Orel Family

In the car, getting late in the evening, driving down I-70 through Maryland near the end of a long family drive. Turned on XM6, the sixties station. They were doing a countdown, I guess of this day/week in 1961. The DJ was managed to mispronounce Warren Spahn's name (Spahn won his 300th game this week that year), but no matter, the music won out. They were doing the top 16 of 1961. Coming in at #16: Ike and Tina, "It's Gonna Work Out Fine." I don't know the last time I heard someone other than Springsteen do this song. Nor did I appreciate just how faithfully Bruce imitated Tina's voice. This put me in a good mood. #15: The Chordettes doing "Never On Sunday." Now, everyone knows the melody to this one. But I don't recall ever hearing it with the words. Nor did I ever really put a context to Bruce's "Never On Sunday" comment in the "Blood Brothers" video. Now I'm smiling, big time: I think I know what Burce was doing...

On August 4rd, the Washington Times ran an article titled, "Lieberman rival owns stock in Wal-Mart", by Charles Hunt. See "http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060803-112200-4787r.htm for the article. Since Lamont famously took incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman to task during the recent Connecticut primary campaign over a $1,000 Wal-Mart PAC contribution to Lieberman's campaign, and, accoring to the opening sentence of the Washington Times article, "sharply criticized the employment practices of Wal-Mart," the surface accusation appears to be one of hypocrisy. The article says, "Mr. Lamont and his wife jointly own two accounts containing as much as $16,000 in Wal-Mart stock. Their Wal-Mart holdings spin off as much as $3,500 in annual dividends. In addition, a trust fund he set up for one of his children contains as much as $15,000 in Wal-Mart stock and spins off as much as $1,000 in dividends." Something's not right with those numbers, ...

Last November, I established an associates account with amazon, going primarily from my discography page (http://bruce.orel.ws/discography.html). Any amazon.com sales generated by people navigating to amazon from my site generates commissions, that amazon eventually sends my way. As I noted at that time, anything that comes my way from amazon.com will be turned over to charity, on a quarterly basis, doubled by a match from me. All selected charities will be from the set of charities documented at http://bruce.orel.ws/charities.html. During the second quarter of 2006, I introduced a new section of the site, "The Songs of the Seeger Sessions," at http://bruce.orel.ws/seegersessions. When the site was prominently linked in from http://www.brucespringsteen.net and from several other high-volume sites shortly before the release of "The Seeger Sessions," traffic on my sites increased substantially. I added amazon linkage to the new section shortly thereafter. Due ...

July 23, a cool night, finally time for the first apple cider of the season -- tart! Using the transparents. Nearly 3 gallons, and just in time, we were down to our last gallon, and I wouldn't have wanted to buy any. At the farmers' market someone was selling something called "Lodi," which is very similar. Someone else was selling all the corn you could fit in a bag for $2.50. I bought the corn -- 20 ears. Then, the heat wave. So hot I almost put the roof up in the convertible... but I resisted. The pool hit 88.2 degrees, with zero chlorine. A fungus came and wiped out the cucumbers, pretty much overnight. Not as bad as the animals attacking the corn... but only because corn is nearly holy and cucumbers aren't. July 31, the crickets came out. August 2, a light show as the clouds rolled in and the heat wave finally broke. Heat lightning everywhere. This is the best time of year. Too bad it all ends so quickly.