It has been years since I put up an ABBA video. Those used to be standard here. They came out just as I was getting away from popular music and I didn't like them. Made fun of them. Came to like them.
Flamingoes were big around here in the early years, especially the authentic Don Featherstone type. Meerkats figured prominently for a few years as comic relief. I started as a psychblogger, and put out my Underground DSM right from the beginning. You pick up things that aren't in the textbooks if you just pay attention. I also carried news from Romania fairly often, but even I'm not interested in it anymore.
I think I understand about Romania. Most of the people I knew in Liberia are now dead or scattered far. The folks in the news there now are maybe 3 connections away from me at best. I may go back one more time with a few family, but things are looking dicey and even the burial may not happen.
ReplyDeleteI care, but caring is a lot more abstract than it used to be.
I also carried news from Romania fairly often, but even I'm not interested in it anymore.
ReplyDeleteSounds like me and Venezuela. I worked in Venezuela, in the oilfield. In addition, a lot of hometown friends had connections with Venezuela (but none of those connections had anything to do with oil)- such as one who, last I heard, corresponds with Virginia Betancourt, daughter of the late President. Back in Texas I worked for a year with a firm that employed a lot of Venezuelans- nearly all vehemently anti-Chavez.
For 10-15 years, I followed and commented on English language Venezuelan blogs. They have tapered off, and so have I. Venezuela is lost, one more casualty to lefties. Here are 2 anecdotes to indicate why Venezuela is lost. When I worked there, I met some people with names like "Lenin." Which indicates Commie parents. While the Venezuelans who ran the blogs I read were decidedly anti-Chavista and anti-Fidel, many were still quite lefty by US standards. Some were reasonable, some were not. Unreasonable: the blogger who was a Reed graduate- with a take on US politics that could have been taken from the Reed campus today. He had no idea why a degree of neutrality in US politics- he went off the wall with Trump- would help garner support for democracy in Venezuela.
(The irony of Venezulan Lefties for me is that purchasing reading Carlos Rangel's Del Buen Salvaje al Buen Revolucionario in Venezuela helped turn me right-wing)
Yeah, ABBA is OK. Listened to them every night in Spanish at the restaurant in Argentina that provided our meals.
When I was a teenager there was a boy in our neighborhood who was obviously effeminate, and we used to tease him mercilessly for listening to things like the Carpenters and Carol King, while the rest of us liked rock and roll. Now that I'm older I have to admit that he had excellent taste in music.
ReplyDeleteThe still used for that video caught them in an unattractive posture.
ReplyDeleteMy ear was never tuned well to ABBA (or quite a lot of other groups). It was in some ways like listening to somebody talk in French--I could make out some phrases, and get what I hoped was the gist, though sometimes it was the opposite. The "take a chance on me" was nice and clear, though.