This is nice:

Once there was a city where everyone had the gift of song. Gardeners sang as they clipped their flowers. Husbands and wives sang each other to sleep at night. Groups of children waiting for the school bell to ring raced through the verses of the latest pop songs to get to the pure spun sugar of the choruses. Old friends who had not seen each other in many years met at wakes and retirement parties to sing the melodies they remembered from the days when they believed there was nothing else in the world that would ever grip their spirits so and take them out of their bodies. Life was carried along on a thousand little currents of music, and it was not unusual to hear a tune drifting out from behind the closed door of an office as you passed, or even from the small back room of the art museum, which was almost but never quite empty. The people of the city did not always sing with great skill, but they sang clearly and with a simplicity of feeling that made their voices beautiful to hear. And because they loved what they sang, no matter how painful or melancholy, a note of indomitable happiness ran through their voices like a fine silver thread.

Excerpt from “Parakeets” in the new Granta (I presume) by David Brockmeier

Granta has a new issue out with a group of writers they say are the best of the younger (ahem …. that would be under the age of thirty-five…. I suppose that still pretty young… I know this fifty-five year old thinks it’s young…) writers

I bookmarked this list of them for future reference. I recognize a couple (Foer, Budnitz) and as I started investigating I recognized works by some of them.

I know the sheer act of reading anything seems to be falling out of favor. Better to scan quickly, looking for pictures and video links. Whippy skippy. I do that. But I still like to read. And am on the lookout for new books.

I drove up to Barnes & Noble (after checking our local bookshop) and bought David Mitchell’s first nove, Ghostwritten. I finished Cloud Atlas by him last night. I like this guy a lot.

Yesterday standing in the cold, I was talking to my friend Michael Fegel who sometimes lurks here. I introduced him to a pompous dude as a “reader.” It’s true. There are some readers left.

By that, I mean someone who enjoys the sheer act of reading and does it. Virginia Woolf called them “Common Readers.” I like that a lot.

I heard an interesting report on the BBC this morning. It appearsthat there are rock formations deep below Australia that maintain a constant temperature of 300 degrees farenheit. That is hot. There are plans to use this heat to generate steam to generate electricity for Australia. Although it is a bit more expensive than coal (I think I remember it was eight dollars more a unit or something) it could provide electricity for Australia for the next four hundred years.

I googled it but couldn’t find anything on the web on it.

Just got back from playing at Centennial Park for the anti-Global Warming Rally. No mayor. There were people, though. A lot of Lutherans from Peace Lutheran where I was the musician for a while. Their pastor was one of the main organizers. I was kind of surprised they asked me because I’m pretty sure this guy doesn’t like and might even blame me for stuff I did at that church.

Jon and I played really well. We practiced for about hour beforehand and then we went over and pretty much nailed the three songs we played. There was a mic that buy diazepam sweden worked and a clip on that didn’t. It was really really cold. My hands were too numb to finger pick.

I was very happy with the way the songs went. I’m trying to do “Naked Boy” and “Elephant” with a bit more energy and it definitely came together.

The crowd wasn’t paying too much attention because they were organizing group photos at the same time we were playing. Mark the Lutheran Pastor dude apologized to me later. No biggie at all.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera. Oh well.

Russian immigrants (this means citizens of nearby Uzbekistan for instance) have recently been forbidden to sell vegetables in Russian markets. They can sell other things like spices but only Russian citizens can sell vegetables.
It seems like hate for the other is on the rise in the world.

They are happy to buy my spices, but in the street there is still hate for immigrants.

There’s still hate on the street in America as well. And China. And France. And the UK.

link to NYT story.

Golijov on the right. David Henry Wang on the left. Wang wrote the libretto to Ainadamar. I checked out the CD from the library and am going to order a copy today after listening to a couple cuts. I really like this guy’s music.

Okay. I can’t read this. But this web site has a game on it that is kind of cool.

How to make a reading nook in your room. Just did this recently myself.

On the Media weighed in on the Joshua Bell busker story this morning.

When I play today at the anti-Global Warming rally, I want to play my accoustic guitar and sing. As usual, I have concerns about how I’m going to be amplified. The people organizing this have little experience around these issues and are renting a PA that sounds primitive.

I’m not even quite to the point of wondering whether the sound will be good. I’m mostly wondering if they will be capable of miking my guitar.

Jonathon wisely is bringing his electric. I suppose there will be a place to plug things in. I meant to put my outdoor batteries through a test this week but didn’t get around to it.

I do not want to play electric because I have been working on accoustic versions of my songs. It gives them a nice rhythmic sound I like.

I won’t be playing too long today. Originally they said twenty minutes. There are two other acts.

I’m expecting everything from four people in the audience to more than a hundred.

It’s cloudy right now in Holland. My weather page says it’s 33 degrees and feels like 29 degrees. Maybe it won’t warm up enough for me to play and I won’t have to worry about miking issues.

Eileen is going to a Hatch family shower today. She will be gone most of the day.

Jonathon Fegel and I are playing at an anti-Global Warming rally tomorrow. The organizer just called me and told me there will be a PA. She’s renting it from a local rental place and is not sure of the quality.

She also said that we would go on around 1:00 PM. Hopefully it would be warm enough by then. (I told her previously that if it was too cold, I wasn’t going to play.) Also we will be on the bill right after the mayor of our fair city, so we should be prepared to go on late.

I’m interested to see how “The Naked Boy” feels next to a speech by Holland City Mayor Al McGeehan. That should be fun.

For some weird reason I think this is cool. “The Muslim World’s Most Modern City: Miniskirts meet Minarets in the new Istanbul” By Annette Grossbongardt, April 13, 2007 Spiegel online.

obscurationism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity  quoted in The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of A Universe by Micahel Frayn

This seems to be quite a charming little book. I have read the first section called “Prospectus” which has compelled me to go on to the next section (“Principles”). The prose is easy to read and he poses some interesting basic philosophical questions in words I can understand.

Here are a couple of online reviews:

A Not So Starry Night: Michael Frayn steps out of character to ponder our place in the universe by Richard Panek Seed Magazine, 4/8/07
Self Centered by Jim Holt NYT 2/18/07

There is still snow on the ground outside. I am scheduled to play at a Global Warming rally tomorrow. Sigh. I actually feel like crawling under a rock this morning. Too much input probably.

I have been taking consolation in the early piano sonatas of Beethoven. I never used to like Beethoven all that much. But he is fun to play on the piano and it calms my weary mind.

I am loving the book I am reading: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. The book skips from one story to another of different people who are cleverly connected. It spans a huge period of years. By the middle of the book, the reader has been taken from the 1800s on a pacific island to far in the future on some difficult to identify place (Hawaii?).

The story keeps you interested from section to section. This guy could write one helluva serial (he would make the recent spat of New York Times Magazine writers who have had their works featured as serials look like rank amateurs. Come to think of it there is a blurb on this book by Michael Chabon, whose serial novel is currently running in the NYT mag. I gave up on Chabon. But Chabon says this about Cloud Atlas… “I’ve never read anything quite like it.” I bet, judging from your current effort which is dense and bores me…)

Anyway Mitchell helps me remember what skill certain authors have. I am relishing his story the way I used to relish a new Anthony Burgess novel.

After mid-way in the story, he reverses his time flow but not the unfolding story. It is a virtuoso  performance as far as this reader is concerned. He does this (for example) by having someone in the future spend her last hours before excution watching an old movie from the past. This movie is based on the life of a previous character in the book. She begins watching the movie where his story left off….. get it? very clever I think.

Anyway, we’ll see if I am still so happy with this book after I finish it. I am about three quarters of the way through it.

I listen and read to Jack Lessenberry quite a bit. He is a Michigan commentator on the radio and web.

His latest essay takes Michiganders to task for taking away the money needed for services via tax cuts and removing politician’s responsibility for long term decisions via term limits.

He writes (and reads via the audio link):

You might want to ask what kind of state you want to live in, and whether clutching your tax cut in your cave is really what you want.

Also see this article: “Drowning Schools in the Bathtub” by Hazen Pingree.

With the upcoming 2008 Olympics in Beijing, there is an effort to correct obvious mistranslations into English in signs. China Daily Article.

One of the fun things in China was reading the English mis-translations everywhere. It seems kind of mean. But it is funny. Eileen was looking for a t-shirt before we left with an obvious one but she didn’t find it.

RIAA is still sueing it’s customers according to this article in the U of M Michigan Daily. The idea that sellers should control our society is one of the more beserk notions I observe on a daily basis. Whew. (Rev Jim sigh)

Sueing the people who want your product is ridiculous. When this product is something like music, it’s really unethical. It also (I hope) is shooting yourself in the foot.

What is music for? I think it’s part of the whole human dance of what makes us human. One thing that I think makes us human is that we are “meaning-makers.” We make sense of our environment, our lives, our feelings, our bodies. Music can help. Indeed, I think music, art, poetry and literature are basic to this aspect of being human.

To exploit this for a profit is akin to charging for air (or water or medical care…. get it? …. just my opinion, of course)

Yesterday I heard a radio report about patents for certain Tax shelter procedures. There was a clear defense of this idea. (pretty dumb, but clear: wouldn’t you want to be able to protect a bunch of work and research you did so that you could charge for it and no one else). But wait a minute. Taxes are part of the social contract. You know. We tax ourselves in order to provide ourselves with services and safeguards. Why should we pay a third party because it can figure out our admittedly arcane rules better than we can? Why not just change the rules and make them clearer? silly fucking me

RIAA is an example of a seller that is not thinking clearly. For the longest time, they were able to sell music over and over to the golden goose consumer. Now that the consumer is consuming in new ways, they want to kill the goose to keep the egg. Good grief.

And at the same time it becomes clearer and clearer to me that populist music (i.e. music that is selling bigtime) along with populist everything is turning into dross.

Mediocrity sells. Imus sells. Misogyny sells. Fair enough but whatever happened to integrity of the product.

I don’t want to stifle Don Imus’s free speech, I just don’t want him to be in the million-zillion dollar club because of his racial pandering. Let him say whatever he wants, but please media people remember you are a kind of public trust.  Try not to sponsor out-and-out hate.  If people want to buy it, fine.  That is their choice. Their consumer choice. Their vote, if you will.

As for me, it’s in the same boat as Haliburton profitting from the war and people who watch a calamity (like 9/11 or Katrina) and are already on the phone trying to scam (skim) some of the money they know will follow the disaster.

Netflix now has us on their streaming video list. This is an added service they provide with no extra charge. Subscribers get one hour of monthly streaming videos for every dollar of their subcription payment (which depends upon which level of service you have chosen…. Eileen and I have the 2-videos-at-a time service which costs about 15 bucks a month).

Last night we streamed Heater. Eileen picked it out and I enjoyed it immensely. Judging from customer reviews, this flick isn’t for everybody. Made around 1999, it chronicles a day of two men living on the street. Nothing happens, okay? Bruce Willis is not in this movie.

I liked it better than any movie I’ve watched in a while. The acting was pretty strong. The title comes from the fact that one of the main characters carries around a new heater in a box for most of the film. The dialogue is believable. The story is believable.

When I first discovered that we had the streaming option, I streamed The Ladies Sing the Blues.

It’s a sort of documentary which has two arresting moments. One when Bessie Smith sings on camera and one when Billie Holiday sings on camera. I guess it’s worth it just to watch these two for me. The rest is pretty limp. Ethel Waters sings a disturbing song called about “darkies.” The great Lena Horne and Sarah Vaughan and Sister Rosa Tharpe are also on camera but these don’t show these people at their most interesting and artistic.

I really like the new Netflix streaming option. Not all videos are available, but still it’s kind of cool.

I think it’s ART. More here (warning: this site is in Italian)

Cornell U online Archive of US mags from the 1800s….. I think this is cool. Of course I am a “print media” guy. The list includes Atlantic Monthly, Harpers and Scientific American.