In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in. We’re here at 7 pm on Sunday nights.
For this, our second Medium Cool of 2022, let’s talk about what we’re looking forward to in the new year in terms of culture. I’m just finishing Michael Pollan’s book How To Change Your Mind, and have his newest one on deck.
What’s on your horizon? A new book or film? Revisiting or catching up with something? Planning to get to something you haven’t done in a while? Covid forcing you to finally learn a foreign language or new musical instrument? Do tell.
Baud
I’ve been learning Spanish for many years now but I’m stuck at maintaining a rudimentary proficiency. Not sure how to take it to the next level.
BGinCHI
One thing I’m looking forward to in this space is a post on friend-of-Medium Cool John Lingan’s forthcoming book on Creedence Clearwater Revival. We’ll do something during the pre-order stage and then again when it lands, and John will be here to answer all your Rock ‘n Roll questions.
If you haven’t heard of, or read, John’s first book (Homeplace), it’s here.
BGinCHI
@Baud:
Move to Mallorca?
mvr
I’m working on building a concert ukulele. So far I’ve made the form for bending the sides and a template for cutting them. And got some nice Koa. I guess this counts as learning new musical instrument (though perhaps not in the intended sense) as I have made a few guitars, but uke’s are new to me.
And the Creedence book does sound interesting to me.
WereBear
Working on my second cat book, already drafted, and working up a cozy mystery series.
Omnes Omnibus
I am starting to think about picking up my violin again.
BGinCHI
@mvr: WOW. Very, very cool. A cycling buddy of mine builds guitars on the side, and they’re beautiful.
What a skill.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Working your way up to playing it?
Smart.
Leto
Avalune and I are traveling to Italy in April so I can attend a weeklong cooking shindig/seminar. Very excited to go back. Will attempt to eat my weight in gelato and will also try to fill a very large suitcase with hard to find items.
Regarding Polian:
NPR Fresh Air: ‘Reluctant Psychonaut’ Michael Pollan Embraces The ‘New Science’ Of Psychedelics (First interview, 42 mins long; May 2018)
NPR Fresh Air: ‘Reluctant Psychonaut’ Michael Pollan Embraces ‘New Science’ Of Psychedelics (Second interview, 37 Mins; May 2019)
BGinCHI
@Leto: The book is excellent.
Where in Italy?
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Next step, getting the sound post reset. Baby steps.
mvr
@BGinCHI: Not so much skill as persistence in my case, but two of the three (the electrics) I made came out very well and the other one (an acoustic) needs a bit of work as it was built where it is humid and now lives where it is dry and I didn’t sufficiently curve the bracing to allow it to stand up to that well.
I’ve been hoarding wood for some more guitars in the next few years or if not then when I retire.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
So you can fiddle while America burns?
Leto
@BGinCHI: Calabria region, town of Dasa. When we lived in Italy we never got past Rome. We explored the northern half of Italy quite a bit, so heading further south and exploring their cuisine/cooking will be amazing.
We’ve read most of Pollan’s work, just haven’t gotten to this one. We’ll get there.
Edit: going to kill my autocorrect.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ve never tried playing a violin. It looks so damn hard.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: It’s a violin, not a fiddle. Damn it!
BGinCHI
@mvr: I would endlessly shop just for the wood and never get past that point. Would love to see a pic when it’s finished!
BGinCHI
@Leto: I also know the northern half well but not the south at all.
Sounds like an amazing trip.
Leto
@Omnes Omnibus: One man’s Mozart is another man’s Ralph Stanley.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI:
I started when I was nine. I haven’t touched it in over 30 years. We’ll see what happens.
Gin & Tonic
Not really in the same music/art vein as others, but I’m hoping to build another boat this year. If I put strings on it, can I pretend it’s an instrument?
WereBear
@BGinCHI: that sounds great. Love Creedence. Following that author!
brendancalling
Over the holiday a friend of mine showed me the basic finger-picking roll for guitar, so I’m working on that.
In March I start applying to teaching jobs in Philly and Nashville. Burlington VT is a nice place to visit, but I’m out at the end of summer. Gonna be nice to back in either city.
It’s raining on the snow right now, and temperatures for tomorrow -6 to -10 Fahrenheit. So the drive into work (never mind the walk to my car) will be an Olympic skating event.
Leto
@BGinCHI: we’re super excited. I’m excited for the new recipes I’ll learn, Avalune is excited for the new recipes I’m going to learn ;) It’s been 9 years since we’ve lived there, and honestly that’s just too long to be away.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: What kind of boat?
mvr
@BGinCHI: I can do that. When it is finished.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: Thoughts (I’m trying to maintain my rudimentary French, much degraded in 28yr):
raven
I hope my spinal injection helps me get my mobility back so I can dump this gut.
