“Sure,” cried the tenant men, “but it’s our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours. That’s what makes it ours–being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.”"We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man.”
“Yes, but the bank is only made of men.”
“No, you’re wrong there–quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”
from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, quoted in Joy at Work by Dennis Bakke.
My latest favorite song is the new recording of a longtime favorite, Nessun Dorma, by Chris Botti. Previously, I had only heard vocal versions of this song. I was introduced to it in 10th grade, when our concert band performed a marvelous version of it featuring my very own trumpet section. Perhaps this is why I love Botti’s rendition, which gloriously belts out those beloved melodies. 
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