I had a pleasantly eerie but nostalgic late-night drive last night going from Newport to Providence after midnight. When I left my hosts on Division Street (after a very entertaining Robert Burns party) ravens were loudly and insistently, indeed ominously, cackling over the narrow street, laid out in the 17th or 18th Century. I thought of the Hitchcock horror movie The Birds.
But then I turned on the car radio and enjoyed 45 minutes of the sort of old sweet jazz that you used to hear all over the place on your radio dial, back when most of the people making the music were still alive. They used to call such shows "Music in the Night'' and they were usually hosted by a male announcer whose baritone was made more mellow by a serious cigarette habit.
