Ruptures -- between 1981 and 1995

While the songs do not go in complete chronological order, the first twelve songs are essentially how my family became the unit that it was in 1981, the first time that my father had an affair.

It's not that he was never difficult before, but some new patterns emerged.

Neil Diamond and Hooked on Classics were things that played with all of us together. For the 14th and 15th, it is music that was shared with one parent or the other, but not both.

As they were working out that they were staying together, one of my father's complaints (he had a pretty long list) was that he wanted Mom to get a job. Because were were still pretty young, she ended up with a night job cleaning office buildings while he was home with the kids.

“Theme from The A-Team by Mike Post 

I am sure there were other shows that we watched, but that is the main one I remember. It may have been the first television show we started quoting to each other. 

The A-Team ran from 1983 to 1987, and I don't know that Mom ever saw an episode. Maybe she saw reruns later.

“Take On Me” by A-ha

Mom may have been gone nights, but it was also about this time that Dad started being gone more on weekends.He said he was hiking; it was probably true at least some of the time.

We spent the weekends with Mom, running errands and visiting people. The main music we listened to in the car was the Hunting High and Low album.

My way back then was to buy records and record them onto blank cassettes so that we had a master copy. Most record sides did not quite match the tape length, so some songs may have played more than once. It did not matter; we all loved this entire album.

There is an old Mother's Day card that my younger sisters made for our mother where they thank her for liking their music. She really did; all of it. We were influenced by hers too, but she was very open to ours and the mid-80s were a great time for music.

Sure, she also developed fondness for Duran Duran and even Metallica, but A-ha was her favorite, exactly as it should have been.

"She Works Hard For The Money" by Donna Summer

She really did. 

Initially Dad had this idea that Mom would turn over her paychecks. She did use her money to pay household expenses, but she got her own checking account, which -- perspective -- had only become legal after she was married. 

She made her own choices and became considerably more independent. Part of that was wanting to work more.

She still did things like being a room mother, but she also found daytime work cleaning houses; first through an agency, and then with her own clients.

At her height, on a typical day she would clean her own house, clean one or two other houses, come home and make dinner, then go and clean a building. I did not appreciate how energetic she had to be then, but I don't take it for granted now. 

Her jobs were also a big part of beginning to make new friends. One of the last activities we arranged before she needed to go into memory care was getting together with a former coworker. 

It took a toll, including her arthritis (which will come up again), but it was good for her too. 

Before the next break, there's another song that's more for me. 

Monstrous comics

Other than continuing with scary novel series, trying to read as many ghost story picture books as possible, and looking up some remembered middle reader ghost stories, I also read some comics.

They followed a different theme. They were pretty disappointing.

We were going to attend a Universal Studios Halloween Horror Night in late September. It makes sense that I pursued the knowledge, but I don't remember exactly how I found out that there was a comic series based on the classic Universal Monsters.

It was a little surprising to see the history honored in that way, because you certainly don't see any traces of them at the Studios; that is all much more recent movies plus a lot of clowns with chainsaws.

https://sporktogo.blogspot.com/2025/10/universal-halloween-horror-nights.html 

It looked like each comic was initially released as four single issues, then collected into a trade. I read the trades.

The order I read them in, with publication dates:

Universal Monsters: Frankenstein by Michael Walsh, April 2025

Universal Monsters: Dracula by James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds, May 2024

Universal Monsters: Creature From the Black Lagoon Lives! by Dan Watters, Ram V, and Matthew Roberts, November 2024

I really hate how much I did not like them.

The problem was that the people were all so terrible. I don't mind monsters not actually being monsters. From that aspect, Frankenstein was probably the best of them; the problems with Dr. Frankenstein have always been pretty clear.

There really should have been more Creature in Creature; it was mainly terrible humans, then rejected by the Creature who was inclined to like the woman.

That follows a lot of current trends. You might think I would learn something from that, but notice that schedule? There's a mummy one out now. Yes, I requested it from the library. 

If I hate it but there is a Wolfman one in six months, I will probably check that out too. 

While pursuing this series, there were some other things that came up in my catalog searches. I am always up for some mission creep.

B.P.R.D. Plague of Frogs, Volume 3 by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi

This was back from 2012. Parts of it were quite grim (not unusual in the Mignola-verse) but there was an interesting new character and a cat, and some shocking changes. I may pick this back up. 

If someone will tell me that giant armadillo from The Visitor shows up again, I am there!

Lon Chaney Speaks by Pat Dorian

This was a pretty interesting look at early film history. While "Senior" did not play any of the Universal monsters (Junior did), the father had such an influence on make-up and prosthetics that his influence is there.  

Universal Monsters Little Golden Book by M.D. Brundlefly and Meg Dunn, September 2021. 

These are not just Universal monsters, but Funko Pop figures of the Universal monsters.

