Memories

Paul McCartney’s Very Good Month

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Paul McCartney was having a pretty successful season the autumn of 1968. Now, most of the autumns that Paul McCartney has spent on this Earth in his adult years have probably felt quite successful to him, but autumn 1968 may have been special even by his standards.

In August of that year, The Beatles had two songs prepared for release as a single: “Revolution” and “Hey Jude.” The band was about to release its double album, “The Beatles” (more commonly known as the White Album), but these two songs were not going to be included. A rendition of “Revolution” appears on the album, but the group had another, a faster version, that it wanted released. “Hey Jude” and the hit single version of “Revolution” did not fit that already over-stuffed album, so the two songs were slated to be their new record label’s (Apple Records) first single.
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Age Is Just a Thing

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

One friend, upon hearing me describe a new ache or an old pain, used to reply, “You’ve never been (insert age here) before!”

At first, I found this insulting, then, later, very insulting. But knowing the friend as I did, I eventually realized that he was not being dismissive when he said this, but was instead reminding me to do something I did not have a long history of doing: To pay attention to my body. He has since passed on and will remain forever 65.

He was saying that almost everything we experience is unique to us, yet not at all unique. That sentence is either wise in its simpleness, so simple and wise that “simpleness” is too complicated a word for it, or incredibly banal. All of the above: We are all growing older. I’ve never been 46 before. So it is.
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Forever Snug

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

My current crush and I are grabbing some sun today at the same local pond I wrote about last week in “Forever Snug“:

Yesterday was one of those days in which the lifeguards outnumbered the swimmers. We were at a local park that features a small lake and beach; busy late August life kept the crowds away even on a sunny Saturday afternoon, so we were one couple out of maybe ten groups. Two families, each with three water-loving toddlers, splashed about, and none of the children were yet old enough to test their limits against the flimsy, algae-covered nylon rope demarcating the “deep end” on three sides. The lifeguards chatted with the families, flirted with each other, bought each other ice cream, and burned off the calories breaking each others’ speed records chasing after the ice cream truck.
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