I sometimes forget I have a Spotify account when I want to listen to music. The good news is when I want to listen to music, the entire possible library is right here, with me wherever I am. The days of lying on my stomach next to the record player or stereo, reading the liner notes on the album cover, as well as studying and memorizing the lyrics are over, but the joy of listening to music is always with me.

My guest today probably has heard himself described as “legendary.” It is Peter Asher, CBE. Formerly of Peter & Gordon, the pop duo of the 60s. Having met Paul McCartney in the early 60s when he was dating Peter’s sister Jane, Peter’s story was intertwined with the cute Beatles.

McCartney wrote Peter and Gordon’s first hit (it went to #1 internationally), “A World Without Love,” but Asher became Apple Record’s first head of A&R. He later discovered James Taylor, and managed him and Linda Ronstadt among many other artists, and become a heralded record producer as well. You’ll love his stories.

By the time you hear this podcast, I will have two out of 3 exhibits home for the holidays, with the other and his family en route to me. I long to have all my kiddoes here under our roof for a week or so.

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My five great things this week:

1. Having all our kids home and together. I see it now through rose-colored glasses. Even when a day or two isn’t perfect, or there’s been some disagreeableness – I just love knowing that they are here with me. And the baby is the bonus! I got such a kick out of buying baby food for my um son’s son.

2. Last Friday we went to a dinner party at the house of a couple we just have started to know, and it was so much fun! Jan and Alan planned a festive group, and not only did we stay till midnight (what?) but the food was out of this world. It’s always such a surprise to have such a bracing evening with people you barely knew.

3. JoJo Rabbit. Have you seen this odd but wonderful movie yet? It’s made by the wonderful filmmaker Taika Waititi who wrote and directed Hunt for the Wilderpeople. It’s a picaresque movie about a little German boy who lives with his mother during WWII in Germany, and he’s obsessed by the Nazis. A sensitive child with an inquisitive mind, he misses his father – who is seemingly fighting in another country, and his older sister who died from influenza. The boy, JoJo, conjures up an imaginary friend, who is Adloph Hitler, played as a petulant and immature bully by Waititi himself, a Jewish-Maori New Zealander. I am still processing all the ways the movie made me feel, which tells me it breaks new ground and is worth seeing.

4. Cleaning my office. It’s a work in progress, but slowly I’m getting it organized. Soon it will be a place of pride and a thing worthy of good writing.

5. Last week, in a moment of discouragement – they just happen sometimes, without warning – I received a couple of letters from some of you who say they like this podcast. I cannot tell you how much that means to me. We all need validation or to be bolstered up when we aren’t feeling too confident. When I get feedback from you listeners, I feel this is not some elaborate waste of time.