Silent night.

Hal0scan is going out of business. They’ve warned me that if I do nothing, my account will be handed over to their successor for which I will pay a $12 fee per annum. I can choose to put my comments in storage, pending the appearance of another company, I can simply not have a convenient comments box at the bottom of the page and let everyone leave me notes, like in the bad old days, I can resume the super gold membership and pay whatever they ask, or I can relocate to a friendlier website, like Blogger. I have until February 17 to decide. In the meantime, maybe someone will have a good suggestion. Please.

Yesterday I took out my new guitar and played it, singing through lots of Phil Ochs songs that I used to play in my younger years. Here is a songwriter who is almost unknown and doesn’t deserve that neglect. He wrote war protest songs at the time of the Viet Nam conflict, he exposed the hypocrisy of his government’s penal and criminal justice system, protested racial segregation, he pointed and laughed at various segments of society, including religious and educational institutions, and he described historical events in song. He had a beautiful singing voice, a strong guitar style, and his melodies and lyrics are so far ahead of others’ of his day, including Dylan and Cohen, at least in my opinion. He met an untimely end, taking his own life after an injury sustained during a mugging in Africa made him unable to sing anymore. I mourned then and I still grieve.

As I type this, I hear my cleaning lady attempting to play the melody to Silent Night on the piano downstairs. Everyone has music in them. At least, we can hope.

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