This morning I lost my best friend, Thumper -- my buddy for the past 18 years. He was a cute, lovable, playful, gray and white tabby cat. I will miss him as long as I live....
In recent weeks, Thumper hadn't been feeling well. My roommate, Cleta, and I took him to The Cat Practice in Marina del Rey, not far from our home. Veterinarian Beth Hagenlocker, DVM, gave him a number of tests and determined that his bladder was weak. She prescribed two medications, which seemed to help for a week or so. Then Thumper grew weaker and didn't eat very much. He lost weight. We took him to see Dr. Beth for a couple of follow-up visits.
Thumper liked to sleep on an old, folded Afghan my mother knitted years ago that we had placed underneath a giant Teddy Bear on our love seat in our living room. In recent weeks, as he grew sicker, I would sleep next to him on the love seat, often petting him during the night.
Last night, he slept unusually well, falling asleep about 10 PM. I dozed on and off, petting him whenever I awoke. About 4 AM, he jumped off the love seat and walked into the kitchen for a snack. A few minutes later, he returned, jumping back onto the love seat but falling down on his first try. He made it on his second try. Thumper and I stayed there until around 9 AM, when I phoned Dr. Beth. She said to bring him in at 10:30 and we did. She checked him out, noticing he had lost another pound in the past week, now weighing only a little over six pounds, almost four pounds less than he weighed a month ago. After I told her how little he had been eating and how much trouble he was having going to the bathroom, Dr. Beth politely suggested that it might be time to end his misery. I reluctantly agreed, realizing it was for his own good.
I signed a cremation form, authoring his ashes to be tossed over the Pacific Ocean, not far from my home. I hope he will be happy in his next life. I will think of Thumper often, especially whenever I ride along the Blue Pacific....
That was very difficult for me to write. His life has influenced so many of us in so many ways.... Visit the Apple web site and say "Goodbye" to Steve in your own way:
My Apple IIe computer is on the computer desk behind me and it still works beautifully. I bought it when I received my income tax refund in 1983 -- on St. Patrick's Day -- at a MicroAge computer store on the first floor of the Board of Trade Building in Chicago. In the years that followed, I bought a variety of software programs to use with it. I was amazed by all my Apple IIe could do. And I still am!
I began using computers when I was a graduate student at Stanford University in the mid-1960's, learning both Basic and Fortran -- and mastering keypunching in the process! By the time I earned my M.B.A. at the University of Chicago in 1976, computer technology had grown by leaps and bounds. Statistics Professor Harry Roberts developed one of the first spreadsheet programs, which he named IDA, short for "Interactive Data Analysis." IDA offered 110 rows and 19 columns for its users. More than 100 colleges and universities around the country quickly signed up to use Harry's IDA program.
I loved computers for two reasons: first, because they made it easy to solve complex mathematical problems; and second, because I loved how easy it was to write with them.
But it was Apple that brought computers into our homes, quickly followed by IBM and then other companies.
In the mid-1980's, after I bought my Apple IIe, I discovered some online web sites that made it easy to communicate with other computer users. One was called The Source; the other was called CompuServe. Both allowed members to send messages, or emails, to other members. And both sites offered a variety of information services, as did the Dow Jones web site. I used all three sites for my job and for personal use.
Working in financial public relations, I found it easy to send articles I had written for clients via email, eliminating expensive overnight messenger costs. It took some clients awhile to get used to emailing documents, but once they discovered how much cheaper it was to communicate this way, they soon appreciated both the ease and the value of emailing documents. Remember, this was in the middle and late 1980s.
In 1987, I moved to Southern California and found a job that required me to use an Apple Macintosh Computer. Using the owners manual, I quickly mastered it. And I learned a desktop publishing program from Adobe called Pagemaker that enabled me to layout articles I had written.
I could go on and on talking about innovations since Steve Jobs and his alter ego Steve Wozniak launched Apple Computer and introduced the first Apple II in 1977, but you can Google their names and read all about them.
This video will give you a good look at Steve Jobs. It shows him delivering the commencement address in 2005 to the graduating class at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, not too far from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino:
Take time to pause and think about how Steve Jobs has changed our lives...and the lives of millions of people around the world!
