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Clouds , 1969 Clouds , front cover Listening to Clouds  was a strange experience for me: I didn't know the album!   I know every note of every album Joni has recorded since then, but this one was foreign. Of course I know the famous songs from this album -- "Chelsea Morning," "That Song About the Midway," and "Both Sides, Now" -- but I had no memory at all of the other songs. The one exception was the a cappella  "The Fiddle and the Drum," about the US's war-making -- but that's because not long ago, we saw Joni perform it on an episode of the old Dick Cavett Show, filmed right after Woodstock had taken place. But the actual album? It felt like I was hearing it for the first time. This must mean that my sister and I didn't play Clouds . Maybe we didn't own it and filled it in later, when Joni's music had gone way past this stage. I really don't know. I'll see if my sister has any idea. Even more surprising, I had

This is my first post in my re-listen to the music of Joni Mitchell  in chronological order of album release. These posts come with all kinds of disclaimers, chiefly that I don't know what I'm doing. I wanted to write about the two Reckless Daughter  books before starting on these posts, but I'm ready to move on to the second album, and haven't yet finished the books. So here we go. * * * * Joni Mitchell ( Song to a Seagull ), 1968 Song to a Seagull, front cover I hadn't listened to this album in a very  long time -- probably not since childhood. I am the youngest of three siblings, and got into music much earlier than my peers, listening to anything my older siblings had. My sister and I adored Joni and listened to her obsessively. Of course in the present, all the songs came back to me immediately (long-term memory is amazing) and I knew many of the lyrics. The songs on this album hang together as a whole, which was very common in those days. The album is also the

You can read the story of how we got these: here . This, below, is the smaller painting that the salesman added to the pot after the price would budge no further. It is possibly painted on banana leaf, a cheaper and less durable papyrus substitute. There is also a third, yet smaller painting, also "thrown in," but not display quality or worth framing. The celery-looking stuff is fresh papyrus. We watched Papyrus Guy make a small sheet. That's our painting behind them!

In library school, you learn that the most important part of the reference transaction, or reference interview, is asking questions. Customers, it seems, rarely know how to describe what they are actually looking for. Most people ask for something entirely different than what they want. Tonight was a classic example. Woman: Where would I find paperback nonfiction? This is a bit of a strange question, because normally people don't specify hardcover or paperback when it comes to nonfiction. Me: Nonfiction is in a few different places, depending on the subject. Do you have a title, or a call number? Or the topics you're looking for? Woman: I want to read about kings and queens from a certain time period. You know, how they lived, what they did. Me: That would be on the third floor-- Woman: But the stories aren't necessarily what really happened. It's real kings and queens but in made up stories. Me: Ah, so you're looking for historical fiction. Woman: Oh is that it? Me

I've posted 11 anti-war songs , and I've done Labour Day readers' advisory , but I don't think I've ever done anti-war readers' advisory.*** Here are 11 great books with an anti-war themes. 1. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins 2. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut 3. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges (nonfiction) 4. Regeneration, Pat Barker 5. Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo 6. Hiroshima, John Hersey (nonfiction) 7. Mother Courage and Her Children, Bertolt Brecht (drama) 8. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway 9. Catch-22, Joseph Heller 10. The Deserter's Tale, Joshua Key with Lawrence Hill (nonfiction) 11. And finally, the greatest anti-war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque There are many, many others: here are some lists . Honour the dead by working for peace. *** Turns out I had done this very thing, just two years back! The post was incorrectly tagged, so didn't come up in the search. Here&#

Two new books about Joni Mitchell have come out, with -- strangely -- the same title. Reckless Daughter: A Joni Mitchell Anthology , edited by Barney Hoskyns, is a collection of stories about Joni* and reviews of her work. It's part of an ongoing collection called Rock's Backpages , which looks at rock through accomplished music writers of the last 50 years. I'm reading this now. Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell , by David Yaffe, is a biography of the artist and her music. It's especially noteworthy because of the unusual access Yaffe had to his subject. I'm going to read this after I finish the anthology. While reading reviews and impressions of Joni's earliest performances and recordings, I realized how long it's been since I've heard her early music. In some cases, at least her first two albums, I probably have never played as an adult! I decided I would listen to all her albums in chronological order, starting from the beginning. I'