WALLY'S VISUAL LIKES :-)

Pete Avila, Ellen Ferrato, Mark Farina, Mark Andrus, David Harness, Miguel Migs… anyone familiar with these names know QUALITY house music was spun beautifully once at San Francisco nightclubs. How I CRAVE for these nights again! Oh, those tuneful memories!! 🎶🪩🎧🎵

Recently, a friend’s mom passed away, and I couldn’t feel more sad for his loss. He stated that he is “a mess,” and I just can not imagine what he is going through, as my heart aches for him at this time. But he should, at best, be assured his mom raised a quality, good person many people endear themselves to to have him in their company. Considering this friend and I are within the same age range, this, too, means our respective mothers are ladies of age.

Not a day presses by where I think profoundly of my Mom since we live thousands of miles apart. And I do not know how my mind, heart, physicality will react the day my Mom departs me from this Earth. I will have memories, photographs, remembrances of conversation, laughter, and most all, wisdom and knowledge a prim and proper lady like my Mom could have bestowed to her two sons.

In recent years, a beautiful Spanish song, called “Amor Eterno” (“Love Eternal and Unforgettable”), would play with the loveliest orchestral arrangement. I even included it onto one of my Spotify lists without second thought. It just sounds so pretty. It’s a song sung by different vocalists, and I fell in love with the version sung by Rocio Dúrcal. At first I thought the song was about a lost romantic love. But no. While playing this song one day in my car with my Mom present, I asked her if she found the song to be nice. She concurred, but added, “She’s singing about her mother who no longer exists… how I wish my mother was still here with me.” I had never meticulously deciphered the lyrics to note it is an ode to missing a mother no longer living… There is pain and anguish… Desire and yearning. Regret and love. Upon listening carefully to the words of the song, I immediately began thinking of my Mom, who is now 90. Despite an agile mind and adept conversationalist, her body has slowed down, frustrating and worrying me as I know these are delicate years for her, making me reassess her loving motherly legacy. And the song “Amor Eterno” has now redefined my perspective toward and after such an inevitable day. The lyrics are poignant and touching….

“Amor Eterno” (“Love Eternal and Unforgettable”)

You are the sadness in my eyes

That weep in silence for your love

I look at myself in the mirror and see my face

The time I've suffered because of your goodbye

I force my thoughts to forget you

Because I'm always thinking of yesterday

I'd rather be sleeping than awake

Because of how much it hurts that you are not here

How I wish, ay*, that you lived

That your eyes never had closed

And to be looking at them

Love eternal and unforgettable

Sooner or later I will be with you

To continue loving each other

I have suffered so much due to your absence

Since that day up to today, I'm not happy

And even though tranquil is my conscience

I know that I could have done more for you

Dark solitude I am living,

The same solitude of your grave

You are the love of which I have

The saddest memory in Acapulco

How I wish, ay*, that you lived

That your little eyes never had closed

And to be looking at them

Love eternal and unforgettable

Sooner or later I will be with you

To continue loving each other

The song was originally written by legendary Mexican music icon Juan Gabriel, whose popularity continues being profoundly strong today, six years after his passing. He wrote the song after his mom passed away in his twenties, just as his music career was taking off. How sad she didn’t live long enough to see the immense heights of his career and how much the Mexican public came to love and cherish him as a musical ambassador and an institution. Whenever he performed this song live in concert, he could never get entirely through it without being emotionally overcome with the memory of his mother, having instead the audience sing-out the song. “Amor Eterno” has become a song not just as an ode to mothers, but a hymn for loved ones who have departed where the lyrics can also lovingly remember a husband, wife, son, daughter, brother, sister, or a long time friend.

Despite the quivering sadness this song evokes, it is still a beautiful connection to lovingly remember a mother, whether she is still with us, or has since departed. As my Mom always says in Spanish, “No hay nadie como la madre…,” translated, “There is no one like a mother.” With what my Mom had to go through as a single mom with two kids to raise, work full-time, making the extraordinary efforts to be there during our important moments in life, the lows and highs of our lives without hesitance or reluctance, yes, my love will always be eternal and unforgettable while I still have her now, and forever.

¡Te amo, Mamà!

❤️💕💝

Television pioneer.

TV producer.

Comedienne.

Dramatic actress.

Multi-Award Winner.

Humanitarian.

Animal Rights Advocate.

Eternal Optimist.

Loving Wife.

Beloved by Legions of People.

Eternal Icon.

Growing up during the Cold War, I had always wondered why my country, the United States of America, had such a contentious relation toward the then Soviet Union. I never bothered much to actually research why… then. I just accepted Soviet Russia had always been communist and detested capitalist America. But my Mom would sometimes speak to me that, as a young girl, would listen to radio programs of serials taking place in “Imperial Russia,” and how much she was fascinated by cities like Minsk, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kiev. Most of all, she’d recount the interest of the Russian Tsars. The “tsars.” Here’s a title of a word I had never heard, but now as a college student in a year away from the collapse of the Soviet Union, I learned Russia had an autocratic monarchy that included Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, and Catherine the Great.

However, it is the last emperor, Tsar Nicholas (Romanov) II, who seem to interest me the most. Sadly, his father, Tsar Alexander III, had no plans to effectively teach his son “Nicky” how to rule until he was 30. But Alexander died of renal failure leaving Nicholas unprepared for the grand task of ruling all the Russias. Ultimately, Nicholas surrounded himself unbeknownst with corrupt and ineffective ministers. His wife Tsarina Alexandra possessed a contentious personality as both husband and wife worried for their hemophiliac son, Russian heir Alexei. The convolution of World War I, Nicholas’s indecisiveness, weak leadership, low soldier morale with sending an under-prepared Russian military to the warring front, mass food shortage, skyrocketing inflation, contributed toward him abdicating his position as tsar.

Today is the 103rd anniversary of the Romanov family regicide. On July 18, 1918, the new Soviet communist regime ordered the execution of the entire Romanov family, including their faithful traveling servants, at ‘The House of Special Purpose’ in Ekaterinburg, where they were held under arrest. Instead of placing Nicholas on trial for past grievances of fellow Russians, the execution was senselessly cruel and barbaric. It was vengeful and evil. Why not spare the Romanov children and the loyal servants who traveled with them, and shown the world the new Soviet state could handle internal affairs humanely and maturely? No. The barbarism of the execution forebode of what would plague Soviet Russia and its satellite blocs in the ensuing years: a newly unforgiving autocratic rule replacing the imperial old one, political oppression, suppressing dissent, persecution of creatives, man-made famine, anti-Semitic pogroms, while contributing toward the dangerous proliferation of nuclear armament threatening global peace.

I have often wondered what the world would have been like had Tsar Nicholas been more adeptly prepared for his reign. Would there had even been an arms race between East and West? Would Nicholas (or his successor) have prepared Russia more so for World War II? Would Russia still been part of The Allies with Roosevelt and Churchill? (Probably so since antagonism existed between Russia and Japan.) What would have been makes for fascinating thought and speculation. The topic of Russia’s last royal family has continued to fascinate me to this day since college, so much so that I have a small portrait of the Imperial Family framed in my home. It is how they met their demise that dejects and touches me because they were undeserving of it.