"That's how you laughed in the middle of the night."

Said Meade, and I said: "Then Chip Ahoy must have been in my dream." Because I was just reading his comment: "Melody and Rose...

"When the melody rose, her voice broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air."

Today's Gatsby sentence , describing singing, has us picturing the woman as a vessel containing warm human magic . Because she's a c...

"In the mountains of the Pyrenees/There's an independent state/Its population five thousand souls/And I think they're simply great..."

"One hundred and seventy square miles big/And it's awf'lly dear to me/Spends less than five dollars on armaments/And this I...

How I spent the winter break between semesters at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

I sat in my Freedom Chair or stood at my motorized desk in front of a wall of picture windows looking out over our snow-covered yard thou...

Dubbing in movie musicals fell into disrepute.

Present-day preference is for "real" screen actors, with an acceptance of their vocal imperfections. But in the old days: Classica...

At the 10 Commandments of Love Café...

... take happiness with the heartaches and go through life wearing a smile.

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last/ Next year we may all be living in the past."

The original lyric to "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," which I learned about after happening to catch the tail end of ...

The dark-eyed junco.

I didn't have the presence of mind to grab the camera and take a picture of the globular gray bird with a white belly, perched on the de...

Galeazzo Frudua replicates the sound of the Beatles' singing with remarkable accuracy...

... except for that bit of Italian accent , which proves it really is him singing all the parts. And he explains what he's doing in that...

The end of a Christmas caroling tradition.

The NY Post reports: The tradition began in the late 1970s when cabaret singer John Wallowitch would walk by Berlin’s [NYC] house and warbl...

Pat Sajak condemned as a pronunciation Nazi.

When "seven swans a-swimmin'" for "seven swans a-swimming" costs Navy Intel Specialist Renee Durette $4,000. The ...

Democrat, Democratic, Democratical.

Today, I encountered a word I'd never noticed before: "democratical." I was writing about the "common sense" meme a...

"It's an argument with which older, calmer people needle the emotional young."

I wrote in the previous post . Meade asks: "Did you mean 'the emotionally young'?" No, I'm not insulting anyone for em...

"I've been so many places in my life and time..."

We're listening to "A Song for You" here at Meadhouse tonight. The original, by Leon Russell , and this version by The Carpent...

"A new reality TV show has revealed the underworld of the seemingly modest Amish community of Pennsylvania..."

"...  complete with prostitutes, blackmail and assault rifles." The Discovery Channel's 'Amish Mafia' follows Lebanon ...

"Top 10 Emotional Intelligence Moments of 2012."

Some are high EQ and some are low . #6 is a fascinating low: a restaurant owner at a Romney campaign stop who suddenly wipes Romney's fa...

"The broadcasting of any 'romantic' songs or music videos on Egyptian state television channels has been banned..."

"... a state-run newspaper announced on Thursday, adding that only 'patriotic' tunes will be allowed to be aired. " Nation...

"My brother had a house in Paris....To it came many Western classical musicians. These musicians all made the same point..."

"'Indian music,' they said, 'is beautiful when we hear it with the dancers. On its own it is repetitious and monotonous....

Dave Brubeck has died.

He was 91. Take eternity. ADDED: I changed the link to a much better obituary (at BBC), which says that "Take Five" is the best-s...

"Would you send your kid to a school where faceless dolls and pine-cones are the toys of choice?"

"A school where kids don't read proficiently until age 9 or 10 -- and where time spared goes to knitting and playing the recorder? ...