day 75 - a side trip to Memory Lane

Today is the 5th day of the 11th week, the 16th day of the 3rd month, the 75th day of 2023, and:

• Absolutely Incredible Kid Day
• Black Press Day
• Campfire Girls Day
• Companies That Care Day
• Curlew Day
• Everything You Do is Right Day (( I wish ))
• Freedom of Information Day
• Goddard Day
• Lips Appreciation Day
• National Artichoke Heart Day
• National Curl Crush Day
• National Farm Rescuer Day
• National Panda Day (( I would always tell my Panda that today was her special day.  I wonder if she was born on this day and that is why they named her Panda, because she certainly didn't have any markings that would evoke a similarity ))
• No Selfies Day
• Oranges and Lemons Day
• ST Urho's Day - this is actually a fictional saint of Finland who supposedly drove the frogs [or grasshoppers] out of  the country to save the grape crops

Driving to work this morning, I heard a song that immediately took me back to my childhood.  Lee Case, a Baltimore DJ on WCBM, who was known as "The Morning Mayor,"  and for over 25 years was on every day back in the heyday of AM radio, before it faded away after FM arrived.   There was one particular instrumental he would play regularly, and I remember vividly sitting at the table in the dining room, eating my oatmeal [and in later years, cereal - my mother was thoroughly disgusted that I preferred cereal with milk to the oatmeal she would make hot], before going to school.  It was a catchy tune, but my elementary school self never quite absorbed where it was from, just retaining a vague memory of it being something about mules in the Grand Canyon.  Once I reached college age, I searched for it, but since I was convinced it was from The Symphony No. 9 in E minor, "From the New World"  [AKA  the New World Symphony], composed by Antonín Dvořák, I couldn't find it for a very long time, finally stumbling across it by accident in a classical collection played by WETA Classical.

Take a moment to enjoy "On The Trail", the third movement of The Grand Canyon Suite for orchestra by Ferde Grofé

Other parts of the suite are more familiar to listeners as it has been used in advertising and in the sound track of "A Christmas Story".  Why Lee Case chose this particular movement to play, I have no idea, except maybe he and I both share the same enjoyment of the instrumental depiction of the mules