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: I took lessons for a while back in the olden days in high school. We couldn’t afford a decent tuner so I had to suffer with an out of tune plastic pitch pipe. Needless to say, it wasn’t very helpful in trying to learn a fretless stringed instrument…
:-/
Enjoy!
Cheers,
Scott.
Leto
@Gin & Tonic: I give you, the violin boat! (FTFNYT article/pic.) Maybe you and Omnes can perform a show…
Cacti
Since the thread is on pop culture, this seems an appropriate place:
Bob Saget found dead in his hotel room.
mvr
@Gin & Tonic: What kind of boat and what sort of construction. I have fantasies about a strip-built Kayak and then taking it down the North Platte to the Platte and up Salt Creek.
delk
Year 3 of Polish.
Miss Bianca
@mvr:
Yow, cool!
@Omnes Omnibus:
Doo eet. I’ve been picking up my fiddle (NOT my violin, damn it!) almost every day for at least five minutes a day since New Year’s, after having barely played at all in the two years since COVID hit. Trying to work on at least one new tune per week.
cope
Well, if the currently “delayed” boxes of family slides finally show up, I will have about a decades worth of family pics to organize, scan and turn into…something to share with my two brothers and two sisters. These were slides taken by our step-dad including holidays, summer-long vacations, shorter trips, family life and school events. They haven’t been viewed since the ‘60s when they were taken so assuming FedEx hasn’t screwed the pooch with the delivery, I have a long, fun project in front of me.
I’ve also had a very recent urge to take the electric guitar out on the back porch and make some real noise of my own for the first time in three decades.
Professor Bigfoot
I picked the guitar back up over the last few months; and then Mrs. Bigfoot acted on a very long ago mentioned wish: an electronic drum kit.
I’m NO GOOD, but it’s fun as hell and it’s actually a workout
(and being electronic, no one hears anything other than the sticks hitting the pads unless they’re under the headphones with me… )
HumboldtBlue
@Baud:
Find a Spanish language Reddit sub, maybe one of the sports subs like r/Barça, where they converse in Spanish.
On another note and speaking of new mindsets, Fantastic Fungi on Netflix was a fascinating watch and certainly opened my eyes to a world I had little knowledge of, the world of fungi.
laura
@BGinCHI: in a total Momsense-type move, our mom bought the boy who would be Roadie Brother the Elder Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Willy and the Poor Boys. That’s how it started. He was fortunate to have worked a gig for John Fogerty and fulfilled a dream to be of service to such a major early influence.
Also, Stu Cook’s dad- who’s that lazy and dismissive to advise these babies on that contract?
UncleEbeneezer
Hopefully 2022 will allow me to get back to playing live music, at some point. But who knows when that will be and it’s gonna be like starting all over again because I will likely have to find new bandmates due to people moving.
Looking forward to another season of Snowfall and hopefully a new season of For All Mankind. The latter we started watching again while visiting Texas and I forgot just how amazing that first season was.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: @HumboldtBlue: Valdivia would be so disappointed if you started following r/Barça.
Baud
@HumboldtBlue:
Thanks!
FelonyGovt
@Chetan Murthy: I’m trying to regain my French skills as well. We were going to go to France in September 2020, obviously THAT didn’t happen, but maybe someday. I took French and Spanish in high school and was much more advanced in French, but then I married into a Spanish speaking family and Spanish became much more important. And I graduated from HS in 1970, so it’s been awhile!
Another resource you might consider is the Paris Match weekly magazine. I get it through Libby and my local library.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
Thanks! I do some of that but not often enough.
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: I got a V-drumkit with stimulus money. Such a great investment and something I had wanted for a very long time. I love my acoustic drums, but we have a tiny place and my wife is now working from home, so the ability to practice without shaking the whole house is a must. My drum chops have actually gotten much better as a result because I finally CAN practice more.
delk
New Vera today!
Spanky
@Gin & Tonic:
Another ask for more details on the boat. Plank? Strip? Ply? Canoe? Kayak? Skiff? Yawl? Manchin-size yacht?
So many questions.
cope
I also meant to second the recommendations of Pollan’s works and point out that he has a four part series on food on Netflix that I enjoyed.
Haydnseek
@raven: Glad you’re on this thread. Some time ago just in passing you mentioned the book Vietnam by Max Hastings. I wasn’t aware or it. I’ve read quite a bit in this area but I always had the impression that they left a lot of the real history out. This book doesn’t. It pulls everything together in chronological order and plays it right down the middle. Can’t thank you enough. Highly recommended.
