. . .never mind that, even by our remarkably loose modern standards, Shakespeare's grammar can be appalling.

The Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27th, 1756.

Hence a little music: the overture from his 1787 opera DON GIOVANNI



and, from the same work, the aria "Fin ch'han dal vino", sung in a concert setting by the operatic love of my life, Thomas Hampson.

On January 24, 2007, a new blog on the ‘Stream began, very inauspiciously.

Hi. You can call me Fairweather Lewis. . .I’m a middle-aged hillbilly whose passions in life are my family and friends, my cat, classic country music, books, sketching, poetry, ghost stories and dogwood season here in the knobs.

And here I am, three years, three dogwood seasons, many ghost stories, a lot of music, many laughs and a few tears later. Somehow I never expected to continue this long. Surely I should have run out of tales to tell, out of songs to sing, somewhere along the line.

That I haven’t is a tribute to the friends I’ve made here, who’ve read, asked questions, requested more stories, offered critiques, brought me music, shared the laughs and the tears.

This week at Take This Tune our theme is "witty" love, as exemplified by two tunes from the late great Bob Hope: Thanks For the Memory and "Buttons and Bows," my favorite recording of which is by The Browns.

In country music, wit is not exactly a word we associate with love, being more prone to associate love with loss, crying in one’s beer, and etc. There are a few examples I can think of off the top of my head: Faron Young’s If You Ain’t Lovin’ (Then You Ain’t Livin’), with its funny pileup of signs of prestige and wealth that don’t mean squat "if you’re gettin’ no huggin’/no smoochin’ or muggin’" and George Jones’s Nothin’s Ever Hurt Me Half as Bad as Losin’ You which lists in hilarious, if hypochondriacal, detail a stupendous number of painful physical ailments that didn’t hurt half as bad as losing a lover.

Then I remembered this bluesy number from Ernest Tubb (probably way older than ET, but I’m gonna have to do more research on that point). It may not strike many of you as witty, but for me, the deadpan delivery with that hint of a wide Texas grin makes me grin. Gallows humor? Possibly. But painfully funny.




Take This Tune is a weekly meme hosted by my friend and fellow music lover Jamie. Each week a song is posted for a theme, and you are asked to write about your thoughts or associations based on the song. We'd love to have you participate! Please visit the Take This Tune link; full instructions are given there.

because this picture reminds me of a ghost story from Robin Mead's 1995 book HAUNTED HOTELS: A GUIDE TO AMERICAN AND CANADIAN INNS AND THEIR GHOSTS.

I freely admit, I've never been much of a fan of Margaret Mitchell's novel GONE WITH THE WIND (1936)--except, of course, for that irrepressible Charleston-born rogue Rhett Butler, which may owe more to Clark Gable's characterization of him in the 1939 movie than to the book.

There was at the time Mead published his book--and may be yet; the most recent reference I could find to the place online (without more extensive digging) was dated 1998--a bed and breakfast in Concord, Georgia, called Inn Scarlett's Footsteps. Its owners, K.C. and Vern Bassham, had refurbished an antebellum mansion that looked very much like Tara from the movie in antebellum style. According to Mead, the bedrooms were named after characters from the book: Scarlett, Rhett, Melanie, Ashley, and Mr. Gerald.

And one elderly lady who stayed in Rhett's room, says Mead, swore up and down that Rhett--that bad boy!--appeared in the room during a party, smoking a large cigar in defiance of the inn's no-smoking policy. Moreover, he kissed her on the cheek.

Rhett Butler, mind. Not Clark Gable--Rhett Butler.

Hard to swallow--a fictional character, rather than the actor who brought him to life, haunting a themed inn.

But that's how the story goes--