Music Monday

I wanted another Monday Music meme to do, but I didn't find anything I liked much. So I made one up.

I'll post a song, a favorite of some sort, and if you feel so inclined, you can add another song that's in conversation with it: a song mine reminded you of, a song that answers mine, another song by the same artist, a different version ... so many possibilities.

This just came up on Shuffle on my iPad while I was doing chores:

"Mary Chapin Carpenter - I Am A Town (live)" (Watch on YouTube)

I Am a Town

I'm a town in Carolina, I'm a detour on a ride
For a phone call and a soda, I'm a blur from the driver's side
I'm the last gas for an hour if you're going twenty-five
I am Texaco and tobacco, I am dust you leave behind

I am peaches in September, and corn from a roadside stall
I'm the language of the natives, I'm a cadence and a drawl
I'm the pines behind the graveyard, and the cool beneath their shade,
where the boys have left their beer cans, I am weeds between the graves.

My porches sag and lean with old black men and children
Their sleep is filled with dreams, I never can fulfill them
I am a town.

I am a church beside the highway where the ditches never drain
I'm a Baptist like my daddy, and Jesus knows my name
I am memory and stillness, I am lonely in old age;
I am not your destination, I am clinging to my ways
I am a town.

I'm a town in Carolina, I am billboards in the fields
I'm an old truck up on cinder blocks, missing all my wheels
I am Pabst Blue Ribbon, American, and "Southern Serves the South"
I am tucked behind the Jaycees sign, on the rural route
I am a town
I am a town
I am a town
Southbound.

Amazing Article

The Washington Post's Gene Weingarten, a Pulitzer winner twice for feature writing, may have done it again:

The Beating Heart: A tragic crime. A medical breakthrough. A last chance at life.

CONTENT WARNING: Violence against a woman, explicit medical content.

A riveting story with an ending that hit me like an earthquake: I was literally blind with tears for a couple of minutes.