The bridge, whereabouts of

"Has anyone seen the bridge?" In 1973, near the end of a track called 'The Crunge,' Led Zeppelin's front man Robert Plant wailed the question, seemingly feeling his way towards a musical resolution in a manner that evoked the dramatic habits of another great band leader, James Brown. Brown had often pretended, while onstage during performances, to be looking for a new rhythm, or idea, or musical possibility; on 'The Crunge,' Plant suggested that even composed, recorded music could involve a similar process of seeking.

The phrase soon acquired a life of its own, becoming a sort of touchstone in the work of later rock bands. A 1986 Camper van Beethoven track called 'Joe Stalin's Cadillac,' for instance, features a drawled intonation of the same phrase, and in 1996 The Dave Matthews Band was struck by the general similarity between a transitional piece they'd composed for live performances and Zeppelin's earlier effort. Soon enough, the band was calling their piece 'Anyone Seen the Bridge?' in a manner that invoked both its function as a connector and their place in the larger history of rock music. Brown, Plant, Matthews: the three singers offer, in their shared quest for a transition, a common bridge across the last half century of American popular music.

But if pop tunes can seem to need bridges, so too can blogs. Over the past few weeks, I've left a number of narratives unfinished. Balls in the air, threads hanging: the result, you can choose your metaphor, but to me it feels as though I've mapped portions of a territory without necessary linking the charted zones. So: on this quiet Tuesday afternoon, with L. and Cleo back in B'more after a long weekend trip to see the grandparents in N.C., let's get up to speed:

1. Cleo was a fox, a red fox, for Halloween. She wore her outfit during her school's Halloween parade, which went swimmingly, and she then wore it as darkness descended on the city, trick-or-treating among the stately stone houses of Bolton Hill and gently illuminated windows of our own neighborhood.

2. Cleo's anger at me - but is that even the right word? I mean her frustration with my refusal to let her watch Dumbo while we hosted a guest - soon dissipated. Said guest, in fact, brought a lovely set of African-themed dominoes that captivated Cleo, and we then spent much of the next day at Storyville and Barnes and Noble, where she played like an absolute angel.

3. And Hurricane Sandy was relatively gentle to our old pink house. Water seeped in through the seams of our roof, and the drywall ceiling in one room will need to be replaced. All things considered, though, we were lucky: after I explained to Cleo why I was setting buckets out to catch the invasive water, she went back to playing, and then, when L. returned home from out west, dutifully told her that 'we have an old house and so water came in.'

4. The image above? Cleo, flying a kite in Meadowwood Park, on a windy fall day: her suggestion, my joy.

Four bridges, built in a matter of minutes. Hope they help to connect the islands of a blog that too often and too easily, perhaps, forgets to provide narrative closure. But that will, in the next day or two, attract its 10,000th visitor - for which I thank all of you.