The Very Best of Judy Collins

Judy Collins was the last of the Mitchell/Snow/Nyro/Ian/Collins clade to join my collection; I bought this album about two and a half years ago, and I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to write something about it.

I don't know quite what I was expecting. I knew of her as a singer of songs like "Both Sides Now" and "Send in the Clowns" - substantial, kind of gloomy - and placed her closer to Phoebe Snow than any of the others in this category. But now, having listened to the album repeatedly, I really have to modify that impression.

Item: two of the happiest songs I've heard in a long time, in "Song for Judith" (a celebration of friendship) and "Cook With Honey" (a celebration of love). The latter is straight-up happy; the former is the kind that makes me cry a little.

Item: a couple of songs that are kind of spooky and allusive: "Suzanne" and "Farewell to Tarwathie". I first heard "Suzanne" sung by a friend at a religious retreat when I was in grad school, and I loved it even then; Collins' rendition doesn't move quickly as far as pitch goes, but it pulls me along. "Farewell to Tarwathie" has some eerie harbor sounds and whale calls in the background; that sort of thing doesn't always work, but Collins pulls it off here.

Item: excellent renditions of "Someday Soon" and "Amazing Grace", plus a passable, not-quite-as-good-as-the-Byrds version of "Turn, Turn, Turn". (I suddenly have four versions of that song, with Pete Seeger and the Seekers also contributing covers. Neither of those is as good as Collins'.)

Item: melancholy and nostalgic songs like "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and "My Father", and "So Early, Early in the Spring", a folk song along the same lines as "Peggy-O". (Now that I check, "Farewell to Tarwathie" is also listed as "Traditional" - but I bet her arrangement isn't!)

I like this album a lot; there's a good range of topic and mood, and Collins' voice is fuller and richer than Mitchell's or Nyro's (although not quite as pleasing to my ear as Janis Ian's). It's one of several fairly recent purchases that have really hit home with me, and I hope to post about some of the others soon.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Much of today was given over to pouring rain, with a smattering of heavy thunder. After the light show moved on, Gracie decided she needed to go out in the back yard.

I opened the door to the back porch; I could see and hear the rain just sheeting down immediately outside the outer door. I looked at Gracie and said, "I'll open it, but you're not going to like it." I did so; she took half a step out and immediately backed away. I closed the door. She went up and scratched at it again. I opened it, and got a repeat performance. I closed the door. She scratched. One more time... It occurred to me then that perhaps I could shield her with an umbrella, long enough for her to do whatever she needed to do. I fetched the umbrella, pushed the door open, stuck the umbrella out so it covered the doorstep - and took a spray of rebounding rain right in the face.

I closed the door, told Gracie to forget it, and went to the bathroom to dry off.

And Then There Was One-Half

Shortly after I bought this house, I bought some ornamental pear trees for decoration: one near the driveway, one near the corner, and one around on the other side. At $48 a pop, they seemed pretty cheap to me.

Ten years ago, an ice storm hit the area and broke one of the trees in half. The city towed away the fallen section, and what remains has more or less thrived.

Three years ago, the city decided to put a stop sign at the corner, and the corner tree, being in the way, was cut down and hauled away.

Today, without notification or explanation, the city put an end to the tree near the driveway.

Battered and torn, what remains of the third tree... remains.

$144 for twelve plus nineteen plus twenty-two years of very pretty trees... seems a fair price.