Guess where else we went the day of the Halloween Horror Night?

https://sporktogo.blogspot.com/2026/01/hollywood-funko-pop-store.html 

I thought with that level of commercial influence, this would be terrible, but it was surprisingly charming with a perfect ending. 

Ideas are important, but it all depends on the execution. 

Actually, the Boo! Book that came with the Wendy's Halloween Frosty meal was better than you would expect too.

At least sometimes they try. 

More about my father

I want to write about the songs for the 10th and the 13th, but it may be hard to get right.

January 10th last year was the day he died. "The Living Years" by Mike + The Mechanics kept coming to my mind, but it didn't feel like it was about me and and my father (or about my mother and my father). 

It felt more like it would be between my father and his own father. 

He was estranged from his parents when they died. It had mainly been a fight with his father, but he wasn't talking to his mother either. She was really upset about that and had talked to my mother.

They might have made up eventually, but then my grandparents were dead in a crash, with no real warning.

Based on the number of times that my father disowned children who displeased him, I can only assume he refused to learn anything from that. I still know it affected him, including him suddenly wanting to have another child: me. (A string of cousins born pretty close together tells me that his reaction was not unique.)

I didn't think "The Living Years" reflected us because I had communicated with him about what our relationship needed many times. It never got anywhere, but I had tried, and I believed I had tried enough. 

I revisited the idea periodically, and I was afraid I was going to have to reach out and it would be hard, and then he was gone. It was sad, but mostly a relief. When he stopped speaking to me for two and a half years when I was seventeen, I told myself that it was easier not dealing with him, but I was not really okay with it. Many years later, I had a better grasp of what I could control and what I couldn't and there really was peace, even though it was still sad.

"I Can't Make You Love Me" by Bonnie Raitt was definitely for Mom and Dad. 

She tried really hard. I saw her do so many things for him, coming up with little surprises and honoring even his most unfair whims.

That's not to say that she was always perfect. She would get frustrated and freeze him out sometimes, but I think she learned everything she knew about the silent treatment from him. Also, there was far less in the way of attempts to make her happy on his side, and lots of criticism of what she did try. That criticism also changed, where things that had worked before became unacceptable. 

Look, there are reasons none of their daughters got married. 

One thing that helped me understand him was a passage from Jane Eyre. Mr. Rochester is explaining his guardianship of Adele through his relationship with her mother, his mistress, as well as briefly mentioning two others. He explains that a mistress is always inferior socially and often by character, and it is degrading to live familiarly with inferiors.

It is possible to find in that an indictment of the English class system and various patriarchal systems (speaking of patriarchy, it is sad how similar so many other fathers of that generation were). What I saw as an adolescent girl was that Dad thought he was better than Mom, and he treated her as inferior. That was not great for her, but it also damaged his love for her, which continually got worse.

She had to be bad so it was his fault that he cheated or was a jerk in other ways. Then she deserved it, and he kept viewing her as lower and lower, so kept treating her worse.

He also did that with his children. 

To be fair, he needed to be better than everyone, not just Mom. For people who didn't deal with him a lot, it may not have been noticeable. For people who lived with him, it was hard, perhaps more so because it was never stated outright how you were supposed to be to make him happy. You could try picking it up from context clues, but in fact, you could not make him happy and he would never see that as a him problem.

Its origin was his problem, but living with it was ours.

I found myself in the song too. It's not that he didn't love me, but there was a problem with his love, or with how love didn't change things... I could not fix that. That's why I stopped trying. 

So there I was in the other song as well.

Because I had tried, I didn't think I had regrets, but I can believe now that he would. 

I don't know what the time frame is, but I really do believe that eventually the self-deception fails in death. Maybe you cling to the denial really hard, but eventually it gives out against the stark reality of death.

I can believe he has things that he would have liked to say to us in the living years.  

That window has closed, but other ones will eventually open. 

I hope he has been able to make peace with his father. 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/10/on-paternal-side.html  

Hooked on culture

Looking over the timeline of the songs for January, there are two important ruptures. I wanted something to represent the time in between them.

"America" kind of did that, but also represented Mom moving countries. I wanted something for what life was like before things started splitting off.

Something else that played a lot was Hooked on Classics.

I had never thought about the structure of that album. There literally is a track called "Hooked on Classics Part 1 & 2". I ended up choosing "Rondo Alla Turca" -- that's what I was feeling the most, even though technically I was hearing it as part of track 7, "Hooked on Mozart."

I may be thinking of this more because of an earlier conversation. 

My younger sisters were saying they credited me with some of our tendency to go to cultural events and travel and things like that.

I understood why they thought that, because often when we went together to the opera or ballet or Australia, I did a lot of the planning and paying, back in the day. That is not where it got started.

I pointed out that with our mother being Italian we were always more likely to be interested in going to Italy, at least, and I think that opened things up, as well as opening us up to opera.

