We’re not lost in the ’50s, or any other decade, today, with this music trivia challenge:
1) There he was, all dressed up in “A White Sport Coat (And a Pink Carnation),” but he never felt more like “Singing the Blues.”
2) “I Will Always Love You,” she sang — after she wrote it.
3) “How Will I Know” was the pressing question on this singer’s mind.
4) “Walking on Broken Glass” had to hurt her.
5) It was a “Cruel Summer” for this fruit-filled bunch.
6) They weren’t the Beatles, but they showed everyone how to “Walk Like an Egyptian.”
7) Clutching his guitar, this guy sang that we were living in a “Political World.”
“Never Gonna Give You Up” was a hit that gave rise to “rickrolling,” providing fake Internet links that led to the song’s video instead of the expected subject.
9) Their hit song “It’s Raining Men” played during a really lame but hysterically funny fight scene in the film “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”
10) If Cher and Madonna were smushed into being one person, the result might look like this lady, who sings “Bad Romance.”
11) The acoustic version is a pretty song, but the original “Layla” by this artist rocks like no other.
12) There’s “Glitter in the Air” when this young woman sings while on a trapeze. Let’s hope she’s careful up there, and especially that she’s “Sober.”
13) Is this guy still “Livin’ la Vida Loca”?
14) The voice of actor Vincent Price added the final touch to this man’s unforgettable “Thriller.”
15) “I’ll Make Love to You” was a hit for this young group of singers.
16) This singer had a hit with “Kiss from a Rose.”
17) Some people still wonder about the meaning of this group’s “Hotel California.”
18) This song by a Canadian brought to eerie life “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
19) “We Are the Champions” proclaimed this group, who also promised that “We Will Rock You.”
20) “Stairway to Heaven” by this band was made to endure.
The answers are:
Queen (19)
The Bangles (6)
Bob Dylan (7)
Seal (16)
Rick Astley (8)
Marty Robbins (1)
The Weather Girls (9)
Michael Jackson (14)
Gordon Lightfoot (18)
Annie Lennox (4)
Lady Gaga (10)
Eric Clapton (11)
Dolly Parton (2)
Bananarama (5)
Boyz II Men (15)
Pink (12)
Ricky Martin (13)
The Eagles (17)
Whitney Houston (3)
Led Zeppelin (20)
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Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063.

In last week’s column, I shared some information concerning past relations between the United States and Iran, focusing on Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the collapse of his rule and his entry into the United States seeking treatment for cancer.
In retaliation for America accepting him into the country, students and militants took over the American embassy in Tehran and held more than 50 Americans captive for 444 days, from late 1979 to early 1981.
That’s where the column ended, but that handful of facts marks only the beginning of an extraordinary time in America.
At that time, the United States was still finding its way after the events of the 1960s and 1970s. The country had been through the Vietnam War and the accompanying anti-war protests. Generally speaking, there were no parades for returning soldiers, and some faced epithets and being spat upon. In some activists’ anti-war frenzy, even veterans from earlier wars, including World War II, sometimes received the same treatment. Desegregation had been achieved, at least on record, but not without protests and riots and even death.
While college students seemed especially fond of anti-war rallies, there were others who joined them. Likewise, the desegregation effort, shouldered by African-Americans who bore the brunt of the brutality, was joined by people of other races.
Now, Americans were trying to put the war behind them (it would be years before the Vietnam War veterans received any form of recognition or apologies) and also learn to live together as equals in one nation.
It was an uneasy peace.
When the Americans were taken hostage, their countrymen were both outraged and frustrated. A rescue attempt was made but had to be aborted, and eight servicemen died.
The release of the hostages eventually was brokered by Algeria.
During the intervening 444 days, something had changed in America. People joined together to pray for the hostages’ release. Yellow ribbons bloomed everywhere, for remembrance.
When the release came, I remember that several churches here opened their doors so that people could come and go as they wished to offer up a prayer of thanks.
Once again, we were one nation. We were simply Americans, without regard to race or other divisive factors. There was joy.
But soon, we were back to many of our old ways.
What we didn’t know was that we would once again experience the unity of the 444 days, many times over, but at a terrible, terrible price, one that would be paid on Sept. 11, 2001. On that day, we all became just Americans again, for a while, at least.
Now, here we are, the country bitterly divided again. Do we really have to wait for another 444 days, or a 9-11, or any other set of chilling numbers to make us realize that the best thing we have is each other?
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Joanne Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063 or jpersinger@ tribtown.com.

