NPR's compiled an argument for "The Decade's 50 Most Important Recordings" and they've set it up so you can listen to one song from each of their album choices, and then embed your choice of their choices in your website. So here's one:

This song always sort of chokes me up.

So that's fun! For you.

Other thoughts: The dying hydrangea I posted on the first of the month has gotten so much more brownly-yet-pinkishly elderly, it's like the Lillian Gish of the neighborhood, fading so graciously that every time you look at it your heart still sees the bee-stung lips of its youth. I'm regretting not having set up a tripod and putting little chalk circles around its tripod feet so that I could set it up in the same place at the same time every day to capture the hydrangea's elegant demise. Instead, all I have is before and somewhat less before:

Lastly, if anyone is waiting along with Peevish for my thoughts on the Mamie Minch album, I haven't listened to the full thing just yet but my impression thus far is that she is going to get somewhere! She just hasn't quite figured out how to get everything in gear and floor it. There are some wonderful duets with her and a woman named Dayna Kurtz over on a certain MySpace page that have been a lot of fun to listen to, and so then I downloaded Dayna's "Postcards from Downtown" album (so far so good!!), but I can't find any joint releases from them so far, despite some talk about a 10-inch, which does me no good whatsoever, my turntable's been packed away for a decade. And no, I can't think of a better word than "album" for any songs released as one whole stack of pancakes by an artist, I think it's still a good word -- I like the way "album" lets you think of a book with page after page of photographs somebody else took of the inside of your head* -- so I'm keeping it.

*Too labored?