The wonderful depressive Bill Callahan has recorded a terrific version of Mickey Newbury’s 1973 nugget “Heaven Help the Child.” In a cool move, Callahan’s label, Drag City Records, has released it as a split 7-inch single with the original. The video looks like the cover to Brian Eno’s Before and After Science album.

It’s a very remarkable feeling to read the Guardian’s ongoing account of today’s general strike in Spain. If this were happening in the U.S., it would have been like, “COPS SKIRMISH WITH JOBLESS UNIONS” or something inexplicable and misguided. Over there, it’s like, “This is what workers are protesting, and also the cops hit this one dude at a peaceful labor protest.” (The Times however did a nice job this morning.) The general strike is focused on the new government’s response to the crippling recession and high unemployment, which has as a central component easing of employment laws, so that it will be easier to make more people unemployed or cut worker wages. I’d totally move to the EU, except I guess there won’t be an EU by the time I can get over there.

Sorry, ladies: “JUST one alcoholic drink a day can increase your risk of breast cancer, according to a new study…. no woman should have more than ONE alcoholic drink a day — and those at a higher risk because of their family history should avoid booze completely.”

“Rather than speak out about the connections between folk and country in the war-torn, politically contentious ’60s, he simply showed up at folk festivals and played, at least when he and Flatt weren’t at the Grand Ole Opry. During the long-hair/ short-hair skirmishes of the ’60s and ’70s, he simply showed up and played, with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and The Byrds. And when staunch fans of bluegrass — a genre that would not exist in a recognizable form without Mr. Scruggs’ banjo — railed against stylistic experimentation, Mr. Scruggs happily jammed away with sax player King Curtis, sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, piano man Elton John and anyone else whose music he fancied. ‘He was the man who melted walls, and he did it without saying three words,’ said his friend and acolyte, Marty Stuart in 2000.”
 — The astounding Earl Scruggs has died at the age of 88.

by Sarah Marshall

• ahhh 1968..the ‘good innocent part’ I was 10 years old, and when me and my friends heard it for the first time, we cried…her going ‘away’ meant she was dying

• I loved this song when ot firtlst came out. I’ve lovedbit ever since. I could never list er n to it WI Rt hout balling befote it was half through. Apparently I still cant. thank you

• the first time i heard this song, my cat had just died and it came on the tv and just shook me. i love this song. i cry everytime

• My favorite cousin from Killen, Texas, Pricilla Landess, was buried recently. Why? Because she had a “DIRTY DOCTOR” who prescribed her Zanex. I also miss her terribly more and more each day. I wish our president would put each and every single DIRTY DOCTOR in prison with a 45 million dollar bail amount. I guess that will never happen because DIRTY DOCTORS cut down our planet’s over-population problems…

• I love this song but is sad.

• This was one of my grandmother’s favourite songs. She passed away a week ago tomorrow, and her funeral is tomorrow. I remembered this song out of the blue on Sunday and started to sob uncontrollably, but I know right about now, my grandma and Honey are in heaven and she’s laughing at me for being a cry-baby. She would always say, Crying? bring a bucket quick. lol.

Granny I miss you, and ‘m being good. And I’d love to be with you if only I could.

• THIS NICE

• Thank You Mr. Bobby Goldsboro, for this perfect song to my Mommy, I was 4yrs. Old when she passed, and am now 48, I still MISS Her EVERY DAY of My Life. Your song only makes me feel her absence more, but still reminds me that I once had her, being the babiest of 10 that was left without her. A BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL,befiting song to ALL those that have passed. THANK YOU SIR for SONG ABOUT MY WONDERFUL N BEAUTIFUL LOVING MOMMY, And GOD BLESS U SIR, AND MY MOMMY (ZOILA)!

• Is this “No Country for Old Men: The Musical”?

• Sad memories and mixed emotions are ragging in my head as i’m listening to this song.This song was a fav of mine n my highschool honey. senior yr was loads of fun til her family abruptly moved across country. I joined the military after highschool n was sent to the jungle of hell to find someone named charlie, came home without my soul to find out I was’nt welcome home. went to find my highschool honey n was told in the spring of 1971 she went away, sadly she took her life..freedom is not free.

• back in the 70s there was a company in nj that was selling bobby goldsboro wigs for men.

• i always said i would play this lovely song at my wifes funeral.just she not my wife no more …

• MY QUESTION IS: WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE DISLIKE THIS SONG????

