27 | August | 2021 | MY ENDURING BONES

I don’t get boodle of steady readers, but I have a few of you and right off I want you to know how much I appreciate it when you swing by, read my stuff and when you comment or like my work I am on top of the world.

So I want to explain why my posts have gotten a little skinny.

After I returned from my visit to Wisconsin to visit my son and his family my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.

She is 84 years old and it really does blow that she has to spend the next year in treatment, but you gotta do what you gotta do. She just wants to get through the treatments so she can be done with them.

My family are no strangers to some very tough challenges, so really she’s put out because that means she won’t get to make her yearly run to Vegas ( but she just got back so-) and when she hates the idea of losing her hair because she doesn’t have a lot to begin with.

Anyway, last weekend we went to a casino in Tacoma and blew off some steam. It really felt good and now we are looking ahead to the holidays and working around Mom’s appointments.

I’ve taken a sort of vacation from writing, but what I have learned from facing all sorts of challenges is that one goal that helps you the most is living your life the way you did before you got struck sideways.

So that’s what I will be doing, that’s what my Mom will be doing and that’s what the rest of our family will be doing to.

Now.

I have some grave humor and grave thoughts to dig up for my blog and I hope you will continue to enjoy it as much as I enjoy creating it for you.

Anita

I’ve chosen a couple of Murder Ballads to feature on today’s #100toHalloween because even though they’re not Halloween songs, they’re haunting and they do explain where the ghosts we celebrate on October 31st come from.

Photo A.M. Moscoso

A woman gives birth to one or two illegitimate children (usually sons) in the woods, kills them, and buries them. On her return trip home, she sees a child, or children, playing, and says that if they were hers, she would dress them in various fine garments and otherwise take care of them. The children tell her that when they were hers, she would not dress them so but murdered them. Frequently they say she will be damned for it.

Two sisters go down by a body of water, sometimes a river and sometimes the sea. The older one pushes the younger in and refuses to pull her out again; generally the lyrics explicitly state her intent to drown her younger sister. Her motive, when included in the lyrics, is sexual jealousy – in some variants, the sisters are being two-timed by a suitor; in others, the elder sister’s affections are not encouraged by the young man. In a few versions, a third sister is mentioned, but plays no significant role in events. In most versions, the older sister is described as dark, while the younger sister is fair.