Musical Milestone

“Although my staunchly Irish Catholic family considered it a mortal sin, that day I wasn’t paying attention to the rioting in Northern Ireland’s Derry.

 

Seated at the living room table, which was cluttered with artifacts of all the vices of our day, I was consumed with my Gretsch guitar, practicing with friends.

 

 

“Just think!” Bernie reminded us. “Everybody from Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane to Joan Baez and Janis Joplin will be there this weekend!”

 

 

“Feh!” Helen bragged. “We can be just as good. After all, we have been practicing constantly for the past three full months together!

 

 

It’s time yet again for Rochelle’s weekly Friday Fictioneers.  This week, Yvette Prior supplies our photo prompt.  Please read Rochelle’s blog for all the details.

Annunci

10500 Cielo Drive

It was  August, 1969.  Jason, Bernie, and Helen were on summer vacation from Walt Whitman High School. Slightly over a year ago was the second Kennedy assassination, and they were losing lots of friends in Southeast Asia.

 

 

Eagerly awaiting the imminent release of the Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’ album, they were listening to the white album, and hoping to go to Woodstock in a week.

 

As they were enjoying songs like ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Helter Skelter’, a sudden knock came on the door.   Pam and Larry, stunned, asked: “Have you heard what’s happened to Sharon Tate and her friends?”

 

 

This summer saw the fiftieth~milestone~anniversary of the R.F.K. assassination, and tomorrow is the forty ninth anniversary of the Manson family’s murder of Sharon Tate, Leno and Rosemary La Bianca, and their friends.  Please join us for our weekly jaunt through Rochelle’s  Friday Fictioneers.  This week, Ronda Del Boccio

supplies the photo prompt.

Humanae Vitae At Fifty

Humanae Vitae  Tomorrow will be the fiftieth anniversary of Pope (soon~to~be Saint) Paul VI’s ominously prescient 1968 Encyclical.  Because of liberalism’s ever~aggressive Culture of Death, which can be found in poisons like abortion, euthanasia, suicide, homosexuality, and other aberrations, mankind is now confronted with a Pandora’s Box of trouble.  Please donate to this worthy cause.

Major Third World Troubles

“I’ve been talking to Fraser, the history professor, and to Father Anthony, who’s from here,” Trevor reminded Raquel. 

 

“Perfect!” his wife gushed. “Each one has a bottomless pit of knowledge of this part of Africa. That’s a perfect way to keep people’s interest. One is an expert on the didactic side and the other on the narrative side.”

 

 

“The number of people living in utter poverty grew from fifty one million in 1990 to eighty six million in 2013. Along with that we can talk about the Civil war between Nigeria and Biafra between July of ’67 and January, ’70.”

 

“There’s one catch,” Trevor reminded her. “Considering that we’re asking for help with getting people jobs, health care, and education, it might be to our advantage to set the film in a less idyllic places. Imagery makes a difference.

 

The couple then proceeded to make the necessary phone calls.

 

Welcome back, yet again to What Pegman Saw , a weekly prompt based upon a Google geographic location.  Fraser and Fr. Anthony are real people. 

 

 

Remembering the Quiet Beatle

All Things Must Past..Beatle George Turns 75

st. cecilia as a metaphor and warning

“Henry and Peter made their daily trip to Erika’s House of Music at the South Bay Shopping Center.

The owner and her husband, as always, greeted them in their Austrian and German accents.

“The twenty second’s coming up,” Henry intoned.

“It’s interesting that J.F.K.was killed on the feast day of the patroness of music.”

“Yeah,” Peter reminded him. “So much of the nauseating Sexual and Cultural Revolutions of that era was set to such perfect music. A little charisma can be poisonous.”

“There’s good and bad in every era,” Henry noted as they looked around for Jimmy Page’s sheet music.

This week’s photo prompt was supplied by Bjorn Rudberg. Rochelle Wisoff~Fields guides us weekly in Friday Fictioneers, as each of us writes a hundred~word story based upon a photo prompt.

mass murderer

It’s late July,1966, in Chicago.

Muriel and Gloria spot a terrifying sight.

“I know they’ve got Richard Speck already,” cried Gloria, “but I still can’t help losing control!”

“He’s that moron who tortured eight young nursing students to death,” replied Muriel. “He was high as a kite.”

“You have to admit that is one odd sight!” stammered the former. “Do you think it’s some copycat bastard?”

“Do you have to bring that up?” Muriel went on. “That always happens.”

Trembling uncontrollably they go home and try not to dwell on their fear.

“Let’s stick together all day,” Gloria suggests.

Thanks to Janet M Webb for the photo prompt and to Rochelle Wisoff~Fields for her help each week in Friday Fictioneers.

traumatic september 11

On September 11, 1971, I moved from Jackson Heights, Queens, to Lindenhurst, in Suffolk County. It was five days before my twelfth birthday and I had a difficult time adjusting to my new circumstances. Always having gone to Catholic school, at St. Gabriel’s, I was forced, for two weeks, to attend Copiague Junior High School, the local public school,until I got into Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I ended up spending many decades in Lindenhurst but my early days there were quite a quirky trip.

On September 11, 2001, five days before my forty second birthday, the Moslem terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in Manhattan, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.,also hijacking United Airlines Flight 93. People on the left still don’t quite seem to understand that Islam is ruled by Satan. I was at 9:00 a.m. Mass that day at Our Lady of Perpetual Help when Father Edward M. Seagriff told us about the attacks.

through the past darkly

I walked into the Lindenhurst Mc Donald’s last

evening, when I noticed Mc Garrity, a neighbor and Viet Nam veteran. He came

over and said hello.

He reminisced a lot.

“Ed,” he said. “The world went to Hell when J.F.K. died.”

“This week in ’69 were the Manson killings, when Satan was defiant,

and Woodstock, when he was subtle. My friends and I were in Southeast Asia

and Fort Hood then.”

“People stood on this very spot back then and got an entire meal for a

dollar. Perfect music and fashion were everywhere. Was it really worth it

though?”

carmelite dialogues

It’s July 17, 1794 in Compiegne. Sister Teresa and her fifteen Discalced Carmelite companions are on their way to the guillotine.

“Come, Sisters,” demands Teresa. “Out of fidelity to Catholic orthodoxy, to Jesus and Mary, and to constituted authority, we go to our deaths.”

Calmly they intone the Miserere, Salve Regina, and Te Deum.

Each is decapitated, after which her body is merely thrown into a common grave.

“Well, Citizen,” an onlooker is overheard to explain joyously, “We can’t have their God and Robespierre’s and David’s goddess of reason, you understand.”

“La Marseillaise” plays in the background.