.. yeah," her eyes glazed over. "He uh ... um ... Mom once told me that before she was born, he and grandma drove all night to St. Louis and he tried ...ut for the Cardinals. I think he may have actually made it to a ... what do the call them? A tryout team?" Farm league?" I helped."Yeah. Now I remember. It was 1941, and I think he went on the road and played half a season—"I cut her off, "Then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor." Yeah. Grandpa joined the Army on December 9th. He was so proud of that.". ”He said nothing in return, overwhelmed by what she was saying; he simply stared into her eyes. They were like jade pools, deep in the woods, reflecting the leaves but hiding the aquatic life. He heard her words, but wasn’t sure if he could see her sincerity…“And the things you wrote about Ron…” she turned her head, staring out onto the baseball diamond and clenching her jaw. “Two months ago, my sister hanged herself. She stayed home sick, my mother had gone to work, and when I came home from. What was unusual about the site was that all of the women were bound in yards and yards of lightly colored rope. There were dozens of photo sets on the site, but the amazing thing about them was that every girl seemed to be tied differently. And, while some of the girls looked to be very tightly and restrictively bound indeed, others appeared to wear their ropes more as a form of decoration than as a means of restraint. They coiled around arms, legs, and stomachs; they framed smooth,. " She grinned. "And some musicians take what the composer wrote as just the starting place, and add a lot of themselves to it."She must have seen I still wasn't sure. "I can say, 'Come here, Tom.' My tone is soft and even. I can say, 'Come here, Tom!' and raise my voice; it doesn't mean the same thing. You can put embellishments into music, just like when you're talking. Slurring words and notes together, adding an extra note just to make it sound better, or slightly change the meaning. 'Can.