Rich Heldenfels, Pop Culture Wanderer

A few months ago I started posting songs on Facebook. I've done that before, but this evolved from an occasional post (often with some thematic connection to events of the day) into a daily post of songs I liked for one reason or another, or which I thought might resonate with my FB friends. But which I still liked. I spared everyone commentary, beyond "Good morning," and let the songs speak for themselves. I also wanted to avoid too much duplication of artists and songs, which led to my keeping a list, one page of which you can see above.  I've done more than 100 songs so far (which you can see and hear via Rich Heldenfels on Facebook) and some duplication has crept in, but it has been fun to reach into my memory banks and old files for contenders. Songs I liked in high school, songs I liked in college and young adulthood, songs I like now (hello, Lizzo!), songs I had on vinyl and tape and CD and on iTunes (although my iTunes account went weird some time back, wiping...

The song "Blue Skies" has a long history , longer in fact than I realized. I think the first version of the song that I know was Benny Goodman' s, and the song predates that vintage gem, For that matter, I did not know that "Blue Skies" has an extensive connection to "Star Trek: The Next Generation ," which explains its appearance in the season finale of "Star Trek: Picard." What was strikingly resonant about its inclusion was that the season finale of "This Is Us" also involved the song, lovingly, in a monologue by Dr. K (the great Gerald McRaney), the doctor who delivered Kate and Kevin and brought Randall to the family. The monologue was pretty good, although the show conceded that it was not as good as a previous Dr. K chat, and much the same could be said of "This Is Us" overall this season. Yes, there were astounding moments, including the nothing's-sacred verbal brawl between Kevin and Randall in the final...

We all have stories lately about the ways our lives have changed. Here's one of mine: Yesterday we headed toward NY to visit family. We were cautious, with wipes and gloves for dealing with strange surfaces. But the travel itself proved strange.   Every rest area on I-80 was either closed or had bathrooms closed or was marked only for truck parking. We coped — Sheetz locations were open — and got to Lamar, PA, where we stop for the night. (Yes, we split the trip. We are old.)  Few cars were in the lot of the Hampton Inn where we usually stay; breakfast was cancelled but the room was OK as usual. Then we heard that the governor of PA had ordered a bunch of shutdowns including, it seems, hotels. The hotel association said places will be open but our hotel couldn't tell us for sure if the hotel would be open in a few days when we came back. And who knew what else would be shut or locked down before we returned?  So, back to Ohio we came this morning. There was p...