I dedicate my song today to two birthday celebrants who live in the same Irish town, Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, Ireland. We wish a happy birthday to Kenny Timberland and Siobhan O’Dwyer. Have a great day, folks, and thank you for being my Facebook friends.
My song today is ‘Bad Moon Rising’. This song was written by John Fogerty and was performed by ‘Creedence Clearwater Revival’’. The song peaked at Number 2 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ in June 1969 and reached Number 1 on the ‘UK Single’s Chart’ in September 1969. It was CCR's second gold single. The song has been recorded by at least twenty different artists, in styles ranging from folk to reggae to psychedelic rock. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked it Number 364 on its ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’ list.
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The Moon orbits the Earth at an average lunar distance of 238,900 miles or 1.28 light-seconds. Its gravitational influence produces Earth’s tides and slightly lengthens Earth’s day. This is a scientific fact but what about the Moon’s relationship with mankind over the centuries. The full Moon is thought to influence human behaviour in many ways, even the reproductive system of animals.
The moon and romance are inextricably linked in the mind of all lovers. Tell me, what else but the light of a full moon shining down on a courting couple during a warm summer’s night is capable of capturing hearts in a moment of madness and never releasing them to another, or suspending the reasoning faculties of two like-minded lovers who are inclined toward reckless abandonment, and who give way to uncontrollable passionate feeling for one moment of perfect bliss?
To mankind, the moon has always meant much more than a mover of the tide. The moon moves tides, hearts, and minds! The moon has been held to have been no less than a God to some tribes, but whatever its importance, it has forever been assumed to be capable of influencing and affecting the mood of mankind for good or ill.
Today’s song, ‘Bad Moon Rising’ reminds me of how the mood of the nation has been influenced for the worse over the past year because of this pernicious spread of Covid-19 during the pandemic virus. The gradual wearing down of one’s positive spirit has been relentless, and we have all experienced one disappointment after another with repeated lockdowns and the restriction of our freedoms. The Government of the Day has been guilty of chopping and changing its mind at a moment’s notice, deciding that we could all have Christmas before cancelling it at the eleventh hour, then significantly altering it by sending everyone a Christmas card that read, ‘You can invite Granny for Christmas dinner if you want, but be prepared to have her buried in the early New Year if you do (without being able to attend her funeral of course). Merry Christmas!” The period between full moons has witnessed all of the dreaded ‘Ds’ that any country can possibly cope with and preserve its sanity; disillusionment, depression, destitution, divorce, despair, and the death of loved ones within the population as a whole.
I am and have always been a positive person, and I know how hard it is for anything in my life to ‘get me down’, which is always the unfortunate prelude to ‘keeping you down’. However, I must confess that though I have not been brought low by this pernicious virus, there have been several times during the cold of the past month when I have turned over and have considered stopping in bed for the morning instead of getting up out of bed to face the day. It is difficult to always wear a brave face when the body is weak, and it is never easy to find the sunshine in any cold, wet and dreary day, but for sanity’s sake, that is what we must do to get through these strange, fearful, stressful and most uncertain of times.
Covid-19 has taken over our lives and we have heard nothing else on the radio or television daily for one year now. During the past months, I know that flooding has driven thousands of people from their unsafe homes, and yet I have not seen one image of such nightmares as Covid-19 has swamped that news also!
I hold no truck with any of our politicians in the manner they have treated the electorate over the past year, deliberately keeping us in the dark by disseminating a combination of fact/falsehood in their daily public announcements. They have deliberately failed to disclose vital information to ‘save face’, and their massaging of statistics to disguise malpractice and cover up their general incompetence has rubbed everyone up the wrong way. One minute they claim that they are following the science, the next minute it is Mystic Meg, or they are consulting with astrologists and looking towards the moon as they twiddle their thumbs!
Thank God that our Government has managed to get one thing right; the rolling out of a number of vaccines ahead of all expectations! Then, just as we dared to dream of a summer holiday once more, along comes more variants of the pandemic virus than existed in the Plagues of Egypt (the ten disasters inflicted upon Egypt by the God of Israel in order to force Pharaoh to allow the Israelites their freedom). Sounds familiar?
While it has proved to be the hardest of years for all of us, please believe me when I tell you that the sun will shine again for each of us. Also, it is important to remember that neither the man in the role of Prime Minister nor the man on the moon controls our moods or feelings. Both the man in ‘Number 10’ and the man on the moon may influence the tide of events on land and sea, but it is ourselves who ultimately control our mood swings, our prevailing attitudes, our overall behaviour, our happiness factors, and our destinies; not bad governance or the bad moon rising!
Love and peace
Bill xxx