curiosity rover on Mars. Had they not been willing to risk failure, how could such an unknowable mission have been launched?  How would any venture with an unknowable outcome ever be attempted?  As I believe it is all, every moment, a mystery in the process of unfolding, for better or worse, we seem to have two choices: do nothing or do something.  Neither of them comes with a guarantee.




“We are all born with genius. It's like our fairy godmother. But what happens in life is that we stop listening to our inner voices, and we no longer have access to this extraordinary ability to create poetry.”

Milton Glaser

Among his iconic art, Milton Glaser created covers for every album produced by Tomato Records.   Here, with covers, are songs from the School of the Bold and Willing, performed by Nina Simone and Etta James.