The album presentation last week was She’s So Unusual by Cyndi Lauper. I found myself drifting off into memories of Mimi and her restaurant on Bathurst. Cyndi Lauper’s energy reminded me of Mimi. She had the greatest apartment I ever saw in Toronto, funnily she lived in Mimico and it overlooked the lake. When my father turned 60 my mother made him a party, I flew back home from Toronto and at the end of the night, after everyone had left we sat in the red swivel wicker chairs and with my usual bluntness I said “so, what’s unique about being 60?” His reply let me in on an unexpected secret, “half the people I’ve known are dead”. That’s my favourite memory of him. I understood it was true for him, probably true for most. Often thought about it during each of my decades, like a warning from Macbeth’s witches. There is a summit to the hill everyone climbs and eventually you pass. It is visceral and on the way down you notice many ghosts of all the people you once knew, living quietly inside moments of you. The Cyndi Lauper presentation was done in Powerpoint and I realized next semester I must instruct people not to read what they simply copy and paste. It doesn’t prove they understood anything. I want them to explain what they found without looking at phones or computer screens. The moment I liked best was when the shy 19 yr old woman described to us the lyrics of Money Changes Everything and suddenly snorted loudly because the lyric’s ideas are the opposite of the usual messages. I know we were in love darling but I found someone with more money, adieu.