That Was the Winter of Our Disconnect

So, to paraphrase that wonderfully innocent anti-war poster from the 60s, what if they gave a season and it didn't show up?  It feels hard to celebrate the passing of something that wasn't: Winter Into Spring, as George Winston would have it, doesn't it?  It's like the Repugs lamenting the passing of, and hoped-for return to, a time and a country that never really existed.  But that's next week's post, and theme.

As evidenced by that last sentence, I find it sooo difficult to stay away from those two elephants-in-every-room-of-the salon, those fraught enemies of friendly and genteel (oh--maybe that's why) conversation, Religion and Politics. "Are you sure it's bad to stick my fingers into those spinning blades?  Oh, lemme try, it'll be okay...."  I maybe oughta change the name of this space to "Bloody Stumps."  But I'm'a avoid controversy again this week and just deal with mud-luscious, puddle-wonderful Spring.  Except to raise the specter of looming and catastrophic climate change which almost all of us, even those who believe on some level that it's happening, resolutely deny.  It'll be interesting as hell to see if, the next time we're s'posed to have a winter, we do.

But on to a celebration of actual Spring, not the Spring we've had for most of the winter, but that time to take out the baseball glove and oil it up, the time of puddle-splashing and marble playing and hopscotch and jump-rope and jesus, how old am I?  Does anyone still do any of those things anymore?  Am I one of those-- not fuzzy-headed-liberals but foggy-brained-conservatives-- living in an idealized Never Never Land?  Aargh, more of the non-prescription drugs, quick!

Anyway, in past years of Spring-celebration shows, I've gone for, as I usually do, songs with the theme in the title.  This time I have in mind to play songs that instead evoke Spring, the first warm days, the release from cold and winter and the promise of warmth and summer.  Stuff like Daydream and Groovin' and It's a Beautiful Morning, many versions of what is to me the quintessential springtime celebration song (and, probably not coincidentally, peyote chant) Witchi Tai -To, and like 'at.  I'll also have to play something by Firesign Theater (likely High School Madness) since, sadly, Peter Bergman, one of the founders of that brilliant and anarchic comedy troupe, the Beatles of counterculture humor, died recently.

Hope you can join me on Tuesday, noon-till-two, on 100.1 FM or wool.fm, broadcasting from beautiful, springlike in all seasons, downtown Bellows Falls, VT.

Beware the goat-footed balloon man.