Mad Times

Stone cosmos

We went to the Museum of History and Industry on Thursday night to see (hear) singer/songwriters Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell. They each did a set and sang and played on a couple of each others' tunes. We knew Kaplansky going in, but Shindell was new to us. He writes odd, strangely touching songs that are mostly like short stories. He talked almost as much as he played, giving background on the songs. His guitar playing was fascinating, sounding and looking like he had a third hand somewhere out of sight picking out the melody. Kaplansky played mostly dark sad tunes, but that's sort of her field. It was a good show. Being there, though, we forgot all about the total lunar eclipse which was pretty close to totality at intermission when I took this picture of a mosaic in the lobby of the theatre at the museum. By the time we went out to the car after the second set, the moon, peeking through scudding clouds, looked just odd enough to remind me of the eclipse with a little divot out of one edge all that remained of the transit of our big shadow across its face.