We will be tested to our very souls

Summer Anthems: Been brainstorming this for a week now, assembling a mental list of summer anthems, ranging from the very personal and evocative, to the mass pop hits that manage to provide us with a sense of collective identity in spite of ourselves. This week I’m highlighting a song that is, to many, the epitome of summer anthem. Catchy, joyous, difficult to get sick of even after over-inundation, the rousing Hey Ya! seemed to be loved by everybody. As much as I’m into our increasingly diverse/individual/niche/user-generated content cultural milieu, where everyone’s face can have a book about it, and every band can have its space, etc., it is still fun when songs manage to break across those niches and entertain many people, all together, not just at our computers. Summer anthems should be happy, light, and they should bring people together, possibly by making us dance poorly to them. (The linked-to video is really really cute.)

It’s grey out there, but here’s the good news: My sister sent me this ‘news’ item about kittens who saved their human owners by alerting them to a house fire; this Washington Post story says that women have been key to reconstructing Rwanda; check out this artist who paints fantastical portraits of Stevie Nicks – she used to take commissions for portraits of you and Stevie, but has fallen about a year behind – most important, you can get said portrait on a tambourine; and, good news, a drink or two a day may make for stronger bones.

May is strange around here. Many of you are using up vacation days before the end of the fiscal year. Fridays at HRF this month, it’s like a ghost town, or like a Friday in Dillon, Texas when there’s an away game. (I am netflixing Friday Night Lights. I just got netflix. It is awesome. Trust me, this is apt.) I should note that I have no such days to use up, and am a little jealous. Speaking of FNL, this speech is both cheesy and awesome, and surely is in some way apropos: We will all, at some point in our lives, fall. We will all fall. We must keep this in our hearts. That what we have is special. That it can be taken from us. And when it is taken from us, we will be tested. We will be tested to our very souls.