Tom Lyford here. Bona fide Baby Boomer. Born in 1946. Grew up in my central Maine hometown of Dover-Foxcroft, where I still reside today. Married my high school sweetheart, Phyllis Raymond, in 1966 (best decision I’ve ever made) and together we had three wonderful children approximately one and a half years apart: Melissa, 1968; Kathryn, 1970; and Christopher, 1972. Taught high school English for 34 years (one year in Belfast, ME; ten years in Mexico, ME; and twenty-three years at Foxcroft Academy, Dover-Foxcroft, ME), retiring in 2002. After which I worked as a library clerk at our local Thompson Free Library until 2024.
They say you are what you eat. Hmmm. Likewise, I think you are what you consume in the way of food for thought, for the brain, for the heart, and for the spirit. That being said… here’s just a scratching of the surface of the Literature, Music, Drama, and Cinema that has sustained me:
Singer/Songwriters
Ray Charles; Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie; Carole King; Leonard Cohen, Harry Chapin, The Beatles; David Mallett, Bill Morrisey, Townes Van Zandt; Greg Brown, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Paul Simon; Randy Newman; Janis Joplin; John Prine; Rick Nelson; Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show; Elton John; Tom Waits; David Bromberg; John Hiatt; Willie Nelson; Rickie Lee Jones; Shel Silverstein; Johnny Cash; Neil Young; and James Taylor
Poetry
Carl Sandburg; Charles Bukowski; e.e, cummings; May Swenson; Edwin Arlington Robinson; Dorothy Parkeer; Phyllis McGinley; Dave Morrison; Tony Hoagland; Shel Silverstein; Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Leonard Cohen
Classic Cinema
Casablanca; Failsafe; Blow-up; Flight of the Phoenix {the original}; Thunder Road; The Manchurian Candidate {the original} Paper Moon; On the Beach; North by Northwest
Offbeat Cinema
Magnolia; Paris, Texas; The Milagro Beanfield War; Memento; Donnie Darko; Raising Arizona; Run Lola Run; Shaun of the Dead; Being John Malkovich, Birdman; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Boondock Saints; and anything Quentin Tarentino
Sappy Romcoms
Love Actually, The Goodbye Girl; Ghost; There’s Something About Mary; About Time; Groundhog Day
My Guilty Cinema Pleasures
Blade Runner; Terminator I, II, and III; The X-Files; The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai; Fight Club; Mars Attacks!; Reefer Madness: The Musical; Apocalypse Now; Bubba Ho-tep; The Purple Rose of Cairo; Mama Mia {yes me, always the hopeless romantic}; Natural Born Killers
Literature
Moby Dick; The Grapes of Wrath; Sometimes a Great Notion; the works of Ray Bradbury; the works of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; the works of Stephen King; the works of John LeCarre
Offbeat TV Humor
The Simpsons; Seinfeld
Creative Television
The Twilight Zone (the original series); Breaking Bad; Call the Midwife; Land Man;
Offbeat plays
Shepherd’s True West and A Fool for Love; The House of Blue Leaves; Ed Graczyk’s Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean; Sartre’s No Exit)
What Defines Me
Discovering Everyday Life as one offbeat adventure after another; meeting new offbeat, unusual people; rooting for the underdogs of the world; babies; animals (especially puppies, cats, and kittens)
I’ve published 7 books of original poetry and 2 memoirs. Some of my poems and stories are likely to “creep” into this blog from time to time…
Damn, I’ll Still hafta come back to this, I see…
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