Today's favourite thing: listening to Vinyl Cafe on the radio as I made my lunch. It made me laugh out loud. It also reminded me of how returning home after visiting another country is so often captured by listening to favourite radio shows and hearing the announcer's familiar voice. (I should note that most people I know are not as enthusiastic about Vinyl Cafe as I am--I don't think they know what they're missing. But if you're tempted to listen, you can get the show as a podcast here--it's called "Razor's Edge.")
Another pleasure of returning home was waking up this morning to a light snowfall. And this reminded me of one of Peter's T's favourite things: James Joyce's "The Dead." Here is the conclusion to that story (which is even more powerful if you've read what comes before needless to say): "A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
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