Another Saturday Night...

"We don't accomplish anything in this world alone...

and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life

and all the weavings of individual threads

from one to another that creates something."

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Shabbos ended and upon returning from shul I put on NPR for background as I cut up new cloth tape to line my watch with so that the metal (or leather or plastic or vinyl) won't give me a rash again. (Details available upon request.)

The quote from above was read on air and struck me because I was planning on posting and starting with this line I thought of, "If not for the people in my life, I wouldn't know anyone."

The other day, Hearts and Bones re-entered my consciousness. I hadn't realized that a bunch of years before he put the song on an album he sang The Late Great Johnny Ace at the famous reunion concert with Garfunkel (though I recall renting the ideo back when videos were new). This clip contains Garfunkel singing a pretty song alone ( A Heart in New York, written by B. Gallagher and G. Lyle from one of Garfunkel's solo albums) and then Simon singing his raw song. Simon always seems pensive to me, but never more -so then here, singing this tune.

About six minutes into this piece, right after he sings the part about John Lennon there's a frightening security breach. You can tell he was shook up, he keeps looking around trying to figure out what happened. But in a literal, lyrical sense - he does not skip a beat.

I always imagined that when he describes bumping into someone the night Lennon was killed, and going to a bar and singing with his friend till the place closed that it was Garfunkel that he was talking about and that this led to their Central Park Concert. That's probably my romantic imagination, rather than reality. It is fact, rather than reality that Hearts and Bones was recorded together with Garfunkel, in the footsteps of the success of the Central Park reunion. At the time I read a big article about it in The Times. Garfunkel commented on his favorite songs. Then hey had a fall out and it came out as a Simon solo album. (From Wikipedis: Simon and Garfunkel even completed their first new studio album in more than a decade, entitled Think Too Much, featuring some songs previewed on their recent jaunt. However, creative differences (coupled with the record company's negative reaction to the decidedly un-Simon-and-Garfunkel-like album) led Simon to remove Garfunkel's vocals and rework the songs himself. The solo album Hearts and Bones was the result, and a long period of estrangement for the duo followed.)

Garrison Keilor's Prarie Home Companion is a rare gem of a show. My favorite part is his weekly monologue about the slow week just passed. He's doing it right now; contrasting little Lake Wobegon and giant North Dakota, two hours to the south. Then he segues into individual life portraits.

Darlene at The Chatter Box Cafe was down this week because she told a guy in a chat room that she weighed 125, and she's a ways off from that. She serves people all day and after slipping up to 150 after telling him she was 125 and knowing it was more like 140, she got depressed and she shot up to 172.

Then there's an 85 year old guy, in the cold, putting up the city lights and decorations in a cherry picker because there's no-one else who knows how to do it. So after 45 years he's still doing it, because he doesn't want to get blamed if someone takes over, does a bad job, and the iron star of Bethlehem falls on and kills someone - at least that's what he tells his wife when she tells him it's enough already.

Arlene Bunson does an amazing Christmas, but told Clarence - this year she's not doing it, because daughter Donna is not coming. They'll deal with that in due time, but for now the big issue is that she may not make Thanksgiving at home. The neighboring couple have reunited for the seventh time and aren't coming to Arlene and Clarence. Arlene wants them to go away to Minneapolis - she planned it out, two hundred dollars, all inclusive. He's afraid to drive. But she wants to go, mainly to see The Johnson Girls perform in the Tom Tom Room.

He says they should invite the two construction guys who live in a trailer, and Florence Peterson who seems so alone. She says, "If you want that, then you cook for these strangers. She especially doesn't want Florence Peterson who never has a nice word to say about anyone.

He recalls a Thanksgiving when things went awry at home and they ended up at the Chatterbox Cafe and it was lovely, as there was a busload of people who got stuck and ended up there. They sang a song that reminded them of Aunt Lois and then went to the home, where Lois was. They sang My Old Kentucky Home to her - right before she died.

He wants to stay home. She wants to go away. He wants to do what she wants and vice versa. It's an old story, what they - like many old couples do. They fight back and forth about this year's Thanksgiving. He calls the hotel.

Keilor concludes that Arlene and Clarence's disagreement is a metaphor for all of us. Should we stay where we are and expect the best from it, or go off to the big city?