RIP Ozzy

July 23, 2025September 18, 2025 ~ MaryG ~ 18 Comments

I responded to this WordPress Daily Prompt almost two years ago by interviewing my husband about Jimmy Buffett, who had just died at age 76:

Interview someone — a friend, another blogger, your mother, the mailman — and write a post based on their responses.

Here’s that post:

An American Reacts to the Death of Jimmy Buffett

Welp, yesterday we learned that Ozzy Osbourne passed away at the exact same age as Jimmy Buffett—76. So, I decided to ask my “Generation Jones” husband (age 63) the same questions about Ozzy that I had asked him about Jimmy Buffett two years ago.

Question: You heard the news that Ozzy Osbourne has died at age 76. How did it make you feel?

Answer: Surprised. I didn’t know he had Parkinson’s and I had heard about the farewell concert two weeks ago (which was billed as the last time Black Sabbath would ever play together).

Question: What were your overall feelings about Ozzy?

Answer: I really liked Black Sabbath, but only with Ozzy. Together they were great. (Didn’t really like Ozzy on his own or Black Sabbath without Ozzy.) Iconic sounds. Ozzy’s voice and Tony Iommi’s guitar…there was nothing else like it at the time (early 70s). First started listening to Black Sabbath in junior high school.

(Tells me the whole story about how Tony Iommi’s fingers were severed in an industrial accident, which forced him to play the guitar an octave lower and make that incredible sound.)

We then listened to a couple of his favorite early 70s Black Sabbath songs: “Sweet Leaf” “Into the Void” “NIB”

He says that their 1978 album “Never Say Die” was the last album of theirs that he liked.

Question: What made him a cultural icon?

Answer: The Black Sabbath/Ozzy sound. They were the first ones. The low guitar, the slow riffs, Ozzie’s Voice. Influenced everything that came after.

As an illustration of how truly different and awesome their sound was at the time, we looked at the Billboard Top 100 Hits of 1971. And I really got the point. I mean…I love Carole King, The Osmonds, The BeeGees, John Denver, etc…but you can see how Black Sabbath felt like the start of something entirely new and exciting to a lot of people—boys especially.

And then came the true revelation: my husband still listens to Black Sabbath all the time—even more than Led Zeppelin—especially in the gym.

It’s his jam.

Deadlifting 485 pounds

I guess Black Sabbath makes a better soundtrack for powerlifting than say… Taylor Swift. I get it!

Question: Would you say that they were a uniquely British band?

Answer: No. They were just completely different than anything else out there.

Question: You’ve now read his obits, was anything a big surprise?

Answer: No. (Already knew the whole story of Sharon dragging Ozzy out of the gutter and resurrecting his career—way before “The Osbournes” TV show.)

Question: Did you ever know any other big fans?

Answer: We all listened to them in high school. (He has an older Boomer sister who introduced him to cooler music in the 70s. Meanwhile, I was listening to The Osmonds and the Bay City Rollers.)

Question: What do you think his legacy will be?

Answer: First answer: young people don’t listen to Ozzy anymore.

Upon research, we learned that certain subgenres of metal continue to cover Black Sabbath songs and even sound a lot like them.

RIP Ozzy.

Rain, rain go away

May 31, 2025September 18, 2025 ~ MaryG ~ 22 Comments

As of today, May 31, 2025, Greater Boston is experiencing its 12th consecutive rainy weekend. Since early March, every weekend has included some measurable rainfall, with more than half of those weekends seeing rain on both Saturday and Sunday.

GenX, there are a couple of rain songs from our childhood that will never leave my brain.

The first is “Rainy Days and Mondays” by The Carpenters. It came out in 1971.

The other one is “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” by BJ Thomas. (I didn’t know the artist. I looked it up just now.) It came out in 1969, so perhaps only older GenXers like me remember this one. Apparently it was featured in the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” but I don’t remember that. I just remember singing the song along with the radio, with the most memorable line being “Just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed.” I always pictured that guy. His feet must have been enormous.

What are your rain songs? You know—those songs that just emerge in your brain on rainy days.

Someday he will be gone

May 1, 2025September 18, 2025 ~ MaryG ~ 15 Comments

I think one of the hardest things about accepting Trump’s reelection is that it feels like a mortal wound to the idea of the “beloved community” that many of us 70s kids grew up with.

Popularized by Martin Luther King Jr, the “Beloved Community” is a global vision in which racism, poverty, and militarism are eradicated—a society based on justice, equal opportunity, and love of one’s fellow human beings. In King’s words, the Beloved Community was not utopian, but attainable through hard work and commitment to ethical principles and systemic change achieved through nonviolence.

Mr. Rogers brought that vision to life for those of us who were a bit too young to remember MLK when he was alive. Mr. Rogers (and also Sesame Street) taught us there’s a place for everyone in the neighborhood. It’s better to be kind than to win. Bullies were unequivocally bad. Even the cold old Catholic Church got nicer in the seventies when the reforms of Vatican 2 led to a focus on the New Testament—lots of felt banners and folk music.

