Month: May 2024

K. Lee Wilder, 1936-2024

I’m sad that it took me a month to find out that Lee Wilder passed away on April 22. 

Lee owned more of my books than anyone else, but there was nothing special about me. A few years ago he decided he wanted to own every book written by people who live in or are writing about Door County. I live about a quarter-mile inside the county line, so he had to have my stuff.

He owned more than 1,000 different books by Door County authors, and he made sure we signed his copies.

He had back surgery in March and was battling cancer. I braced myself for the inevitable when he posted on Facebook on April 12:

“Another update from Methodist Hospital. Pneumonia and blood poisoning have been added to my list of problems. I have elected to forego further attempts to battle all this and have turned it all over to the Lord. He will determine what happens now and for my remaining time. I love you all.”

Tuesday evening I saw that one of our great local bookstores had posted a note from Lee’s son about a gathering next week in Pekin, Illinois, celebrating his life, and that led me to his obituary.

I love that in the notice he left “a perpetual request that everyone … especially the President, members of Congress and elected officials from all states … should put America ahead of politics. He was deeply disturbed by the lack of civility and the harassment directed toward those with opposing views. He also strongly believed in term limits for all politicians.”

Most of us, I think, are troubled by the level of anger and hatred directed across the aisle by both sides of the political debate, and it was just like Lee to make his final public statement an appeal to our better angels.

Lee was a great champion of Door County writers, but more important he was a magnificent human being. He is sorely missed.

‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy

The old Three Dog Night hit “Eli’s Coming” came on the radio the other day, and I found myself hearing it for the first time in a long time. Written by Laura Nyro, it really is a tasty song and a magnificent recording.

It really gets intense in the middle eight — you know, the part where “you’ll never get away, no, you’ll never get away from the burning heartache” — and then I realized I never quite understood the next line. 

It sounds like “I want to Apollo by the Bay.” I thought, that can’t be right, it must be one of those misheard lyrics that people laugh about, like “Sweet dreams are made of cheese.” I wondered what they could possibly be really singing, but I was driving along a highway at 70 mph, so it would have to wait.

I was puttering around the house later, and I remembered my conundrum. What did they really sing that sounded to me like “I want to Apollo by the bay”? I grabbed the laptop and opened DuckDuckGo, searching for “Eli’s Coming lyrics.”

Here we go — Eli’s coming, hide your heart, yeah yeah yeah. Scroll down … here we go.

“But you’ll never get away, no, you’ll never get away from the burning heartache …”

And the next line is:

I walked to Apollo by the bay — Everywhere I go

WHAT?!?!?

I was (mostly) right?! What the bejeebers is Apollo by the bay? And why would you walk there? And how could you walk to a specific somewhere everywhere you go??! This time, DuckDuckGo led me to Answers.com:

It’s a place by the water in Australia. Actually, the Temple of Apollo by the Bay of Baiae (now the Bay of Naples) was in ancient times considered to be one of the entrances to the Underworld. So Nyro may have meant nothing more by “I walked to Apollo by the Bay” than “I walked to the very end of the earth.” At this temple, visitors could ask the Sibyl (the priestess of Apollo) about their fate. So perhaps Nyro’s lyric is invoking such a pilgrimage. 

I guess that’s the something new I learned today. But I still think it’s a weird line.

Not as weird as “No one heard at all, not even the chair,” though. That’s the weirdest line ever.

The joys of musicology

Photo © Roberto Pangiarella | Dreamstime.com

I’ve been enjoying a two-year trial of SiriusXM in my car, and while I don’t know if I’ll renew when the price triples at the end of the trial next summer, I have been listening to lots of music in the car again after years of commuting almost exclusively with audiobooks.

The variety is amazing. Some days I’ll listen to a channel full of classic 1940s music that my parents would have love. There’s an all-Beatles channel and a Springsteen channel, channels devoted to sixties and seventies and eighties music, and blends of it all. There are CCM and bluegrass channels, and I’m reminding of the healing power of music all the time.

I can also listen, if I want, to the audio feeds of the various news channels, as well as talk radio, where I get a different vibe. These TV and radio feeds tap into my anger and my outrage, and they reach into my heart and try to pull out hatred and fear. I don’t hear any attempt at understanding or healing on those channels.

I wonder how much better our world would be if the people who claim to be our rulers would sit down in comfortable chairs and listen to music together — or play instruments together. Instead of “Who do we want to kill today?” they could ask each other, “Who’s your favorite band?” “What’s your favorite song?” “What song was playing when you met your spouse?”

Artists who get outraged when politicians they hate play their songs at rallies, maybe they could reach out and say, “If you like my music, maybe we have something in common that could lead to understanding each other better.”

Music is a language that crosses ideological barriers. We should communicate with that language more instead of tapping our anger and outrage buttons.