No Questions, Please

This is a week of drear and despair – a week lost to grading final exams and papers. I have an intimidating stack of term papers demanding my attention, even after days of effort to reduce the pile, and still two more final exams to administer and evaluate.

What heightens the pressure is that we are in the midst of buying a “new” car (new to us – a 2009 Hyundai Sonata) and the day of graduation for Grace is rapidly approaching. Grace is thinking about graduate school and finding housing in her new North Carolina home town, and that’s an issue requiring some attention and thought. Immediately after Grace’s graduation, I will be leaving the country for a while. I am not at liberty to reveal the exact nature of my activities or my whereabouts on this trip. (I’ve always wanted to say that!)

So given all this, I didn’t expect to be blogging at all this week, but I will put in a word this morning before I get back to that humongous stack of papers. I just want to take a minute to say that some music can really bring your soul back to life. Like Jackson Browne’s “The Load Out – Stay” medley, for example. It’s a great song, the first part being a kind of ethnographic sketch of life on the road for a 70s rock band, and the second being an irresistible plea for the audience or whoever is listening to “please, please stay.” The heart of the “Stay” segment features Rosemary Butler swooping in with her vocal, “Oh won’t you STAA-aay, just a little bit LONGerererer, Please, please, please, say you will -- SAY you will!” Her voice is wonderfully strong, clear, and electrifying, it rings every bell in the bastion of my being. Her solo is followed up by a comical parody by David Lindley who repeats the same lines in falsetto. The whole song rocks and it’s one of those I have to be careful not to sing along to while I’m walking about, lest I be mistaken for an escapee from an Alzheimer’s ward. (Who IS that guy, cruising along the sidewalk singing “And the union don’t mind…?”)

Anyway, Jackson Browne has done some good stuff in his day, and he always reminds me of LA, a town where I spent a little time a few decades back. Rock on, JB.

iPod World

OK, so my Beloved Darla gave me an iPod last Christmas and my dear friend Deb Bennett chided me for being so excited about it. Deb's exact words: "Well good for you! Reaching out to the 21st Century. Even I've had an iPod for three years."

I'm still loving it. This morning it occurred to me that I may be in some danger of being picked up by a passing squad car since I may give the impression that I'm a cognitively impaired homeless guy while listening to it. I say this because I sometimes involuntarily shout out an artist's name as his or her song hits my ears while I'm strolling down the sidewalk. This morning, while walking to school, I found myself shouting "Tracy Chapman!" when the opening notes of "Give Me One Reason," came pouring out of the little gadget. It was great because I love that song and I had forgotten that it was on my playlist. Then I remembered a similar thing happening yesterday: Just as I was walking into the Cornell Social Science Building I cried out "Bach!" I couldn't help it. At that moment a wonderfully sweet melody of Bach's had started playing, the one that's called "Jesus, You Are So Cool," or something like that.

Deb is right, I should have been doing this years ago.

Footnote: Tracy Chapman - anthropology major extraordinaire.