Dave Schramm was an original member of Yo La Tengo, then quit before their first album came out to focus on his own band, The Schramms. Whoops, I guess, except he put out a handful of terrific albums. I was obsessed with Walk to Delphi, put out on Columbus, Ohio’s Okra Records label in 1992. It still holds up, as evidenced by the stripped-down “Wild and Small” tucked into this mix. Schramm was putting Emily Dickinson poems to music a few decades before Phoebe Bridgers and Andrew Bird. His solo album, 1999’s Hammer and Nails, is an understated masterpiece. Good luck finding it.

I fell into a funk at the thought of sending out my Nebraska novel manuscript out to agents before realizing after reading a sentence or two from Denis Johnson how unready it still was. The funk is over and I’m having a ball sharpening the prose. Will anyone pick it up? Who knows, but the only defense against gatekeeper rejection is feeling as proud as you can about your work.