The lake's task list: freeze, nevermind, bust it up, put some snow on it. I'm looking for that hint of teal blue in the ice, the color that says all water, even frozen, carries the possibility of the Carribean in it. Maybe my clothesline insulator caps suggest the same thing. I've been checking end of the year best of lists, from Folk Alley to Offbeat. In that spirit here are some songs from the 242 cuts I added to monthly mixes that I liked best: The Decemberists. Don't Carry It All Over The Rhine. All My Favorite People The Decemberists. June Hymn Bridge. Big Wheel Lucinda Williams. Seeing Black Jude Johnstone. Cry For New Orleans Shannon McNally. In My Own Second Line Alex McMurray. Where K-Doe Lives Joan as Police Woman. I Was Everyone Dawes. Moon in the Water Sonia Dada. Lester's Methadone Clinic Jolie Holland. Rex's Blues Fountains of Wayne. Cemetery Guns Kris Delmhorst. My Best Friend's Girl Hope Waits. Ring Them Bells Tom Morrello. Black Spartacus Heart Attack Machine Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas. McLaughlin's Strathspey Peter Mayer. All the World is One Robbie Robertson. How To Become Clairvoyant Eliza Gilkyson. Looking For a Place Lori McKenna. Rocket Science Thao & Mirah. Hallelujah Among great performances I saw this year were Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas at Unity Centre; Eunice Keem at the Atlantic Music Festival at Colby; Eden Brent at the Bangor Folk Festival; Alex McMurray at JazzFest; Fishtank Ensemble, Hot Club of Cowtown, Miss Tess at Unity Centre. In the coming year I hope to get unstuck from Unity and venture out to other venues in New England. I've ordered a new book (The Last Nude by Ellis Avery) for the Kindle because it's just coming out, and ordered two other books used on Amazon. Used is still cheaper than Kindle editions. I don't like that the Kindle shows percentage complete rather than page numbers. I think I read faster with paper books but maybe that's just because I can see page numbers. One of the ordered books is Time and Again by Jack Finney because in the afterword to the Steven King book 11/22/63, King says that Finney's is the best book ever written about time travel. I think a theme for winter reading is hereby established. Reading any novel set in the past is like time travel. Reading A Lesson Before Dying recently I felt like a visitor from the future who wanted to tell them to hang on that Martin Luther King was coming soon. The other book on order is Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose because the phrase "Angle of Repose" has popped up recently in several contexts including the song "Ravens and Crows" by Dehlia Low.

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