Good old classic-style country music was an endless delight in my younger days. Many of the people who wrote the songs, sang them, and picked the guitars that accompanied them were among the most talented people in their fields, there can be no denying.
One of them, a feller who came along in the early 70s, was Dick Feller, who wrote and sang all sorts of songs: novelties, love ballads, any and all. Among them:
The Credit Card Song
Biff, the Friendly Purple Bear
Makin’ The Best Of A Bad Situation
Any Old Wind That Blows
Lord, Mr Ford
The Thing That Kept Me Goin'
East Bound and Down
Some Days Are Diamonds (Some Days Are Stones)
One day several years ago, I was rummaging through my iTunes and I wondered whatever happened to Dick Feller? And so I rummaged through Google, and found that Dick Feller was now Deena Kaye Rose, having undergone surgery to become a trans woman in 2014. She wrote her autobiography, Some Days Are Diamonds, in which she came out publicly as a trans woman and adopted her new name.
Since everyone has the right to their own decisions in the matter, I was happy to read the book. It was sad to find that she had struggled with her identity for many years, even while married and the father of a daughter. I recognize the strength it took to do this. Denying herself womanhood must have been daily torture, and it was nice to read that she no longer had that agony to deal with.
She also mentioned that the song "Some Days Are Diamonds," written years ago and recorded by not only Feller but John Denver as well, revealed her thoughts very well in its final verse:
Now the face that I see in my mirror
More and more is a stranger to me
More and more I can see there's a danger
In becoming what I never thought I'd be.
Imagine looking in the mirror and not recognizing, or appreciating, the reflection therein. And then, imagine a day and age when it was not possible to rectify the situation, and being forced to "live" with it. Deena's transgender journey was the trip to contentment.
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