Friday 4/5/24
I've been awash in Otis Redding music.
Aiming to work forty hours this weekend so will not stop and tarry here other than to make a few notes. Need to pour it on right now.
Looking for cheap copies of the two volumes of correspondence between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle.
Strange to see Luke Skywalker referenced in a Three Investigators novel. There are certain "rules" throughout the series--no references to popular culture, for the most part. Fictitious popular culture, yes--like some made up movie--but not actual then-contemporaneous pop culture, so this was a little jarring. I've read the book before. I've read every Three Investigators novel save one, which had a very limited print run, being the last in the series, but I have located a pdf copy of that and will remedy this soon.
My mother was telling me about my nephew's reluctance to read for the twenty minutes that is required of him by his school each day outside of school. He likes to be read to, it seems, but doesn't care to read himself. I'm not sure if it's a predilection thing or he's struggling some. I know he has enjoyed learning about Revolutionary War-era history, so I recommended the book Johnny Tremain, but I didn't hear anything back.
Next Saturday is the Boston College spring football game. Weather is supposed to be in the fifties. I may go if I work hard enough this week.
Water and coffee is already in the coffee maker for the morning so all I have to do is flip the switch.
My esteem for Joseph H. Lewis only goes up. I think of Gun Crazy as the second best noir after Out of the Past. Incidentally: How anyone takes Double Indemnity seriously is beyond me. For me, it's to noir as The Exorcist is to horror: risible. Been spending a lot of time with Lewis's work of late. Also in this category of work I've been pouring over repeatedly: Earl Hines's solo on "West End Blues," Cream's "Crossroads" from Wheels of Fire. Jazz is a music of partnerships: Davis-Coltrane, Coltrane-Dolphy, Holiday-Young, Dolphy-Little, Brown-Roach, and you can put Armstrong-Hines in there, too.
I must write a book on the Grateful Dead. This has to happen.
Have to get one of these jazz books to market. Eats me up that one is not out yet.
But it's mental discipline that most matters now and what will go a long way in taking care of everything else, no matter what that may be. Worthy courses are for focused staying. The worthier, the more so.
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