I am not saying that it's in the blood. Our mother loved opera, and played it frequently. 

She got that from her father, who also loved it. I think culturally that was pretty common in his time; I'm honestly not sure about now. That's probably something else to ask my cousins.

The culture did not just come from her. Our father was the one who played other classical music and filled the bookcase with books. Those included classic novels and plays, but also Tolkien and some Edgar Rice Burroughs and lots of Time-Life book series. We had a full set of junior and regular encyclopedias.

(Randomly, there were also a few copies of PS Magazine, an army maintenance magazine that started with illustrations by Will Eisner, award-inspiring comic inspiration.) 

As important as school and public libraries have been for me, the library at home was a big influence.

My father's family had some hard times. There were a lot of moves and restarts and some migrant farm work. A cousin has informed me that they had good times too -- it wasn't always a struggle -- but the struggle seems to have imprinted itself more deeply.

The frequent moves affected education. 

I don't know how much of my father's ego was real versus an attempt to cover up deep-rooted insecurities. He seemed to really think he was better than everyone else, but maybe it was a convincing cover bolstered with denial.

Regardless, looking back I see a lot of striving in the collection of books and the pursuit of culture and knowledge. 

I hope he got some enjoyment out of it too. 

We did. 

The flight of the Butterfly

My father was not a good husband to my mother.

His skills as a father could be questioned too, and that is not a completely new idea, but there are two points I want to make regarding her marriage:

• She never had any interest in dating or marrying again; once was quite enough.
• She still never regretted marrying him, because of the good things that came from that. 

Two of the songs are because of that, and kind of a third as well.

"America" by Neil Diamond, from the soundtrack of The Jazz Singer:

In my growing up years, some musicians got played a lot that were not really my choice. That might involve Black Sabbath from my brother, Steve Miller and the Beatles from my older sister, and definitely Anne Murray, the Ray Conniff Singers, ABBA, and Neil Diamond from my parents. I don't hate any of them, but I think I have heard enough of them to last a long time.

It still felt like I should include something from there. "America" was the best fit. It played frequently in our house, it represented Mom coming to a new country after marrying my father, and it is also the track for an amazing sequence in a different movie, Born in East LA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AecJ4Vi_zqk 

"The Holy City":

I used a version by the Tabernacle Choir for the song of the day on the 11th, but a version from the London Philharmonic on the playlist I have been listening to while I sort out my feelings. 

In fact, Mom's favorite version was sung by Jeannie Rickards at church and she apparently did an amazing job that Mom never forgot. It was before my time, but I did go to girls' camp with one of Jeannie's daughters so that's my connection.

I chose that song to represent her faith. My father may have led in the decision to meet with missionaries and get baptized, but he stopped going later and she never did. Her faith sustained her and was never something she could regret.

"You're A Friend of Mine" by Clarence Clemons and Jackson Browne

She made a lot of friends through church, and she made a lot of friends through her work (which does have a song, but that's a different post), and through greyhounds. He was the one who first brought a stray greyhound home on his way out of town, leaving her to care for it. 

She was not thrilled with that (it was pretty inconsiderate) but she quickly grow to love that dog, who absolutely loved her. It also led to her contacting the adoption group, volunteering with them, and making many more friends.

Her ability to make friends wherever she went did not come from him, but a lot of the "wherever" was him.

Her family did not really have pets, but they became a constant part of her life here. She loved her cats and dogs (which tended to be collies before we discovered greyhounds). Sure, I thought about "Who Let the Dogs Out" and "What's New Pussycat", but no.

I also don't know a good song to express Mom's love her for children, but she wanted us and could never regret us.

She was resilient and found many good things in her life. Most of them got their start in my father, but that was not their end. 

A ghostly movie

I try watching a different Halloween movie every year.

They are mostly movies that are new to me, but an old one that I haven't seen for a long time will do as well.

I hadn't had anything specific in mind this year, and was thinking Weird Science might work, even if not strictly on theme. Instead, I finally found an option for watching Child of Glass.

Many of my spooky Halloween memories are associated with Disney, from us watching the weekly shows and from the early years of the channel.

The other movie I associate most closely with that is The Watcher in the Woods, but I have been able to see that much more often.

It had felt like Watcher was much more recent, but really they were only two (kind of three) years apart.  

The Watcher in the Woods had its first theatrical release in 1980, but was then re-shot and re-released a year later. Regardless, it did have a theatrical release, so that kind of a publicity campaign and then a lot of television play.

Child of Glass aired as an episode of The Magical World of Disney in 1978 (and in May, not October). Repeats just never seemed to happen. As far as I know, I only saw it once, but I always remembered the glowing girl and the dog, and that she was able to materialize for a dance (which seemed really fake and unfair to Blossom).

I had looked it up many times but with no luck. Finally I found a copy on Youtube. If the quality was not the best, it was still something. Finally!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzg4uQWAAuY 

(One thing that will come out more in a later post: I was also able to locate the book that acted as the source material, and the book is better.) 

