When my brother and I were children — way, way longer than I care to admit — we loved to listen to music. (Still do, of course.) This was back in the days when music meant a jukebox (I’m old enough to remember a cafe that had a jukebox selector at every booth), or the radio, or the record player. It played vinyl records, boys and girls. 8-tracks had not been invented yet, and ipods were not even a dream in Steve Job’s brain.

Mama picked up a couple of folk albums for us — gotta be contemporary, ya know. Our favorite was one called The 3D’s — New Dimensions In Folk Songs. The D’s had set classical poetry to folk. The music was nice and the harmonies were lovely, and we played the thing over and over and over again until I’m surprised we didn’t wear a hole clean through the groove. To this day I can still recite Jabberwocky flawlessly. ( ‘Twas brillig, and the slithey toves. . .) And Charge Of The Light Brigade. (Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die. . . - for some reason that’s not found amusing when I quote it in meetings.) And Gunga Din. (You may talk of gin and beer while you’re quartered safe out here. . .) And I will never forget Bess, the landlord’s black-eyed daughter, plaiting a dark red love knot into her long black hair while she waits for her lover, The Highwayman, to come to her by moonlight — though hell should bar the way. That last really made my romantic little heart pound. Oh, how I longed to have a dangerous highwayman come riding for me by moonlight. (I may have also learned to plait love knots into my hair, ahem). Alas that my hair was not black, nor were my eyes. (And the Highwayman and Bess really did not come to a good end.)

At any rate, we listened and listened and listened to those poems until they became old, familiar friends. So imagine my delight when I learned that we needed to memorize 50 lines of poetry for English class the year that I was a Freshman in High School. OK… I wasn’t so thrilled to have to memorize poetry (I was a normal kid). But I was thrilled when I saw that one could either memorize several smaller poems, or get the whole thing over at one whack (and get extra credit besides) by reciting Gunga Din.

The only hard part was to avoid bursting out in song during the chorus.

Something brought the 3D’s to mind not long ago, and I wondered if their album had ever been released on CD, or was downloadable, or otherwise available. And a bit of googling turned it up. One of the D’s has released it. I ordered a copy for myself and a copy for my brother (his b-day prezzy). And I sent an email with a very belated thank you for the A in Freshman English.

Bro, niece Z, #1 Son and myself had dinner last night. I’d made a Have A Groovy Birthday card for Bro, complete with peace signs and smiley faces (gives you an idea of the decade that I was a Freshman). Bro was thrilled with the CD and listened to it in his car all the way home. No word on what niece Z thought about it.

If you want your own copy, you can order it from Phoenix Records on either CD or cassette.

Knitting: I have been super slammed at work, so not much knitting is being done. But I have managed to turn the heels on the Moosecreek socks, and I’m heading up the legs. Rockin’ Sock Club yarn should be coming soon, and a new sock class starts in a couple of weeks. So I need to get these puppies off the needles.