• I lost my Honey 7 yrs ago to Cancer while I sat there and Held her hand.
4 yrs ago I met a new woman in my life but there’s still that Void. it’s hard when your with someone for 20yrs and raise twin girls. they shouldn’t have had to bury they’re mother at 17.
 — Brotherant53

@Brotherant53 My sincere condolences too. My guess Is used the Illuminati fda doctors that use chemo poison Instead of The Bob Beck Protocol and Food Grade 35% Hydrogen Peroxide even In 1934 A Man name Royal Rife was curing cancer but some greedy business men & fda put and end to It. Now time to get Internet dating service but these Women taught by false Prophets only want a tall rich man.

• I am sorry, but all I remember about this song is Al Bundy calling this a “musical sphincter-lock” on Married…With Children. So, I had to see what the fuss was about.

• I can’t listen to this song without thinking of my little dog, Mr. Dinkles. He died five years ago this week. I love you Mr. Dinkles.

• Honey is sucha whore.

• When I was a kid I loved this song. Still brings a rush of nostalgia. But as an adult I now see that the lyrics are very condescending toward women. The narrator didn’t treat his wife well — was rather cruel and patronizing. She tripped and almost hurt herself & he laughed ‘till he cried? He makes fun of her when she plants a tree & when she gets emotional watching movies. Sounds like his grief at her loss is actually feelings of guilt for not being there for her, when she was sick or depressed — strawberryseason

Stawberry, you really missed with your comment. Obviously you weren’t listening close enough. This song is about the love he had for her. He’s just remembering her and her funny ways. Maybe your too young to get it.. Listen to it again Honey! Its a great song. Really takes me back. Loved it 35+ years ago, still do!

• I grew up listening to this music every friday while my parents got drunker then hell, but this music always relaxed me and helped me sleep. Very powerful song I can tell you.

• i missed up wih chris i love her for the rest of my life i messed up xx

• I will never forget that moment I was leaving the old Kyrlon paint factory in Norristown where I had put a aplication in for a job as I crossed the old industrial railroad tracks it came on on my favorite old station wibg radio 99 and as I said before I pulled over and listened and even cried it was such a great song., Thanks for your nice note. It is a moment frozen in time for me as long as I live. I had a beautiful green 2 door 1963 chevy Bel Air stick on the colume back then.

• i wish i had hair like his

• The most gag-inducing, revolting pop song of all time! And more than tinged with apparently unconscious sexism. Barf, barf, barf! Not a bad voice, though quite nasally-adolescent sounding, but then so many pop singers are. A treacly purgative. Right up there with Paul Anka’s “Having My Baby”. Auggh! — URLy2Rise

@URLy2Rise Why did you listen to it you heartless bastard. I guess you have never lost anyone you loved if you are able to love?

• your not a man if you dont shed tears during this song.

• Thirty years ago, I found my grandfather in the kitchen, late at night, sitting at the end of the table drinking his cup of coffee, listening to this song, word by word while nodding and agreeing to each word. Tears were running down his face. I stood there watching him unnoticed. Then he began to sing along. And when the part came to say “Honey”, he sang my Grandmother’s name — Lily. Though he never showed me love, that moment broke my heart. I learned to love him from that moment on…

• anyone know if he is dead

• If you dislike this song..You have no heart..or just a LOSER!!!!!

• I am seventy something now, but when love leaves you, whether it is by death or someone you love just gets tired of you and moves on, it is devastating, just devastating. I am still grieving over Patti Smith, though I have not even seen her in thirty years. She is all I have thought of for these thirty years, but I know that she has not thought of me more than once, briefly.

• its true me and my grand mon plated a tree and now she going and the tree stillis there and i ride my bike ,rudy hernandez milwaukee wi

• song is about a woman who plants a tree and dies a few years later

• Thanks for posting this. For another sad-sweet-lost-love song check out Rammstein’s “Ohne Dich”. (even if you don’t speak German it’ll make you cry)

• Justin Beiber version1?

Sarah Marshall is a student in the MFA program at Portland State University, where she also edits The Portland Review. She may or may not occasionally cry while listening to Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like a Wheel.”

Here’s a terrific piece by John Lanchester on what Karl Marx got right, what he got wrong, and what he managed to get right even by being wrong.

“I have often thought, as I watched their complicated alliance relationships, that their social lives would be mentally and physically exhausting, and I’m glad I’m not a dolphin.”
 — University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth Richard Conner talks Discovery’s Jennifer Viegas about his study of a community of 120 bottlenose dolphins in Western Australia’s Shark Bay. Male dolphins “engage in extensive bisexuality, combined with periods of exclusive homosexuality,” and work in pairs, or sometimes trios, to “sequester and herd” individual females to mate with in mating season.