‘
Omnes Omnibus
I appreciate that you appreciate the difference.
Spanky
I too picked the guitar back up, but once I did I now find I’m not so eager to keep it up. Don’t know what that’s about, but will probably shelve it until the muse returns.
SiubhanDuinne
For the past year or so, I’ve been taking all manner of online courses through Emory University’s OLLI (lifelong learning) program. They put out a call a while ago inquiring whether there was interest in teaching a course. I put my hand up and am now deep in working up a notional set of lesson plans for a course tentatively entitled Murder Between the Wars: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and the Golden Age of English Detective Fiction. I’m doing a ton of reading right now — revisiting all my old favourite mystery novels, of course, but also getting a better sense of the rapid interwar social changes and seeing how Christie and Sayers reflected those changes in their novels. I’m hoping to have it ready to offer starting in early summer.
Denali
I m trying to get back to watercoloring. It ain’t easy.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Sounds like a cool course.
BGinCHI
@WereBear: Homeplace is fabulous too. Highly recommended.
I taught it in a grad seminar a few years ago and John came to the class at the end (via Zoom) and we had a terrific discussion.
persistentillusion
@mvr: Salt Creek, in south suburban Chicago?
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
Maybe he can find r/Espanyol?
BGinCHI
@Leto: I’d go just for Calabrian wine and the peppers they do in vinegar. I expect a full report.
BGinCHI
@mvr: We can do an MC on crafted things at some point. I know WaterGirl or someone does a similar kind of thing, but we’ll find a way.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s certainly fun prepping for it!
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: A skin-on-frame kayak.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne: not a mystery, but I learned so much about that period in England from galsworthy’s trilogy that follows up on the forsyte saga. Highly recommended.
BGinCHI
@raven: Careful cheering tomorrow night!
GO DAWGS!
BGinCHI
@Cacti: WHAT??!!
Also: predictable!
BGinCHI
@laura: John’s book covers so much of that drama.
You (and your brother) will love it.
Gin & Tonic
@mvr: As noted, “skin.” I’ve already built a wood/fiberglass kayak, but have long been fascinated by skin on frame.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne: I think the trilogy is called end of the chapter
BGinCHI
@UncleEbeneezer: Is FAM getting a new season?
persistentillusion
@SiubhanDuinne: That sounds brilliant! I’m a huge fan of Sayers, have read most of Christie with varying degrees of enjoyment and would love to hear your thoughts on that period of rapid change in a society that had remained relatively static for 100 years.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: She lets me root for Liverpool, but just barely.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Whose skin? I want to get an Adirondack guide boat for up at my family’s cabin. Mais trop cher.
Spanky
@Cacti: How many wetsuits?
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI:
I have made her and her mom Packer and Bucks fans. I am evil.
BGinCHI
@SiubhanDuinne: That sounds fabulous!
My colleague Julie Kim has edited several detective fiction collections (articles on various subjects). Might be worth a look for the class reading.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Wouldn’t the commentary there be in Catalan?
Chris
The friend I started rooming with during the Covid era got me hooked on the Barker & Llewelyn detective series over the last year, which I recommend if you enjoy the Sherlock Holmes type Victorian fiction. Oddly enough the detective mysteries themselves don’t really hold my attention, but the setting and characters more than make up for it.
Currently on book # 6. Once that’s done, starting book # 1 of the Amelia Peabody series, which I’ve been meaning to check out for a while.
Sure Lurkalot
I live close to a path along a creek and during the pandemic got a lot more into water birds…mostly ducks, but also egrets, herons, hawks and little peepers to numerous to know much about. More of that and one day this week when it will be warm, we’ll go to a state park to view the eagles nesting.
I have toyed with buying a keyboard and a computer program to learn the piano. I keep looking but I never pull the trigger. I’m afraid that I don’t have the focus.
Leto
@BGinCHI: I’m going to work with WaterGirl to do some type of Travel post :) Also if there’s something specific you’d like brought back, lemme know.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s no mean feat.
Nelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Do let us know when you are offering it!
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: I don’t do reddit.
BGinCHI
@Leto: Giant barrel of wine.
SiubhanDuinne
@BGinCHI:
Thanks for the suggestion — I’ll definitely check her out!
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI:
Being evil? Nah, I am a natural.
SiubhanDuinne
@Nelle:
I’ll do that!
mvr
@persistentillusion: Rural Nebraska to Lincoln. The idea is to follow the small stream (Portaging the first mile or two) that leaves my tiny self-built cabin in the Sierra Madre Mountains of WY to my home in Lincoln (I guess I’d have to portage a mile or two on that end as well).
