I whipped up a new look for Ken over at the Illuminated Donkey a day or two ago… I think it’s an improvement, perhaps you will too.

Greg and Spencer and I had practice yesterday evening – seemed like we were both really rusty and coming along nicely. Three more evenings and we should have an idea of a setlist.

Here’s one of the songs we sang last night. I thought of duct tape, and wondered who sits on the board of Duct Tape USA, and are they on an advisory panel to the Department of Homeland Security? I suppose we’d need a FOIA request to make a definitive determination, but it’s my understanding that FOIAs are deprecated these days.

Influenza

(Sung by Ace Johnson, Clemens state farm, Brazoria, Texas, April 16, 1939.)

In nineteen hundred and twenty-nine, men an’ women sure was dyin’,
From the disease what the doctors called the flu.
People was dyin’ everywhere; death was creepin’ th’ough the air,
For the groans of the sick sure was sad.

It was God’s almighty hand; he was judgin’ this old land;

North an’ South; East an’ West could be seen,

Yes, he killed the rich an’ poor, an’ he’s goin’ to kill more

If you don’t turn away from your sins.

In Memphis, Tennessee, doctors said it soon would be,
In a few days influenza we’ll control.
But God showed that He was head, an’ He put the doctor to bed,
And the nurse they broke down with the same.

It was God’s almighty hand; he was judgin’ this old land;

North an’ South; East an’ West could be seen,

Yes, he killed the rich an’ poor, an’ he’s goin’ to kill more

If you don’t turn away from your sins.

Influenza is a disease, makes you weak all in your knees;
‘Tis a fever everybody sure does dread;
Puts a pain in every bone, a few days an’ you are gone
To a place in the groun’ called the grave.

It was God’s almighty hand; he was judgin’ this old land;

North an’ South; East an’ West could be seen,

Yes, he killed the rich an’ poor, an’ he’s goin’ to kill more

If you don’t turn away from your sins.