"Imagine, Mi Amor" Bonus Content

Thank you for listening to last Sunday’s podcast Imagine, Mi Amor. I have some more thoughts. Round and round I go…

The lyrics of great poet-songwriters are scripture to me. I do imagine there’s no heaven, no hell below us, above us only sky. And isn’t that enough? The sky? The stars? In my story, Miriam says, “Isn’t that what we want to do, Izzy? Reach the stars?”

The words of Woody Guthrie. John Prine. Joni and Bob and Joan Baez. John Fogerty. John and Paul. Merle Haggard. Johnny Cash. It’s scripture to me, chapter and verse.

Marvin Gaye mourned the wasting, ruining of our planet. “Mercy, mercy, me…Where did all the blue skies go? Oil wasted upon our seas, fish full of mercury…This overcrowded land, How much more abuse from man can she stand?”

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I’m not changing the subject, but it’s going to seem like it.

Game shows have played a big part in mine and my husband’s lives. Alan’s a game show fan, a Jeopardy! champion and a writer on many game shows. I’ve been a Jeopardy! fan for decades. Part of his courtship of me was to queue up Jeopardy! every night for us to watch together. (Don’t laugh. It worked. We’re still together over 30 years later.) So, around 1997, we signed up to audition for the new game show Win Ben Stein’s Money. Remember that show? Jimmy Kimmel was Ben Stein’s irreverent sidekick. As part of the audition process—besides a pretty hard knowledge test and an interview—the contestant coordinators asked us all to write a poem. A poem?!! What on earth for?

But then, as now, as in 1971 when I first heard Marvin Gaye sing Mercy, Mercy, Me, I went back to my father’s stories about nature and his respect for the land and resources. It’s on my mind always. The destruction of our environment. Water—growing up in the arid Southwest, I had an early understanding of what a precious resource it is. And animals, animals, animals. What are we doing to the earth’s animals? Unsurprisingly, when I put pen to paper, this is what I wrote for Win Ben Stein’s Money nearly 30 years ago.

Woe

If global warming isn’t real

Then why do polar bears feel

So alone on tiny ice floes?

Human actions without compassion bring

Woes, woes, woes

Time is running out, y’all. 2023 was the hottest year on record, and 2024 promises to be hotter. The oceans are heating up. Wildfires are raging. And positive change seems almost impossible to achieve. But we have to try. We have to keep trying.

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This week, I want to introduce a section that’s both serious and fun. I’ll include it from time to time.

Thanks for listening, reading and indulging me in this week’s round and round and round.

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