“Appreciating others is a reflection
of celebrating oneself.”
Walt Whitman
It’s hard to believe
It’s been over a decade
Since that first blog post
On 2015 New Year’s Day
I began this blog
As a writing exercise
To practice each day
Writing whimsical prose
Through these many years
I never would have dreamed
My followers could grow
To 50,000 plus from Zero
Thanks to all who’ve visited
Who’ve liked and commented
Thanks for all your support
Thanks for following
Shine On
“Music is enough for a lifetime
But a lifetime is not enough for music”
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff
I listen to music daily. My music repertoire is extremely diverse and includes a great deal of classical music. Mostly because when I write it’s my background music of choice. The past months while working on my current novel, Without Warning, I only listened to Rachmaninoff.
The first time I heard his music was in the movie, The Seven Year Itch; where Richard Sherman (played by Tom Ewell) is a married man whose wife is away for the summer. He famously uses Rachmaninoff music as a cynical tool of seduction, while hosting his attractive upstairs neighbor, Marilyn Monroe in his apartment.
I was writing and half listening to Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 when it completely stopped me in my tracks. I recognized this same tune from Eric Carmen’s 1975 hit song, “All By Myself”. Carmen died in 2024 but some of you might know him as the lead vocalist of the Raspberries, with whom he recorded the hit “Go All the Way”.
Anyway, I looked up information about Carmen and his song “All By Myself” and lo and behold, the verse melody comes from the second movement of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Apparently, when Eric Carmen composed his song, he thought Rachmaninoff’s copyright had expired, but he was wrong and later had to share royalties with the composer’s estate.
If you’re not familiar with Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff, he was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. He started playing the piano at the age of four. By the time he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, Sergei was already the author of the First Piano Concerto, the one-act opera Aleko and a number of piano pieces and romances.
Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. “Composing music is as vital for me as breathing or eating: this is one of the essential functions of life,” I love this quote and must agree wholeheartedly with Rachmaninoff.
Shine On
“Bittersweet song
Memories gone
Bittersweet song
Remembering you”
J R Malmquist
The music and lyrics I create always come from the heart. This song I just wrote and created is no different.
I continue to add songs to my Dragonfly album and here’s one I just uploaded for your listening pleasure titled, Bittersweet Song.
Taking my brain
Back to memory lane
Thinking about you
Warms me to my core
Once every minute with you
Was never too long
Every kiss from you
Was like a bittersweet song
Once every embrace with you
Was like a blanket of love
Warming my heart
To the depths of my soul
Bittersweet song
Memories gone
Bittersweet song
Remembering you
Once you said
I will never hurt you
But now you say I’m sorry
I never meant to harm you
I forgave you
For what happened
But I will never forget
What you did
People that are hurt
Well they hurt people
I understand that
Perfectly now
Bittersweet song
Memories gone
Bittersweet song
Remembering you
Bittersweet song
Wrote and created by J R Malmquist
September 20, 2026
Shine On
“We cling to our own point of view,
as though everything depended on it.
Yet our opinions have no permanence.
Like autumn and winter,
They gradually pass away.”
Chuang Tzu
Welcome fall, my favorite season of the year. Although I’m a fan of evergreen trees, deciduous trees with their spectacular burst of color is always a welcome site.
The autumnal equinox, also called the September equinox or the fall equinox will arrive on Tuesday, September 22, 2026. Not only do temperatures drop, but plant life slows down, and so do we. The autumnal equinox is an astronomical event that marks the start of autumn or fall. In the Northern Hemisphere, the autumnal equinox occurs every September whereas in the Southern Hemisphere, it occurs every March.
During an equinox, the Sun crosses what we call the “celestial equator”, an imaginary extension of Earth’s equator line into space. The equinox occurs precisely when the Sun’s center passes through this line.
Surrounding the autumnal equinox is the relationship with the full Moon. Curiously, the full Moon that occurs nearest to the autumnal equinox is always called the Harvest Moon. Why is that?
Well, surprise, surprise the name has to do with farming. Around the fall equinox, the full Moon rises around sunset for several nights in a row, traditionally providing farmers with just enough light to finish their harvests during the arrival of the Harvest Moon.
Shine On Harvest Moon
“”The truth will set you free
But first it will piss you off.”
Gloria Steinem
Last Wednesday, September 2, 2026 the World lost another passionate talented and intelligent woman. Gloria Steinem, the American journalist and political activist who became the face for feminism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, died at age 92.
Born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, Gloria Marie Steinem inherited an activist tradition. Her grandmother served as chair of the educational committee of the National Women Suffrage Association and also helped rescue members of her family, who were Jewish, from Germany during the mid-1930s.
Steinem graduated from Smith College and moved to New York in 1960, where she was often sexualized and dismissed while searching for reporting jobs in a male-dominated journalism industry. “We need a reporter, not a pretty girl,” she says she was told by an editor at Life Magazine.
By 1962, one of her first articles was published in Esquire Magazine, an exploration of birth control and shifting sexual beliefs among college students. Themes that would continue to appear in her later work.
Gloria’s near century on earth were years well lived, and she continued working for equality until the very end. Steinem was a feminist icon who spent the better part of a century advocating for women’s rights in the workplace, especially equal pay for women as well as the right to abortion and sex education.
Her name and face became synonymous with the fight for women’s rights. She continued to be a vocal proponent of feminism and other liberal causes; like anti-war activism well into her 90s. She devoted her life to the pursuit of equality and political change. She worked tirelessly for over 70 years to ensure each generation built upon the work of the previous one.
I will be forever grateful for her many accomplishments helping woman. She fought so I could choose whatever I wanted to do with my life rather than be confined by traditional gender roles. Something she said that I have lived by is:
“Do what you love so much that you forget what time it is when you’re doing it.”
She changed women’s lives by opening up possibilities we never imagined. “Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.” As she also stated: “Women are not a special interest group; they are half the population.”
She lit a torch many years ago. It is now our responsibility to keep that torch lifted and lit into the future.
Rest in peace Gloria. You will be missed as a champion for woman.
Shine On
