Folk Thursday: Whitney Houston

I realize Whitney Houston isn’t generally associated with the folk revival, but this cover of Dion’s “Abraham, Martin and John” is glorious.

Emily

Thank God Almighty

The bad news: My beloved Mac died just before 1 o’clock Wednesday morning.

The good news: Approximately eight hours later, I learned that the Oklahoma Route 66 Association didn’t want me to do the Trip Guide this year, because the board thought it would be better to find a designer who lives a little closer to Oklahoma.

This is good for two reasons: First, the Trip Guide was the only reason I needed to own a Mac equipped with professional-grade design software, so instead of wasting my Saturday driving to St. Louis to buy a $1,200 computer tricked out with $1,300 software, I went to Target tonight and picked up a $375 laptop. I don’t like it and probably never will (I haven’t been on speaking terms with Windows since 1998), but it’s good enough for blogging and writing, and that’s all I really need to do at this point.

Second, and more importantly, I was getting tired of laying out the Trip Guide. It’s a terrific project, and its value to the road is indisputable. But I did it for nine years, and it stopped being fun about three years in. Parts of it were exhilarating, and the end result was satisfying, but the negatives were starting to outweigh the positives, and I was getting seriously burned out. I wouldn’t have said no if I’d been asked to do it again, but I’m really glad I wasn’t.

Emily