Addendum

man, I'm listening to the new Susan Tedeschi album, Hope and Desire, and this just bumped one of my other discs to make the top ten of 2005. It's fantastic; I praised it upon its release way back in October after sampling it but I never picked it up. Imagine a vibe around Aretha/1970 with Bonnie Raitt on vocals. I still need to set up my new sound system to truly appreciate the production of this but even out of my tiny computer speakers, this is a dynamic album.
I go back to work tomorrow only hoping and praying for a smooth transition into the second semester. I will have a lighter course load to teach and so I'm looking forward to a time to really invest in students' lives without killing myself with so much work.
Tomorrow or the next day, whenever I can find time after my brother and his family fly home, I will post a top ten list of albums I picked up, regardless of release dates. I find that I'm buying albums released more than a half-century ago and that my tastes are changing in that all I want to listen to half the day are records put out during Depression-era history. I'm finding great music, a little solace and a great amount of history in listening to such old music but that out of duty I need to be listening to this because I can't truly appreciate Branford Marsalis or Susan Tedeschi without understanding Lester Young or Mahalia Jackson. Maybe by the time I'm seventy I'll have digested and appreciated all the music I need to in finally cracking all-modern bands.

I also need to produce some thoughts about Joan Didion's new book, The Year of Magical Thinking which I devoured in just two and a half days as well as some predictions for 2006.