And raise your hand if you remember Free to Be, You and Me. For those who don’t remember, it was a pioneering children’s album and television special created by Marlo Thomas in the early 1970s that promoted gender equality, individuality, and emotional expression. Featuring stars like Alan Alda and Diana Ross, it encouraged kids to reject traditional stereotypes and embrace who they are, becoming a cultural touchstone for a more inclusive generation. My sister and I listened to that album over and over again.

Someday Trump will be gone.

And on that day, I’m going to listen to Free to Be, You and Me from start to finish.

Full track list:

Free To Be… You And Me – The New Seekers

Boy Meets Girl – Mel Brooks & Marlo Thomas

When We Grow Up – Diana Ross

Don’t Dress Your Cat In An Apron – Billy De Wolfe

Parents Are People – Harry Belafonte & Marlo Thomas

Housework – Carol Channing

Helping – Tom Smothers

Ladies First – Marlo Thomas

Dudley Pippin And The Principal – Billy De Wolfe, Bob Morse & Marlo Thomas

It’s Alright To Cry – Rosey Grier

Sisters And Brothers – Voices of East Harlem

My Dog Is A Plumber – Dick Cavett

William’s Doll – Alan Alda & Marlo Thomas (probably the most memorable and groundbreaking track on the album)

Atalanta – Alan Alda & Marlo Thomas

Grandma – Diana Sands

Girl Land – Jack Cassidy & Shirley Jones

Dudley Pippin And His No-Friend – Bob Morse & Marlo Thomas

Glad To Have A Friend Like You – Marlo Thomas

Free To Be… You And Me (Reprise) – The New Seekers

Camping with the “Campfire Girls” in the mid 1970s, when the seeds of our hopes for a peaceful, inclusive, accepting world were planted.

A time-honored tradition

February 5, 2025September 18, 2025 ~ MaryG ~ 5 Comments

It’s that time of year when Bostonians who don’t ski set their sights on the Sunshine State.

These are some of the rituals:

Get a pedicure

Pack sandals in your carryon so you can change shoes on the plane

Pray your flight won’t be canceled due to incoming snow

Leave your winter coat in the car and dash into the terminal coatless and freezing

Sit on the plane and nervously watch the wings get de-iced

Pray this bird gets airborne

Lift off – ah

Watch dirty, grey old Boston recede from view and mind

Touchdown in the Land of the Mouse.

😎

Photo digitization project

The Cape

January 28, 2025September 18, 2025 ~ MaryG ~ 6 Comments

I’ve been digitizing old photos over the past few weeks. I have a ton of them. There’s no way I could save all of them in the event of a fire. I wouldn’t even want to. There are too many.

Walt Whitman’s lines “I am large, I contain multitudes” keep popping into my head. I’ve gone through so many phases in my nearly 60 years. I contain multitudes. We all do.

One theme I’m finding is that we (like everyone) mostly took photos on vacations and holidays. And there’s one vacation destination in Massachusetts that everyone knows: Cape Cod. It’s known simply as “the Cape.” (There’s another popular cape in Massachusetts, but that one gets referred to by its full name: Cape Ann.)

Cape Cod is where the Kennedys summered and it’s just one of those places that everyone in Massachusetts has memories of. If you didn’t have a friend with a house “down the Cape,” then you probably rented one or stayed in a Cape hotel at least a few times in your life.

My earliest memories of the Cape include barfing after eating scallops at Thompson’s Clam Bar, having my grandmother tell me that they thought I’d drowned when I went missing at the beach one day, and waiting for the sun to come out.

I’ve been lucky to visits “The Islands” many times too. (If you’re from Massachusetts, you know that The Islands are Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.) But the Cape is where my earliest vacation memories happened.

I’m realizing that the places where our memories were made—where our lives have played out—are quite meaningful. They’re the settings for our stories.

At the beach on Cape Cod, 1970, with my Italian grandmother in a bathing suit (a rare occurrence). I don’t remember how I hurt my knee, but I do remember wearing that huge bandage.

Knee socks

January 18, 2025September 18, 2025 ~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

Today’s realization from The Great Photo Digitization Project of 2025 (inspired by the tragic California wildfires) is that I was an extremely well-dressed child. (My own kids were nowhere near as well-dressed as my sister and I were.)

And this was before the era of “fast fashion,” so my mother made many of our dresses and outfits.

We always had matching accessories too. Note the headband in this shot:

With my baby cousin Steven and Aunt Betsy, 1971

In my old photo albums, one accessory is featured more than all the others and that is color-coordinated knee socks. I remember having a drawer full of them. Thinking back, they were pretty cool because they came in so many different colors and were way more comfortable than tights.

Knee socks *and* a matching purse for the first day of first grade

Note the “milk box” near the front door (I am old)

Facilitated by my mother and a Marshall’s opening up in my town in the late 70s (“Brand Names for Less”), I ended up being a major clothes horse right through high school. I embraced the Reagan era “preppy look” and had dozens of sweaters in every color of the rainbow. My closet looked like a Benetton store.

It wasn’t until I tried to fit all my clothes into a tiny freshman dorm closet that I realized how ridiculously many I had.