Iran is much in the news these days, and that’s not a new thing.
Ever since I can remember, Iran has been a country of revolution and change, and it also was once the backdrop of a tragic love story.
That part might not make it into the history books, but at the time, it was fascinating.
Iran’s ruler, the shah, was married three times. His first marriage, to Princess Fowziyeh, the sister of Egypt’s King Farouk, ended in divorce.
Fowziyeh was a beautiful woman, and so was the shah’s second wife, Soraya, whom he married in 1951.
In 1958, however, the marriage came to an end. The ruler of Iran needed an heir, and Soraya had been unable to conceive. The inevitable result was that Soraya left. The idea of whether it was her decision or the shah’s remains cloudy at best.
One thing was clear: Because of Soraya’s infertility, the couple divorced, so that the shah could remarry and, hopefully, father an heir.
When a woman is beautiful, and the couple is part of an international setting of the wealthy and powerful, not to mention royalty, a story takes on a life of its own. The fact that the marriage did appear to be a love match gave it even more poignancy.
The shah married Farah Diba in 1959, and late in 1960, their first child, a son, was born.
Still, people wondered. Did the shah still secretly long for his beautiful Soraya? Was the marriage to Farah Diba simply an arranged liaison? After all, some said, Farah Diba was no match for Soraya in the looks department.
In the 1960s, Iran was friendly toward the West. The shah was an advocate of reform policies in his country, including advocating voting rights for women.
In 1967 he crowned himself King of the Kings (Emperor of Iran) and Farah Diba as Shahbanoo (Empress), contributing to discontentment among some in the country. Some of his actions were viewed as anti-Islamic.
The shah resigned in the 1970s, and his government finally collapsed, thanks in part to Islamic leaders, especially the exiled cleric Ayatollah Khomeini.
Suffering from advanced cancer, the shah left Iran to live in exile. When he went to New York for treatment of his cancer, the Iranians took over the American Embassy in Tehran, holding more than 50 Americans hostage for 444 days.
The shah died in Cairo in 1980.
Most of this story I have written from memory, with help from the Web sites www.iranchamber.com and en.wikipedia.org.
No one can see into Iran’s probably frightening future, or what it holds for the United States and the rest of the world.
It’s hard to see a love story ever again being its most compelling story, even for a brief moment in time.
Perhaps it’s just as well that the past is steeped in mystery, and we are still left with the tantalizing question of which woman the shah loved most.
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Joanne Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063 or jpersinger@ tibtown.com.

April’s beauty is as fragile as a butterfly’s wing.
Bare branches flutter into tender green leaves, and blossoms unfold on the redbuds and dogwoods. The ground greens up, and spring flowers slip from winter’s grip, unfurling like a child stretching after a nap.
This is one of my favorite times of year, when everything is fresh and new. Warm, gentle breezes send the scent of lilacs to be warmed by the sun. Even rainy days can be a comfort, enticing me to just sit and listen, discouraging restlessness with a soothing “sh-h-h-h-h …”
April’s storms, on the other hand, and be about as subtle as an anvil, as thunder first rolls and rumbles in the distance, then smacks soundly overhead. Lightning can be a string of wicked footlights, setting the stage for gusting winds and driving rains, leaving streets shiny in the lamppost lights in the evenings. And everywhere, the water gurgles in rivulets down small gullies, pooling in every low place, sometimes pushing out into the streets.
As beautiful as she is, courting April is rather like a man courting a demure but alluring woman who, it turns out, has one heck of a temper, and a jealous boyfriend to boot. One day’s beguiling smiles become another day’s tempestuous fury.
Much of April’s adoration comes at no cost to her, but rather is the luck of the draw, in that she follows cold, blustery, stormy, even snowy March.
Whether March goes out like a lion or lamb doesn’t much matter; people generally are just glad it’s gone.
April also has the good fortune of being the youngest of the warm-weather months; not as much is expected of her, and every leaf she turns green, every bud that unfolds, is seen as a great accomplishment.
She doesn’t have to match May’s flowers; she only has to turn up a few flowers of her own, and since they are the first since winter, they bask in an admiring glow.
Certainly, she doesn’t have to even approach June’s time of seeing growth from planting, or its warmth that’s finally reached the depths of the swimming pool.
Those who prefer April will scoff at July and August, and their scorching, sultry sun, trees greened to the max and flowers that blossom everywhere, like so many beautiful ladies at a garden party.
April may be both beautiful and cruel, but it is wise to enjoy the one and overlook the other.
Her stay is never dull, and it is oh-so-brief.
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Joanne Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812)523-7063 or jpersinger@tribtown.com.

