I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.
My dad wasn’t much on that type of sentimentality.
Visiting the gravesites, beyond the limits of geography, is a very personal preference, I believe. I don’t think I’ve visited my dad’s grave more than two or three times. Of course, when he first died, on this date in 2000, the headstone wasn’t ready.
I know I made at least one trip, maybe two, to the military cemetery 40 miles north of Charlotte, NC, with my mother and at least the sister who lives in North Carolina, and very likely, her daughter.
The last time, I’m sure, was when my mother died in 2011. Both of my sisters and their daughters, my wife and MY daughter all attended the burial. She’s interred next to dad, and the headstone has now been replaced to represent both of them, with information on each side. I’ve actually never seen mom’s side of the headstone, except in photographs.
But my dad wasn’t much on that type of sentimentality. His mom died in the early 1960s, about a decade before he moved from Binghamton, NY to North Carolina. I have no recollection of taking us to visit her grave in the Floral Avenue Cemetery in Johnson City, NY. And I just can’t imagine him going on his own.
Indeed, I didn’t even remember – or more correctly, misremembered – where she was buried until about three years ago, which I wrote about.
Spring Forest Cemetery in Binghamton I went by virtually every single weekday growing up. It’s three or four blocks from the house I grew up in, and even closer to my maternal grandmother’s house, where I went each school day for lunch. we used to cut through the cemetery to play baseball at Ansco field.
My paternal grandfather died in 1980, and he’s buried in Spring Forest, or at least I think so. I doubt my father ever made a trek up to Binghamton to visit the grave.
So I guess I’m trying to make myself feel less guilty – guilty may be overstating it – about not going to what is now my parents’ gravesite. I DO have pictures.
The Eagles was an American rock band based on Los Angeles who became one of the most successful musical acts of the 1970s. In 1971, Linda Ronstadt her then-manager recruited local musicians Glenn Frey and Don Henley for her band. They, Randy Meisner, and Bernie Leadon played on her eponymous third album, before recording the first Eagles’ album. The songwriting partnership of Frey and Henley really was established with the group’s second LP.
The country-folk-rock band had some hits but wanted a bit of a harder sound. Leadon’s childhood friend Don Felder played on a couple of songs on the third album and then joined the band full time.
But it was the fourth studio album, One of These Nights (1975) that really broke through on the charts, the first of four albums to reach #1. The title track also went to #1, Lyin’ Eyes reached #2 on the charts, and won the band their first Grammy. The final single, Take It to the Limit, went to #4. The song reached number 4 on the charts. The album was nominated for a Grammy award for Album of the Year.
At this point, they released the Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) album that has challenged Michael Jackson’s Thriller as the all-time best-selling album in the United States.
Bernie Leadon left the band, unhappy with the harder edge of the music. He was replaced by Joe Walsh of the James Gang. The next album was the massively successful Hotel California. It contained two #1 singles, New Kid in Town and the mysterious title track. But after an exhausting tour, Randy Meisner left the band, replaced by “the same musician who had succeeded him in Poco, Timothy B. Schmit.”
The 1979 album The Long Run was successful, less so than its predecessor, and the band went “on hiatus” for 14 years until they reunited in 1994, and put out a popular live album, Hell Freezes Over, and a profitable tour. “In 1998, the Eagles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For the induction ceremony, all seven Eagles members (Frey, Henley, Felder, Walsh, Schmit, Leadon, and Meisner) played together for two songs.”
One last album, Long Road to Eden, came out in 2007, without Don Felder, who had been involved with lawsuits against the band.
The band was “slated to receive Kennedy Center Honors in 2015, but this was deferred to 2016 due to Frey’s medical problems. Then on “January 18, 2016, founding member Glenn Frey died in the Washington Heights section of New York City at the age of 67, leaving Don Henley as the only remaining original member. According to the band’s website, the causes of his death were rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis, and pneumonia while recovering from intestinal surgery.” in short order, Henley confirmed the dissolution of the band.
Liking Eagles music is uncool in certain crowds. I appreciate their sound, particularly their tight harmonies.
Some favorite songs – links to all:
10. Take it Easy (Eagles) – written by Frey with his then-neighbor Jackson Browne 9. Already Gone (On the Border) 8. Heartache Tonight (The Long Run) – sounds like a Bob Seger song, in the good sense; written by Henley, Frey, Seger, and J. D. Souther 7. Desperado (Desperado) – particularly hated for its alleged faux profundity; whatever 6. Life in the Fast Lane (Hotel California) – some rockin’ Joe Walsh
5. Tequila Sunrise (Desperado) – one of my drinks of choice in college 4. I Can’t Tell You Why (The Long Run) – I think it’s lovely and sad 3. Take it to the Limit (One of These Nights) – written by Meisner, Henley, and Frey, the only Eagles single to feature Meisner on lead vocals; reminds me of a coffeehouse in my college town that I lived in, and a young woman with long light brown hair, with whom absolutely nothing happened 2. Hotel California (Hotel California) – the Stairway to Heaven of the Eagles’ oeuvre, it shouldn’t be diminished because it was overplayed 1. Wasted Time (Hotel California) – I gravitate towards songs about lost love
Governor Cuomo announced an agreement between New York State and the Seneca Nation of Indians that resolved a multi-year dispute between the State and the Nation.
