The summer equivalent of the part of winter--like, mid-February or so--when you think if you see any more snow you'll puke, when the snow's dirty and disgusting, and you're sick of sweaters--that part?--well the summer equivalent of it is when you've brought home more and more vegetables and fruit from the market, and your swamp cooler's chugging away (for the furry dog! for her, it's for her sake!), and you still have to prop the door open for the dogs to go in and out, and that means that there are FLIES. And also fruit flies. So making and eating dinner is a project involving, a. heat and b. winged pests and c. a rapidly declining good mood.
On the plus side, I obtained a used copy of Ram, the second solo album Paul McCartney made after the Beatles broke up. I was prompted to do this because my daughter's (Scotland) husband is a rabid Beatles fan, and especially loves Paul McCartney, and so it came to pass that Ram came into heavy rotation in their household, in part because my granddaughter loves it. Especially the "Admiral Halsey" medley. ("Do we get to hear 'hands across the water' now? Have we missed 'little gypsy get around'?") Now, no one will extol the virtues of John Lennon more than I--that mordant wit, that inimitable sad sack voice, the primal scream inherent in his singing even before he did that whole scream therapy thing. And if you'd like to argue, with fervor, that neither Lennon nor McCartney were as good without one another as they were when they wrote and recorded together, I will not disagree. But I must say that Ram is an expression of pure pop joy, it is splendid, and I urge you all to take a listen to it if you haven't, and to have a new listen if you haven't listened recently. Go on, have a listen. (you can hear clips here.)
