A musical diversion, if I may

These blog things are pretty cool.

It's wonderful to have the ability to communicate directly with Enquirer readers. I am still overwhelmed by the kindness of the messages many readers left concerning my mother, Elizabeth Curnutte, and her battle with inoperable lung cancer. Thank you.

(Mom has begun chemotherapy after completing a cycle of radiation on the brain tumors. She is tired physically but remains strong spiritually and sharp mentally. I talk to her almost daily and am headed up again during the Bengals' bye week.)

I once covered music, well, twice, as it were, in Lafayette-West Lafayette, Ind., and Rockford, Ill. While not exactly Athens, Ga., (there's a nod to C. Trent from the Post), those two cities provided some great experiences. One of the most memorable concerts I covered at Purdue University was 10,000 Maniacs opening for REM in 1987. It's when I first heard the REM song "Cuyahoga" from the excellent "Lifes Rich Pageant" album. Wow. Favorite REM disc: "Automatic for the People." Not one single bad note.

In Rockford, while having to endure a steady diet of late-1980s glam-hair metal, the flipside was the blues acts that traveled out from Chicago to Illinois' second city. I saw the great Lonnie Brooks four times in two years.

I respect, appreciate and am thankful for my job covering the Bengals. It's a lot of fun, and maybe once or twice a month it seems like work. But I overdose on football. Sometimes I want so badly to write about or discuss another topic, anything else.

The balance, in part, comes from music.

I once had a literature professor at Miami who told me that writing is a lonely occupation. You're alone all the time, she said. You have to be comfortable being by yourself. True.

But I've found companionship in music. It provides another voice, at least another spirit, in the house. When I was in school, I could study everything but a foreign language with music on in the background. I also couldn't concentrate too well on my reading assignments if distracted. Hawthorne's "The Marble Faun" didn't mix too well with Warren Zevon's "Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School."

All of which brings me to this morning: I'm sitting here, having already downed by two bowls of Total Raisin Bran, drinking coffee and writing. In the background is my latest discovery: jazz trumpeter/vocalist Chet Baker.

I'm right beside an open window. It's cool and damp. The rain is soft. The sky overcast and evenly gray. Baker's sad trumpet and even sadder voice compete gently with the sound of chirping birds and drops of rain falling into the metal gutter outside my window.

Baker's style, both vocally and instrumentally, is understated. The arrangements sparse but complete. Perfect.

One more musical diversion, please: I've often toyed with the idea but resisted posting a lyric of the day. "Sports Illustrated" football writer Peter King has his thing about food. Other football writers are frustrated travel writers.

I go through a regular existential crisis about covering football and working in the toy department of human affairs. I should be back covering news, I tell myself, subjects that truly affect people's lives -- race relations, social justice, championing the daily lives of the poor and working poor and those expelled to the fringes of society in Greater Cincinnati and often dehumanized: minorites, immigrants, gays, lesbians and bi-sexuals. As a football writer, I'm part of the illusion. Of course, topics of social justice -- unless sensational -- don't sell many papers around here. At least that's what I've been told. Our readers also don't read anything longer than 15 inches and love bits and briefs, again, what I've been told; they must have the attention spans of children reared in front of "Sesame Street." But I digress from my digression.

I'm a former music writer in search of an occasional diversion. So here's my lyric of the day. It comes from the Jayhawks' stunning 1992 "Hollywood Town Hall" album and the song "Clouds."

"God of the rich man ain't the God for the poor."

Thanks. I feel better.

Now, back to football. Where's my "Power and the Glory" CD? That's the official music of NFL Films.