missizzy

 Went on a tour today with a group of federal librarians of the Library of Congress' Performing Arts Reading Room, which despite its name is actually mostly music materials.  Although while it was called a tour, and we did go around the reading room, and into the sound reference room that adjoined it, it was largely a lecture given in the back room, where she had brought up some boxes from the stacks so we could get a taste of what was in the collection.  Among the boxes was one from their Oscar Hammerstein collection, with a folder containing the yellow stenopad sheets on which he brainstorms and then wrote/typed out the lyrics for "My Favorite Things."  The sheets were dated; the first day's was filled with various things he liked, including kittens, mittens, and a few other things, some of which made the final song, of which didn't.  The second day, however, it seemed he came up with only two things he liked: "raindrops on roses" and "sleep."  By the third day, however, he was getting the song into shape and breaking out the typewriter(although it only even got the phrase "my favorite things" in the second draft).  She passed around the sheet on which he typed up the first two verses and wrote the refrain verse by hand(his handwriting wasn't always legible, by the way, but it helped that we all knew the words already), and it was kind of surreal to see where those words had first come into being on the paper.

Agents of SHIELD continues to be a roller coaster, but I must say, I was very happy with their choice of stinger.  It was nice of the writers to leave us smiling for once.  It amuses me too how the did the promo.  Gave barest nods to the ongoing plot, but they know once it becomes time to learn May's backstory, what's going to happen next ain't the viewers' top priority anymore.