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Weekend Edition: “Sometimes it hurts to be a woman.” Pulse Oximeters (yes, again). “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” A poem for lovers, and more.
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Published: Oct 14, 2021
Category:
Weekend
“SOMETIMES IT HURTS TO BE A WOMAN”
It will be of interest to no more than two of you that Kacey Musgraves — a female singer from Nashville — won Album of the Year and Country Album of the Year for “Golden Hour” at the Grammy Awards three years ago. She’s not the Nashville of old. She favors recreational marijuana, she was married to a woman for a few years, and it’s pretty clear she’s not Baptist.
I start with her today because the Recording Academy has decided that her follow-up to the album that won those awards isn’t “country” enough — it’s rejected her application for nomination in the Country Album of the Year category.
Kacey Musgraves just dooesn’t know her place.
Bad news for the traditionalists: Woman Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives has just been released as a paperback. The editor is Holly Gleason, an unstoppable force among Nasville writers. I met her two decades ago, when she ordered me to interview John Prine, whose music I did not know. I’ve been listening closely to Prine and Holly ever since. Like Gleason, the 27 female contributors to “Woman Walk the Line” are passionately committed to the female country stars they profile. A sample: Rosanne Cash begins her eulogy for her stepmother, June Carter Cash, with two stories. One illustrates June’s belief: “In her eyes, “there are two kinds of people in the world: those she knew and loved, and those she didn’t know and loved.” And this, about Rosanne Cash: Deborah Sprague went to her office as a man, but spent weekends as the transgender she was to become; when Rosanne Cash grabs his hands at the start of the interview and says, “We have the same nail polish,” she’s acknowledging the obvious and blessing it, a gesture that says so much about her. Gleason’s essay about Tanya Tucker precisely expresses the book’s thesis: “Music, like water, often moves and shapes us without our ever realizing it.”
If I were Kacey Musgraves, I’d buy dozens of this book and send them to the Recording Academy.
DO YOU STILL NEED A PULSE OXIMETER?
The New York Times says yes:
In one study, “the risk of dying was about 50 percent lower among the patients who had been instructed to monitor their oxygen at home. Based on the overall mortality rate, it was expected that 95 people in the study group would have died. But using a pulse oximeter appears to have saved the lives of 46 people.”
“I think it’s important to know that a pulse oximeter makes a difference,” said Shirley Collie, an author of the new study and chief health analytics actuary at Discovery Health, a large managed care administrator in South Africa. “You’re monitoring your oxygen because the timing of when you get to the hospital makes a huge difference on your clinical outcome.”
Personal story: A Butler reader recently wrote to thank me for saving her life. Well, I didn’t. Her pulse oximeter did — when her numbers dropped into the 80s, she rushed to the emergency room. If she had waited…
To read about Pulse Oximeters on Butler and buy one from Amazon, click here.
CAPITOLARE DELLA SCUOLA GRANDE DI SAN ROCCO
In celebration of the 500th year anniversary of the birth of Tintoretto, new lighting was installed to better display his canvases in the Chapter Hall of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice. The music begings in the dark. The singers gradually emerge. By the time the video arrives at three huge paintings on the ceiling, you have made a note to visit San Rocco. (The music doesn’t start for 45 seconds.) Watch it here.
CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM
A new season begins on October 24. Here’s the preview.
A THOUGHT FOR LOVERS
I’ve suggested these lines often to couples to read at their wedding. They’re by Randall Jarrell.
While you are, how am I alone?…
Be, as you have been, my happiness;
Let me sleep beside you, each night, like a spoon;
When, starting from my sleep, I groan to you,
May your “I love you” send me back to sleep.
At morning bring me, grayer for its mirroring,
The heavens’ sun perfected in your eyes.
HEAD BUTLER FIELD TRIP
A few months ago, I was nuts for Jesse Malin’s “Todd Youth.” Watch/listen.
He’s off to Europe for a long tour, but there’s a New York show before he goes. October 23, Saturday, at Brooklyn Made, a new club said to be good and safe. Will I see you there?
