Maturity Journal
FOR MATURE CITIZENS - OUR MOST VALUABLE RESOURCE
Volume 39 Issue 12
December 2024
The Music in Our Lives, Part 1: Holiday Music by Peggy K. Newton If one lives long enough and keeps a mind that’s open wide enough and ears tuned to all stations (metaphorically), they’ll hear an enormous variety of music without even trying. Even when we’re not paying attention, we’ll hear it. Life would be poorer without it. As someone with a lifelong hearing deficit, I am thankful for the ability to hear music. Music is my goto therapist when I need to chill or pep up my spirits, and rarely does it fail to do so. My earliest memories of music center around Christmas carols and other songs of the holidays. When I was growing up, our next door neighbor worked for the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation, and he is largely responsible for initiating my love for reading. When books were being phased out at the end of the school year and marked for the garbage bin, he gave books to kids in our neighborhood. He was a fix-it guy; he repaired “ailing” machinery and in the summer if he had repaired a movie projector for the School Corp., he would test it out by showing the movie in his backyard and inviting neighbors and their kids. I remember my mom reading from a poetry book that he gave to my sister and me. Mom’s favorite poem was “Over the River and Through the Woods.” Robert Frost it wasn’t, but it reminded her of her childhood, growing up in the country with only horses and wagons to haul people from one place to another. Thinking back, I am
Mickey Braddock played "Corky," who took care of the animals, including Bimbo the baby elephant, on "Circus Boy," shown on Saturday mornings on NBC in the mid-to-late 1950s. Mickey grew up and threw away the "e" in his first name and used his father's last name to become Micky Dolenz, lead singer of The Monkees, which aired Monday nights on NBC.
INSIDE MJ Treasure Hunt Contest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Hometown History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Patriots of the Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Newburgh Remembered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Picturing Our Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Windows to Our World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Just for Laughs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Hometown History Contest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Brain Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 & 21 Cooking Corner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22