"Monday, Monday, can't trust that day..." -- Dennis Doherty / John Edmund Andrew Phillips
"Goodbye Ruby Tuesday / Who could hang a name on you?" -- Rolling Stones
"Wednesday Morning 3 a.m." -- Simon & Garfinkle
And I was Thursday's child" -- --David Bowie / Reeves Gabrels
"I've got Friday on my mind"-- George Redburn Young / Harry Vanda
"'Cause Saturday night's the night I like" -- Elton John / Bernard Taupin
" (T)here's something in a Sunday / Makes a body feel alone" -- Kris Kristofferson (Johnny Cash)
That's just a representative sample, of course; there are plenty more songs to sing for every day of the week.
***
We mailed a vial of my spit to Ancestry.com, so we'll see where that leads us. My kids got me the kit for my birthday. I'm hoping that it turns out that I am descended from a bat.
Seriously, I don't know what to expect, as I have not kept up in detail with advances in knowledge based on DNA. Apparently, if we triangulate my DNA with my kids, we'll be able to project something backwards about our ancestors.
Until a few years ago, the only thing most of us knew about who we came from were via stories, most of which were passed on within the family, one generation to the next.
In my case, the Scottish line was clear -- my mother was born in Eaglesham, near Glasgow, and there are a variety of family names that migrated to this country when she and her relatives arrived in the 1920s. Plus I heard the old folks speaking with their accent when I was growing up in the '50s.
My father's story is a little more mysterious -- we knew the Weirs came from Ireland, but there were other influences in the mix, especially the French. We'll just have to wait to see what Ancestry.com says about all this. What is documented within the family is our long Canadian period, which lasted from the 1830s through the 1920s.
Beyond the nature/nuture debate is the family dynamic whereby kids react against their parents at the same time they adapt to their parents' tutelage. Many children show mannerisms and gestures that their parents have/had; all kinds of things like the ability to wiggle your ears or raise your eyebrows one at a time are, according to anecdote, inherited.
I've gotta remain non-committal about all this, but I know for sure that whistling is not inherited, at least not in my case. My Dad was a big whistler; I can't whistle worth a toot. But my oldest son can, and does. So maybe it skips a generation.
On my Scottish side, an almost mythical status within the family concerned our red-headed ancestors, none of whom had appeared in a hundred years or so. While there have been traces of red hair in several of my kids, it was the birth of my second son that brought us our first true redhead. One of my Scottish aunts was dying at the time and when she heard the news, she said, "Hallelujah! Now I can die in peace." She did.
My third son soon came on the scene with even redder hair.
My three girls have hair that seems to change color over time, sometimes blond, sometimes reddish, sometimes brown. The best way to describe it is nuanced.
Back to me, the patriarch, I had very dark hair as a boy and a young man. In my 20s, I had shoulder length dark brown hair. It started turning gray a bit in my late 30s and that process continued until my 60s, when the gray was replaced with white.
Now I have shoulder-length white hair.
***
Of everything I've done, what seems to be of the most enduring interests to the historians, journalists and documentarians who contact me is my years at Rolling Stone, 1974-1977. Within that, the Patty Hearst stories Howard Kohn and I wrote have led to interview requests every single year since they appeared in 1975.
After that, my work on Circle of Poison still generates a lot of queries. I'm almost always willing to talk about the past, with the caveat that I cannot always vouch for what is fact and what is part of the myths that have grown up about the work we did back then.
That I'm so bad at cliches plays a role here. I can never figure out the simplest things, like when people ask me what it was like "back in the day." Back in or on *which* day?
I may be able to sing my way through the week, but I never know which one of those pesky critters was *the* day. That's why the first sentence of my memoir, assuming I can ever settle down enough to complete it, will start out:
Once upon a time, a long, long way from here, back in the day, we don't know which day, but back on some day, something happened or maybe it's just that my memory made me do it.
-30-
Seriously, I don't know what to expect, as I have not kept up in detail with advances in knowledge based on DNA. Apparently, if we triangulate my DNA with my kids, we'll be able to project something backwards about our ancestors.
Until a few years ago, the only thing most of us knew about who we came from were via stories, most of which were passed on within the family, one generation to the next.
In my case, the Scottish line was clear -- my mother was born in Eaglesham, near Glasgow, and there are a variety of family names that migrated to this country when she and her relatives arrived in the 1920s. Plus I heard the old folks speaking with their accent when I was growing up in the '50s.
My father's story is a little more mysterious -- we knew the Weirs came from Ireland, but there were other influences in the mix, especially the French. We'll just have to wait to see what Ancestry.com says about all this. What is documented within the family is our long Canadian period, which lasted from the 1830s through the 1920s.
Beyond the nature/nuture debate is the family dynamic whereby kids react against their parents at the same time they adapt to their parents' tutelage. Many children show mannerisms and gestures that their parents have/had; all kinds of things like the ability to wiggle your ears or raise your eyebrows one at a time are, according to anecdote, inherited.
I've gotta remain non-committal about all this, but I know for sure that whistling is not inherited, at least not in my case. My Dad was a big whistler; I can't whistle worth a toot. But my oldest son can, and does. So maybe it skips a generation.
On my Scottish side, an almost mythical status within the family concerned our red-headed ancestors, none of whom had appeared in a hundred years or so. While there have been traces of red hair in several of my kids, it was the birth of my second son that brought us our first true redhead. One of my Scottish aunts was dying at the time and when she heard the news, she said, "Hallelujah! Now I can die in peace." She did.
My third son soon came on the scene with even redder hair.
My three girls have hair that seems to change color over time, sometimes blond, sometimes reddish, sometimes brown. The best way to describe it is nuanced.
Back to me, the patriarch, I had very dark hair as a boy and a young man. In my 20s, I had shoulder length dark brown hair. It started turning gray a bit in my late 30s and that process continued until my 60s, when the gray was replaced with white.
Now I have shoulder-length white hair.
***
Of everything I've done, what seems to be of the most enduring interests to the historians, journalists and documentarians who contact me is my years at Rolling Stone, 1974-1977. Within that, the Patty Hearst stories Howard Kohn and I wrote have led to interview requests every single year since they appeared in 1975.
After that, my work on Circle of Poison still generates a lot of queries. I'm almost always willing to talk about the past, with the caveat that I cannot always vouch for what is fact and what is part of the myths that have grown up about the work we did back then.
That I'm so bad at cliches plays a role here. I can never figure out the simplest things, like when people ask me what it was like "back in the day." Back in or on *which* day?
I may be able to sing my way through the week, but I never know which one of those pesky critters was *the* day. That's why the first sentence of my memoir, assuming I can ever settle down enough to complete it, will start out:
Once upon a time, a long, long way from here, back in the day, we don't know which day, but back on some day, something happened or maybe it's just that my memory made me do it.
-30-
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