There are places, I remember,
all my life though some have changed
some forever, not for better
some are gone, and some remain
all these places have their meanings
with lovers and friends I still can recall,
some are dead and some are living...
in my life, I've loved them all.

                  - The Beatles In My Life  (Lennon/McCartney 1965)

I like the Judy Collins rendition best, though. 

Let the love fest of memory, which started in Part I, continue. Here are the rest of those voices, in order of appearance, all first heard on OS in that germinal month of May. Take it as given, I love them all.

If you follow the links and like what you see, RATE THE POST or make a comment. This will bring the posts to the Activity Feed and perhaps others will admire and emulate. I've generally described the first few posts that were made by the writers. Once you're hooked, you'll tend to read all their work. 

Anne Rhys Matthews                  Donna Sandstrom                    Arlene Green

Anne Rhys Matthews  : For those of you sick of the dueling docs (and if you aren't, you shouldn't be here), here's the cure. Anne is a true doctor.  A real medical doctor.  I love her: her humanity, her respect for humanity, her humanness, her caring.

These shine forth in every line of her writing.  Go to the The Stand-In , which is nominally about adoption or  The Heart of the Matter, ostensibly about cataract surgery.  You'll come away marveling at her healing powers, her uncanny empathy, her regard for the other and her heart.

Donna Sandstrom: On her "25 Things" post, I had commented that she was the most naturally, spiritually connected person I'd encountered on thes boards. And that her writing was out of this world.

Her On Harvesting Oysters begins:  Last week I went to Desolation Sound to help my friends harvest oysters at their family cabin.  That echoes, and in my mind surpasses, Daphne du Maurier's famous beginning to Rebecca.

Read her on Music:

Dad was Hank Williams at the Grand Ol’ Opry
On a scratchy old record at the back of the rack.
Mom was Van Cliburn, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky

Jesse's Ghost is one of the most touching tributes to a dead friend I've read. And last but not least, Sam and Lily have got to be two of the most beautiful and beautifully photographed cats in all of creation.

Arlene Green: I love this geek Goth goddess. She ranges from writing about additives in vaccines to HP Scientific calculators to A certain part of the male anatomy:

Okay, first of all, no woman in their right mind is going to call 5 times about that in one day. Any guy who does not take this as a sign to run for the flippin' hills because he does indeed have a potential stalker on his hands deserves what he gets.

A line which when crossed turns stamina and a really good time into...

oh my god...is he EVER going to come?

Her lusting after an HP Programmable Scientific Calculator  resonated with this dog.  (The 15C was a gift from the gods, but do any of you readers remember, the fucking thing used Reverse Polish Notation. Arlene looks way too young for RPN. Geeks are directed to the HP Museum.)  And she ices the cake with a political Venn diagram!

Rosina Lippi                                         mad typist                      Susan Mitchell 

Rosina Lippi: Her Storytelling is essential  is essential reading for all aspiring OS writers. Tell me this doesn't grab you:

Carlo Antonio Lippi rendered himself notorious by killing the baron of Porcile, Antonio Cesare Ventimiglia. This was during the rule of Giuseppe Buonaparte over the kingdom of Naples. As Carlo was about to deliver the fatal shot he shouted "Signore, Giuseppe Bonaparte sends you this!" Carlo was a hero of the people and escaped all punishment with their help.

She concludes:  Faulkner said if there's a story in you, it has to come out but really, that's not exactly true. There are multiple stories in everybody. It serves you best to let them out. Well said.

mad typist: A liberal, secular humanist who is a former member of the Armed Services AND she is a girl. And that's why her football commentary is better than anything you'll find on SI!

The dish in Fooooosball commentary is delicious: Parcells was livid about (Jason)Taylor participating in Dancing With The Stars, instead of doing a traditional workout. And again, re Chris Dooley's attempt at writing: It reads like a cheeseball letter to Penthouse.

Her More on the Back Door Draft and Women in Combat give a rare (at least on OS)  insider's view of the volunteer army which is compelling reading.

Susan Mitchell:  OK, I love her. And so do 14,378 other OSers at last count. She introduced herself in  the now-classic My 15 Minutes of Blog?:

Just as we all should have our 15 minutes of fame, we each need our own home page, full of broken links and stale news, unchanged since shortly after its creation. This is mine.

