All That Was Good Happened YESTERDAY. Now That's a Sad Song.

"I believe in yesterday…" Clearly I'm not the only one who believes "Yesterday," by Sir Paul McCartney, is one of the greatest sad songs ever written. Many feel it is the top pop song, period, sad or otherwise. (Many statisticians who track such things list it as the most covered song of all time.)

With the Viet Nam war raising its ugly head, angst was the middle name of many a young student. When kids first heard "Yesterday" on the radio, they trotted out and bought the 45(rpm) and listened over and over to the lilting melody, the delicate string passes and heartfelt delivery of McCartney as he searched for a place to hide away.


When someone leaves your life without telling you why or saying goodbye, truly that is the harshest hit of all.

Now, I ask you, what could be sadder than thinking that all the good that has ever happened or will happen to you has happened "yesterday"

The song lyric delicately searches with a decidedly European sensibility as melancholy pervades the melody. More than speaking to a single tragic loss or event, "Yesterday" speaks to a state of mind which offers little hope.

By contrast, in her uniquely American way, Scarlett O'Hara utters those memorable lines, "After all, tomorrow is another day," at the close of Gone With the Wind. That hook line would have been a dandy title for the song on the flip side of the "Yesterday" '45. ("Act Naturally" by Ringo is on the flip side.)

I offer no judgement on which attitude serves one best in life. Looking to tomorrow is hopeful, but too often leads to expedience and tearing down of the past; remembering the best of yesterday, although sad at times, fosters reverence for beauty, art and lessons learned.

Perhaps it's best to remember that a wee bit of both is the right blend in the teapot. I expect Sir Paul is having a cuppa' right now. Cheers, Sir Paul and thanks for a great song.

HOPE IN A NUTSHELL by Keith Cymry - book review

Wit and wisdom explode from a precarious piñata of life/ death, ying/yang, good/evil, and despair/hope in Keith Cymry's novel HOPE IN A NUTSHELL. Hope, as the author neatly states, "is the golden thread from which the world swings like a pendulum hanging from the Kingdom of Heaven." The nutshell in the title? That is another matter altogether and as difficult to explain as the concept of hope.

Cymry has as much quirky "stuff" crammed between the covers of his book as Tom Robbins and John Irving do in "Jitterbug Perfume," and "World According to Garp," combined. Case in point? How about a mystical 2000-year-old walnut coated with Arizona gold, which serves as the tale's touchstone of hope as well as its center of conflict? Add the fact that the stolen medallion comes from the City of Forever, (somewhere out there), which allows the author to expertly knit together the natural and the supernatural.

With a crazy cast of mismatched characters, from the hippie hero, Uriah Freestone, who travels blue highways of Arizona and "the badlands of gnawed skulls and scattered bones known as New Mexico," to a supernatural raven named Rocker, to an occasional Ethiopian as well as an ancient Navajo pal named Laughing Puma, the action is non-stop. And an added plus is a gem of a character, the ever-slimy Sheriff Joe Garbonzo. Garbonzo is a sweet morsel of satire offered up to Cymry's fellow Arizonians who have their own Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the troll of Maricopa County, as a dangerous irritant.

As the humans who are able to save the world, Freestone and his beloved Mary Beth, nimbly straddle the universe of us and the universe of them, the gods (little "g"). (Both worlds are peopled by the sane and the insane.) In constant conflict with both the natural and unnatural worlds, Uriah and Mary Beth are tasked with ciphering clues found on the aforementioned ancient medallion encased in a golden walnut. Mary Beth has knowledge of nuts and bolts science/math while Uriah has mastery of the ancient Celtic language and all matters mystical. Their combined skills represent a symbolic blend of science and humanity. Can they solve the puzzle in the nutshell in order to save the world or might the world drift into nothingness on the proverbial Mayan doomsday of December 21, 2012? As with Arthurian legend (immeasurably updated and brushing on Pythonesque) getting to the end goal is the fun that makes the journey worth while for hero and reader alike. Parts of the journey are quirky and absurd, parts are dramatic and tense and parts are poignant and sniffley.

In recap, to reach the end game of the story, the author weaves a tender love-story into a fantasy landscape while telling a taught suspense thriller at the same time. And he does it with language that flows in many, many instances with the best contemporary word-smithing this reviewer has come across in many a magical moon. To include all the remarkably turned phrases would cheat the author of one of the prime reasons to read his novel, but as enticement, a few one-liners are shared here:

"Tequila will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no Tequila."

"Are they trick questions? Do they move when someone tries to answer them?"

"Those eyes could launch a thousand ships," he thought. "Or at least a thousand of his own tiny mariners upon some great odyssey."

"In Las Cruces are still to be found those cheap sort of motels that once dotted the main thoroughfare of every small town in America. Nowadays the few that remain cluster in cities like rotting hope."

Continuing to speak of seedy motels, Cymry refers to them tautly as "dilapidated remnants of America's greatest generation." So much for misguided jingoism.

"Free beer was always the best beer, provided it wasn't 'Milwaukee's Best.'"

And finally, to sum up some of the insanity our hero faces, the "narrator seeks to put an eye-of-newt up the arrogant nostril of a chained consumer society whose course will ultimately lead humanity to near certain bloody, chaotic rebellion, mass starvation, and the annihilation of civilization." Clearly the stakes are high.

This novel is a quick read and, because it functions on so many levels, the experience of reading it will delight any thinking person.