A striking phenomenon was that twice on our vacation, we left the country, kind of. The green highway signs we saw along Route 17/Interstate 86, for a time, were in both English and in the language of the Seneca.
“In the 1990s, the Senecas won a prolonged court battle to assume ownership of all land on their reservation, including that owned by private non-Seneca. (This was particularly contentious in Salamanca, where non-Native landownership had been tolerated for decades. State and local officials said that this is the only United States city located on Indian reservation land; under the recognized law of the time, the underlying land remained Seneca owned, but “improvements” on that land were not subject to lease and were still privately owned.) The city had been developed under a 99-year federal lease arrangement with the Seneca Nation. It had provided land to railroads to encourage development, which the railroad developed for workers and their families, and related businesses. This arrangement was confirmed by acts of Congress in 1875, 1890 and 1990.”
“The State of New York recognizes and reconfirms the exclusivity of Seneca casino operations in the Western New York region, and the Seneca Nation agrees to resume payments and to make pro-rated repayments for past amounts that were in dispute.”
On the return trip, when we took a more northerly route, off the major highway, the signs were more interesting. These purple road signs implore people to drive carefully but have a more folksy feel than your usual directives. More than one said “Drive safely for our children. Drive safely for our elders.” This one is the only one I could find a visual for online, alas.
Occasionally, my web page has gone down. It was annoying, not so much because I couldn’t have my purple prose seen, but because, almost always, I was trying to write some NEW ramblings.
I know the vendor, in fixing the last problem, suspended someone’s user account “for CPU overage,” whatever THAT means.
And I can’t always tell whether it’s a problem with my Internet at home – which has also failed me – or the blog itself. So I email a list of trusted folks and ask them, re my site, “Is it down for everyone or just me?” Unfortunately, almost always, it’s down for everyone.
I do back up my blog every month, or three, but still, it’s a pain.
As it turns out, I noticed that another website was down recently. I wrote on the closed Facebook discussion page, “Is it down for everyone or just me?” Someone wrote This is always a handy check and pointed to down for everyone or just me.com. There are similar sites, such as Is It Down Right Now.
Oddly, when I went to Is It Down, when a blogger I know was down in May, it showed: “[URL] is not down. (it took me 0.02 seconds to check, if it is down for you, go shout at your IT support or ISP). BTW: The status code I got was 502, which means that there is something wrong with URL or site.” To me, that means the site is not working.
At least the first two sites will be, I’m afraid, quite useful in the future.
Every Mother’s Son did have three other Top 100 songs in the US, two from their second, less successful collection, the imaginatively-named Every Mother’s Son’s Back
The band Every Mother’s Son was likely, depending on how you define it, a one-hit wonder. Come On Down To My Boat was the only Top 40 Billboard hit for the New York group, comprised of brothers Dennis Larden (vocals) and Larry Larden (guitar), who had originally performed as a folk duo, plus Bruce Milner (keyboards), Christopher Augustine (drums), and Schuyler Larsen (bass).
The #6 hit on the Billboard charts was originally recorded by a group called The Rare Breed, which apparently was one iteration of a group called the Ohio Express, but that lineage is too complicated to go into here.
The latter version of Come On Down To My Boat appears on Every Mother’s Son’s eponymous first album, which got to #117 on the Billboard album charts. The single went to #3 in Canada and #26 in Australia.
From the Wikipedia: “Because the group was signed to MGM Records, MGM Television… decided to feature the group in a two-part episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., ‘The Karate Killers (The Five Daughters Affair),’ singing the song in a nightclub as a fight breaks out.”
But Every Mother’s Son did have three other Top 100 songs in the US, two from their second, less successful collection, the imaginatively named Every Mother’s Son’s Back, which failed to dent the Top 200 album charts. Put Your Mind At Ease, which has a riff that reminds one of Pleasant Valley Sunday by The Monkees that had come out earlier in 1967, got to #46 in the US, though made it to #8 in Canada. Pony with the Golden Mane only got to #93 US, #41 in Canada.
No One Knows, apparently, a non-album cut from 1968, only got to #98.
Visiting the gravesites, beyond the limits of geography, is a very personal preference, I believe. I don’t think I’ve visited my dad’s grave more than two or three times. Of course, when he first died, on this date in 2000, the headstone wasn’t ready. 