The late Peter Jennings (ABC TV) reporting on the destruction of the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
Everyone remembers where they were when they heard about the planes crashing into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. I heard about it about 6:20 AM PDT (9:20 AM EDT) after reading emails from two friends of mine in the U.K. Both said essentially the same thing: "We are sorry for what happened in New York City!"
Since I had just woke up, I didn't know what they were talking about, so I immediately turned on my TV -- and remained glued to it for days on end. I was filled with anger at the terrorists who caused these two planes to crash into the Twin Towers -- and at their counterparts who caused another plane to crash into the Pentagon and a fourth plane to crash into a field in Pennsylvania.
Peter Jennings
ABC-TV's Peter Jennings remained on the air all day and a good part of the night on September 11th. Jennings, a journalist's journalist (1938-2005), reported on seeing people jumping to their deaths from the burning World Trade Center. At first, viewers saw a few of them jump, but then ABC-TV wisely decided not to televise the horror of other jumpers as they fell to their deaths.
I remember seeing firemen and policemen rushing to the Twin Towers, many never to return. I remember seeing people running from the Twin Towers as fast as they could to escape the crashing buildings, cloaked in dust and debris as they ran to safety.
I remember seeing a TV reporter interviewing Franciscan priest Father Mychal Judge, Chaplain of the Fire Department of New York, who was about to enter one of the Towers to administer last rites to firefighters. But Father Judge did not come out alive.
Father Mychal Judge being carried out of the World Trade Center. Photo courtesy of Reuters.
Father Judge was designated as "Victim 0001" -- and recognized as the first official victim of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Other victims perished before him including air crew, passengers, and occupants of the Twin Towers, but Judge was the first certified fatality because his was the first body to be recovered and brought to the coroner.
And I remember the dust. Everyone was covered with dust from the collapsing buildings as they ran for their lives. Brave TV reporters and their crews were in the streets below, trying to talk with people, then running with them away from the collapsing buildings, everyone covered with dust.
Our nation was stunned. How could this happen in America? Who were these terrorists? Where did they come from? Was Osama Bin Laden behind the 9/11 attack?
In the days that followed, we learned just how many died because of the attack on Sept. 11th -- nearly 3,000 people!
As we commemorate the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11th, let us pray for those who died and their loved ones.
And let us pray that nothing like this ever happens again.
Shasta beverages are lower-priced alternatives to Pepsi and Coca-Cola. I have always preferred Coke or Pepsi to Shasta because I think they taste much better.
In recent weeks, Shasta has been running TV commercials showing people falling down after someone throws a can of Shasta at them and hits them in the head.
Can you imagine being hit in the head with a full 12-ounce can of soda pop? Can you imagine your neighbor's reaction if one of your kids threw a can of Shasta at one of their kids and hit them in the forehead?
How would you feel if someone threw a can of Shasta at you and hit you in the forehead with it?
Take a look at the Shasta commercial, either right here or on YouTube:
I don't know who at Shasta is responsible for these numbskull ads. But if you would like to complain about them to Shasta, email them:
My parents, aunts and uncles, and neighbors spent many evenings in the 1940's and 1950's playing cards, often five-card stud, sitting around the kitchen table in our Chicago home, drinking beer, smoking, and on Fridays and Saturdays staying up until 1 or 2 a.m., sometime later. "Your Hit Parade" and other shows I really liked!
Looking back at all of the fun we had in those days, I remember a song my father introduced me to in 1948: A Deck of Cards by Tex Ritter.
Tex Ritter
Tex sang about a soldier fighting in North Africa who is reported for looking at his deck of cards during a Sunday church service. Listen to Tex tell this amazing story:
A Deck of Cards
by Tex Ritter (1948)
This remains one of my favorite stories. In 1959, a young Wink Martindale recited "A Deck of Cards" on the Ed Sullivan show. Perhaps you saw it, too. Here it is:
Back in the late 1940's, my dad -- another George Spink -- and I often drove from Berwyn to Wrigley Field to watch the Bears, dressing as warmly as we could, but often freezing our asses off anyway.
My dad stocking up on our way to Gage's Lake on any Sunday.
My dad inspecting our outdoor Christmas tree lights.
Once we got our first TV in 1950, we didn't go to Wrigley Field as often when it was really cold outside.