For a made for television movie from the late 70s, it is not bad. I don't need to see it again, but I am glad that I was able to see it one more time.

As it was, I ended up more distracted by the familiar faces than caught up in the plot.

Alexander's mother was played by Barbara Barrie, Barney Miller's wife and Nana on Suddenly Susan. His sister was Violet Beauregard, though without her wearing blue or chewing gum there is no way I would have recognized her there. 

In my previous attempts to find the movie, I had gotten that Inez was Sylvia from Little House on the Prairie, but that didn't tell me that Aunt Lavinia was Moses' adopted mother from The Ten Commandments! I mean, these are people whom I had actually seen in other things, even at that young age.

Also, while I probably had not seen him prior to that, I would later become quite fond of Anthony Zerbe as Teaspoon in The Young Riders. I caught him very close to my re-watch in an episode of Columbo and I have to say he is pretty versatile.

It's not a big deal, but it was something I had wanted for a long time and I got it.

I would say that next year I will try Weird Science, but a friend reminded me of Something Wicked This Way Comes. 

I don't remember very much about that one either. I think I need to check it out.  

Butterfly

After two choruses from Verdi operas, I put in two of my mother's favorite songs from when she was a teenager in Italy, then one my father used to play as he stood by the jukebox.

This marks a transition from her family of origin to marrying an American GI and the father of her children.

I'm not saying she wouldn't have liked Puccini or Madame Butterfly anyway, but I know she felt like Butterfly in a way that she never felt like Aida or Fenena.

I am not sure when that started. I was only nine the first time he cheated, plus there was a time before I was born when he he had feelings for someone else... it put a great strain on the marriage.

Did she feel like Butterfly as soon as she married an American soldier and enthusiastically embraced all things American? (Watching a performance as an adult, that perspective broke my heart.) Or did that feeling happen later, after the soldier proved faithless?

I don't know.

What I do know, though, is that she did not become Butterfly, at least not the opera version.

In the opera, Pinkerton's new wife comes for his son with Butterfly, because Pinkerton is too cowardly to face Butterfly himself. Taking the blade with which her father killed himself -- on which it is written "Those who cannot live with honor can die with honor -- she takes her own life, having already surrendered it to her husband.

That was not my mother. 

She was hurt, a lot. If her children had been taken, I don't know what would have happened, but she had her children and she loved and worked and thrived for them.

That thriving becomes a larger pattern of her life, and there will be another post for that.

I am getting more to the point where I will be able to write an obituary. 

For now, I should say that there was another version for Butterfly as well.

The opera was based on a short story by John Luther Long.

It is mostly the same, but after agreeing to give up the child and starting to kill herself, Butterfly is interrupted by her maid, Suzuki, who pinches the child to make him cry.

Butterfly stops, and her child crawls into her lap. Suzuki dresses the wound, and when Kate Pinkerton arrives the next day, the house is empty.

Okay, the odds of a classical opera ending that way were always pretty low. You either tend to have a majorly happy, triumphal ending, or a tragedy with at least the soprano dead, the tenor and the baritone as well. 

Fortunately, life is seldom operatic in its scope; small victories and joys can get us through.

If those small joys happen because someone is looking out for you, good! We should be looking out for each other.  

Related posts: 

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2024/08/my-mother-my-talk.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/08/1960-1958-july-daily-songs.html 

Fly, my thoughts (Va pensiero)

January 3rd through 8th songs were a mix of classical opera and contemporary hits from around the time my parents met.

For as long as I can remember, my mother's favorite operas were Aida, Madame Butterfly, and Nabucco.

Two of those are much more famous than the other. I was able to take her to see both Aida and Madame Butterfly; I found a DVD recording of Nabucco for her. It was performed at L'Arena in Verona, where we had been together, so that was pretty cool, but it just doesn't get performed much now.

Madame Butterfly is by Giacomo Puccini and I think there are some things that are different about her love for that, so that will be a separate post.

Aida and Nabucco are both by Giuseppe Verdi. I think a lot of my mother's love for opera came from her father, and that is especially true for Nabucco, with its chorus, "Va Pensiero."

She always told me it was important to him because it was an anthem for Italians when they were under Austrian rule. As I was thinking about songs that were important to her, I started to wonder more about that. 

I was pretty sure it wasn't all of Italy, but maybe just the North. A little research indicated that it had to have been the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, which existed from 1815 to 1866, when they were finally able to join with the rest of Italy, after first being ceded to France. (Italian unification was a lengthy and somewhat complicated process). 

We are from the Veneto, so this is the area. 

My grandparents were old, but not old enough to have been under Austrian rule.

