Musings

Blast From My Past (not woodworking)

Several months ago while dining with Elderdottir at her house I was telling a friend of hers about my experience as a college radio station program host, when I hosted a weekly Tuesday evening jazz program and was in the rotation for every other weekend of late-night jazz on Saturday.  One byproduct of this era was my acquisition of thousands of vinyl records, now in storage in the space above the master bathroom.  Elderdottir’s friend was very excited about it (I believe she is a vinyl record buff herself) so we tried playing a record on the living room turntable.  The turntable had not been used in almost thirty years and did not work well.  On examination I could see the cartridge had been damaged, or at least the stylus had been damaged and was unusable.

In the intervening months I found a new stylus cartridge online an ordered it.   FYI $25 cartridges are now $150.  One of the items on my Thanksgiving Week agenda was to install the new cartridge and see if the turntable was still operable.  It was, except for the “Cuing” function, which I hope is just womperjawed and creaky from sitting unused for three decades.

Elderdottir retrieved one of the two dozen large boxes of records from the storage compartment and when I looked through them I knew instantly which one had to be the first choice for the re-commissioning ceremony – the proto-punk Holly Beth Vincent album Holly and the Italians.  Soon the living room was rocking.

Last I heard Elderdottir was planning on having friends over to listen to her dad’s old records while they drank tea.  A wild bunch they are.

BTW I hope your Thanksgiving was as celebratory as ours, as we were reminded of the blessings and trials God has placed in our lives to draw us closer to Him, and this year was especially noteworthy as L’il T is now part of our lives (and he is progressing nicely!).  Mrs. Barn has been cooking up a storm and in her glory, ministering to and surrounded by the family she loves (plus she and the Barndottirs play board games every evening, something that holds zero interest for me).