I listened to a young woman sing Wichita Lineman and couldn’t get it out of my head for hours. Jimmy Webb came to Hugh’s Room many times during these last twenty years. I never went. I did notice, but never made the effort. I only considered it because he was pals with Harry Nilsson and I have a lifetime membership to the Toronto chapter of Son of Schmilsson. And now Hugh’s Room, which was virtually across the street from where I live, is an hour away in another part of town. Even my friends who worked there, the ones like spies that discreetly nodded their noses to whoosh me in for free to see any show are probably no longer in that employment. One must savour the golden opportunities when they present themselves and realize it is now and not tomorrow. Glen Campbell’s famous version was too cheesy when I was a kid. I never bothered to try understanding what the lyric was about, the character’s point of view or how the melody had powers to float up and down. I assumed he could not be anything other than the cheesy guy singing the cheesy song. Surprising years later learning the song is amazing and even that once upon a Wrecking Crew, Glen Campbell was a young in-demand session guitarist playing solos for Sonny and Cher, Frank Sinatra and Merle Haggard. Didn’t Elvis Costello bark at Linda Ronstadt when she covered Allison without realizing how stupid it was to project on her that she was unworthy? In life you can’t be smart without first being stupid. Halfway through the Thomas Sowell biography. It is filled with examples like this, about his career as an economist, teacher and writer. Hard to believe he was a Marxist from Harlem and later a conservative from Cornell and at the same time not hard to believe at all.