Grandfather's father, Pietro, would have been 14 when they regained their independence. However, his father Domenico was five when the kingdom was created. Domenico died when Pietro was only 10. I don't know if he died in the fighting, but I can believe that there were some strong emotions tied into that song from an opera introduced in 1842 (just over one hundred years before my mother was born).

Shortly before its composition, Verdi had lost his wife and children to illnesses. He swore he would never compose again. The director of La Scala made him take the libretto, written by Temistocle Solera. Originally resisting looking, Verdi opened it to "Va Pensiero" based on the 137th Psalm.

The music came back to him, and he wrote again. 

Perhaps Solera should get more credit. In opera the libretto is often considered unimportant. As it was, Solera had already written one opera with Verdi before Nabucco and wrote three more in the next few years after. Still, the song is mostly associated with Verdi; onlookers in Milan began singing it spontaneously at his funeral procession and Toscanini conducted a version at Verdi's re-internment.

There was a powerful love for that song, and it is a powerful story of recovery from loss. I still don't know that I would have blogged about it if not for two other things that came up in my research. 

One is that various scholars dispute that Verdi meant for the song to be about independence. 

By all accounts, he was a very private man; there is not a proclamation of his determination. He was nonetheless associated with the move for independence and unification (The Risorgimento). The next opera that Verdi and Solera did together is also considered to have patriotic themes. 

Probably a coincidence. 

In addition, reading about Lombardy-Venetia, I found this:

"Austrian General Karl von Schonhals wrote in his memoires that the Austrian administration enjoyed the support of the rural population and the middle class educated at the universities of Pavia and Padua, who were able to pursue careers in the administration."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Lombardy%E2%80%93Venetia 

His explanation is that the nobles mistrusted the Austrians because they got positions through their nobility rather than their education, so it was the nobles who were into independence, not the common people.

Okay, as far as I can tell, Garibaldi was not aristocratic, but born to a merchant family and had some education. That should make him exactly the pro-Austrian type, yet somehow he became the key leader in the Risorgimento. He did at times work with monarchists, and certainly a movement can become more popular after it succeeds... but I think von Schonhals is projecting there.

As the granddaughter of a railroad man who was the son of a farmer, we say that song was about independence and yearning for freedom. 

That may not even matter that much, except that people lying about the motivations and the beliefs of those who oppose them, always having a way to justify themselves, feels relevant right now.

"If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it." -- Zora Neale Hurston

I would be reluctant to use a quote that serious if not for the murder of Renee Good.

Of course, this administration lies more about how you deserved the killing than that you enjoyed it, but they lie a lot.

They also say history is written by the victors, so maybe it doesn't matter what an Austrian general thought after they lost the territory. Maybe the reason the Italians remember it differently is because they finally did become free.

It feels important to express ourselves now. Speak, write, yes, complain, but do not leave the lies unanswered. 

That can have an effect generations later. 

Musically all about my mother... and my father... and me

If it looks like I am obsessing over this pending death, that may be true.

Some of it is figuring out how to handle things combined with my tendency toward rumination.

I don't know that I have actually written this before, but concerns I used to have about my mother's death were that it would happen during a #365FeministSelfie year; when things are hard I don't love capturing that on film. 

We made it into the new year.

In addition, I have worried about it interrupting a specific sequence in the daily songs. At one time I had thought of about seven songs that were important to her, and that I would play those, no matter what, giving a one-week break whenever it happened. 

That could actually work better now as I have seen and accepted sequences getting disrupted a lot this year. However, feeling like this is going to be the month and thinking about music more for a variety of reasons, that is January's theme. If it happens this month, we are already here.

(Then I think February will be all really emotional, grieving songs, so again, we will already be there.)

These are the favorite songs that would have been there for that week, as well as enough others to equal thirty-one days, and to give some overview of her life. 

It is a way of celebrating her, and grieving her, but also a way of noticing things and putting them into perspective.

I hope that will help me with some of the other things I am trying to figure out. 

I do still intend to write about the full list as a media post after the month is done, but some things are bringing up many thoughts. They can have their own posts. At this point, I do not intend to write about any of the songs before they have actually been the song of the day.

So, am I just going to wallow in grief for the rest of the month?

I don't think so. I hope not.

Besides, some of them may take unexpected directions, like tomorrow's intended post.

I promise, I am still thinking about politics. That could come up tomorrow. There will also be things relating to hope and human relations and living a good life.

I am not feeling my most calm and collected. 

For songs that don't require a long post, I started with "New Year's Day" by Reggie and the Full Effect, and then January 2nd was "The '59 Sound" by The Gaslight Anthem.

The first one was not just for the day, though that was convenient. I had used it exactly one year before.

It is from the album 41, inspired by a year where James Dewees lost his mother, his mother-in-law, and his marriage. There were a lot of hospital rooms and a lot of pain.

Hearing it, it sounded like my future. Not the same timeline or circumstances, but some very similar emotions. The enormity of the loss and the insufficient comfort of "she feels no pain" hit really hard. 