IF the one in Chicago is in the Mississippi watershed I suppose it could be done via the Platte as well, but I don’t know if the Mississippi locks allow kayaks.
Benw
LET’S GO CHARGERS
Cacti
@BGinCHI: No details at this point on cause of death.
Poe Larity
Amateur land restoration. Soil treatment, native grasses, growing trees from acorns. Irrigation systems. Inventing toyon removal/suppression strategies.
Eric S.
In the Fall a few of us on my softball team started a book club. We are SLOW readers. We are reading The Night Watchman right now.
I just finished watching 2 seasons of The Witcher yesterday. I won’t argue it is good but I find it a guilty pleasure.
Finally, a couple weeks ago I took up sketching. I don’t have much of a direction beyond “I want to create” something. So far, so good.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Tradition would call for walrus skin, but that’s hard to obtain here, so most people use a heavy synthetic canvas.
mvr
@BGinCHI: Sounds like fun. Just to be clear – is this a subtle way of saying don’t talk about making stuff on this thread? Cause I don’t want to cause problems.
BGinCHI
@Cacti: To die in a hotel room in Orlando is just too damn sad for a guy who seemed so genuinely funny and loved by so many.
Suzanne
Bob Saget died?! WTF?!
BGinCHI
@mvr: Not at all! I love craft. Writing and mediocre carpentry are my stalwarts.
Leto
@BGinCHI: red or white?
mvr
@Gin & Tonic: Very cool. And very lightweight!
mvr
@BGinCHI: Good! Thanks for answering.
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
Oh, I reread The Forsyte Saga every three or four years. Absolutely love those books! (And “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” invariably makes me cry.)
Leto
@BGinCHI: the first time I heard one of his standup routines, I was so surprised by how funny and just dirty he was. Like so many others, I’d only known him from Full House, then later America’s Funniest Home Video. But man was he funny. It was always a treat listening to/watching a set of his.
Mousebumples
@Omnes Omnibus: if it’s wrong to convince people to root for these teams, then I don’t want to be right.
Kalakal
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s right up my street, I’m a sucker for detective fiction of that period. I think my favourite is Ngaio Marsh but am a big fan of Christie and early Sayers
mali muso
For the aspiring French speakers, don’t miss the excellent series “Call My Agent” available on Netflix. Watch it in French with French subtitles (I find it helpful to match reading which is a little easier to hearing which is harder).
Omnes Omnibus
@Mousebumples: That’s what I am talking about!
brendancalling
@Miss Bianca:
I was about to jump in on violin v. fiddle but it looks like that’s covered. What styles do you do? I am not a fiddler myself—upright bass, guitar, singin—but I do love me some fiddle, especially old timey.
With all the talent here, how soon before there’s a Balloon-Juice jam session…
Omnes Omnibus
@brendancalling: Nothing wrong with fiddle. I just never played it. And they are different.
Tehanu
@SiubhanDuinne: The great thing about the Forsyte Saga is how Soames changes throughout. I always cry at the end of Swan Song.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kalakal:
I’m already thinking about a follow-up course featuring Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey, and Margery Allingham.
Kalakal
I’ll keep on with the guitar and finally get around to actually complete recording songs. I have a bad habit of getting to about 80% on a piece of music and then chase off after the next shiny object.
My other project is digitizing and restoring my dad’s old photos and 8mm fim
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: One word comes from French, the other’s English. Only difference that really matters, to me.
Origuy
@Leto: I’m making plans to go to Italy in July. Still not sure if I’m going to go ahead with it. The World Masters Orienteering Championships are in the Gargono peninsula, around Vieste. Current plan is to fly into Rome a few days early and see a little bit of the city. Then take a charter bus to Vieste for about a week. After that, another bus to Naples and see Pompeii. Open-jaw flights are around $200 more than a round-trip to Rome, so it’s probably worth it. Using Duolingo and Rosetta Stone to learn some Italian. After years of Spanish, it’s going pretty well.
billcinsd
@BGinCHI: Orlando? I heard Canada
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne: I love it too but I’m talking about three later novels that deal with the interwar period. It starts with A maid in waiting. The trilogy is called The end of the chapter
Miss Bianca
@brendancalling: Mostly Irish and Scottish tunes, some old-timey. I’ve played with several bands and jammed along with all kinds of stuff.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: only with your comment did I realize we weren’t talking about bob seger
Kalakal
@SiubhanDuinne: Sounds good to me, what a great idea for a course. Allingham is a particular favourite
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Everything that was drilled into my head about how to hold it (“Keep your elbow up; you’re not a fiddle player”), etc., cries out differently. Hell, if I play air violin, I sit up straight, keep my left elbow up, and make sure my air bow is held perfectly.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: Okay, I’m terrible, but that made me laugh.
mvr
@Suzanne: Did you get your door fixed? Been wondering about it all day after reading your posts (in last night’s thread) this morning.
