The doors to this church—the church of gospel music—are always open.
You don’t need to believe anything to enter. All you need are ears to hear.
Brooklyn All-Stars (featuring Joe Yawn), “No Cross, No Crown,” live
More? Here.
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lagniappe
reading table
even the pine tree
I planted grows old!
autumn dusk—Kobayashi Issa, 1803 (trans. David G. Lanoue)
two takes
I’m too close to heaven, I just can’t turn around . . .
“Too Close To Heaven”
Brooklyn All-Stars (featuring Hardie Clifton), live, 1989
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Bessie Griffin, live
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lagniappe
radio gems: gospel
Sinner’s Crossroads
WFMU-FM
Jersey City, New Jersey; Mt. Hope, New York
Thursday, 8-9 p.m. (EST) (archived shows)
One of my all-time favorite radio shows.
*****
reading table
Shelby had been fooled about Florida, but that was okay. She wasn’t the first. She’d imagined a place that was warm and inviting and she’d gotten a place that was without seasons and sickeningly hot. She’d wanted palm trees and she’d gotten grizzly, low oaks. She’d wanted surfers instead of rednecks. She’d thought Florida would make her feel glamorous or something, and there was a region of Florida that might’ve done just that, but it wasn’t this part. It was okay, though. It was something different. It wasn’t the Midwest. It wasn’t a place where you could look around and plainly see, for miles, that nothing worthwhile was going on.
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“Everybody calls this the real Florida . . . . I don’t understand an expression like that. Is part of the state imaginary?”
—John Brandon, Citrus County (2010)
music clip of the day 