Maybe next year I won't need that song so much anymore.

"The '59 Sound" is a pretty great song in general, but also wonders "which song they're gonna play when we go" and "Did you hear your favorite song one last time?"

I have played and sung favorite songs for her, and sometimes that is what breaks through the most. That is part of needing to go over them again. 

Childrens books for Hispanic Heritage Month (especially for October)

There is a confluence of different things here. 

One factor is that while I was reading various picture books for Halloween, I ran into several that were Spanish language or by Hispanic authors.

Please remember that Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15th through October 15th, so the last half of it is very much Halloween-adjacent.

In addition, what I am working on now for that reading is going through all of the winners of the Américas award, the Pura Belpré awards and the Tomás Rivera awards. 

There is a fair amount of overlap, but that's a lot of books. It's a good idea to get them out of the way, and more than half of them are ghostly.

Not ghostly:

The Night of Las Posadas by Tomie dePaola

DePaola comes up with a lot of holiday stuff, generally retelling legends and folklore. I generally find that I like other versions of the same story better.

My Name Is Celia: The Life Of Celia Cruz / Me Llamo Celia: La Vida de Celia Cruz by Monica Brown and Rafael López

Solid introduction to Cruz with a lot of energy in the art.
 
Bravo, Chico Canta! Bravo by Pat Mora, Libby Martinez, and Amelia Lau Carlling

Pretty fun, but I thought it was a little too wordy.

Ghostly

The House, The Ghost, and Me/La casa, la fantasma, y yo by Tessa B.H. Ruiz and Eliza Morena

Better illustrated than written, as there was a kind of weird rhythm to the story.     

El susto de los fantasmas by Alma Flor Ada and Vivi Escrivá

I am pretty fond of Alma Flor Ada. This is a cute story with a twist. 

Cheech and the Spooky Ghost Bus by Cheech Marin and Orlando L. Ramirez

This is probably my favorite. I am not even sure it is the best, but c'mon! It's Cheech! 

La Llorona Can't Scare Me/La Llorona no me asunta by Xavier Garza 

Once again there is a connection between ghosts and luchadores that I don't quite understand, but this is probably a good book for bedtime rituals and fear of the dark.

Prietita and the Ghost Woman by Gloria Anzaldúa and Maya Christina González

Okay, if Cheech's book is not my favorite, then it is this one. You have a great author/illustrator combination in a story that reclaims La Llorona and is essentially a coming of age story. Excellent work. 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/12/ghostly-childrens-picture-books.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/10/spotlight-on-jose-carlos-andres.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/12/cuentos-hispanic-heritage-month.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/07/childrens-books-pura-belpre-award.html 

Dialectics

I'm afraid that I am going to be more annoying this year.

That's not a resolution, just a prediction. 

Annoying people is one of the things I am really insecure about, but if it feels like the right thing to do...

Over the last month I have contradicted two friends' posts. One was about Artificial Intelligence and one was repeating leftist talking points, focusing on Democrats as Republicans destroy the country. 

My feelings on those topics are no secret, but generally I share my opinions through my own posts -- whether a blog post or a status update -- and let other people say whatever they want.

That is starting to feel insufficient.

Let me get back to dialectics.

I believe I have also previously expressed that I tend to find philosophy very annoying, but I sometimes find it useful. 

Dialectics have been following me around over the past year, coming up in The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs, which I finished in July, and in The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change by Pauline Boss, which I finished for the second time through last month.

They stuck in my head more for two reasons. One was that I have a friend who is into Hegelian dialectics so when it comes up in a book, I think of her and let her know. (To be fair, as Boss uses the term it is really more classical and Fichte rather than Hegel. See, I annoy myself with that, but clarity and correctness is important to me.)

In addition, in Boggs' work there is a mention of a mentor who "excommunicated" a few of the group as they adapted their philosophy. The name sounded familiar, and yes, I had read C.L.R. James' The Black Jacobins back in 2016. 

Although at the time that was all I knew of him, I remember feeling like it was out of date. It was written almost sixty years before I read it, so that wasn't necessarily all James' fault, but it seemed believable that he might fight change and evolution.

What I see now -- especially via Facebook, but not exclusively -- is that there are strong tides of influence that are often poorly understood. They stay powerful because of ubiquity or propaganda or comfort and habit, where people really need to update and adapt but aren't doing it. 

My posting on my own feels insufficient; I know the algorithm isn't on my side.

It looks like that is going to lead to me being more confrontational. I hope I do it in a thoughtful and considerate way, but no one really enjoys receiving contradiction. (Some people love giving it, but I do not.)

If I am doing this because I am so sure that I know better... well, you can see why I an concerned that I am going to be more annoying.

But if it's important...
 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/06/rejecting-ai-as-much-as-possible.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/09/case-studies-possibly-most-relevant-one.html 

Just chewed up around the edges

My sisters have several friends in the process of losing parents. We know we are not the only ones.

