It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go; Take a look in the five-and-ten, glistening once again. With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.

From the explanatory notes that Willson wrote to accompany his symphony, A Symphony of San Francisco,: "Generally speaking, the first movement is intended to convey pioneer courage, loyalty, strength of purpose and freedom." The trumpet motive in the closing Allegro "is a call of defiance to the very elements themselves that had the temerity to dispute the spiritual strength and courage of the golden city of the West."

Never let the demands of tomorrow interfere with the pleasures and excitement of today.

Regarding the current Broadway revival of The Music Man, Jay Nordlinger wrote: There will always be those who sniff that the show is "feel good"-but, oh, it feels good to feel good. And the main reason The Music Man feels so good is that it is good-a great American musical.

Most playwrights go wrong on the fifth word. When you start a play and you type 'Act one, scene one,' your writing is every bit as good as Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill or anyone. It's that fifth word where amateurs start to go wrong.

I haven't seen Iowa people get so excited since the night Frank Gotch and Strangler Lewis lay on the mat for three and a half hours without moving a muscle.

Speaking of River City in The Music Man & his home town, Mason City, Iowa: I didn't have to make up anything. I simply remembered Mason City as closely as I could.