Sunday, July 19, 2009

Sad for Frank

My cousin Frank is ill... very ill. He's been dealing with health issues for several years, but his incredibly optimistic spirit and his indefatigable energy made it easy to forget that he had a number of serious issues confronting him.

Tonight Frank is struggling in a battle that I don't think he can win, and I'm very sad. But Frank wouldn't want people to be sad; he spent his life making people happy, both with his charisma and his musical ability. So I'd like to give Frank a chance to make people happy once again with a nice bluesy rendition of "Jambalaya" (Frank's the singer and lead guitarist; while blues was his passion, he loved to take songs that weren't particularly bluesy and rework 'em into his style, as he does here). This is one of several clips he has on YouTube; look for "Frankie Moates" if you'd like to see more.



Saturday, July 18, 2009

And Iran So Very Far Away...

Just saw a news feature about protestors who are, for the fourth straight weekend, staging protests on a streetcorner in Atlanta against the Iranian elections.

Yeah, that does a lot of good. Watching a half-dozen to a dozen misfits trying to yell their organized cheers against Iran is amusing, but if these guys really want to make their point of view known in any significatn way, why are they wasting their time yelling here? Wouldn't some place like, y'know, Iran be a better site for their silly displays? Or maybe even some country that has diplomatic relations with Iran?

Of course, that might be costly and more than a little risky. So instead, they stage the most insignificant protest possible by getting together with their friends in a city that Iranians probably can't even find on a map so that they can yell to people who almost unanimously agree that Iran is a very sucky place.

(Maybe, if they feel like they have to stage their little protest in the US, they could go to Washington and protest in front of the White House, since its occupants seem to be about the only people in the US who think that Iran's government is comprised of reasonable people...)