I am going to sound a little mean about this one.

As much as I acknowledge that life is hard in general, some people do have it easier. One aspect of that may be not having to work.

I also acknowledge that a lot of jobs should have better leave policies and backups in place, especially for illness.

Regardless, if one particular person is a bit more self-absorbed, more demanding of support and sympathy, and also takes a lot of time off work and has more money in the family background... I suspect those things going together is not a coincidence.

Anyway, when asked how she was doing, she said that her therapist said she was "consumed with grief."

That sounds bad, but it is also a luxury and probably not really good for her.  

Yesterday I mentioned realizing that the cumulative grief that keeps welling up is probably a product of grief I have put to the side while doing other things. 

It's not that I never felt any of it, and it's not that there aren't some issues with putting it to the side... I don't think I have been as balanced as I should be.

That being said, I think it is good to have things to do.

It is possible that part of my current crying jags is that it is easier to lose concentration on schoolwork than on a job, though that's questionable too. 

I would say that my being in school instead of having a job is the reason why I am making the phone calls and things, but based on past history there is a good chance I'd have been the one doing a lot of that anyway. Is our family perfectly balanced? No. I am not sure if we are worse than other families, but no.

I still see some advantage to us in that we have to rally ourselves and keep going, over and over again.  

I like that about us, but I also see the downside. One point Pauline Boss made in The Myth of Closure is that we can't have resilience be the solution for social ills that we could prevent.

Children can be resilient, it is true, but that does not mean that experiencing hunger or homelessness is good for them, especially if we start looking at research into Adverse Childhood Experiences.

I am grateful to be in school right now, and that I have some control over my schedule. 

I am also grateful that I  have to report to my mentor weekly and to my Employment Department person every two weeks. That makes a difference.

I am grateful to have a sense of responsibility that was developed over the years and does relate at least partially to hardships. 

I am also fortunate to live with people who do have jobs; I would feel some shame if I wallowed too much. Also we have the same heartache going on and can commiserate about it.

Frankly, some extra money would solve a lot of our issues, and it would be great if that were an option. 

For now, we are getting by.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/03/is-that-what-was-happening.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/12/dealing-with-ambiguity.html 

Over the holiday break...

I haven't written one of these kinds of posts since December 18th.

There is a level on which I thought that was very sensible, because people are busy over the holidays.

I would be lying if I said school and grief weren't issues.

The grief is an important part of that.

I wrote various cards and letters, because the holidays are also a good time to connect. I even talked to some people. 

One thing that kept coming up is how the grief is overtaking me more now. 

In some ways this is practical. I am writing to funeral homes and updating the death list and messaging siblings and answering their questions. The sense of the impending loss is more present now.

In another way, I have been feeling like it shouldn't be this bad. We have been dealing with losing Mom for literally years. Since I am still quite sure that is going to be much worse when she actually does die, why does it also have to be worse now?

It hardly seems fair.

But many of these conversations and letters and thoughts have been with other people who have faced loss, including sometimes specifically with dementia.

It has been good to catch up, and has also shed some light.

Over the years I have felt grief, but I have also put a fair amount of it to the side because there were things I needed to do. 

Now a lot of the things I am doing are specifically about that. It's not really at the side, and there has been enough grief accumulated that it could be coming out for a while.

Also, one of the things I decided to do was that January would all be songs that related to my parents and this process. In the song selection I am deliberately listening to songs that bring strong emotions. That is self-inflicted.

But there is relief in it as well.

And I am going to need to draft an obituary. 

I do keep learning more. I am sure at some point there will be posts about what questions to ask and things to think about when a loved one is dying. I like being able to be helpful, and to take all of these thoughts and problems and put them into words.

I am okay and this is hard.

Those things are equally true. 

Songs for Native American Heritage Month

This year has been largely about things not fitting into easy boxes but still being okay.

Last year's Hispanic Heritage Month daily songs stretched from September 17th through November 24th, giving short shrift to Native American Heritage Month.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/12/daily-songs-for-hispanic-heritage-month.html  

I kind of had in mind that I would make up for that this year, and the article with the Indigenous Halloween playlist got the ball rolling.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/11/songs-squeezed-in-between-things.html 

That (plus a couple of my own) gave me Indigenous artists from October 24th through November 4th; what was I going to do after that?

I was reading The Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley, and there were some cars that were important to the story as well as actual attendance at a powwow, and I just kept thinking of "NDN Kars" by Keith Secola. I had to start there. 

11/5 “NDN Kars” by Keith Secola

Looking for some inspiration, I found that the ACLU has a Native American Heritage Month playlist compiled by their Native and Indigenous staff. Listening to that, I found other songs that I liked and wanted to include.

