Coming home last night as the grey clouds hunkered down over the city, bringing back rain and cold. Coming home to Mitchell, who had called me earlier with these amazing words: “Let me know what time you plan on getting home so I can have dinner ready by then.”<\/p>\n
Uhm … heaven??<\/p>\n
But seriously. More than that. We’ve just had a great time. Pretty much doing NOTHING. Lying around, Mitchell does the crossword, sometimes we listen to music, we flip through books, we sit in the kitchen and talk … we have covered MANY topics. For example: we talked about Kay Thompson <\/a>for about 45 minutes.<\/p>\n I came home last night. Mitchell had gone for a run that day – came home, and – since it was chilly and rainy all day – had pretty much just stayed in my apartment, and watched old video clips online – stuff on YouTube. Stuff like Dinah Washington at the Newport Jazz festival. Ella performing live. Sarah Vaughan on some television show. All of Mitchell’s ICONS. We saw an incredible clip of Johnny Cash and Odetta singing a duet. Sadly, there were no Lena Horne clips to be found. But Mitchell just … went nuts with the You Tube. Tracking down clips of Barbra, Burt Bacharach … all the classics.<\/p>\n We talked about how, as kids, we basically just listened to the records our parents had. These were the records I remembered<\/a>. His parents’ albums were all of those jazz, r & b, and soul classics – from the 40s, 50s, 60s.<\/p>\n I just think that’s so cool.<\/p>\n Oh, and dinner was made. Ready for me. So sweet!!<\/p>\n There was corn on the cob, chicken and a salad.<\/p>\n We had the windows open in the other room, and we could hear the rain coming down softly, peacefully. There was a cool breeze coming in. The lights were low, homey …<\/p>\n Oh, and we had been so blown away by the Odetta\/Cash duet that Mitchell popped on some Odetta. I don’t own any Odetta – so Mitchell had to go to his little CD collection that he has brought to my humble abode.<\/p>\n This didn’t’ even occur to me until later on, after dinner – how perfect it was to have a big random Odetta appreciation moment and then to be able to listen to an entire CD of hers immediately …<\/p>\n I turned suddenly to Mitchell: “Uhm … you just happen to have an Odetta CD on you?”<\/p>\n “Oh. It’s always on me.” Mitchell replied, matter-of-factly.<\/p>\n Beautiful.<\/p>\n My mom LOVES Odetta. I called my parents later and just had to tell her: “Guess who we are listening to right now …”<\/p>\n hahahaha<\/p>\n Mitchell has a great story about seeing Odetta last year in Chicago. But I’ll let him regale you with it in the comments, should he so choose. I have heard him tell the story, but I made him tell it to me again. The woman has gotta be 80 years old, she’s got the bifocals on, and she is still touring. She’s still LIVING it. How many people do that?? She’s actually playing in NYC on Friday. But we looked up her tour dates <\/a>and she is pretty much booked through the next 5 months. Amazing.<\/p>\n Odetta softly playing … the rain coming down … incense burning … my Bohemian little apartment, with Oriental rugs, and red-shaded lamps, and mis-matched furniture … Mitchell looked around at one moment and said, “Wow. I feel almost like … we are back in time … when Odetta first started singing – like the surroundings, the eclectic furniture, the low lights … kind of bohemian energy … we could so be kids back then, listening to her for the first time.”<\/p>\n This is one of the many many reasons why I love Mitchell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Coming home last night as the grey clouds hunkered down over the city, bringing back rain and cold. Coming home to Mitchell, who had called me earlier with these amazing words: “Let me know what time you plan on getting … Continue reading