Country Road

Singing costs you. At least it was for a John Denver’s fan. $210 for disturbing the peace.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/1998526,CST-NWS-johndenver19.article

I admire someone who , at the age of 42, is still hanging on to his hobby, and his music.

A testimony to the enduring brand equity. John Denver would be pleased to hear.

The police, I suspect, couldn’t relate to the music or its volume generated through the window.

Rocky Mountain High. It must have been the refrain. The singer was communing with nature via Denver’s composition.

He was in the zone i.e. being transported back to a time and place when he first felt that special connection with the help of that tune. We all have our favorite tune.

Mine is “Reflections of my life” by the Marmalade.

Especially when I heard it play on the radio in one of those Vietnam War documentaries, with shirtless GI’s and the transistor radio hanging in the tree (they’re Bose equivalence). “oh I don’t want to die, all my sorrows…” “take me back to my old home”.

Speaking of wartime past.

Images of helicopter dropping US troops on the lawn of Haiti’s Presidential Palace couldn’t be more iconic.

The reverse of the choppers I saw leaving the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon.

Peace keeping. 21st century global mission. The revitalized USAID organization, with its Director on Sunday talk shows.

Engagement diplomacy. New model. I am for it. When we can still sit down and talk, and find growing common ground,

there is hope. Maybe we are wired for this new century (capacity to empathize and collaborate). The fact that we have averted multitude crisis and disasters, working together “without borders” shows that we have a lot more in common than that which sets us apart. There is no need for another Third Reich as a cause for rally. Just 7.0 magnitude quake here and there to test our “soft powers”. (Mrs Clinton in her speech used the word “tested”).

Her favorite was probably “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow”. It takes Village People to do good work (YMCA).

Oh, I don’t want to die. I want “sunshine, on my shoulders makes me happy”. But not too loud, please.

The neighbors are dialing 911. In some state, you might get slapped with ticket plus mileage to help balance growing budget shortfalls. Between that 42-year-old noise offender and me, we can agree on “Country Road, take me home”.