Hi, Bob (and all),

My "easy reading" version of comfort food is to read usually re-read) one of 
Robert M. Parker's "Spenser" (detective) novels.  (If you're not immediately 
familiar with the books, he's a fun, quick read, and the characters feel like 
family after 30 years of these books;  also, in the '80's there was a TV show 
named "Spenser for Hire" starring Robert Urich, if anyone cares or remembers; 
also, if there are Jonilistas who are also Trekkies, Avery Brooks played Hawk.

Anyhoo, Spenser is always quoting Shakespeare, Shelley, Byron, you name it, 
but at one point in Sudden Mischief [itself a literary reference to *Edmund* 
Spenser's "The Fairie Queen" (ahem), in which someone says "Be well aware," 
quoth then the Ladie milde,/"Least suddaine mischiefe ye too rash provoke"], 
Spenser mutters "Don't it always seem to go."  Surely seems like a Joni 
reference to me, but I don't know whether the expression originated with her, 
or whether she merely made it popular (anybody know?).  I also know that 
Janet Jackson used a loop of Joni's original Big Yellow Taxi, with her 
permission, in a song a coupla years back.

So, in case you want it, Smurph, there it is.  On page 185 of Parker's 
"Sudden Mischief", published by G. P. Putnams's Sons, New York,  Copyright 
1998 by Robert B. Parker.

Ciao, Smurfino,

Walt

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