Driving home at night needs accompaniment, and my fingers restlessly search for something on the radio to fit my mood. Maybe I’ll find some R&B, something from the ’80s or a country song I like. Then I hear it — the drifting sound of violins, softly persuading me to stay, to listen, to be mesmerized.
My mind drifts back to my grandfather, a fiddler, who played the old music, the dancing music, carried across the sea with the immigrants and flowing out into the new land.
One bitterly cold, snowy winter, he and my grandmother, whom I called Papa and Mama, came to stay with us for a while. It was an experience. I can still see Papa standing in the living room, fiddling a lively tune, and laughing, always laughing, a mirth-filled “wha-ha-ha!” that defied anyone to be anything but happy. He would keep time with his feet, and I, who was only about 5, would try to dance an Old Country jig, not very successfully. Maybe that’s what made him laugh so hard.
Another night, another drive in the blackness. This time, I hear a country song I haven’t heard before, and its signature line leaves me howling. Brad Paisley sings about a girl, of course, and woos her with some romantic lines, about how he’d like to kiss her way back in the sticks, and walk her through a field of wildflowers and then check her for ticks. When I hear that last part, everything that is country in me explodes in laughter.
But eventually, the violins lure me back. The music sounds familiar, yet unfamiliar, and turns out to be pieces by two composers blended into a unique arrangement. It’s an arrangement that works superbly.
Mama was sickly the whole time I can remember her, and she died shortly before I was 7. One of my memories of that winter was of her brushing out her hair, which she wore in a braided coronet. She was brushing it to one side, and her dark but graying tresses fell past her knees as she sat on the sofa. I remember sitting on the floor, just watching the long, long brushstrokes.
The violins have me in their grip again. They are bold this time, commanding, and scenes of dancers flicker in my mind’s eye, a lively ballet, beginning with strong moves and lifts before drifting into a play of innocence and seduction, two things that seem to be an inherent part of music.
Cabin fever eventually got to Papa. My father had driven the truck to work, and we lived in the country, but there was a way to get to town if a person really wanted to be there.
Papa hitched up one of the draft horses to an old sled. I can still see him slapping the reins and standing firm-footed on the sled, shoulders squared, not to be deterred. (I always figured he must have run out of tobacco.)
I’m home now, Papa and Mama. Thank you for lighting my way.
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Joanne Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063 or jpersinger@ tribtown.com.

March, which is National Women’s History Month, got off to an auspicious beginning, starting with the Oscars on March 7.
Finally, a woman was named best director. She won for “The Hurt Locker,” which also took home best film honors. No chick flick, “The Hurt Locker” is about an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Iraq.
Recognition of another kind came to a select group of women on Wednesday, those who served as WASPS — Women Airforce Service Pilots.
A story by Associated Press writer Kimberly Hefling began with a stark summation of facts on the lack of previous recognition:
“They flew planes during World War II but weren’t considered real military pilots. No flags were draped over their coffins when they died on duty. And when their service ended, they had to pay their own bus fare home,” Hefling wrote.
But, the AP story by Hefling continued, the women navigators finally got their recognition on Wednesday, when they received the highest civilian honor given by Congress, the Congressional Gold Medal.
The ceremony on Capitol Hill drew about 200 women who, mostly in their 80s and 90s, had served as WASPS. A touching moment described by Hefling centered on a woman who stood up from her wheelchair and saluted during the entire playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Sadly, another AP story brought news of another sort, this one about a woman who was once hailed as a trailblazer.
In 1974, Juanita Goggins was the first black woman elected to the South Carolina Legislature. Her achievements included key legislation on school funding, kindergarten and class size, the AP reported. She sat on the House budget-writing committee and the former teacher also helped pass the 1977 law that is still the basis for education funding in the state. Her proposals to expand kindergarten and to reduce student-teacher ratios in the primary grades were adopted after she left politics in 1980, citing health issues.
On March 3, police found Goggins frozen to death. The coroner said she probably died about Feb. 20.
Goggins, who had an illness that was never fully diagnosed, had become more and more reclusive and turned down offers of help. She died living in a rented home four miles from the Statehouse.
It’s a sad ending to what was a life filled with accomplishments, and it’s also a reminder that the end does come for us all.
That’s all the more reason to honor those who achieve within their own time, and to set down in history what they have done, so that their achievements will live on to inspire others.
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Joanne Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063 or jpersinger@ tribtown.com.

