Monday Meanderings - 10.2.2017

The subject of this week's post is senility - or at least advanced forgetfulness. Last Monday Barb remarked, "No Monday Meanderings?" And truth be told, it had completely slipped my mind. I had gone the entire week without giving a single thought to putting anything down.

I have to say it was a hard, and busy week. A lot of activity, and you know how activity wears us Senior Citizens down. Monday and Wednesday are Learning Ally days; Thursday night was a Eucharist service with our next-door neighbors at Saint Matthews; then a sound rehearsal on Friday night with the Central Texas Medical Orchestra; a tough, tough standing-room only funeral Saturday afternoon; and the then the Orchestra performance Saturday night.

I have blogged about the Central Texas Medical Orchestra before. All the musicians are local and are directly or indirectly part of the medical profession, and their 4 concerts a year benefit various health-care organizations, such as the Epilepsy Society, or March of Dimes. Each concert, in addition to an interesting selection of classical and pop music by the orchestra, features a guest instrumentalist and a guest vocalist.

This performance featured Kiki Ebsen, daughter of Buddy Ebsen (of Beverly Hillbilly TV fame). Her program was a brief retrospective of her father's career, with photos, video clips and songs from the films, such as Moon River (Breakfast at Tiffany's) and Over the Rainbow (Wizard of Oz). Since I mostly remember Buddy only from the Hillbillys episodes, so it was interesting to hear about his earlier career, including his three roles in the Wizard of Oz that never came to fruition.

Ebsen was originally cast as the Scarecrow until Ray Bolger's rubber-legged dancing caught the attention of MGM's brass, so they switched Buddy to the Tin Man role. However, he was highly allergic to the aluminum powder they sprayed on his face daily - so much so, he was hospitalized, and while he was undergoing a lengthy recuperation, they replaced him with Jack Haley.

His voice remained on the soundtrack, however, when the quartet of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion sings We’re Off To See the Wizard - though he never received screen credit for that until the 50th Anniversary version of Wizard was released.

So this has been a quieter, calmer week, and my antique brain did muster up a notion that I needed to write down some Meanderings. That, and a couple of nudges from Barb.