Lydia Likes It

Martha, and Motown

Of all the girl groups Motown lifted up to the world, two resonated the most with me: The Supremes, of course, and Martha and the Vandellas. Martha Reeves, Annette Beard and Rosalind Ashford began singing together in 1957, and by 1963 the group hit it big with Motown. "Nowhere to Run" has always been my favorite. Go ahead, sing along!

Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide
Got nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide.
It's not love, I'm a running from,
It's the heartbreak I know will come.
'Cause I know you're no good for me, but you've become a part of me.
Ev'rywhere I go, your face I see, ev'ry step I take, you take with me yeah

Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide
Got nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide.
I know you're not good for me, but free of you I'll never be, no.
Each night as I sleep, into my heart you creep.
I wake up feelin' sorry I met you, hoping soon that I'll forget you.
When I look in the mirror to comb my hair
I see your face just a smiling there.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from you baby,
Got nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide.
I know you're no good for me, but you've become a part of me,
How can I fight a lover, that shouldn't be, when it's so deep,
So deep, deep inside of me
My love reaches so high I can't get over it
It's so wide I can't get around it, no
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from you baby
Just can't get away from you baby, no matter how I try to

I know you're no good for me, but free of you I'll never be,
Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide, got nowhere to run to baby.

Chain of Fools?

Awesome. Wow. Whoopie. She's not Aretha Franklin, who recorded this in 1968; she's Gezel Bardossi, a 12-year-old Australian girl who sang this for her audition for The Voice of Australia in 2023. Close your eyes when you listen to Gezel. You'll swear Aretha is singing in your ear. (Thanks to my husband Ted for finding this.)

Iko-Iko

One of the most well-known songs of Mardi Gras is “Iko-Iko,” made popular after an impromptu jam session was caught on tape by songwriting greats Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. In 1965 New Orleans girl group The Dixie Cups were recording for Leiber and Stoller’s Red Bird Records in a New York studio. They’d finished “Chapel of Love” and during a break the women began singing a song they’d learned from their mother called “Iko-Iko,” a call and response chant of a Mardi Gras Indian tribe. Group member Barbara Hawkins said: “We were just playing around with it during a session using drumsticks on ashtrays. We didn’t realize Jerry and Mike had the tapes running.” Leiber and Stoller later overdubbed bass and percussion along with the drumsticks on ashtrays, released it, and in 1965 it became the Dixie Cups’ final Top 40 record. My husband Ted found this recording, and as soon as he heard it, he said "Lydia Likes It!" And he's right. I do.

Excerpted from The Story Behind "Mardi Gras Mambo" and "Iko Iko" by Lydia Hutchinson on Creative Workshops.

Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage

Perhaps because I am one (an old lady), I squealed with delight when I read in the Reasons to be Cheerful newsletter and the Christian Science Monitor newspaper about Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage (OLAUG), an absolutely real group based on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Since 2017, the group -- which accepts only women 65 and older as members -- has removed trash, by hand, from ponds across the Cape. A recent haul yielded wooden planks, silty beer cans, a plastic container lid, a mud-caked fishing rod, a cement block, and a 12-foot segment of aluminum flashing that required the combined efforts of several divers to hoist on the back of a kayak. They also found a blueberry-cheesecake-flavored electronic cigarette. “We didn't even know what it was!" they laughed. "We had to ask a young person.” The dives attract onlookers (and cheerleaders), and provide joy along with a community service. Fabulous!

Elevated Access

Let's face it: women's health care just ain't what it used to be a few years ago. Those of us who live in the Northeast, who have access to quality care and the resources to afford it, are luckier than we can imagine. In much of the US, women's reproductive health care is either no longer available, or so restricted that it's available only to those wealthy enough to work around the restrictions. For women in need of reproductive health care or gender-affirming services, Elevated Access, an all-volunteer corps of pilots using donated private planes, transports women at no cost to get the care they need. The services of this young nonprofit organization are available all over the country. They accept referrals from case workers, direct-support organizations, and health care providers to evaluate the need and try to locate a pilot to handle the flight. Pilots, thank you for your service.