Blowing in the Wind

Just a bunch of thoughts (as seems to be my mind most days of late):

• A student introduced me to "Pandora" about three years ago and it has been wonderful for me.  I "knew" of the service... but he showed me that there was a FREE version that would play a brief commercial every once in a while.  I had always thought it was only available as a pricey, monthly service... which I was not willing to pay for.  
• I have a variety of channels that I have created on Pandora and listen to different ones depending upon my mood.  I have a general jazz channel, a Miles Davis channel, a saxophone channel, a clarinet channel, a jazz saxophone channel, a musical theater channel, an acoustic guitar channel, a Chicago channel, and a Crosby, Stills, and Nash channel.  I do have a few others, but these are the ones I gravitate to the most.  
• I was listening this morning to the Crosby, Stills and Nash channel and since the way Pandora works, is that in a channel, not only do they play the specifics requested in that channel, but the system has an algorithm of some sort that will also rotate in other "similar" quality music.  I like that feature as it allows me to add in a lot of favorites that are great (one memorable add that I still overjoyed about its rotating in regularly is "More Today Than Yesterday" by the Spiral Starecase.  I have acquired several really wonderful songs this way.
• Well, today, "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas rotated in again on my Crosby, Stills and Nash channel.  Such a beautiful song, but as I was sitting here working at the damn computer on my classes, the lyrics of the song hit me really hard emotionally and big, heavy tears brimmed over my eyelids and into my beard.  I had to take a break for about 20 minutes to get myself back into some semblance of focus again to keep working.
• We tend to store some of our seasonal clothes in a rolling rack in the basement during their "off season" so that we have a bit more "elbow room" in our closets for the seasonally appropriate clothes.  While working on an clarinet I am refurbishing yesterday, I went and brought up a few Summer shirts I had not worn the past couple of years.  They are of the vibrant, "peacock strutting his stuff" slightly garish "Hawaiian shirt" variety.  I felt like I needed to be a bit more vivid this Summer.  The shirt I wore this morning is covered in a cavalcade of different sport fish and fishing gear.  It feels comfortable and fun.  
• When I reached into the shirt pocket, I found a couple of crumbles of pipe tobacco as I had probably last worn the shirt somewhere or other where I had a filled and ready to smoke pipe in my pocket, and a few strands had fallen out.  It was odd... I have my pipes and pipe tobaccos all over the place sitting here in my office, but finding those few crumbles in the pocket of my shirt did feel so very poignant.   
• The fellow in the image on the top of this post is reasonably adept at blowing smoke rings from his pipe.  I was quite skilled at the art of blowing smoke rings, and could easily produce multiple rings on request.  Blowing in the Wind, Dust in the Wind.... roller coaster emotions and all.  

PipeTobacco