Melody's Blog

Any follower of my blog knows I come and go. Well, since my last post in July 2018, I have been in hospital 12 or 13 times, usually for 5-6 days at a time. Just one thing after another. I don’t believe you can withstand cancer for nearly 40 years without a bunch of other stuff going wrong and indeed, it is the effects of the cancer causing most of my problems. Now, we are stuck in shelter-in-place in most parts of the world due to COVID-19. I’m hoping to use this enforced period of self-isolation to write some more and edit more of my dad’s stories. I have also had a couple more books that were accepted in the Paul Bechtold Library Publications project before I had to resign to long-term disability, and everything else has had to wait on me getting those finished. I’m sure I wrote about the books we were publishing elsewhere, but the last two books in the project are awesome and I want to comment on them. The penultimate book is titled  Hattie’s Book: A Woman’s Story in the Ci...

So, right after I posted the last Heaven Playlist post, I found another Watersons' song I wanted to include, plus Spotify's 'Your Daily Mix' gave me a couple more in the next day or so that also fit the bill. I go hot and cold on Spotify—sometimes it gives me a good list of new stuff in my Daily Mix and other times it is abhorrent. I'm struggling along still to see if it works for me. But it sure did on this particular night. The new-found Watersons', don't know how I missed it because it is from the Sound, Sound Your Instruments CD, MORNING TRUMPET . The hymn, O When Shall I See Jesus , is ascribed to John Leland, an 18th century Baptist minister from Massachusetts. Julian (Julian, ah, Julian—WAS the highest authority on info about hymns back in the old days and I treasure my copy before the internet—maybe I'll write a short blog about Julian at some point) calls this a 'vigorous lyric' which is not how I'd describe it at all. I...