If misery loves company, most of us are not lonely at the moment.
A limping — no, make that bedfast — economy. Political fighting, infighting, incivility and, worst of all, remorselessness. Global warming/cooling/man-made/cyclical. Earthquakes and tsunamis.
Just for the heck of it, I decided to see what people were worrying about or horrified by a hundred, give or take a few, years ago. At http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade10.html, I found some noteworthy items for comparison.
Today, for instance, you may be out of a job. In 1911, you might have been unfortunate enough to be employed by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. A fire on March 25 of that year killed 145 people. At http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/, it is stated that many of the women were recent Italian and European Jewish immigrants, some as young as 15. A number of people at the time believed that some of the exit doors were locked.
Hey, not to worry! If a man was out of a job, and his wife died working in a sweatshop, he could just put the kids to work. Back at the kclibrary site, you’ll learn that a commission found that up to 20 percent of urban children were undernourished, and with work a priority over education, only a third enrolled in elementary school and less than 10 percent went on to graduate from high school.
I guess that took the pressure off the schools back then. Think of how many fewer teachers were needed when the kids went to work instead of school. Maybe not so good for the teachers, though. No teaching positions open, and the shirtwaist factory sure wasn’t hiring any longer.
Not surprisingly, labor unions were growing during this time, but if you were African-American, you weren’t allowed to join the American Federation of Labor (or much of anything else).
Even women who didn’t work in sweatshops couldn’t vote. The first suffrage parade was held in 1910, but the 19th Amendment wasn’t ratified until 1920.
The outlook overseas over the years spanning 1910 to 1920 was pretty bleak. Maybe it would have straightened out if Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, hadn’t gone and gotten himself assassinated. Eventually, the United States got involved in the action, known as World War I
And, while you may be constantly telling your daughter her clothes are too skimpy and too tight, well, blame it on the women of that long-ago era. That’s when the Gibson Girl look fell out of favor, the hobble skirt became popular and hemlines raised. (Those hussies began actually showing their ankles!) Unfortunately for the wildlife, wearing fur was also popular.
Some eras are worse than others, but sometimes it helps to step back and take a look at the trials and tribulations of the past.
Somehow, the world kept turning, even those times when there wasn’t much reason to care if it did or not.
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Joanne Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063 or jpersinger@t ribtown.com.

Birds rarely seem to get their due, in comparison, at least, to many other creatures in nature.
It might have something to do with the fact that birds can zip into a treetop, or soar completely out of sight, when a person draws near.
Jackson County is fortunate in having forests and fields set aside by state and federal government that provide habitat for birds and other wildlife.
Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge (Seymour), Starve Hollow State Recreation Area (Vallonia) and Jackson-Washington State Forest (Brownstown) will be host for Birding in Jackson County Day on March 6, a Jackson County Visitor Center press release announced.
“The county is home to almost 300 different kinds of birds at different seasons of the year, including bald eagles which nest at Muscatatuck and near Starve Hollow,” the press release stated. “This time of year also usually brings other large and noticeable migrating birds to the area — sandhill cranes. Sandhill cranes have been visiting Jackson County fall through spring for many years, and can often be seen in wet fields or ‘bottoms.’ The crane flocks in the Ewing Bottoms, on the north side of Brownstown, can sometimes number 6,000 to 8,000 birds …”
To find out more about activities planned for the March 6 event, call the Visitor Center at 524-1914.
Thanks to those who really love birds and are patient enough to wait and watch, snap photos and shoot video, the rest of us have an opportunity to learn about birds from all over the world.
One of my favorites is the bird of paradise, found in New Guinea. In pursuit of a mate, the male bird of paradise engages in some very intriguing behavior, including cleaning up its immediate area. It flicks away leaves on the ground, much as a bachelor might scurry to take out the garbage before his girlfriend comes over. When a female arrives to check him out, he jumps on a log and hops up and down, and then the real show begins. Somehow, he changes his appearance into something resembling a big, dark oval with a blue smiley face, eyes and all. Rejected by the female, the bird’s smiley face turns into a frown, as he slowly deflates. It has to be seen to be appreciated.
The bird of paradise may be colorful, but nothing tops Australia’s lyrebird for sound. It can imitate not only the songs of other birds, but other sounds in its habitat, including the clicking of a camera shutter, a car alarm and even, sadly, a chainsaw. That last sound it has heard as inroads are being made into its habitat.
To see and hear these birds, just Google them and several sites will come up, most notably from documentary footage of Sir David Attenborough.
As for me, I may never visit New Guinea or Australia, but I have found a favorite place to watch for birds in Jackson County.
All it took was seeing a mama duck swimming along with her babies paddling in her wake, one splendid, quiet day as I sat in a boat on White River.
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Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063.

