Tag Archives: blogging

Smoke and Mirrors – –

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Jack is very late or very early this time – –

I started to smoke cigarettes when I was about 15 or 16. The ‘tuck shop’ across the street from my high school sold them from ‘under the counter’ – packs of five ‘Woodbines’ or even singly! Back then in the 1950s it was cool and most of my generation started out that way. Almost everyone we knew smoked and you might even have seemed strange if you didn’t!

Of course all the favorite movie stars smoked – Bacall, Bogart, etc.

In the college where I worked you could still smoke anywhere up until the 1980s – classrooms, workshops – wherever – –

I’ve tried often to quit – cold turkey or a pipe but it never worked – –

But for various reasons it is now necessary to bid them goodbye – –

I decided to try ‘vaping’ as both an alternative and a route to stopping completely. That took a bit of a leap in the dark as I know nothing about vaping. But a visit to a local small store and a conversation with the owner explained a lot and so did some research via Dr. Google. Now, vaping isn’t perfect either but at least I’m not sucking actual smoke into me, but mostly water vapor.

Obviously I shouldn’t be encouraging anyone to start vaping for any other reason than as a means of quitting, but I can certainly attest that it is definitely helping me with that. It’s been three days now and I haven’t been tempted to go for a cigarette.

Wish me luck – – –

Separation – – – –

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Wendy did Wednesday, so Jack does Friday – –

My friend Dirk, who engineers my radio shows often talks about the ‘two degrees of separation’ in folk music – everyone has some kind of connection to everyone else!

I experienced this graphically over the last few days – –

Another friend – Randy – owns ‘Oracle Books’ nearby and I hosted a Burns Night there last Saturday celebrating the anniversary of the birth of Scotland’s beloved National poet. I said that I saw significant parallels between the lives of Burns and Bob Dylan – both from rural areas, went to the big city, were lauded by the ‘glitterati’, then dropped when they no longer fitted in! Bob has frequently said his favorite song is ‘Red, Red Rose’ by Burns!

Paul Clayton

I had taken a few books to show, including one called ‘The Merry Muses of Caledonia’ – a very bawdy collection of songs that Burns had heard, written down and was published after his death.

Oracle Books also sells used records and to my surprise Randy messaged me a few days later to say an LP of ‘The Merry Muses’ had just come in to the shop. The performer was Paul Clayton which made another connection. Clayton was a folklorist and singer living in New York when Dylan arrived there in 1961 and they hooked up. Dylan, of course was a sponge who soaked up everything he heard and incorporated lots of that in his songs. Clayton sang a song he’d collected called ‘Who’s gonna tie your Ribbons when I’m gone’ – Dylan used the tune and some lines for ‘Don’t Think Twice. It’s all Right’.

My connection to Dylan? I was at his concert in Edinburgh in 1966 just a few days before the infamous ‘Judas concert’ in Manchester, England.

So maybe you are at the center or maybe you’re just circling around – – –

Me, Bob, Paul, Randy, Dirk, Burns – let the circle be unbroken – –