Music, Music, Music and some Wolves

I am still hard at it. Sorting, disassembling my train layout and trying to figure out whether or not to convert my LPs. My neighbor, who was helping me to try to figure out how to get photos to sync to my iPod (still no answer to that yet, but I've moved on), let me borrow a portable hard drive that he has with 100 GB of music on it from a DJ that gave it to him. It has all sorts of music from the 40s through the 90s, the kind that would be played at weddings, parties, etc. I copied a whole lot of it, but not all. I'm really not into hip-hop or rap or some of the other genres of today. I copied in batches and it took probably a total of nine or ten hours to do that. It's amazing; I just clicked "copy" and then "paste" and the computer did the rest.

I have a lot of classical LPs also that I have been agonizing over whether or not to convert them. Today I decided to look over our CD collection. I was surprised that we have about a foot's worth of CDs of classical music. Where it all came from, I am not sure, but I went straight to the cellar and, no longer feeling guilty, removed about six boxed sets of Beethoven LPs from the shelves. It was hard because I realized that quite a few of these records had probably never been played. Why did I feel guilty? If I hadn't played them in thirty years, well, duh!

I seem to have things that most people don't have and maybe don't want to have. As I was sorting through LPs, I came across one titled "The Language and Music of the Wolves." On one side, Robert Redford narrates about wolves. On the other side there are tracks of wolf sounds. Here is the list:

Band 1 - Opening Howl
Band 2 - First Growls of Wolf Pups Inside the Den
Band 3 - Pup Howls - Spring and Fall - Contrasted with Adult
Band 4 - Barking
Band 5 - Series of 3 Adjacent Single Howls
Band 6 - Comparative Difference in Howls
Band 7 - Single Howls Joined to Give Illusion of Pack Howl
Band 8 - Combined Sounds of the Wolf
Band 9 - Distant and Close-up Howling Ending in Group Howl
Band 10 - Series of Group Howls
Band 11 - Joint Group Howl

I'm not making any of this up. Who could make such stuff up? Okay, maybe Stephen King. But this is the truth. Do you think I have to be more aggressive in throwing out records? I bet you can't imagine how many happy and relaxing hours I have spent through the years sitting in a comfy chair with a glass of Scotch and a good book (Jack London, probably) listening to my wolf howls. Actually, I may end up converting this one. I can see a great deal of entertainment value if, by chance, we buy the house next to my brother-in-law. Ah, I see it now. A cold winter night; a loud speaker set in our yard facing his house, but the volume not set too loud. We go over to visit and sit by the fire. Everyone is relaxed. Suddenly, a bone chilling howl fills the air outside, followed by Distant and Close-up Howling Ending in a Group Howl. I think I will hang onto this LP. It most assuredly has possibilities.