You know who else wore a hoodie?

Do you like Shanghai soup dumplings? Of course you do. Here you are, reading this sentence, after all. And when you eat them — at Joe’s Shanghai if you are in 1998 or are Jean-Georges Vongerichten, or at Shanghai Asian Cuisine if you are Robert Sietsema, or Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao if you live in Flushing or are up for that kind of travel, or at the Grand Sichuan International in Chelsea if you are me, most of the times I have eaten them over the past fifteen years — do you also eat the leaves of steamed cabbage upon which they sit in their wicker-basket platters? No? Oh, you should. I always do. (I have kind-of a hang-up about wasting food that probably goes back to my mom over-reminding me about starving children in Ethiopia when I was a kid. But it also might just be because I’m a glutton.) Anyway, I always eat the leaves of steamed cabbage even they are technically a functional garnish (I think they keep the soup dumplings from sticking to the basket) and even though steamed cabbage is, you know, rarely the most exciting element of a meal at a Chinese restaurant. But I recently discovered a better way to eat the leaves of cabbage that come with soup dumplings. And so have a suggestion for what you should do for lunch today.

First, go to Shanghai Café Deluxe on Mott Street between Hester and Canal. It is a fun place to go, because it has a ceiling of different-colored neon tubes behind translucent sheets of plastic. It looks like a little bit like an apartment-complex rec room decorated for a party by the Thompson Twins. I went there for the first time on a recent Saturday because I read about how good the soup dumplings were on a website that’s more obsessive about food than I am, and my kid takes karate class nearby.

Order the soup dumplings, which are the first item on the menu and are called “steamed tiny buns with crab meat and pork.” (Don’t worry, they’re totally kosher.) They are delicious. Thicker skinned than some others that you find, which, this would normally be a drawback for me, because I generally like my dumplings, any kind of dumplings, to have as thin a skin as possible. Like tracing paper. But while these ones stand-up higher than those at, say, Joe’s Shanghai or Grand Sichuan International, and you can’t see the soup bulging the sides like a water-balloon, they are excellent nonetheless. The soup is clearer, cleaner, more liquidy, less meaty. But you can really taste the crabmeat in the dumpling; it doesn’t get overwhelmed by the pork, which is a problem I’ve experienced at other places. There’s even a little crispness left at the top of the meatball, where its pinched in the dough, and a slight reddish spiciness. You will like them, I think.

Okay. Also order — and here’s where it gets a little tricky, because this it’s not on the menu, so you will be ordering “off-menu,” so will probably feel like something of a jerk. As well you should. Because who orders “off-menu,” other than egomaniacal movie stars like Danny Devito in Get Shorty? But that’s okay. Do it anyway: ask for scrambled eggs with baby shrimp. It’s a common dish in China (I have been told by someone who has been to China) and lots of Chinese restaurants do have it on the menu. And they can definitely make it at Shanghai Café Deluxe. In fact, they make it very well. The eggs fluffy, the shrimp fresh-tasting, some soft scallion. I asked for this dish because it was 11:30 in the morning when I went, and while I was having soup dumplings, I wanted some eggs for breakfast, too.

So what you do is, once you’ve eaten the dumplings that sit on the cabbage (and you know how to eat the dumplings, right? You pick them up and nibble a hole in the skin and sip out the soup, before munching the rest of the package), take a cabbage leaf — there are usually three or four per basket, I think — and spread it on your plate and scoop up some of your big-time-hot-shot-rock-star-ordered-“off-menu” scrambled eggs and shrimp and put them on top of the cabbage leaf. Then fold it up like a taco or a mini-burrito. Being steamed, the cabbage leaf should be floppy and easily to manipulate in this way, and being green, and vegetable, and slightly sour and funky, it adds a perfect third counterpoint to the rich and briny eggs and shrimp. (Yellow, pink and green, to paraphrase Chuck D, you know what I mean? And I’m sorry for paraphrasing Chuck D like that.)

Oh, and do dip it into the sauce that comes with the soup dumplings. Shanghai Café’s is exceptionally good — more vinegar than soy sauce, with large chunks of ginger and garlic.

Yum!

Previously: Stuff Your Peppadew With Kibbee, Have Soup For Lunch At Karloff

“The Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Tuesday relaunched its Poetry in Motion program that ended in 2008, offering straphangers snippets of text meant to transport them away from a crowded, rumbling present.” The first poem in the new batch comes from the legendary Dorothea Tanning.