First Communion

January 17, 2025September 18, 2025 ~ MaryG ~ 11 Comments

I’m continuing to selectively digitize my old photos and I bring you a comparison of the two methods: iPhone photo vs PhotoScan by Google.

Let me know if you have thoughts about which method is better quality, because it’s too much work to do both.

Because most of these photos are stuck in the old adhesive style photo albums, I’m having to pry them out if I want to see what (if anything) is written on the back. Then I’m stuck with a loose photo that I’ve been taping back into place with painter’s tape.

The photos above were taken on my “First Communion” day in April 1973. Despite my previously described love of veils, I remember I did not like that one. It was attached to a very uncomfortable headband that squeezed my head painfully. Perhaps this was a sign of the rocky road ahead for me and the Catholic Church.

Other than the painful headband, I remember getting some religious-themed presents (a Bible locket, an angel) and being made to feel quite special with a family party after the main event at the church.

I think we look like a real mid-century Italian-American family in these photos, but my dad is no Tony Soprano. He loved his mother (my long-widowed “Grammy”) dearly and she worshipped him. He was far and away her favorite child. As the only boy in an Italian family, he was extra special and he took great care of her until her death in 1992, just a month short of her 90th birthday.

1974: GenX turns 9

January 16, 2025September 18, 2025 ~ MaryG ~ 2 Comments

Born in the summer of 1965, I am part of the oldest GenX cohort (1965-80) and I’m discovering through my photo digitizing project, that I’m quite well documented.

My parents took a lot of pictures. Many of them were bad (“delete” was not an option back then) but there’s at least a few photos from every single year of my life through college graduation. (Whereas, we probably have five pictures in all of my father as a kid.)

It looks like the summer of 1974 was the peak of my gymnastics prowess. I remember that I worked very hard and mastered a “front walkover” as a kid and here’s the proof:

I don’t think I ever progressed to handsprings (too hard). And I certainly never did a walkover on a balance beam (too scary).

Two years prior, in 1972, a tiny Soviet gymnast named Olga Korbut did a backflip off the uneven bars in the Munich Summer Olympics, won three gold medals, and inspired a lot of little American girls to try some new tricks. I was one of them.

And so, for my 60th birthday this summer, I pledge to work hard to reenact this photo and perform a front walkover in front of an audience.

KIDDING!! Can you even imagine? I’ll stick to Downward Dogs.

My 9th birthday party on my parents’ porch in the summer of ‘74. My sister and I and my neighborhood friends Candy, Kim, Carolyn and Bethanne had a good time.

The Original Guinea Pig

January 15, 2025September 18, 2025 ~ MaryG ~ 23 Comments

My photo digitizing project continues…

Thanks to blogger Dwight Roth (a wonderful poet), I’ve learned that sometimes an iPhone photo of an old print is just as good or better than a “scan.”

Today’s discovery is Rainbow—the original guinea pig.

Rainbow was the first in a series of guinea pigs that my sister and I had as pets in the 70s. My main memories of the little fellows involve the absolute anguish we felt when they inevitably got sick and died. I can’t believe my mother spent good money taking them to see veterinarians when they stopped eating. (Maybe she lied about that and just drove around the block a few times.) I remember praying to God to save my guinea pigs. He never did.

In any case, I’ve learned that Rainbow was my class pet in kindergarten and I took him home for the summer.

I was happy to discover some good guinea pig memories in one of the old photo albums.

Good times in Kindergarten with two boys whose first and last names I *still* remember. (Yet, I can’t recall the name of a new person I met in church last week.)

I love how Rainbow got his own square in the class photo.

I was a wary little kindergartener. Thank goodness Rainbow didn’t die on my watch.

We hosted a neighborhood party for our guinea pig “Cookie” and another guinea pig in the summer of 1973. It looks like they had a nice little feast.

A happy memory of “Candy” roaming free in our backyard in the summer of 1974. I remember the guinea pigs loved nibbling clover and were very cute doing so. 🐹

Matching Sisters

January 14, 2025September 18, 2025 ~ MaryG ~ 13 Comments

In continuing my California wildfires-inspired photo scanning project, I’m seeing another theme emerge: matching sisters.

I have just one sibling, a younger sister, and my mother loved to put us in matching outfits, many of which she sewed herself.

I’m giving my mother an A++ for the extraordinary effort it took to not only make some of our clothing, but to have the two outfits clean on the same day and get us both to agree to wear them. You must admit, we looked very cute and were a big hit when out in public.

Unless you had hippie parents, this was a common thing for girls in the late 60s and early 70s. Sisters matched. I don’t remember boys being put in matching outfits, but maybe some were.

To be honest, my sister and I are not close and have not been for many years. We are extremely different people. I don’t know if being seen as a “set” of girls from a young age had a negative impact or not. I know there was a certain expectation that I would set an example for her. And as you may have heard, oldest daughters tend towards perfectionism, which probably isn’t fun for the ones who come after.

But darn it, we were cute.

50 Happens

Gen X Mom Keeps Calm & Carries On

seventies