Leto
@Origuy: that sounds really awesome! There’s never enough time to explore Rome, we spent a week exploring as much as we could, but I do recommend Googling the best gelatterias and simple walking from one to the next. Tons of amazing stuff in between so a win/win :
Edit: regarding the bus, is there no train route? If you can do the train, I’d recommend that.
dm
This first part of this comment was inspired by MisterDancer’s “A reason to sing” thread, but didn’t quite belong there.
Malcolm Gladwell has a series of interviews with Paul Simon, called Miracles and Wonder, which takes Simon through the creative process from the early days in the 1960s to today. Simon talks about his musical influences (which are widely scattered and diverse), building up to Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints. I’m pretty musically illiterate, and I kind-of thought Paul Simon was okay background music, but this series really opened my ears.
It’s available as an audiobook (of course — I can’t imagine it on the printed page, since 50% of it is musical excerpts).
But that was the past, we’re supposed to be talking about going forward.
A nerd am I.
Like Baud with Spanish, and some of you with French, I’ve been working my way through a manga series in Japanese. I can knock off a chapter in about a week, speeding up as my working vocabulary increases. When I finish this series, I have more to tackle, plus a small stack of novels I hope to progress through faster than a half-hour a page.
Sorry: the following won’t mean much, save to a small subset of posters.
Last year I read The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP), widely considered a classic. However, I didn’t do the exercises, so I sort-of got the gist, but especially in the later chapters, where the magic really happens, I was lost. So I’ve started over again, and am working my way through all the exercises this time.
I wish I’d done this years ago. I’ve been a software weenie for almost fifty years, but this book makes me look at the things in a different way.
Along about halfway through chapter two there’s a couple of pages that seem pretty innocuous, but they introduce a concept of representing data procedurally that’s …. breathtaking. There is deep magic happening here, though it won’t be obvious until the subsequent chapters when that magic is applied to do some amazing stuff, up to building a virtual machine and a compiler for it.
There’s a third edition about to be released, only this time they use Javascript instead of Lisp, which sounds intriguing.
BGinCHI
@Leto: Red, per favore.
West of the Rockies
Any fans of The Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davies? Fun Canadian academic-setting stuff.
Also, looking forward to season 2 of Picard in February.
Omnes Omnibus
@Leto: I avoided Italy for years, but, once I finally went, I was bowled over. I would still opt for France if forced to choose, but Italy was well worth the wait.
Raven
@Haydnseek: Good, I finished it recently and thought it was really well done. Everyone was fucked.
zhena gogolia
@West of the Rockies: I love the Cornish trilogy
SiubhanDuinne
@West of the Rockies:
I adore everything Robertson Davies wrote.
Raven
@BGinCHI: Woof!
Origuy
@Leto: The bus is organized by the event, so it’s probably the simplest. I still have to contact the bus company to see the details, like price and schedule, for example. If I change my mind about getting the open-jaw ticket, I’ll take the train from Naples to Rome.
The Dangerman
I would generally never recommend Joe Rogan (too often a bunch of Chucklefucks on Parade), but his episode with Pollan was really interesting.
HumboldtBlue
Of topic, but some interesting news from the Yankees. Rachel Balkovec will become the next manager of the Low A Tampa Tarpons
The NBA has a dozen or so women referees and Becky Hammon, an assistant with the Spurs, is tipped for a head coaching job, while Jennifer King is an assistant coach with the Washington football team.
Times they are a-changing.
Suzanne
@mvr: Not yet. We filed the claim.
So the crazy dude has been arrested and charged with criminal mischief, breaking and entering, destruction of property, and indecent exposure. That last one may be considered a sex crime because the kids were present. I looked him up, and he has a long spotty history of DUI, assorted low-level drug offenses, public drunkenness, and trespass. Lots of probation stints. I looked up his voter registration. GOP. Shocking.
dm
@West of the Rockies: Gosh. I read it so long ago that I seem to have forgotten everything but one or two characters’ names.
I think of the Deptford trilogy every time I pick up a chair, however.
Almost Retired
@West of the Rockies: Big Fan! Loved the Deptford Trilogy as well.
mvr
@Suzanne: Sounds like his life is a bit of a train wreck.
Hope the household returns to normal as quickly as possible. I’m assuming you’ve got something over it until the insurance comes through or they authorize you to get someone to do it for you with a promise of payment.
