My pleasure, Raychael—very glad (and amused) to have been of assistance! :)

POSTSCRIPT: The Brawn and I yelled in acknowledgment of our mutual defeat. "Why do I even try to match wits with you?" I grumbled. "What he said," the Brawn agreed.

And now for some reason it's popular in Hertford and...Glasgow? Aren't they kind of far away from each other?

Aw, Ellie! Cheers, friend! I'm so glad to hear that—and you clearly have outstanding taste. :)

To the large number of people coming here from Facebook: welcome! Uh...where was this posted, if you don't mind saying?

Oh. I'm getting so many hits on this piece because there's an episode of "Once Upon a Time" titled "New York City Serenade." Thank you, tumblr, for the explanation!

Thank you, Trufflehoney! (A phrase people don't use nearly enough.) That would indeed explain it. My goodness, what a version.

Not that I'm displeased, not by a long shot, but if anyone could tell me why this is suddenly getting tons of hits, that'd be swell. Was this just linked to somewheres or something?

Wow, great thoughts. I think, though, that I'd quibble with this: A junk man bein dressed in "satin" and the day of this writing... Seems to me to indicate a pimp or dealer, or both. I can't see that, sartorial choices aside, Springsteen would refer to a pimp as a junk man, given how extremely derogatory a comment upon working girls that would be—it would be the absolute height of dehumanizing them, and that doesn't seem to fit any phase of his writings. A dealer, on the other hand, would make sense, colloquially, given that "junk," obviously, was slang for heroin. Except that Springsteen has always been famously anti-drug, and I'm again having trouble seeing how that corresponds with what would seem to be the narrator's admiration for the junk man and, above all, the extreme beauty of the accompanying music. Given the physical description and the admiration and transcendent music—music which had for decades been described as "junk"—is it possible the junk man was the impressive gent all the way to the left in this photo? http://blog.gettyimages.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Bruce-Springsteen-1975-London-Hammersmith-Odeon-Chalkie-Davies-Getty-Images-170331901.jpg

I'm still not sure you've officially said yes yet. All I recall is a lot of tears. (You might have been crying too, I couldn't tell.)

That was absolutely beautiful, Laura. Thank you for agreeing to share it.

Yeah, we fast-forwarded past that scene. :)

I'm sorry you were disappointed by my response. For what it's worth, the feeling is very mutual. Rather than addressing the arguments put forth, you dismiss them out of hand because you don't like the newspaper and have such little respect for the priest that you can't even bring yourself to use his honorific. As Albert Einstein is reported to have said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The pro-life movement has been trying to eradicate abortion using the same tactics for 30 years and is no closer to achieving its goals. So by all means, continue doing exactly the same thing and vilify anyone who would dare suggest that the evidence indicates the pro-life leaders don't really have the interests of the pro-life movement at heart, and that the desired end might actually be accomplished some other way. You're doing ever so much good.

Lynn— A good question. I'm going to outsource my answer to Father Peter Daly, who wrote recently: Bishops said that never before had people been required to violate their religious conscience to comply with the law. But every day, we tax Quakers and other religious pacifists to support wars. Jehovah’s Witnesses pay Medicare taxes for blood transfusions. Seventh-day Adventists in the military must report to duty on Saturdays. Mormons had to give up their cherished practice of polygamy as the price for bringing Utah into the Union. The fact is that religious liberty has never been absolute. http://ncronline.org/blogs/parish-diary/why-fortnight-freedom-was-failure-among-average-catholics I can't possibly say it better than Father Daly, although I would add that in the Supreme Court case Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), Justice Antonin Scalia ruled that even though the use of peyote was part of a Native American religious ceremony, the state still had the right to take punitive action against peyote users using peyote in a religious ceremony. Blood transfusions contradict the teachings of Christian Scientists, and yet the courts and legislatures have dictated that Christian Scientists must allow medical personnel to give their children transfusions if doctors deem it medially necessary. Pope John Paul II said the Iraq War was unjust and illegal, and yet as a practicing Catholic my tax dollars went to support this unjust and illegal war. It's the price we pay for living in this great nation in which we live. It's not perfect, it never has been and it never will be, but we can and will keep striving to make it a more perfect union.

...hokey smokes, you're absolutely right. Great catch!

By far the highest praise I've ever received. You have set a high bar indeed for all future comments.

That is really and for true the Bean in that photo. And, yeah, for some reason, her transition from impossibly sweet and adorable little kid into really sharp yet still sweet and adorable kid has been even more striking than with her siblings. She's got a shiv she keeps hidden most of the time but every once in a great while she'll beam delightedly as she silently and invisibly slips it between your ribs. Inherited it from her mother, obviously.

Yes! And now I have material!

...a very, very valid point.

I'm not sure why, but after nearly four years, this piece has suddenly become very popular in Asia and Australia over the past few months, now getting dozens of hits per week. If any of you who've found this page could drop me a line and let me know why, I'd surely be grateful.

The demographics demand it. The fewer people that are able to vote, the longer the GOP can stay in power. Elementary, my dear. Next stop: the poll tax. Oh, wait, that's essentially what many of the voter ID laws are. Well, I'm sure the current Supreme Court will...oh...

Admitted upsides: Clarence's nephew sounds fantastic, Nils rips his solo and I don't think I've ever heard false crescendos (crescendi?) quite like that.

In the mid-90s, when Springsteen seemed to be sort of at a loss, I had a dream of him recording and touring using Sonic Youth as his backing band, the way Warren Zevon did with REM and Neil Young did with Pearl Jam. Still think that would have been magical. Or maybe a disaster. But I'd have been okay with that, too.