Skin2Skin

Oh, so do I, but replace NYC with Philly. We always got your spillover. I saw Suzanne Vega once--she was really good. I think Shawn Colvin was singing backup. We were seeing a lot of shows until we moved--the Triangle isn't the hub for our kinda music Philly was. But we've caught a few good shows. Missing live music of "our artists" (obscure, but not all that obscure, singer/songwriters) is what I miss most about Philly. We've seen the following shows since we've been here: Neko Case, The Kennedys, Caroline Spence, Leslie Stevens, Kelsey Waldron, Emmylou Harris I think that's it. That was like one month in Philly, and it's been almost a year since we moved. To be fair, we ended up not going to some shows we had tix for because of various crises: Patty Griffin, The Lemonheads, Stiff Little Fingers

Right now I'm re-reading Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton in honor of her 150th birthday. It's a personal favorite of mine, because Undine Spragg, the main character, has no match in her combination of beauty, rapacity, and shallow ambitiousness--and Wharton is brilliant in painting the picture of the NYC high society to which Spragg aspires. I just finished The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. The author's name alone is quite the amalgam, and the book a beautifully written novel of a magical duel enacted by two mentors and their proteges, one that has been playing out for centuries and in many venues. It's exquisite and atmospheric. I am not sure if it would be considered mainstream or fantasy, but if you're looking for an evocative new world to visit, look no further.