Spitball Army

About a week ago, on the Facebook website, someone posted an event entitled “Election Day.” Members were asked to choose whether they were “attending” or not, much like R.S.V.P.’ing for a dinner party. I selected Yes, and added a note: You would have to kill me to keep me from attending. I haven’t always felt this way.

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…Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.)…, addressing a business summit in Cambridge yesterday, was talking about the media’s “silly questions” to presidential candidates when he cracked his “joke,” his spokeswoman said.

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So, I cautiously opened James Taylor’s Covers CD when my review copy arrived in the mail, already acknowledging my disappointment at the absence of original songs. My opinion of the album only worsened when I read the song list. Track number one: “It’s Growing.” No, I thought to myself, it can’t be.

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There was so much vinyl – multiple copies of many titles, and what seemed like endless rows of classical music – that I was overwhelmed. The two guys working the store seemed overwhelmed, too, wedged in behind a small sales counter that was piled high with boxes of new vinyl arrivals.

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Eventually, in that retail business mileau, I had to tell the community, “Thanks, but no thanks,” for that financial black hole to nowhere. If I really wanted a financial black hole, I’d dig it myself.

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If cat Barbara could have ever been named after a particular person, though, her namesake would most likely have been my first grade teacher, SAM (our acronym for Sister Augustine Mary, who later changed her name back to Sister Barbara Mason), who telephoned me on my birthday one year and played “Las Mañanitas” on her trumpet.

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“When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless.” – Sol LeWitt

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Am strangely tired, and would dearly like to spend the night in my own bed, nice as that feather bed at the Charles was.

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The subway system no longer takes tokens. They have taken the “branding” approach, as well, as the tickets that you buy from a machine (automation again, as at the airport) are called “Charlie,” as in “Charlie on the MTA!!” It took me awhile to figure out how to buy one. The lines to buy with cash were very, very long, and no one was purchasing at the credit card line, so I did that. It wasn’t easy, at first, all touch screen technology and menus, but I would be a pro a second time.

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There are hardly any of those great used music or book stores left. I especially miss the one on Church Street, which is now a bunch of offices. Thank God there seems to still be no McDonald’s in the Square, but there are plenty of Starbucks storefronts, which is just plain odd in an area with sooooo many great small indie coffeehouses.

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