In some cases they were inspired by the list. For example, I used a different Testament song than the one that was on the list, but I had not even had Testament in mind, so the list was still helpful. 

Also, this playlist is how I discovered that Romeo Void's Debora Iyall was Cowlitz; I'd had no idea.

11/6 “Yellowstone” by Digawolf
11/7 “I’m Alive (Life Sounds Like)” by Michael Franti
11/8 “Idle No More” by Pura Fé
11/9 “Why” by Supaman
11/10 “American Dream” by Raya Zaragoza
11/11 “Fallen Soldiers” by Inez Jasper feat. Fawn Wood
11/12 “Train, Train” by Blackfoot
11/13 “Imigtaq” by Riit
11/14 “Peace and Power” by Joanne Shenandoah
11/15 “Witchi Tia To” by Jim Pepper
11/16 “I Didn’t Know” by Sugluk
11/17 “The Devil Is a Blue-Eyed Man” by Celeigh Cardinal
11/18 “Bombs Over Baghdad” by John Trudell
11/19 “La Danza Azteca” by Nauhuatl Sound System
11/20 “Heart Song” by Ronnie Spector
11/21 “Cherokee Morning Song” by Walela
11/22 “Future Street” by Martha Redbone
11/23 “Closer Still” by Douglas Spotted Eagle
11/24 “Soft Stud” by Black Belt Eagle Scout
11/25 “Pueblos” by Sara Curruchich feat. Lila Downs
11/26 “Vibrant Colors” by Zoon
11/27 “Inter-Tribal” by Thunder Mountain Singers
11/28 “Love Song” by Nukariik
11/29 “Native Funk” by Burning Sky
11/30 “The Big Ones Get Away” by Buffy Sainte-Marie
12/1 “Big City Dreams” by Adrain Sutherland
12/2 “Just Too Easy” by Romeo Void
12/3 “Trail of Tears” by Testament
12/4 Ghost Dance by Bill Miller

I had also had in mind to give all of the artists with Halloween songs other songs, so I did some additional listening to each of those ten artists (as well as RedCloud who is from my own list). 

I gave more than one extra song to Link Wray. I regret nothing.

12/5 “Wovoka” by Redbone
12/6 “Slinky” by Link Wray
12/7 “Broken Arrow” by Robbie Robertson
12/8 “Immutaa” by Beatrice Deer
12/9 “Dangerous Games” by Derek Miller
12/10 “Would You Know Love” by Crystal Shawanda
12/11 “Landback” by Kristi Lane Sinclair
12/12 “Put Your Feathers On” by Blue Moon Marquee
12/13 “Burn It Down” by Lightning Cloud feat. Pigeon John
12/14 “Electric Pow Wow Drum” by Halluci Nation
12/15 “Complicated” by Breach Of Trust
12/16 “Ice People” by Link Wray
12/17 “Tapatio” by RedCloud feat. Pigeon John

At this point we were getting pretty close to Christmas. I was looking up Christmas songs by Indigenous artists, as well as looking for playlists. (I did find some, but they weren't as good.)

I also started remembering old favorites, and wanting to work them in.

First of all, I would hate to omit the Snotty Nose Rez Kids, and I found a timely one that was even featured on Resident Alien, which I am totally going to watch some day.

12/18 “Bougee Natives” by Snotty Nose Rez Kids

I thought a lullaby was a nice start in to the Christmas music even if it was not particularly Christmas-themed. It may have been kind of uneven to go from "Bougee Natives" to a lullaby then to two songs that are really more humorous in nature. I did get more traditional after that.

12/19 “Lakota Lullaby” by Robert Tree Cody
12/20 “Twelve Indian Days of Christmas” by War Scout
12/21 “Stuck in the Smoke Hole of Our Tipi” by Elder Oldhands
12/22 “Away in a Manger” by John Two-Hawks
12/23 “The First Noel” by Douglas Blue Feather
12/24 “O Holy Night” by Jana Mashonee
12/25 “Christmas Night (Arbeau’s Orchésographie)” by Bill Miller
12/26 “Coventry Carol” by R. Carlos Nakai with William Eaton
12/27 “Holly and Ivy” by Painted Raven
12/28 “O Sanctissima” by Alice Gomez

Then it was back to old favorites.

As hard as it can be for me to include Jeremy Dutcher without including "Mehcinut", I thought "Ancestor's Too Young" was a better companion to Frank Waln's "Concentration Camp Blues". They may also be better-suited for this time. 

12/29 “Concentration Camp Blues” by Frank Waln
12/30 “Ancestors Too Young” by Jeremy Dutcher

Then I ended with Michael Bucher's "Don't Forget About Me".

That's not the first time I have ended a sequence on him, but it remains important. 

This is a time led by abusive people and loud distractions where it can feel impossible to keep up and stay grounded.

We still need to try.

12/31 “Don’t Forget About Me” by Michael Bucher

Resist.