My dad was a sports fanatic. He would watch one Bears or Cardinals game on TV and listen to the other one on the radio. He did the same thing with the Cubs or White Sox.
When the Bears moved to Soldiers Field, we went there a few times each season, but when the temps dropped, it was even colder than Wrigley Field.
No matter how cold it was outside, we always went to see the Bears play the Packers when they played in Chicago!
Bears tickets didn't cost my dad anything. He was a lifelong friend of George Halas. After my dad graduated from Riverside-Brookfield High School in 1928, where he was a star quarterback, he played semi-pro football for seven years until me married my mom in 1935. Halas often watched my dad play and they became friends.
George Halas, Owner of the Chicago Bears
My dad worked for the Federal Reserve Board on LaSalle and Jackson during the 1930's, learning to be an accountant. He often had lunch across Jackson Blvd. at Harding's. My mom was 16 when she began working at Harding's in 1932, when my dad was 22. She lived in Berwyn on Wesley Avenue, a block north of the CB&Q, with her five sisters and two brothers and their parents. My dad lived with his parents and brother and sister on Gage Road in Riverside. He walked about mile and a half from their home to my mom's home to take her out. They often went to the Roxy Theater two blocks south on Grove near Windsor, then to Prince Castle for ice cream. Sometimes they rode the bus to the Berwyn or Olympic Theaters on Cermak Road.
They married in June 1935, when my mom was 19 and my dad was 25. This photo was take in the backyard of my mother's home on their wedding day.
They bought that home from my mom' father in 1944. I grew up there, too.
They soon bought their first car, driving to the Aragon or Trianon or the Grand Terrace ballrooms in Chicago and at Melody Mill in North Riverside just west of Berwyn. They said driving their own car sure beat taking the bus, streetcars, and the "L" to go to and from these big band meccas.
In 1944, my dad went to work as head accountant for B. F. Brown and Company, a small housing and feeding firm at Clinton and Madison, a block east of the Streamliner. George Halas and my dad had lunch together at the Streamliner on Fridays for many years, until my dad died in January 1957 from Hodgkin's Disease. Halas came to his Awake at Herron's Funeral Home on Oak Park Avenue in South Berwyn.
Halas often gave my dad hand-autographed Bears footballs and Cubs baseballs to give to me. To my dad's dismay, my buddies and I played with them, believing they would bring us luck! We played football almost every day from September on until it was just to cold to do so.
When I turned 40 in 1980, my mom surprised me by giving me an autographed White Sox baseball in a plastic baseball holder. It came with a note from my mom: "I hope you are now old enough to take proper care of this one!"
It has sat safely on a bookcase in my living room for the past 30 years.
At the time, we were parishioners of Holy Name Cathedral, near our homes not far away. One of the young priests was Chaplain for the White Sox. He took the baseball to the White Sox front office to find out which year it was from. They identified the players as being members of the 1951 White Sox.
A couple of years later while working in the Mayor's Office of Special Events, I met George Halas again at a function we held at the Chicago Cultural Center. When I phoned his office to invite him and told his secretary my name, she paused for a moment, then said, "A name from the past.... Just a minute for Mr. Halas!" Halas came on the phone in seconds. He said he would love to attend and to meet me again.
We sat next to each other at the dinner. He told me what good friends he had been with my dad, telling me some of things I mentioned above, things I didn't know before. He couldn't have been kinder to me.
I have loved big band music since I was a boy growing up in Berwyn, Illinois, a Chicago suburb about nine miles southwest of the Loop and just west of Cicero. My parents and my mom's two sisters who lived with us loved it, too, listening to it on the radio all day long and into the evening. I remember big band remotes from coast to coast, which came on the air at 10 PM in Chicago.
One of my aunts, Ruth, built a terrific collection of big band 78's. She began collecting them in 1938, usually buying two or three a week. Her 78's are now safely stored in a closet with shelves in my rear hallway. I listen to them from time to time on my 78 turntable. They have a presence that has never been captured on 45's, LP's or CD's.
In 1949, when Aunt Ruth married, my father encouraged me to collect my own records. He bought me a portable phonograph. In 1954, he bought me a better one from Webcor for my grammar school graduation. I bought 45's and LP's from money I earned working part-time as a tray boy and later a dishwasher at a nearby hospital. My record collection grew ... and grew ... and grew as the years went by.
