what all is in our brains

Oh, the Lord is good to me


And so I thank the Lord


For giving me


The things I need


The sun and the rain and the apple seed,


The Lord is good to me


__________________


Thinking about Thanksgiving this morning, the above song, an ancient memory, sifted/drifted up in my mind.  (What kinds of things can we remember?  What all is in our brain-computers?)  Probably the last time I heard that song, or sang it in a church group or with family, Richard Nixon was president -- maybe even Lyndon Johnson.




I got the same kind of funny feeling -- sort of real and surreal at the same time -- recently when I saw a documentary about the folksinger Pete Seeger -- they have the song "Jacob's Ladder" toward the beginning of the film. 


Hearing it, I thought, "Wow, I haven't heard that song in so many years, and yet I remember it clearly and intensely as if we had just sung it in church yesterday.




We are


Climbing


Jacob's


ladder.


We are


Climbing


Jacob's


ladder.


We are


climbing


Jacob's


Ladder,


Soldiers


of the


Cross




The film, The Power of Song (2007), had an excerpt from another song --


Get along home,
Cindy, Cindy


Get along home,
Cindy, Cindy


Get along home,
Cindy, Cindy --


I'll marry you someday!





I think I might have been sandbox-playing age group when we heard, or sang (or both) that one...  How does something stay in your mind that long, when you've never taken it out to sing it, play it, or remember it, in the interim?  Brain Mysteries.  The Mysteries of Memory.




If it were my style to say a sentence like, "Ahh -- that takes me back!" I might have said that.  But -- not my style.  Once when I was in college I played a Peter, Paul & Mary album (from 16 years before) for my dad, in my Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment -- he said, of the music, "Oh! - That takes me back." 


So of course I had to say, "But don't you want to listen to music that takes you forward?"  (What in the hell was I talking about?  LOL - The argumentationalivism of youth...)





Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie


----------------------------------------


When Donald Trump thinks about things to be thankful for tomorrow, I wonder if he will be thankful he is the next president.  I wonder if, on Election Night, he was maybe the most surprised person of all...
  













a view from inside Trump Tower




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