RIP - Jerry Jeff and Billy Joe Shavers - Heaven's Songwriter Circle Grows Larger by Two

As a learned friend summed it up this morning, "Jerry Jeff has finally got off that LA Freeway." Lover of the wisdom of old men, hard livers, bar life and great songs who sung his and those of others like no other. If you don't know his music, you are missing much. Check out "A Man Must Carry On." Four days after this posted initially, Billy Joe Shavers also crossed the river to join Jerry Jeff. Shavers wrote nine of the ten songs on one of the best 1970s albums of all time, Waylon Jennings' Honky Tonk Heroes, an album we played very, very loud over and over when it first entered our KU apartment and years since. It still makes me smile when I hear one its songs.

European Day of Languages

Today is the official European Day of Languages, which is a yearly event begun in 2001 to celebrate human language, encourage language learning, and bring attention to the importance of being multilingual in a polyglot world. On this day, everyone, young or old, is encouraged to take up a language or take special pride in his or her existing language skills.

There are about 225 indigenous languages in Europe, which may sound like a lot but is only 3 percent of the world's total. Children's events, television and radio programs, languages classes and conferences are organized across Europe. 

In past years, schoolchildren in Croatia created European flags and wrote "Hello" and "I love you" in dozens of tongues while older students sang "Brother John" in German, English, and French. 

At a German university, a diverse group of volunteer tutors held a 90-minute crash course in half a dozen languages, like a kind of native-tongue speed-dating, groups of participants spending just 15 minutes immersed in each dialect until the room was filled with Hungarian introductions, French Christmas songs, and discussions of Italian football scores.

(Taken from Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac today 9/26/15)

Pop-n-Doc's (Decatur, NB) Bar Sign

Paris Bookstore - Shakespeare & Company