Today’s Podcast

Happy Thanksgiving!

First off I must apologize to Olivier whose comment I played yesterday. I mispronounced his name. My spell checker “corrected” the spelling to Oliver.

I also want to add to yesterday’s podcast. I got an email from Lee Ann of the Lascivious Biddies letting me know “The Biddies are also a set of characters in The Music Man - it means little hens, but also talkative, gossipy women…” I think I will have to see that musical.

Today’s quote is inspired by a road trip my girlfriend and I took a few weeks ago. On the trip Billy Joel’s famous song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” turned up on one of our old mix CDs. We must have replayed it ten times trying to recall the cultural significance of each of his historical references. Between the two of us I think we got about half of them.

So starting with today’s very special Thanksgiving podcast I will go through one or two references per week. Think of it as a very long quote. I think there are over 100 references.

The song is essentially a catalog of the historical events of Billy’s life. The song begins in 1949 with Harry Truman.

Harry S. Truman was the 34th president of the United States. He had a sign on his desk that read “the buck stops here.”

He served as FDR’s Vice President until 1945 when FDR passed away and Truman became president.

He was re-elected for a second term, but barely, he was expected to lose the election and the Chicago Tribune even ran the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman”

While Truman is most famous for his decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 effectively ending World War II. I suspect Joel started with Truman because Truman was Joel’s earliest memory of an historical figure.