What followed were some of the most honest writing and some of the most beautiful pictures to grace these pages. She occasionally laments she lacks bbd's equipment -- well, I'll say : look at Susan's Senior Portrait and I'll tell you, bbd, no offense, she doesn't need your equipment.

And led by the aforementioned bbd, Susan inspired some of the most heightened creativity by the community  in the "Six for Susan" series.  

Stellaa                                                       pretend_farmer                       bbd

Stellaa:  Stellaa needs no build-up. Fearless in stating her positions and defending them, our dueling docs and others can learn from her how this can be done obdurately yet civilly. But as much as her current, political posts, to me she shines through her more personal ones.

Cinema, Alexandria The 1960's  is  such a jewel, describing her childhood in Alexandria, Egypt:  Nothing will ever be like my childhood movie experiences in Alexandria, Egypt in the 1960's. The Amir, the Rialto, the Metro, the Royal. Each, theater, a grand dame built sometime in the forties and fifties.....

Greek Mothers and Daughters is timeless and universal (especially resonant in the Caveat household with a now 22 year-old daughter):  Her tone of anger or, my tone of pathetic? I remember it always turned on the word “tone”. Real tone or implied tone-- did not matter.  And yet the conflict or anger is subsumed under the love of the lead photograph -- of her daughter's hand.

pretend_farmer: If AZ David weren't a fellow Salonista to whom courtesy is owed in such matters (and besides he knows my UID number) I'd be doing a reverse Glen Campbell in an Oklahoma minute (I think that's how far he got). pretend_farmer's life is one of drama and fun and pratfalls and passion :  what a life and how well she records it and how lucky we are that she shares it with us.

From her (hilarious? not funny?) My Son is a Republican; What Did I Do Wrong? through her Anniversary Gift  and of course the immortal chicken who died in her bra to the wonderful pictures of her menagerie (both human and animal) and her backyard wildlife and devastating flood, we get to know of a strong, smart, resilient, wickedly funny woman. Man, now if we could just do something about that David character.....

bbd: The best photographer on Open Salon by most accounts. But it's not just pretty pictures and his fancy equipment (see full frontal below). He's a photographer with heart, an open heart. 

His Anniversary picture of his wife in  happy 27  is palpably suffused with love, which together with the Joni Mitchell song, glistened this Dawg's eyes.

And he can write a bit, too. the visitor starts out with Sherman Alexie and ends with:

“Oh, honey…I didn’t know you had that in you,” she said with a hint of what may come later. It was better than being Fabio on the cover of a bodice ripper. The aphrodisia of manly manliness is a powerful drug.

And all this precipitated by........... You gotta read it to find out.

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There's a lot more.

Joan Walsh on Mildred Loving, the civil rights pioneer whose case overturned the ban on inter-racial marriage and who, before she died, urged approval of gay marriage.

 J.R.Gibson whose Bubble, Not A Top! written when oil prices were at the $100+ high elicited the following comment:  "We haven't seen the top and when we do, it won't be followed by a return to $50 per barrel prices. But what do I know?"

Already there were some ripples of disquiet. 

kth1120 penned On Civility

This isn't the article that was lost due to glitches in the Open Salon site. That article sang. This one lumbers.

The angry:  Dammit, people, why don't you answer my email?

The plaintive "I'm sorry that no one read this article"

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And I would be remiss in overlooking this from  skeptic turtle (a vital member of our community, now on "sabbatical"): Where do pro-choice men fit?

I'm a feminist-identified, heterosexual, married with kids, middle class, Midwestern, white guy. I am also pro-choice.

That got Skeptic Turtle to be  Sandra's Crush of the Week. I wanna be Sandra's Crush of the Week. That's the whole point of this endless slogging through the archives at the dead of night. PLEEEEEAAASE, Sandra.

WOOF

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                                             FULL FRONTAL PHOTOGRAPH

                                          BBD's  HUMONGOUS EQUIPMENT

 Photo credit:  Canon Super Telephoto 1200mm f/5.6L EF USM Autofocus Lens