clair055

The song I’ve posted below isn’t as popular as Marvin Gaye’s hit “What’s Going On?”, but it is from the same album….the first of its kind for Motown…a concept album. Gaye wrote the songs during a time of great depression when he isolated himself from the outside world.  This site explains.... Through television news broadcasts, Gaye saw the racial, political, and social problems that were plaguing the world, manifestations from the explosion of political and social activism that took place during the late ‘60s. As he wallowed in his seclusion, Gaye read letters from his brother Frankie serving in the Vietnam War. They described the confusion and frustration he and other soldiers felt fighting in a war that had no just cause. Many black soldiers at the time felt doubly conflicted, drafted to fight and die for a country that refused to accept them because of the color of their skin. These observations, along with the loss of Tammi Terrell, motivated Gaye to question his role in the w...

It seems these days everyone has a forum or two to make their opinions known on every subject possible.  We can post to Facebook or Twitter.   We can have our own blog or self-publish our own books.   We can text, we can make regular comments online at various sites, and we can call in to various television and radio shows. Over the last few years we’ve seen how social media can help to accelerate revolutions and impact protests in foreign countries, we can see how fast ideas travel and take on momentum via videos and Internet links that go viral. I often wonder if we aren’t literally drowning in TOO much information…. I often wonder if the present quagmire of partisan politics isn’t caused by TOO much information…. Just imagine for a few minutes how events could have been shaped during the 1700s leading up to the American Revolution if people in England and the Colonies had access to some of the technology we do today along with the resulting partisanship, fing...

On October 2, 1925, the Church Hill section of Richmond, Virginia suffered a great tragedy when a train tunnel caved in at the exact moment a train happened to be in the tunnel.  Several people lost their lives.   It wasn’t long after the cave-in that a story began circulating describing a blood covered creature with jagged teeth.  Huge patches of decomposing skin were hanging off the creature’s legs and arms.  The tale went on to explain how at the time of the tragic cave-in the creature made his way towards the James River and then to Hollywood Cemetery where he was last seen entering the crypt that belonged to William Worthan Pool. It only added to the story that Mr. Pool’s burial site did not share a birth date…only the year he died….1913.  He never died?  Seriously? Somehow the story morphed into a vampire story and the tale of the Richmond Vampire was widely told through the years.    Mr. Pool had lived a very ordinary life before passi...