I found the most wonderful podcast – SO much better than listening to political stuff, a hole I was falling down:

https://500songs.com/tag/led-zeppelin/

This one for example is about Led Zeppelin; I’ve listened to 3 about Bob, 1 on Janis and 1 on the Stones so far. This one got me thinking about vocalists. There are clips of Robert Plant singing with some of the bands he was in before the Yardbirds; and at one point some producer was trying to make him into a “Tom Jones or Englebert Humperdinck”. In all cases he sounded SO different than he does with Zeppelin. It got me thinking about how Dylan had so many different voices over his career; and during the Janis episode, they had a clip of her very early on singing in a pure Joan Baez style. The voice is truly an instrument. Talented vocalists are those who know how to use it.

Not a humblebrag about how awesome my life is. Honest things I’m thankful as all hell for.

I’m thankful a pregnant 19-year-old went home for pre-natal care and birthed me all healthy-like, and did what she thought was best.

I’m thankful I didn’t get pregnant as a teenager.

I’m thankful that when I spun my car around 180 degrees in the rain on a BQE entrance ramp, nobody was coming up behind me, for the whole amount of time it took me to point myself right again. I think I had to make a K-turn on the ramp.

I’m thankful I set up that interview with the FRBNY and walked into that job.

I’m thankful I never spiraled down so low I couldn’t get back up again.

I’m thankful for the Kinks song “Better Things.” When things are bad, I know tomorrow, you’ll find better things.

One of my comments earned forty-five cents on Reddit.

“You like to think you chose the right music when the truth is that the music chose you.”

This thought has seized me. My first Dylan albums took such a convoluted path (through someone’s trash) to reach me. Then they sat ignored in the corner of my room for four years. Apparently, all that time, they were whispering, “play me… play me…”

The gales of November have not come early; it’s a beautiful, sunny day. But the melancholia has come down on me nevertheless. It’s cold and the world has walls around it again.

The erstwhile brook behind my house… there is a tiny glint of water visible. They dry weather has been insane.

Xopher and I on a happier, sunnier day in Newport RI.

We spent three nights in Newport and two in the outer part of Boston. The last day in Newport we did the famous “Cliff Walk” where I tripped and fell on my knee, which hurts. My biking days might be over for the year.

Ezra Klein:

“We are going to have to live here with one another. There will be no fever that breaks, no permanent victory that routs or quiets those who disagree with us. I have watched many on both sides entertain the illusion that there would be, either through the power of social shame and cultural pressure or the force the state could bring to bear on those it seeks to silence. It won’t work. It can’t work. It would not be better if it did. That would not be a free country.

Much of what I would describe as Kirk’s worst moments were standard-fare MAGA Republicanism. And the leader of that movement is the president of the United States. He is now in the White House, having won about half the country’s votes in the last election. We are going to have to live here with one another, believing what we believe, disagreeing in the ways we disagree.”