Winter weather sweeps the landscape with equal parts beauty and danger.
It also affords an opportunity for outrageous fun for some and incredibly huge headaches for others.
The defining line is usually marked by age, with a young-old sampling below:

Snow! Snow.
No school! No school.
Snowballs! Snowplows.
Sledding! Sliding.
Snowman! Policeman.
Snowboards! Snowdrifts.
Snowfall! Slip and fall.
Snowflakes! Muscle aches.
Snow angels! Real-life angels (friends, family, neighbors, emergency workers)

So, when a snowstorm hits, life glides along for some and grinds along for most.
I would be in the grinding-along category, but I enjoy seeing the kids, sometimes joined by adults, having fun in the snow. It’s here, it’s not going away until it’s ready and at least someone can put it to good use.
My thoughts turn often to the people who have to get out in bad weather. Medical emergencies don’t stop happening, for example, and people working in that field must respond.
The various departments responsible for clearing the roads that crisscross the county have to work to keep streets and highways open and fight the deadly slickness that can send the ablest of drivers on an out-of-control course. How frustrating it must be to clear a road, only to have the wind pick up and drift it shut again. And, too, road workers may be driving heavy equipment built for wintry conditions, but nothing’s one hundred percent safe, and even those drivers sometimes find themselves in bad situations.
I wonder, too, just how tired police officers become, as they’re called to assist at one wreck or other situa-tion after another. When they get to the trouble spot, they may wind up with an assortment of travelers on their hands, and the police must get them to safety.
And then there are the cowboys, the wrecker services, rounding up vehicles that have run away from the herd. They may make a lot of extra money in times like these, but I wouldn’t want to make it under the cir-cumstances they do.
There are unsung heroes out there these days, too — the ordinary man and woman who show up for work so that the wheels of supplying the world don’t stop turning. Whether it’s standing behind a retail counter or shoveling out to go open up the grocery store, there they are, doing what they do on every other day, just so the rest of us can have what we need when we need it.
This is a trying time, but I hope it’s also a time when parents and kids have taken the opportunity to have fun together, whether out in the snow or playing board games or watching television together in the warmth of their homes after a day of work or play.
And to all, please keep safe in this time of pretty, pretty danger.
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Joanne Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063 or jpers-inger@tribtown.com.

Veterans Day was Wednesday, and the news, both locally and nationally, was filled with tributes to the troops.
That’s as it should be.
Many words were spoken, honoring veterans past and present, and thoughts were turned to the present fighting and past wars.
Something else took place this week that reminded me that service men and women can be pressed into service and put into harm’s way in countless situations at any time.
That event was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wall was material evidence of the Soviets’ stubborn attempt to hold East Berlin in their iron grip.
Many people alive today are too young to remember the fall of the wall, let alone its construction. I remember both, and the unending tension of the Cold War.
But Berlin was at the center of another historic event — the Berlin Airlift.
After World War II, Germany was divided into three sectors. Berlin, which was in the Soviet sector, was divided into four parts. West Berlin was occupied by the Allies and East Berlin by the Soviets.
In June 1948, the Soviet Union tried to gain control of all of Berlin by blockading surface traffic in and out of West Berlin, a plan that, in effect, would starve out the population.
The Allies fired back with daily airlifts of fuel and food to West Berlin, not an easy task. The airlift became a work in progress, with a pattern having to be devised to keep the planes flying in and out as quickly and safely as possible.
It must have been a strange time. Through reading and by watching documentaries, I have strived to gain some small insight into how it was for the men called upon to aid the very people with whom they had been locked in a deadly struggle only two or three years before.
By the time the airlift ended in 1949, though, West Berliners were volunteering to help unload the planes, and former mechanics for the Luftwaffe were called on to work on American planes.
A huge undertaking like the Berlin Airlift did not come without a price. According to the Web site at http://www.spiritoffreedom.org/airlift.html, a total of 101 people were killed during the airlift, including 31 Americans. Four of those killed were from Indiana and two were from Kentucky. Their photos appear on the Web site: Smiling, young, wearing their uniforms with pride.
We may not have been at war, but for the families of those who died, the tragedy and loss hurt no less for them than did the pain suffered by families who had lost loved ones on the front lines.
Just like those who took part in the Berlin Airlift, today’s service men and women could be called upon at any time to take part in missions that are both difficult and dangerous.
May God be with them all.
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Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063 or jpersinger@tribtown.com.