I'm Old-Fashioned
Glenn Miller and His Orchestra with Skip Nelson (vocal)
In 1976, while I was working at the University of Chicago, I began hosting a three-hour big band show, The Saturday Swing Shift, on Saturday mornings on WHPK-FM, the 10-watt student-run campus radio station. In 1978, I was invited by WBEZ-FM (NPR in Chicago) to move my show there. WBEZ had a 50,000-watt transmitter that served Northern Illinois, Southern Wisconsin, Northern Indiana, and Western Michigan. My showed aired on Saturday afternoons from 1 to 4 PM. I hosted my show on WBEZ until September 1981, when I decided to do other things on Saturdays -- a decision I have often regretted.
From 1977 until 1986, when I moved from Chicago to California, I often wrote freelance articles about jazz and big band music for the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times.
My love of jazz and big band music has never subsided. I have always loved it!
When I launched Tuxedo Junction in October 2000, I knew very little about building and maintaining a web site. I began using computers in college in the early 1960's and bought my first one, an Apple IIe, in March 1983. During the months and years that followed, I learned a great deal using my Apple IIe. It now sits on the computer desk behind me and still works beautifully.
It was on July 4th, 1999 when I bought my first PC. I was no stranger to PC's, having used them at work for a decade or so and in classes in various software programs at the Venice Skills Center near my home in Los Angeles.
Late in 1999, I joined a Yahoo! site devoted to big band music. It had about 20 members who lived in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. We shared our love of the big bands. But late in the summer of 2000, Yahoo! surprisingly stopped hosting these kinds of groups. I am still in contact with some of these big band friends.
Fortunately, about that time, a friend gave me a copy of Microsoft's FrontPage, a program designed for building web sites. I took to Front Page like a duck to water, using it to build Tuxedo Junction.
If I recall correctly, Tuxedo Junction had 19 pages when I launched it in October 2000. I expanded it quickly. A year later, in September 2001, I retired -- and immediately enrolled in a web design class at the Venice Skills Center, attending class from 8 AM until noon, M-F, for the next nine months, studying HTML and Dreamweaver, another program for building web sites.
Today, it has about 125 pages. You'll find Playlist, Juke Box, and Articles pages, which currently offer more than 60 articles about big band music. many written by members of my big band broadcast blog, The Palomar, by members of my "anything goes" blog, George's Blog, and the rest by yours truly. Most of these articles pertain to the big bands, the Swing Era, but a few do not. I'll be adding many more articles by my friends and myself in the months ahead. Some of my own articles appeared in the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Chicago Magazine in the 1970's and 1980's. I wrote others more recently, specifically for Tuxedo Junction or my blogs -- including those about Les Brown, Tommy Dorsey, Spike Jones, and Stan Kenton.
On most pages are Internet music players that offer you about 2,000 big band songs and 200 radio broadcasts. It takes visitors awhile to explore Tuxedo Junction, but big band fans soon find their way around. I urge new visitors to take their time -- to sit back, relax, and enjoy our site as they do.
Tuxedo Junction has a Guestbook, too, where visitors post comments on an amazing number of topics.
It's hard to believe that a decade has passed by already. During this time, I have received emails from big band fans around the world, from Kankakee to Kuala Lumpur, who live in more than 55 countries. I never dreamt when I launched Tuxedo Junction in 2000 that so many people in so many countries shared my love of big band music. It has gradually grown into one of the most popular big band web sites on the Internet. You can enjoy a large variety of big band music on Tuxedo Junction from the 1930's right through today.
For the last 2-1/2 years, Tuxedo Junction has been hosted by Yahoo! Small Business Web Hosting, the most reliable and affordable web-hosting service I have ever used. Yahoo! Small Business Web Hosting offers two services Tuxedo Junction requires: unlimited web space and unlimited bandwidth. Yahoo! has never let me down. I highly recommend them!
The Palomar celebrated its third anniversary in July. You'll find more than 400 entries, a remarkable accomplishment, thanks to the imaginative contributions of our Palomar members.
