I once knew a dean of something or other when I was a graduate student at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, who restored old radios like these and had two or three working models in his office on campus. He turned them on for me once. Nothing sounds quite like these old tube (valve) sets with their large, resonant polished wood cabinets. An iPhone with earbuds ain't the same thing, folks. This particular illustration turns up here at Classic Style with some regularity, but it conveys perfectly the mood of today's post. Relaxed. At ease. Kind of sleepy. Definitely not worried about the trials and tribulations of the world for the moment. My late father used to smoke a pipe during the weekends, and, although I am not a smoker, the aroma of good pipe tobacco is not unpleasant when I detect it on occasion. Ok, magazines rather than a newspaper here, but the expression on his face is priceless. And many Sunday papers do have a magazine supplement, so it's not that
Here's a seasonal tune by the late Julie London (yep, Nurse Dixie on the old NBC TV series Emergency) from 1957. This is a song I had never heard before until my first December in Minneapolis (late 2000 saw a particularly frigid and snowy start to winter that year) at the University of Minnesota. During the last two weeks o the semester after Thanksgiving and Final Exam Week, I used to listen to the ex-KLBB on the radio, which had a nostalgia format (artists from the 1930s-1970s), and each December played nothing but old Christmas tunes for the entire month. This song turned up several times a day and in the evenings as I wrote my own final graduate papers, a final exam for my Norwegian 1001 students, and then graded everything. Anyway, whenever this tune came on the radio, it always brought to mind this crazy chick in my teaching assistant office who was preparing to defend her doctoral dissertation. She sat just two desks away and had the bluest eyes, freckles, and an intoxicating laugh. We spent that entire semester chatting about nothing much whenever we were in the office that we shared with six or seven other grad students. We later went skiing together one cold Saturday morning in February 2001 right before Valentine's Day (she invited me), spent the entire afternoon and evening talking at my place over hot tea and then Ukrainian food from Kramarczuk's Deli nearby until she had to go home late that night. We eventually got married in June 2006. So, this one is especially for my wife. . . The Grand Duchess. Here's I'd Like You for Christmas!
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