I'm Currently Obsessed With

the first track on the Great Lake Swimmers Ongiara album, entitled "Your Rocky Spine."

Here is a sample of the lyrics, which can be interpreted as an ode to either singer/songwriter Ted Dekker's native Canada, or a current love interest, you be the judge:

"I was lost in the lakes
And the shapes that your body makes
That your body makes

The mountains said I could find you here
They whispered the snow and the leaves in my ear
I traced my finger along your trails
Your body was the map, I was lost in it

Floating over your rocky spine
The glaciers made you, and now you’re mine"

Check it out on Myspace for yourself:
http://www.myspace.com/greatlakeswimmers


I have a feeling this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. You know, one of those bands that you have to hear tune they've ever created before your life is complete.

A Note and Brief Passage Highlighted Inside Jack London's "The Sea-Wolf"

A brief note in pencil found on the front paste down endpaper of Jack London's "The Sea-Wolf", a Grosset and Dunlap reprint edition published in 1904:

"September 7-43

I was operated on the 7th of September. My mother got me this book, she was with me while Doctor L.S. Nelson did the operation and so was Mr. Edward Gadiner.

High school started at 9:00 and I was on the operation table at 9:30. I sure was sick for three days but I pull out of it all right. I sure thought of Sgt. Howard Roach and also P.F.C. Gliminil G. Smith."

The young owner's name, Reginald Brown, is written on the following page. The only passage of the text he marked, which must have been of significant interest, is on page 235 and reads,

"I slept only cat-naps. The boat was leaping and pounding as it fell over the crests, I could hear the seas rushing past, and spray was continually being thrown aboard...Between us and the bottom of the sea was less than an inch of wood.

And yet, I aver it, and I aver it again, I was unafraid. The death which Wolf Larsen and even Thomas Mugridge had made me fear, I no longer feared. The coming of Maud Brewster into my life seemed to have transformed me. After all, I thought, it is better and finer to love than to be loved, if it makes something in life so worth while that one is not loath to die for it. I forget my own life in the love of another life; and yet, such is the paradox, I never wanted so much to live as right now when I place the least value upon my own life."