SFBayAreaGal
@BGinCHI: My favorite group. I had the Cosmos album until my brother got his hands on it.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ve known plenty of great fiddlers who used a fairly classical technique. And then I’ve seen others hold the fiddle in the crook of their arms with the bow hold choked up halfway up the stick…and they both sounded awesome. To my ear, anyway. ; )
Not to knock strict classical technique, but I think focus on technique at the expense of musicality can be detrimental. I also think there’s an awful lot of shibboleth and snobbery – to say nothing of outright chicanery – in the violin world.
I guess I mean, technique ain’t everything. I’ve known amazing players who can’t play a lick if you take their sheet music away – just couldn’t improvise on a theme to save their lives, even though musicians of Bach’s and Mozart’s days would regularly do it.
Then there’s me, who can pick out a tune by ear pretty easily, but reads music at basically an elementary school kid’s level and would be equally paralyzed if handed an unfamiliar classical score. Takes all kinds, I guess.
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
I’m talking about all nine novels — plus the several novellas (“interludes,” I think Galsworthy called them). You are right, of course — Forsyte Saga is technically just the first three novels + Indian Summer and Awakenings. The three trilogies are collectively The Forsyte Chronicles, but I am lazy and just think of them all as the Saga :-)
Anyhow, they are all splendid!
geg6
OT, but RIP Bob Saget. If he’s not pop culture, I don’t know who is.
HumboldtBlue
@geg6:
Indeed, here he is on the Chapelle Show.
SiubhanDuinne
@Miss Bianca:
I used to belong to a Facebook group called “Pretentious Classical Music Elitists.”
Gin & Tonic
@mvr: Property insurance companies want to resolve things like this as quickly and with as little involvement on their part as possible. They’ll send an adjuster, who will try to fit everything into their standard formulas, and then cut you a check within days. Figuring out who should fix it, scheduling that, making sure it’s done, etc., is all up to you.
Another Scott
ObPopularCulture:
(via eclecticbrotha)
Cheers,
Scott.
James E Powell
@Kalakal:
I want to learn how to record myself. I have the same issue with not pushing my playing & singing because I’m not gigging or even playing with other people. I figured recording would give me something to aim for.
raven
@Miss Bianca: Love me some Vassar and Byron Berline. Natalie McMaster ain’t bad too!
geg6
@Gin & Tonic:
We must have an awesome homeowners insurance company then. When our sewer backed up into our basement, they took care of everything including getting the disaster recovery company scheduled and paid. Best insurance claim experience I ever had.
Leto
@Omnes Omnibus: Avalune’s initial experience with France essentially killed it as a destination for us for… ever? Maybe ever
Edit: if you wanted the best of both worlds, live either in SE France or NW Italy. Basically the border region as the crossover between the two would probably be really good.
debbie
@raven:
Vassar.
Miss Bianca
@raven: me too. All three.
Remember Vassar Clements and Mark O’Connor’s take on House of the Rising Sun? So gorgeous, it just moves me to tears every time I hear it. I actually got to tell Vassar Clements that when I heard him play in Chicago one time. Gracious, gracious man, he endured my fangirl squeeing with such aplomb.
Leto
@Origuy: that makes sense. Yeah, if it’s a group thing best to stick with that. Man I miss the trains. Travel was so easy. I also miss the roads, like the autostrada. Recently had to replace two of my cars rims because Pennsylvania roads literally warped them (manhole sized potholes). All four are bonked, but I just did two. Just… ugh.
Orange is the New Red
@SiubhanDuinne: Michael Gilbert might be interesting to look at, too.
raven
@Miss Bianca: Byron, on the other hand, was a wild man!
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne: OK — I think your idea for the course is great and I remember thinking while reading the end of the chapter that it helped me understand those mysteries I love.
persistentillusion
@mvr: I grew up in Omaha, say hi to Pottawattamie Forest.
raven
Alison Krauss and Natalie MacMaster – Get Me Through December – Live
Yutsano
OT: this was a great slay.
Suzanne
@mvr: Maybe I’m coldhearted, but he can work his shit out in prison, IMHO. This dude has been a loser for a while, and this is not anomalous behavior for him. I have plenty of sympathy until you break my windows and climb in.
HumboldtBlue
They fish for clouds in the Atlas mountains in Morocco.
Fascinating water capture system
Another Scott
ObFightingTheSoulSuckingMiasma – Dean Baker at CEPR – A Better World:
Well worth a click.
Cheers,
Scott.
frosty
Still playing guitar (acoustic resonators – I have two Nationals and a Republic Highway 61. Just ventured into my first guitar upgrade and put a National cone into the H61. It sounds better but now I have to work on the biscuit and saddle to get the action back down.
In September I picked the harmonica up after (counts fingers, toes …) 45 years. The Hohner came with 30 days of free blues harmonica lessons. Well. If you want to do it right, you need to learn how to play single notes by tongue blocking three of four, instead of pursing lips to hit just one. I tried, but I don’t believe I have enough years left to get good at it.
So it’s back to pursing and getting good enough to accompany the guitar. Which was my goal in the first place.
frosty
@James E Powell: I bought a Zoom H2 handheld recorder a few years ago. Pretty good stereo recorder. I found out I can’t play a single song without a clam somewhere – some of them I’ve been playing for 40-odd years, and I don’t like hearing them. So that put my interest in recording pretty far back on the back burner.
Hope it works out better for you! Sounds like a good plan to get back into playing more during COVID times.
NotMax
While waiting for Medium Cool post to show up, watched something entertaining and moderately uplifting enough for what it is on Prime. BBC production (hardly spectacular, in the sense that the strain of a limited budget shows, I’d call it more “compact”) showcasing a quite mature Richard Harris, The Great Kandinsky.
Following which promptly fell into a nap.
mvr
Actually I don’t know where that is, and Google maps is not helping me.
And I grew up in Rockford IL (mostly) and NJ a little bit.
sab
@Suzanne: I am kind of amazed he is registered to vote at all.
NotMax
re: above
Violinist —— Fiddler
;)
Yarrow
@Suzanne: Just fyi, many police or law enforcement departments will do a site security assessment at your home at no cost. Something to keep in the back of your mind if that kind of thing would make you all feel safer going forward.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Hey, are you still around?
StringOnAStick
I’m working on the rhythm track for Vincente Amigo’s song “Roma” , modern flamenco with a Celtic twist, on my low G tenor ukulele. My husband has learned the lead guitar portion and I have to honour all the hard work he’s done to work that out by getting my part down. Tricky rhythm for sure.
I can tell I’ve climbed out of the depression home if I’m consistent about practicing.
dm
@HumboldtBlue: Can’t help but think of Dune‘s Fremen when I see things like that.
LiminalOwl (formerly The Fat White Duchess)
@WereBear: Looking forward to both of those!
I am currently reading The Way of Cats and People Love Dead Jews for nonfiction, and Things We Lost to the Water for non-genre fiction—my book group’s choice last month, but I didn’t finish it in time. And then I will start Anthony Doerr’s new one, Cloud Cuckoo Land, for this month’s book group.
Of greater interest here, perhaps: the Thin Black Duke and I, along with our housemate, are listening to the wonderful audiobook The City We Became, by N.K. Jemisin. Fantasy novel whose protagonists are personifications of the boroughs of NYC. Much as I love the Murderbot series, this one should have won the Hugo.
NotMax
@LiminalOwl (formerly The Fat White Duchess)
Bronxosaurus?
;)
LiminalOwl
@SiubhanDuinne: I want to take your class!
HumboldtBlue
@dm:
Good point.
Yutsano
@LiminalOwl: Me too!!! It’s too bad I’m not in Georgia.
LiminalOwl
@SiubhanDuinne: And that class too, though I’ve never read Ngaio Marsh. Please help me convince the Duke to read Brat Farrar and The Daughter of Time?
LiminalOwl
@dm: Ooh, thank you. I will have to get that. S&G fan from way back, and I haven’t yet spent this month’s audiobook credit.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Gonna sneak in some Josephine Tey? R. A. J. Walling? Ngaio Marsh?
NotMax
@NotMax
And now I see has been partially answered above.
guachi
Anyone know if Cole is okay what with the Chargers/Raiders game in OT?
If the game ends a tie the Steelers are out of the playoffs.
MomSense
I bought a knitting pattern book of five hats inspired by Avatar. I’m currently knitting Toph. This is my first experience knitting a pattern by the designer Woolly Wormhead and I’m just so intrigued and impressed with her brain. The construction is unique and so cool.
LiminalOwl
@Suzanne: omg. Husband explained to me. Much sympathy.
Leto
@MomSense: Toph is our favorite character! The way they introduced her to the series was so amazing. Will definitely want pictures of the finished product.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Marsh and Tey perhaps in a follow-up course. I love them both. Don’t know R. A. J. Walling at all, but if you put him/her (?) in the same category, I’ll make it my business to remedy that omission — and thank you in advance.
CaseyL
I went dry, creatively, a few months ago: just haven’t been able to go into the studio and do any glass at all. To keep from going crazy, I’ve decided things will pick up again by spring.
