Jay's fond of some modern composers' stuff, including Eric Satie, the dreamy Claude Debussy, especially the latter when expertly played on the piano by Marina Lomazov. Though it is "modern" music, he finds the piano pieces of Konstantinovich Shchedrin irresistible, in the hands of Miss Lomazov. She masterfully brings out their playfulness in a cat-dancing-on-the-keys kind of way. Then there's Ravel, and all the fabulous works of Rachmaninoff, not to mention some Stravinsky and some other composers whose work tickles Jay's ear, but isn't four hundred years old.

Summarize to say, Jay's taste in music is fairly ecclectic, with exceptions here and there to prove the rule. He doesn't like much of disco, for example, can't stand rap, and tires of current Top Forty after a few microseconds. Jay digs some jazz, most swing, the blues of course, many movie soundtracks, some country, lots of old gospel, the mellower New Age, some alternative, and a little, albeit very little, bluegrass. Zero "adult contemporary." The radio in his car stays tuned to the local NPR station, but mostly it stays turned off since it barely works anyway and has to be switched off and back on sometimes to squelch the noise that creeps in. Jay's smartphones offer excellent sound quality, but most of the time Jay drives in quiet, since he rarely goes very far. Quiet is good. Not as entertaining as Mussorgsky, but nice.

This quietude was not always the case. Several years ago Jay equipped his next-previous Hondacar with a high-quality sound system. It bellowed out the classics beautifully. He equipped the door compartments with a dozen of his favorite CD's, rotating them occasionally. In short, he rode around town in a rolling concert hall with 230,000 miles on the odometer. Loving it. In those days, he traveled frequently and always drove, since he doesn't like flying. On one of his many trips to parts north, he put a Lara St. John CD - J.S. Bach, the best - into the contraption and grooved, as Boomers used to say, on the drive through the North Carolina mountains and into Tennessee, just at sunrise. He'd worked out the timing for the trip so he could enjoy the view.

After stopping for breakfast and fuel at a McDo - it was convenient, ok? - he happily got back on the Interstate to resume the trek. A little more than an hour later, he noticed a mile marker - 6, instead of the hundred-and-umpty he expected. In another mile, a sign read "Welcome to North Carolina." He had obliviously retraced over an hour of the trip. U-turning at the next exit, he kicked the sound system up some more decibels and joyfully went back northward. Alas, the car's stereo system was stolen while Jay lived downtown, but the thieves left all the nice CDs. Not to their musical taste, presumably. Now he's stuck with a cassette tape deck that doesn't work at all, and a radio that has its moments.

One thing Jay does not do while driving is sing. If you heard any of his attempts, you'd know why. Mainly, it always comes out nearly off-key enough to anger plate techtonics. Something about no vocal training, none ever attempted, even. And definitely none justified.