When I learned the “St. James Infirmary Blues” as the first piece on my guitar 50 years ago, I did not know that the message would not leave me during a whole lifetime. The story of the woman who died in hospital had happened to us nearly too, in 1975, at the birth of our second daughter. My feet were in my wife’s blood in the operation room for hours while the doctors were fighting for her life. Many blood transfusions. Lifetime virus infection remained. Life is given only for a short period of time. At such times, in such songs it comes to the surface.
photo: my wife, 45 years ago.
comments at flickr.com below:
P G Magnus Ekwall, CoreForce, Baz 120, and 7 other people added this photo to their favorites.
related:
https://flickrcomments.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/st-james-infirmary-blues/
Flickr Comments 
Frizztext7 days ago
my wife B. in our first own kitchen 1969 – found in an old photo shoebox – now we have our 49th anniversary …
e600-Stu7 days ago
Wonderful image congratulations!!
JACK BYERS.7 days ago
I could tell it was 60s before I read your description,The memories came flooding back,now I’ll have to look out my old pic.s.Thanks for reminding me of our age.
leif_8533 hours ago
Sorry I could not tell that it was the 60s. The 60s in Germany were like the 40s in the US where I grew up. This kitchen and the pose of the girl are very modern, an expression of a mentality that was not common in conservative families hitherto. She is not shy at all and belonged most likely to the 68ers, who were an enigma for me. Even a course in Marxism did not help me very much to understand what was going on amongst the students. I took it for a kind of constant carnival with bizarr ideological foundation, what it basically was in hindsight. The protagonists might have experienced it as great hopes, which were in vain.
Very beautiful model and living at the pulse of this time I guess. Enviable. She is reading a cook book though. Maybe she was not a hardcore 68er.
Frizztext29 hours ago | edit | delete
she’s still cooking wonderful, now we are together 49 years!
maybe you are right with:
“The protagonists might have experienced it as great hopes, which were in vain.”
Frizztext4 hours ago
you’ll understand that such a personal photo gives other associations too – more about in my daily blog at
flickrcomments.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/life-is-not-forever/
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