Charlie, Darya & Co.

RIP Charlie Daniels, 83, member of the Cheyenne Frontier Days Hall of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry, the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum, and the Country Music Hall of Fame. As well as fiddle, he played guitar, banjo and mandolin. Before going on his own, he worked with Elvis, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and the Youngbloods, and later with The Marshall Tucker Band. According to his Wiki profile, he cut 30 studio albums, and released eight live discs and four compilations. Of his 54 singles, two cracked Billboard’s Hot 100: 1973’s Uneasy Rider hit #9 and the enduring The Devil Went Down to Georgia, powered by spectacular fiddlin’, hit #3 in 1979 and brought him a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance. He appeared in 21 music videos and six films. IMDb lists 44 titles under his name for Soundtrack, the first on Shindig! way back in 1965. In 2017 he published Never Look at the Empty Seats: A Memoir, his third book. Well done, sir. Thank you.

I’ve wondered about this recently. From an article by John Ziegler at nypost.com: “ Sweden, a country much-maligned in the media because they dared to not lockdown by government mandate, has ‘new case’ and ‘death’ charts which look remarkably similar to ours, and their daily death rate has recently been down to single digits…” Thank you, sir. Of course, the jury is still out. Don’t expect the mainstream media to report on it unless the situation goes completely south.

Sign of the times in this headline from foxnews.com: “New law would require NYPD officers to obtain liability insurance.” Who in his/her right mind would become a Big Apple cop?

I finally remembered to ask one of my regular customers about a prolific Russian female writer whose hardbound editions feature colorful covers usually with a background of yellow and black. Since I don’t speak or read the language, I was unable to figure out her name. Born in Moscow in 1952, at least 180 books bear Darya Dontsova’s name, although it is believed many were written by others, as seems the case with several western writers these days. She has also written at least eight TV scripts and one for radio. She was named Writer of the Year in 2001, 2002, 2003. Her Wiki profile uses the term “Ironic Detective” to characterize her work. She has put a lot of money in my pocket. Thank you, madam. Here she is:

And my thanks to Wolf, who provided the name and today also donated a bag of books in his first language. Fortunately, he took almost as many home with him. A woman who is moving out of state bombarded me with her first delivery, about 75% in Russian, the English titles very marketable. Spasibo, Madam, and also to my constant benefactress, who came bearing gifts, 20 self-help titles; and to the kind folks who bought, especially the lovely young woman who selected about 15 titles almost equally divided between Russian and English. I feel a little guilty about such luck while so many are still out of work. It wasn’t easy hauling the stuff back to the car, which was about 30 yards away. My 70-year-old back complained. Still, it didn’t feel like penance, especially since the breeze along Avenue Z took a bite out of the humidity. Here’s what the display looked like. Two-thirds of what I started the day with remained in the car.

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