Prince

'Controversy' single

Sonnet and I join Emily's birthday party themed "Exposed" where she holds a salon format inviting her interesting friends to offer missives on the subject. A choreographer, for instance, discusses how she feels when her work performed by others. A techie turned designer describes his app that concentrates central and peripheral focus and an entomologist tells how plants offer signals to pollinate them - "a glowing runway".  We conclude the evening with Prince's 1999 - Eitan and Madeleine would have been mortified to see us dance. Ah, well.

Thinking of Prince, I recall West Campus where my class spent the 9th grade while the Berkeley High School C building retrofitted to make earthquake sound in 1982. That year the black girls enthralled by 'Controversy', Prince's break-through album one year before '1999' which became a mainstay on the disco floor and has followed me across .. . 30 years.

'Controversy' was a racy album with song tracks that I am embarrassed to write like 'Private Joy', 'Jack U Off' and 'Do Me, Baby' but I suppose this is now easily eclipsed by the stuff Eitan and Madeleine exposed to in music or online. Back then it was about the funk before the lyrics (though I am sure our parents only heard the lyrics, if they knew of Prince at all).

Today is the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and Gorbechav warns of the new Cold War.

Sonnet: "Tell me three careers, if you had to imagine into the future, that you would be interested in doing."
Madeleine: "One, a full time actress. Two, a physical therapist. And three, to work at Google."
Sonnet: "Great ideas. Give me one sentence for each explaining why."
Madeleine: "I think it would be amazing to be in a film. If I was a physical therapist I would make a difference in people's lives. And Google because it is such a cool company."
Sonnet: "Those are excellent explanations."