Morgantown

Spring! Time to get Bach's Mass in B Minor off the playlist for something not Vivaldi.

I have always associated Joni Mitchell's Ladies of the Canyon (1970) with spring and her mornings, and after looking just now, I noticed it was released in April of that year.

This is an album I listened to a lot in the spring of 1982, living in Victoria two blocks from the ocean near the corner of Moss and May, a college student riding my bike up those hills to school most days, stopping on the way back at that deli across from the Ross Bay Cemetery for bread, cheese and its homemade eggplant salad, meeting up with Bonnie who lived in the suite below mine, or starting the day with Bonnie over filter drip coffee on the other side of Beacon Hill Park, at that ice cream parlour that can't possibly be there anymore, although with Victoria, where resistance to change is a point of pride, maybe.

Side One of Ladies of the Canyon. First song. "Morning Morgantown". Guitar strings like dew drops, piano keys like daybreak's golden rays. I was so in love with Bonnie!