Friday Odds & Sods is Up All Night

I have always loved the nighttime, I think.  Or rather, to put it more accurately, I have loved staying up late.  There are some people, of course, loveable though misguided, who think staying up late means getting hammered with company on Red Bull and Vodka at the club before rolling back to their respective apartments to terminate their union.  This is all well and good, so far as it goes, but lateness, as with most good things in life, requires a conscious separation from the everyday.  Between the ruling duality of hustle and bustle in the daytime and unconscious oblivion at night, one who has chosen to stay up late in solitude has chosen to take a third option, and at three in the morning can take at least some comfort in his sleeplessness in looking out awake at a drowsing world.  But let us leave these insomniac musings and carry on to the Odds & Sods.

• Some further files on the way we live now, Economics Division: A pawn shop struggles on the in the rust belt, a town makes it's living as a death row tourist trap, and the creative economy turns into the drudgery of being a valet to the elite.
• Writing, as someone must have said, is in general a mug's game.  The hours are terrible, and the pay is worse.  Therefore, my hat is always off to those who make it work and do it well.  Into that select group I include one of my personal writing heroes, Joseph Mitchell.
• Finally, for some night music, A Little Night Music: