Hootenanny

They had fun at the hootenanny.

The brain matches the mind-image of doughnuts to images and emotions stored in his brain’s memory regions: “Mmmm … doughnuts.” Then—bingo!—his brain’s dopamine-producing reward centres light up and have a rip-roaring hootenanny.

It bespoke country’s devotion to realism, to songs about Saturday night’s hootenanny and Sunday morning’s moral reckoning, not to mention the kitchen-table truths of Monday through Friday.