Happy 50th, Summer of Love.

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Time flies. You blink once or twice, and suddenly it's 2017 and it's been 50! Years! since the Summer of Love.

My pal Shawn Inmon reminded me about this yesterday when he posted about the anniversary on Facebook. He asked where we were in the summer of 1967, when the hippies were bringing peace, love, and music to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Me? I was nowhere near that scene. I was nine years old and living at home with my parents. But I wore love beads (because Davy Jones did!), and I had a transistor radio tuned to WLS Radio in Chicago -- and really, that was all I needed.

The official song of the Summer of Love was Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco." It embodied the innocence of those days, and called everyone to the city by the bay.

In truth, of course, there was more going on than just a love-in. Drugs got Janis Joplin, as they did many '60s artists. Too bad -- she was a powerful performer. "Piece of My Heart," which she did with Big Brother and the Holding Company, is my favorite of her tracks.

What strikes me is how the music of that time would be sliced and diced into categories today. "San Francisco" would be folk-rock; "Piece of My Heart" would be blues; and the Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" would be...hmm. We don't really have a category today for psychedelic rock. But the kids on "American Bandstand" didn't seem to care.

The British invasion was a few years old by the time the Summer of Love rolled around, and some British bands made the scene -- including the Animals.

And then there was Grateful Dead, whose music still defies explanation. Country? Rock? Regardless, they kept truckin' until just a few years ago.

So where were you in the Summer of Love?

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These moments of rockin' blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Socked in.

My daughter Kitty took this at 4:00 p.m. today.

 

It's been an unusually foggy day here today.  We don't get fog all that often in the DC area, and when we do, it usually burns off by midday.  But this fog has stuck around for more than 24 hours.  It came in around dusk last night and it's still foggy out there right now.  It's like we've been transplanted to San Francisco, except without the cable cars and the $50 per day parking.

But the fog has brought us temperatures in the mid 50s.  In mid-January.  So really, I'm not going to complain.

As for my writing progress, it's not foggy at all.  (I know -- that segue was a long reach. Work with me.)  Here's what's happening:

• Tara at Love of the Goddess posted a great review of Seized today.  
• This coming Friday, the 18th, my week of stops as part of the Orangeberry Big Bang begins (check the Tour Dates page for the particulars), and a couple of those spots are for reviews of Tapped (here's hoping the reviewers are kind...).  
• Also on Friday, I'll once again be the guest on The Indie Exchange's Blog Talk Radio podcast.  The show will be live starting at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, but if you miss it, you can use the same link to listen to it later.
• I'm in the midst of writing a series of posts for Indies Unlimited on how to do writerly-type stuff in Microsoft Word.  On Friday, I tackled Styles.  This coming Friday, I'll talk about how to design your own blank document template.  Let me know if you have any questions about how to do something in Word.  My employer has given me tons of Word training and I love to use it to help folks. 
• Rursday Reads went live this week -- and amazingly enough, I managed to review a book that I'd already reviewed on Goodreads.  No, really, I'm going to start making a dent in my to-be-reviewed pile this week.  Really, I am.  Honest.

Oh, wait.  I bet you wanted to know about the sweater, right?  I'm somewhat less than halfway done with the front.  The cable is working out okay, but I do have to concentrate.  Which means that knitting this sweater and karaoke, for instance, don't mix.  I had to keep ripping out my mistakes while Kitty was taking her turn.

What? Gravid?  Oh yeah, it's coming.  I started the first editing pass early last week.  That kind of stalled when I realized I was leaving way too many loose ends to tie up in book 5.  So I wrote a new chapter one night, and then yesterday morning I spent several hours shoehorning it in.  I think it makes sense, but I'm going to do at least one more pass before I send it over to my editor.  (How's Imbolc looking for you, Suzu?)

I also need to go through Gravid and make a list of all those loose ends, just to make sure I knit 'em all in in the final book.  And (speaking of foggy), I need to figure out exactly how I'm going to handle the Big Mediation Scene that's coming up in book 5, not that I've built up any anticipation for it or anything.  I'm looking forward to that about as much as Naomi is, I suspect -- but like Naomi, I'm kind of ready to just get it over with.

And here we go!  Have a great week, everyone.

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These moments of -- bloggy fogginess? Foggy blogginess? Anyway, whatever they are, they are brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.