It wasn’t countrypolitan, or even country. It felt more like the sound of mid- to late-nineteen-seventies or early-nineteen-eighties countrified pop music: not quite Alabama or Kenny Rogers, but nearer Crystal Gayle or Linda Ronstadt. And it kept sneaking out of the speakers and perfuming the air inside Heinold’s tonight. In low light, you could make out the slope of the bar as the bartender set drinks down for thirsty patrons. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to pull out my phone and fire up Shazam and train-spot the tunes as they billowed softly past.

A day, done well, is something like a cup,
empty at dawn and waiting to be filled
with coffee or whatever wakes you up
enough to move, to say that you treadmilled

that half-an-hour allotment (gym-allowed)
before that brief mid-morning conference call.
A day, done right, humbles the o’erly proud
with evidence of what precedes the fall:

the pavement pothole safely steered around;
the cafe chat delayed, then finally held;
the freeway exit passed and then re-found;
the awkwardness axed until finally felled

by food, by drink, by talk until one’s tired
of all good things a day, now done, required.

I thought of this when I drove past tonight’s Good Times gathering at The Den At The Fox and heard a long mixed-together stretch of Whitney Houston songs spilling out into the street at top volume.

When the news of her death broke Saturday night, in the slow-motion, cascading way news breaks these days—in tweets, emails, wall posts, text messages, unannotated video posts, and hasty, confirming Google searches—the dominant emotion among the music-loving writerly types and pop-besotted humanists who make up my internet social circle seemed to be a horrified disbelief. Not that it was unexpected, exactly, as anyone who’d kept an ear cocked to the gossip industry over the past decade could tell you. But that That Voice could be extinguished seemed an impossibility, a sudden and irretrievable reduction in the scope of the world.

Listening back to her music today, I hear the sadness and pain, loneliness and fear in the lyrics to nearly every song. I hear the heightened-to-tragedy language of romantic convention; like Céline Dion, another overwhelming belter with pain in her past, she did her best work with the tools of melodrama. But I also hear the force with with she beat back the darkness, the shining ebullience that refused to let her, or us, wallow. The world remains unjust, violent, and destructive, but at least there’s song.

I call for love, not made-up holidays,
over these manufactured candy hearts.
I recommend attention to the place
where objects of affection get their starts

instead of affections I must object
to giving attention in the first place.
Aim carefully, for all you would protect
from time and random chance will one day face

the depredations of our mortal plane,
the unexpected tap — the tag-you’re-it
parting all loves and loved ones with pain
because of how the world is — that’s just it.

(If, within you, these words a match would strike,
pray compensate this sonnet with a “like.”)

From Kathleen McAuliffe’s “How Your Cat is Making You Crazy” in TheAtlantic.com

GIVEN ALL THE nasty science swirling around this parasite, is it time for cat lovers to switch their allegiance to other animals?

Even Flegr would advise against that. Indoor cats pose no threat, he says, because they don’t carry the parasite. As for outdoor cats, they shed the parasite for only three weeks of their life, typically when they’re young and have just begun hunting. During that brief period, Flegr simply recommends taking care to keep kitchen counters and tables wiped clean. (He practices what he preaches: he and his wife have two school-age children, and two outdoor cats that have free roam of their home.) Much more important for preventing exposure, he says, is to scrub vegetables thoroughly and avoid drinking water that has not been properly purified, especially in the developing world, where infection rates can reach 95 percent in some places. Also, he advises eating meat on the well-done side—or, if that’s not to your taste, freezing it before cooking, to kill the cysts.

Today’s Sunday Kind of Love 2012 gathering at Julie’s place in West Oakland brought together a choir-off (Albatross and Oakland Soft Rock Choir), a slowed-down version of “I Want To Dance With Somebody” for voice and a piano named Whitney, and that previously mentioned Paul Simon cover with the previously mentioned Julie. Not a bad way to spend a Valentine’s Day-themed event!

I have a big, old songbook of Paul Simon songs on one of my bookshelves from back in the day when I was learning how to play guitar. But there was a gap between where the book ended (in the mid- to late-70s) and ”Graceland” dropping in ’87.

I can’t say I heard lots of people shouting out songs from this period. One person who comes to mind would be Nick Laird-Clowes of The Dream Academy. Another, as it turns out, is fellow Oakland Soft Rock Choir member Julie Bruins. When she threw a party inviting folks to come sing covers, she asked me to join her on a version of Simon’s “Hearts and Bones.” What an amazing song — one of those ones you just wind up feeling like you grow by working on and memorizing and rehearsing.

My days are full of small highlights. I rarely take the time to acknowledge them. More often they just sort of slip off my radar into the recent and undistinguished past. But today there are at least three toppers: noticing that there’s enough morning sun these days for Shamsher to take up her favorite spot in the house at the foot of the bed; making it over to Tenderloin bar Whisky Thieves after work in order to get my copy of “How To Be Black” signed by Baratunde Thurston himself; and making it over to the Mission to check out what is probably Ankita’s favorite place to eat these days: Gracias Madre restaurant.

At Ridder Park Drive / afternoon planning meetings / set the agendas

Under high ceilings / you will have no need at all / of natural light

In my neighborhood / we have natural light, but / not traffic signals

At day’s end, I sit / and take in a well-told tale / about old Oakland

I haven’t spent much time playing with configurations of the camera apps that have lived on my phone. The one I’ve kept and used most often, Vignette, has several settings that are must-haves for me, more than a few I’ve little to no use for, and a few I’ll try out from time to time just to see how they look.

Today I shot a few pictures in something called “fake HDR” while waiting at a traffic light in Berkeley and waiting for plates at a diner in Emeryville. Striking textures appear in full sunlight, while subtler shadows appear in macro shots with indoor or indirect lighting. Fun stuff to play with!