Birthday Present

Tea for the Tillerman
My friend Etta got me this album for my 18th birthday.
(Just wish I could remember what I got her that year!)
We listened to it all summer long, especially this one:
"Father and Son"
Father: It's not time to make a change,
Just relax, take it easy.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to know.
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.

I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy,
To be calm when you've found something going on.
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you've got.
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.

Son: How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again.
It's always been the same, same old story.
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.

Father: It's not time to make a change,
Just sit down, take it slowly.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to go through.

[Insert Son: "Away, away, away
I know I have to make this decision / Alone / No]

Find a girl, settle down,
if you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.

Son: All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,
It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it.

[Insert Father: "Stay, stay, stay
Why must you go / And make this decision alone]

If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them you know not me.
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.

Music & lyrics by Cat Stevens (b 1948)

I know we're supposed to call him Yusuf Islam now, but I'm with Miss Manners on this one. She says that people "are allowed free play with their names, even to the point of changing [them] but they are not allowed to chastise relations and childhood friends for using the old one" (374 - 75).

Recent Wisdom from Yusuf Islam“Then it dawned on me: Even with the entire world sinking deeper into despair, we can still sing! The spirit of humanity can be subdued, but never vanquished. And nothing brings out that spirit like a good song. As a short film of Nelson Mandela I watched recently showed, he danced and smiled from East to West, saying, 'It is music and dancing that makes me at peace with the world and at peace with myself.' "
~ Cat / Yusuf, quoted in Rolling Stone

P.S.
I read a line the other day that took me right back to 1975:
". . . in some crevice of our souls, we are always seventeen."
Richard North Patterson
More Cat Stevens on my blogs:
"Super Moon"
"Moonshadow"
"Many, Many Moons"

P.P.S.
Birthday present from my friend Marilyn ~ 1975

Photographic Illustrations by Dr. John C. Weaver
Accompanying quotations edited by Ben W. Whitley

May Day Birthday

Happy May Day to All!

Peonies, 1887
Charles Edward Perugini, 1839 - 1918
[Previous Peony Post]

&

Happy Birthday to Etta!

For my Christmas present this past December, my dear,
life - long friend Marietta gave me a big shopping bag
full of my old letters to her, thinking that I could use
them for my memoirs, and even better -- for blogging!
Thanks Et!

************

Thanks to my friend Mitzi
for sharing this photo from the Woodland Trust

Ah listen, for silence is not lonely!
Imitate the magnificent trees
That speak no word of their rapture, but only
Breathe largely the luminous breeze.

from the poem -- about the painter -- "Corot"
by D. H. Lawrence
Burnetta writes: "Oh what scene, from my childhood in west Kentucky! I have to share this. I just makes me long for the "olden days" at least in landscape.

Indeed! My friend Vickie Amador and I often reminisce about wandering down a lovely path such as this, gathering wildflowers in a basket as a May Day surprise for our elders!