Music Men and Women Writers

It's the kind of morning where I have a variety of much shorter thoughts.  Let me record them and maybe a pattern will emerge.

--I am not one of the people on social media talking about how much the stories of Alice Munro meant to me.  I remember reading her short stories long ago and being impressed.  But I don't read them now.  She's not one of my touchstone authors.  I am sad that she's gone, but she was in her early 90's, so it's not unexpected.  She did win the Nobel Prize in Literature, so it's not like she was as unknown/unappreciated as some of those social media posters make it sound.

--I feel similarly about David Sanborn, who also died this week.  I have several of his CDs, or once I did.  I might have seen him play at the Jacksonville Jazz Festival.  But he's not a musician who provided the soundtrack of my life.

--On Sunday, we started watching The Music Man, the movie with Shirley Jones and little Ronnie Howard.  I was surprised by how many of the songs I could sing from memory.  I remember watching the movie long ago, in elementary school, when it aired on TV.  I probably went to an amateur stage production along the way. Why do I know this music?  It is a great soundtrack, and I do remember that my parents owned a copy (on vinyl).  But I don't remember them playing it often.

--Yesterday, we started watching Station Eleven, on a DVD copy I got from the public library.  Was the sound quality this bad on streaming?  We watched two episodes, and I don't know that I can keep watching.

--I wanted something easier to watch last night, so we watched The Blues Brothers, which I've only seen once.  I enjoyed it more this time, but I still wasn't blown away.  The music was great, but the plot was a bit thin--and so much destructions of police cars and plate glass windows!

--We are both fighting off colds.  Mine wants to take root in me, and my spouse has been under the weather for almost a week, with lots of rib rattling coughing.  I'm mainly congested, but I've been stuffy for weeks, so mine may just be allergies.

--Happily, most of my work for Spring 2024 term is done.  I've still got one paper to turn in, and I'll do that later this morning.  I'll also do some errand running; I checked out two physical books from the Wesley library, and now I need to mail them back.  I did use them in my final paper, so that's good.  I remember when I was first accepted to Wesley back in 2021, and I imagined having the library send me books by way of mail on a weekly basis.  But this term has been the first time I needed to take advantage of that perk.

--I hope I still see it as a perk when I find out how much I have to pay to ship the books back.

--The tile guys will be here soon.  Let me get ready to move the bigger car out of the driveway.