Welcome back to our adventure!
So to celebrate Day 4, please pick your favorite platitude:
- We’re right there.
- We’re knocking at the door.
- Salvation is on the other side.
- Any/all write-in candidates go here. (-:
Yeah, you guys get the idea. No matter how you say/write it, it won’t be long now! (-:
In the meantime, let’s play a game.
I guess this sort of game can be tough because you may be inclined to include many different people. For this round, though, let’s select just four, any four you want, to join you for dinner. Your dinner guests can be anyone living or dead, someone saintly or dastardly, those who are universally adored or widely vilified, etc. You are bound by nothing.
Now, it’ll be my hope that none of your guests will feel the need to bring others along (ala a dinner I once attended), so please try to choose carefully! Remember that you’re only allowed four.
OK, let’s give this a go:
- Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770 – 1827) – Even though I foolishly gave up on piano lessons at age 16, I’ve always loved classical music. To this day, one of my favorite past times is to see if I can identify a piece of music just by hearing it. Sure, modern technology makes it pretty easy to cheat, and I’ll certainly admit to defaulting to the Shazam app when I really get stuck, but I do love that challenge. There were – and still are – many great classical musicians, but Beethoven has always been my favorite. Though he left the world all too soon, dying at age 56, incredibly, he spent most of the second half of his life unable to hear. Selfishly, at my meal with him, I’d like him to be able to hear, but for a chance to be that close to greatness, I’d certainly take what I could get.
- Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias (1911-1956) – If you’re looking for Jim Thorpe’s female counterpart, this is most decidedly your girl. And remember that this was just short of a century ago, eons before anyone ever even heard of Title IX. Voted the 10th Greatest North American Athlete of the entire 20th Century by ESPN, Didrikson was the highest-ranked woman on the list. In fact, no one else was even close. She was a standout in virtually every sport, baseball, basketball, boxing, cycling, handball, swimming and tennis, among them. When asked if there were any sports she didn’t play, legend has it that she wryly answered, “Yeah, dolls.” For all of her incredible prowess, Babe also left us way too early. Cancer took her from us when she was just 45.
- Ferdinand Magellan (1480 – 1521) – Although I doubt that one of history’s most renown explorers ever imagined his name would eventually be used for everything from medical devices to shoe inserts, I’d certainly love to be the guy to tell him that! If you can remember anything from your earliest social studies classes, I have to believe Magellan was all over the lesson plans. Perhaps best known for finding a path for ships to pass from the Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean (forever known as the Strait of Magellan), I think many of us have forgotten/perhaps never knew that his crew had to finish the very first circumnavigation of the Earth without him. Magellan died at the Battle of Mactan in the Philippine Islands, April 1521. He was just 41 years old.
- Bruce Springsteen (1949 – ) – I suppose, given my other All-Star dinner guests, this may seem to be something of a wildcard in the deck. The thing is, though, that I’m quietly obsessed with so much of what Freehold, NJ’s favorite son has offered – and continues to offer – all of us. Make no mistake, there are many of you out there who know far more about his music than I ever will, including some close friends who have followed him for more than 50 years. For me, it’s the meaning – specifically his meaning – behind so many of those songs. It’s said that all of the characters in his songs, or at least the large majority of them, are based on real people. I’d love to know more about Terry from “Backstreets” and Hazy Davey from “Spirits in The Night” and a slew of so many others, all of whom I’ve crafted an image of in my own mind. Yeah, I’d like to discuss those things with him and see where it leads.
As always, totally your call, gang, but if you’re up for this, I’d love to read your invite lists. Please just post on/message me on Facebook or Linkedin. Or, if it’s easier, just send me an email at: JLJFish56@gmail.com.
Here’s to all our dinner guests. And, of course, here’s to all of you.
Closer by the hour, my friends.
JFish
@Copyright 2024 by John L. Fischer