Music and lights

This morning the alarm was set to play Charley Pride. When Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’ began playing, I said Take it Jerry! And he confessed he does not know Charley Pride’s music. He said they did not listen to country music. Of course, they had a few more options and weren’t really tied to the 12 hours in-valley broadcast of KWVR. Granted you could occasionally get a station from Lewiston or Walla Walla, we could hear American Top 40, but you had to want it. I had a friend in the Navy who, when she’d mention a song and I’d say I don’t know that, would yell at me, Yes, you do! But I didn’t. She was from Philadelphia and could name songs and singers and groups and the years they had hits. I was culturally “deprived” by listening to instrumental, country, the curious “music for the dinner hour”, the farm report and Swap and Shop. But I knew Ferlin Husky and Dolly Parton, (oh we knew Dolly) Sons of the Pioneers, Chet Atkins and Porter Wagner. Now I need to teach Jerry one Charley Pride song and why not his biggest hit?

Well people may try to guess, the secret of my happiness
But some of them never learn it's a simple thing
The secret I'm speaking of, is a woman & a man in love
And the answer is in this song that I always sing

And it’s the Solstice! Jupiter and Saturn are closest to earth that they’ve been since 1623 and, per an article I read, the closest observable since 1226. The convergence. At dusk, as if on cue, they showed up low in the southwest sky. There is also rumor that tonight during the longest night the Ursid meteor shower will be peaking. All this celestial wonder comes after a bright and sunny day. When we went out for our afternoon walk, I mentioned that the sun was at the point in the sky that it rose to in Belgium and then sort of skirted the sky before it disappeared. Days shortened in chunks you could see and feel and then Winter Solstice hit you could feel it rewind until you were closing the black out curtains in the summer to cut out the light.