I am always impressed by the big band topics Palomar members write about as they share their passion for big band music. For example, one member, Robin Kalhorn, wrote a mesmerizing entry about prisoners in a Japanese internment camp during World War Two who formed a big band to entertain themselves and other prisoners. Ironically, big band music has been popular in postwar Japan for years. We have a number of visitors to Tuxedo Junction from Japan who share our love for the big bands, the Swing Era.
I do not charge an annual membership fee for visitors to enjoy Tuxedo Junction or The Palomar, as some big band sites do. Instead, from time to time, I ask visitors to make a donation to keep my sites online. We are all pressed for money in these difficult economic times, but working together, supporting each other, we can keep the sounds of the big bands, the Swing Era, alive on my two sites.
You'll find yellow "Donate" button links at the top of almost every page on Tuxedo Junction and on The Palomar's main page. You may donate via your credit card or PayPal, whichever you prefer.
If you like, you can make a donation right now or at anytime by following this link:
Jack, the Irish say, grew up in a simple village where he earned a reputation for cleverness as well as laziness. He applied his fine intelligence to wiggling out of any work that was asked of him, preferring to lie under a solitary oak endlessly whittling. In order to earn money to spend at the local pub, he looked for an "easy shilling" from gambling, a pastime at which he excelled. In his whole life he never made a single enemy, never made a single friend and never performed a selfless act for anyone.
One Halloween, as it happened, the time came for him to die. When the devil arrived to take his soul, Jack was lazily drinking at the pub and asked permission to finish his ale. The devil agreed, and Jack thought fast. "If you really have any power," he said slyly, "you could transform yourself into a shilling."
The devil snorted at such child's play and instantly changed himself into a shilling. Jack grabbed the coin. He held it tight in his hand, which bore a cross-shaped scar. The power of the cross kept the devil imprisoned there, for everyone knows the devil is powerless when faced with the cross. Jack would not let the devil free until he granted him another year of life. Jack figured that would be plenty of time to repent. The devil left Jack at the pub.
The year rolled around to the next Halloween, but Jack never got around to repenting. Again the devil appeared to claim his soul, and again Jack bargained, this time challenging him to a game of dice, an offer Satan could never resist, but a game that Jack excelled at. The devil threw snake eyes -- two one's -- and was about to haul him off, but Jack used a pair of dice he himself had whittled. When they landed as two threes, forming the T-shape of a cross, once again the devil was powerless. Jack bargained for more time to repent.
He kept thinking he would get around to repentance later, at the last possible minute. But the agreed-upon day arrived and death took him by surprise. The devil hadn't showed up and Jack soon found out why not. Before he knew it Jack was in front of the pearly gates. St. Peter shook his head sadly and could not admit him, because in his whole life Jack had never performed a single selfless act. Then Jack presented himself before the gates of hell, but the devil was still seething. Satan refused to have anything to do with him.
"Where can I go?" cried Jack. "How can I see in the darkness?"
The devil tossed a burning coal into a hollow pumpkin and ordered him to wander forever with only the pumpkin to light his path. From that day to this he has been called "Jack O'Lantern."
This is one of my favorite songs from 1968. Here are three versions, the first by Lucinda Williams, who sings it so beautifully at the end of the 2006 film, "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly.
Next: Glen Campbell's version from 1968, which was a blockbuster of a hit for him.
Finally, John Hartford's version. He wrote the song and performed with Glen Campbell in the late 1960's.
Songs of 1963
I'll never forget 1963, the year I graduated from Northwestern University. Here are three songs from that year that have remained among my favorites ever since. Enjoy them!
Do you remember how volatile America was in 1968? I do, as if it were yesterday. Now, in 2008, it is being remembered by AARP.
Grazin' in the Grass
Hugh Masekela (1968) and The Friends of Distinction (1969)
Songs of 1969
"Soulful Strut"
Young-Holt Unlimited (1969)
"Am I the Same Girl"
Swing Out Sister (1992)
"Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?"
Chicago Transit Authority (1969)
"Only the Beginning"
Chicago Transit Authority (1969)
Swingera Yahoo! Group
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Swingera Yahoo! Group to receive updates about our web sites and blogs. Members can send messages to our nearly 450 Group members to ask questions about the big bands, the Swing Era, or buy and sell old records or memorabilia.