@SiubhanDuinne: I would also love to take this class! Mystery is the genre, along with scifi, that comprises most of my fiction reading. My faves, past and present: Ngaio Marsh, Sue Grafton, Ellis Peters, Dick Francis, Marcia Muller, Thomas Perry, Nancy Pickard, John Sandford, Martha Grimes, and boy is that an eclectic list! I dip into “cozies” once in a while, but too many of them and I start to feel terribly, terribly twee.
Jean
@mali muso: I’ve been watching that! it’s good. I was fairly fluent in French in graduate school, but now so many years later, I feel as if I’m starting over. Took a class at Lifelong Learning, picked up Duo Lingo, and French Radio. I miss having colleagues who would talk/write to me in French. The dramatic loss is speaking and listening. Reading is still okay.
HumboldtBlue
Steelers got fucking lucky.
Benw
Well the Chargers Chargered their way out of the playoffs
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
It’s a he. In the same class in the sense of contemporaneous popularity and regularity of output, anyway.
Ohio Mom
@guachi: I thought he gave up football.
Jackie
@HumboldtBlue: Booo to both the Steelers and Raiders.
tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat)
@Baud: Not sure you’ll see this. I also wanted to refresh my Spanish. Started learning it in 6th grade, majored in it in college and did my junior year abroad in Madrid. Graduated and went to Japan. So much for Spanish… I found this site. It’s Castilian Spanish but there’s a lot to poke around and try. The professor also believes that reading is key to improving language, which I agree with as someone who teaches EFL. He’s written graded readers for Spanish which you can find on Amazon.
https://1001reasonstolearnspanish.com/bitacora/
@SiubhanDuinne: I would love to take this class. I hope you’ll publicize when it goes live and I hope it’s offered online. I just finished listening to Dorothy L. Sayers and Patricia Wentworth on Audible.
@Leto: Any recipes you can share, per piacere! I look forward to the travel posts.
HumboldtBlue
@Benw: @Jackie:
One fun fact about the Raiders today: On this date in 1977 Madden and the Raiders won the Super Bowl in the Rose Bowl.
Just a week earlier, in the Rose Bowl, John Robinson led his USC team to the Rose Bowl title, in the Rose Bowl.
Madden and Robinson were life-long boyhood friends.
Robinson was in the locker room to greet Madden post-game.
MomSense
@Leto:
I love Toph! I actually loved the whole Avatar series. Avalune would love this designer’s patterns. She is like a textile architect.
Benw
@SiubhanDuinne: I’d have signed up for that class in a heartbeat
SiubhanDuinne
RIP, Dobie Gillis.
Dwayne Hickman has died, age 87.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Awww. 87 a good long run.
If there are neighborhood grocery stores in the hereafter, he’s already got his fingers in the till.
;)
Just checked and his more prolific (acting-wise) older brother Darryl is still kickin’ at 89.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Dunno how many today would be aware of Dobie but they’d recognize him from Cat Ballou.
James E Powell
@frosty:
A clam?
I got logic pro on my current macbook. I need a couple pieces of gear, a mic, and then I have to learn how to use it. I was planning on doing it over my winter break (teacher), but other things happened so that didn’t happen.
Fair Economist
@Suzanne:
Too bad you don’t have video, or you could post it (with appropriate censoring) as “A Republican voter came to our house and look what happened!” Instant viral hit.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
I had honestly forgotten he was in Cat Ballou. Must find and watch that again — it’s been far too long since I last saw it.
James E Powell
@SiubhanDuinne:
Loved that show when I was a little kid. Maynard G Krebs was one of my major role models, after Bugs Bunny and before Keith Richards.
Never did get to see The Monster that Devoured Cleveland.
James E Powell
@SiubhanDuinne:
It’s streaming on Roku, rentable on amazon.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Optional viewing for extra credit, the original version of The Old Dark House, based on a novel by J.B. Priestley. Set in Wales, too (although much of the cast played by Americans).
;)
SiubhanDuinne
@James E Powell:
Thanks!
NotMax
@James E Powell
Also streaming free (with ads) on Tubi and via IMDb TV on Prime.
NotMax
@James E Powell
Whoops. I now see you were referring to Cat. My comment at #204 is about streaming for Dobie.
KSinMA
@tokyocali (formerly tokyo expat): Thanks for the link to 1001Reasons. Looks like fun!
julielurks
@mvr: that’s amazing! you should post pictures when done of the progress.
TerryC
In my house, we begin 2022 with a new disc golf course design project in a town about 20 minutes away. Lots of big elevation changes, should be fun.