Trying to go through old magazines and put some in recycling, I can't bear to let go of a 2011 copy of 501 Lost Songs, put out as a collaboration between NME and UNCUT magazines.

There is still a link online to all of the info, plus various other "best of" type lists:

http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/NME_LostSongs.htm

When I saw both of the songs mentioned below I grabbed my a-ha and Fifth Dimension cds off the shelf and popped them in. Cleaning is always better if you have music playing. :)

those sad eyes...

Maybe it's because I'm coming off a bad headache (which always leaves me emotionally weird before, during and afterward) and the sadness of a very lonely stranger who called into where I work today plus worries about my mother, but I am really feeling this article that showed up in my email today.

Edgar Allan Poe has always interested me, more as a person than a writer, though I do like his poetry and some of his short stories. His eyes always seem to be telling their own tale, his desperation so intense it seemed like a separate entity.

He is so the exact opposite of the stodgy-looking Henry James whom I've read much more of over the years. James once said of Poe: “An enthusiasm for him is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”  I'm not so sure that is true, but then each man came from completely different worlds and I'm super-tired so my thinking cap may be a bit off right now.

This part of the New York Review of Books article struck me hard:

The writer Thomas Wentworth Higginson said Poe had “the look of over-sensitiveness which when uncontrolled may prove more debasing than coarseness.” And he does seem to have been overwhelmed by himself, intolerably sensitive and proud and intolerably brilliant, his drinking and bitterness abetting his discomfitures and humiliations. That said, his strange little household of aunt/mother and cousin/wife, through it all and while it lasted, was always reported to be warm and sweet. He was a strong, athletic man who, through the whole of his career, bore up under his weaknesses and afflictions well enough to be very productive, most notably in the unique inventiveness, the odd purity, of his fiction.

The rest of the it can be read here:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/feb/05/edgar-allan-poe/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR+Poe+the+police+van+Gogh&utm_content=NYR+Poe+the+police+van+Gogh+CID_4edd3542cc7ea2efa47d8fd7b4a20fb2&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=On%20Edgar%20Allan%20Poe

And the TBR titles grow...

The February 2015 issue of Elle has lots of intriguing books reviewed or highlighted that sound great! These are just some of them:

 

 

 

The most recent Ultra collection is very upbeat and terrific for exercising. It's not particularly deep and definitely not something to listen to as you would music that takes you away from everything for a while and becomes a mind-altering experience. Last year's compilation stood on its own and had some great zen-like moments.

 

2015's edition is strictly for the beats and the infectious urge to dance. Stand-outs include: "Delirious (Boneless)," "Five Hours," "My Head Is A Jungle" (MK Remix) and "Brand New (Extended Version)." 

 

*See complete track listing below:

 

 

http://www.allmusic.com/album/ultra-2015-mw0002771318

 

 

 A review for Ultra 2014:

 

Review by David Jeffries

                   

Packed with club hits like Calvin Harris' "Thinking About You," Steve Aoki and Chris Lake's "Boneless," plus the Benny Benassi and John Legend team-up "Dance the Pain Away," Ultra 2014 continues to display the mighty licensing muscle this Universal label's annual series has previously wielded, but the difference is in the "details," which in other series is called "filler." Here, powerful, excellent, and yet lesser-known numbers make all the difference, with Hadouken!'s "Levitate" and Lazy Jay's "On the Rocks" being the top candidates, although the delicious and unexpected gathering of Flosstradamus, Yellow Claw, and Green Velvet on "Pillz" will jump right to the top of the list for anyone who loves speaker-ripping electro eccentrics. Being mixed well is icing on the cake, leaving nothing to complain about except for this being one of the shorter (disc one comes in at under 50 minutes) entries. Minor complaint; otherwise the Ultra series remains ultra.

 

 

Catching up with the papers...

Please Look After This Bear

Pico Iyer

JAN. 9, 2015

                       

             

Credit Peggy Fortnum 

                   

When Paddington Bear landed in London in 1958, it was still quite a provincial place. Safe, settled, a little gray — no sign of the Beatles or the swinging ’60s yet — it upheld the ceremonial proprieties immortalized in “Brief Encounter” and “84, Charing Cross Road.” Men wore ties to dinner, women skirts; the post-nuclear nightmares and beatnik explosions of America were barely visible on occasional television screens. Yes, the likes of the Trinidad-born novelist Samuel Selvon were beginning to give voice to other realities in works like “The Lonely Londoners,” but if a British family’s name was Brown, you could be fairly sure its skin was not.

Continue reading the main story

 

Speaking of beloved children's books, I will always be very grateful that my parents, especially my mom, read to me as a child and that I got my love of fiction from them. I also have fond memories of elementary school teachers reading out loud during class:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/us/study-finds-reading-to-children-of-all-ages-grooms-them-to-read-more-on-their-own.html



This essay from last Sunday's New York Times sums it up so well when it comes to religious objection to gay marriage. One passage that really stands out is this one:

Their owners are routinely interacting with customers who behave in ways they deem sinful. They don’t get to single out one group of supposed sinners. If they’re allowed to, who’s to say they’ll stop at that group?

It has long gotten to me that very conservative Christians say they object to all sins and that they are not being bigoted when it comes to gay people. If this is so, then why are we their only scapegoats?

If, for instance, their religious sensibilities are offended by serving gay people, where are their objections to serving straight people living together, but not married? They supposedly believe it is a sin to have any relations outside of traditional marriage, yet they are not denouncing those between unmarried men and women. When was the last time a minister spoke ill of straight people "living in sin"? The 1960s, maybe?

I am so tired of feeling frustrated and getting preachy over something that will probably always be a huge wedge issue in our world. I certainly don't think homophobia will ever disappear in my lifetime. And while it doesn't personally affect me, unless we reach a point where religious fanatics start going after single and celibate gays and lesbians as well, it deeply hurts. 

The thing is it should bother all people when someone's right to love and spent the rest of her life with her partner is infringed upon. No one should ever have the right to keep two people in love apart. And the idea of putting that right up to voters (most of whom are straight and would certainly be devastated if their right to love were treated that way) is both mind-blowing and heartbreaking.

The rest of the op-ed piece can be read here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-religious-liberty-bigotry-and-gays.html?_r=0