Tag: Donna Summer

Origin Story — Studying Popular Music and Preparing for The Stratton Setlist

At age 5 with my first record player, a Fisher-Price Change-A-Record Music Box Record Player

Editor’s Note: This is the first installment in a multipart series celebrating the 10th anniversary of The Stratton Setlist.

I never planned to be a music journalist, but I’ve been unknowingly training for it my whole life.

My parents and older brother, Steve, served as my coaches, offering me different educational resources along the way—ranging from albums, TV shows, and magazines to concerts and festivals.

Those resources helped shape my love of music, a desire to acquire more music knowledge, an obsession with live music and physical media, and an uncanny ability to remember all kinds of music facts and trivia. It was that lifetime of training that quietly prepared me to eventually seek a profession that combined my passion for music with writing.

Now, nearly 45 years later and a decade into running my own music blog, here’s how it all started.

Continue reading “Origin Story — Studying Popular Music and Preparing for The Stratton Setlist” →

Crying in H Mart — Michelle Zauner’s Memoir Helps Me Process the Loss of My Mother

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on the Ann Arbor District Library’s Pulp blog.

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Lori Stratton with her mother Carolyn Barnard at her high school graduation in June 1994.

Each year, I look forward to the summer solstice. There’s something magical about the longest day of the year and the maximum amount of daylight that it brings.

But by June 20, 2020, at the age of 44, my outlook on the summer solstice changed unexpectedly. I awoke early that morning to sunlight streaming through my windows and felt excited about the day ahead.

My husband Brian and I were getting ready to visit my in-laws and celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary with the rest of the family. We were just about the leave the house when we heard an expected knock on our door at 8 am.

I opened the door and saw my father on the front porch looking ragged and exhausted. There was an unrecognizable sadness on his face when he said, “L, Your mother passed away last night.”

Those words punched me right in the gut, and it took me a moment to process what he had just said. My father explained that my mother had a heart attack the night before; she had collapsed instantly and then died.

He tried to revive her before the paramedics came, but it was too late. I was surprised that a heart attack had taken my mother’s life at 75 instead of Alzheimer’s. She had been battling that disease for nearly a decade, and I had prepared myself for that outcome gradually.

Continue reading “Crying in H Mart — Michelle Zauner’s Memoir Helps Me Process the Loss of My Mother” →