MoodyTunes

Though I was born in Minnesota, I didn’t hang around long enough to learn to accept snow as a fact of life. It still feels special. A day off from school, maybe, or simply a day or two a year with magical flakes falling from the sky. That might be happening today in Nashville…rumor has it there’s a wintry mix/snowstorm approaching. I hope so. I want to crunch around in some snow.

I count J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories among my favorite story collections. I might be the only person on the planet who hasn’t read The Catcher in the Rye, and I suppose I should. I’m not sure I feel Salinger’s death like more ardent fans do, but I understand that a literary legend has passed and I might as well chime in somehow.

I’m really happy to have encountered a story like “For Esme — with Love and Squalor.” I don’t know that I need much more than that.

You can read Esme here.

The last line is my favorite of any short story last line out there:

“You take a really sleepy man, Esme, and he always stands a chance of again becoming a man with all his fac — with all his f-a-c-u-1-t-i-e-s intact.”

Here’s to intact faculties…

EDIT: SNOW IT BEGINS OH PLEASE SEND WARM THINGS AND A GUIDE TO CONSTRUCTING IGLOOS AND MAYBE ICE FISHING EQUIPMENT

I’m not so sure about this.