{"id":45346,"date":"2021-10-01T14:19:01","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T21:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=45346"},"modified":"2021-10-01T14:19:01","modified_gmt":"2021-10-01T21:19:01","slug":"todays-friday-fun-is-brought-to-you-by-our-old-friend-mitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2021\/10\/01\/todays-friday-fun-is-brought-to-you-by-our-old-friend-mitch\/","title":{"rendered":"Today’s “Friday Fun” Is Brought to You by Our Old Friend, Mitch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like many of you, I miss the comments and insight that Mitch<\/strong> used to regularly provide here.\u00a0 (And I remain flummoxed on why he can’t logon to our site anymore.)<\/p>\n

I was fortunate to be on his email list where he frequently shares heartwarming stories, articles and photos.\u00a0 I felt that it’d be nice if we could “keep in touch” with Mitch, even if only virtually and vicariously.\u00a0 So today’s post is courtesy of Mitch.<\/p>\n

A Heartwarming Piper’s Tale<\/u><\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

As a bagpiper, I was asked by a local funeral director (with whom I’ve worked before) to play at a graveside service for a homeless man who died all alone, with no family or friends.\u00a0 The funeral was to be held at a newly opened pauper’s cemetery in the remote countryside near where we live, and the homeless man would be the first person to be laid to rest there.<\/p>\n

Sadly, I was not familiar with the backwoods area and became woefully lost.\u00a0 Not only being male, but also being dressed in my kilt and sporran, I elected not to stop and ask for directions. \u00a0I continued to drive around until I finally found it \u2026 an hour later.<\/p>\n

I saw the backhoe and the digging crew who were taking their lunchbreak, but the hearse and funeral director were nowhere in sight.\u00a0 I figured they waited as long as possible and finally left.<\/p>\n

Embarrassed at being so late and unsure of what exactly to do, I apologized to the workers for interrupting their lunch because of my tardiness, and stepped to the side of the open grave where I saw the vault lid was already in place.<\/p>\n

I assured the workers I would not hold them up too long, but felt that I needed to fulfill my obligations.\u00a0 The workers gathered around while I solemnly began playing my heart out.<\/p>\n

As I continued to play the mournful dirges, I could hear the workers begin to quietly weep. \u00a0I played like I’d never played before, from Abide with Me<\/em>, Going Home<\/em>, Flowers of the Forest<\/em>, and of course closing with Amazing Grace<\/em> with the workers joining in song.<\/p>\n

Upon finishing and packing up my bagpipe, I headed to my car feeling contrite that I was an hour late and missed the actual service itself.<\/p>\n

As I was opening the car door and putting my gear in, one of the workers came up to thank me, saying in a heavy Irish brogue: “Sweet Mary and Joseph, I have never heard nothin’ like that before \u2013 and I’ve been putting in septic tanks for over twenty years!”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Baker’s Dozen Clever Ads and Messages \u2013 Courtesy of Mitch<\/u><\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"\" \"\" \"\"\"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like many of you, I miss the comments and insight that Mitch used to regularly provide here.\u00a0 (And I remain flummoxed on why he can’t logon to our site anymore.) I was fortunate to be on his email list where he frequently shares heartwarming stories, articles and photos.\u00a0 I felt that it’d be nice if […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4625,4626,4624],"class_list":["post-45346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-bagpipers","tag-funeral","tag-mitch","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}