Happy Birthday, My Love!

I'm late getting this posted because we spent most of the day driving (fun road trip, details tomorrow), but today is The Wife's birthday, so it's time for my annual repost of memories, thoughts, and observations on how she makes my life so much better than it deserves to be!



















1. Her hand fits perfectly into mine, as though our hands were fit for each other.

1a. That said, there's a good chance that she prefers the dog to me.

2. The first time she saw Star Wars was with me. And ET.

2a. The first time I saw Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were with her.

3. She used to keep an aquarium before a bunch of moves made us give up the fish. Maybe we'll do that again someday. But when we started dating, she had two fish, named Ken and Wanda, named after two memorable characters from A Fish Called Wanda. When Ken went belly-up, she called a friend and solemnly informed her, "K-k-k-ken d-d-d-died." (One of the movie's running gags is Ken's stuttering.)

4. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but I've converted her from someone who hated coffee into a regular coffee drinker.

5. For reasons passing understanding, she has always found Erik Estrada attractive. She and I used to have arguments over who could best the other in a fight: Agent Mulder from The X-Files or Ponch from Chips. (I think Mulder would have blinded Ponch with the beam from those giant blue-beamed flashlights he and Scully were always toting, and then beaten him into submission with his eternally-able-to-get-a-signal cell phone.)

6. One of the first things we cooked together was Spanish rice, which is to this day a comfort dish of ours. The first time we made it together was also the first time she'd ever cooked with actual bulb garlic, as opposed to garlic powder. The recipe called for a clove, but she thought the entire head was a clove, so into the rice the entire head of garlic went. That was the best Spanish rice ever.

7. A few years ago she baked a Bundt cake for The Daughter's birthday, but the damned thing stuck in the pan, resulting not in a ring but a mound. So she just mounded it up, glopped the frosting right over the top, and called it a "Volcano Cake". Now, every year at her birthday, The Daughter says, "Remember the Volcano Cake?"

8. Our first date was to see Edward Scissorhands. So, Johnny Depp's been there since the beginning, from Edward all the way to Captain Jack Sparrow and beyond.

9. We used to go out for chicken wings and beer every Thursday night. We didn't even miss our Thursday night wing night when The Daughter was born: her birth was on a Saturday, and we left the hospital on Tuesday, so at the tender age of five days, The Daughter entered a bar for the first time. This may have made us bad parents, but I don't think so. A girl's got to know how to handle herself in a bar, right?

9a. She's not a huge fan of when I post photos of her sleeping.


10. She insisted on breastfeeding both The Daughter and Little Quinn, which in both cases required lots of pumping. Especially in Little Quinn's case, since he was never able to eat by mouth. Every drop of breastmilk that entered his body went in via the G-tube, so for as long as her production held up, she pumped six times a day.

11. I'll probably never completely understand how much of herself she sacrificed in fourteen months to keep Little Quinn alive and progressing. It seems, in retrospect, that every free day she had was given to him.

12. That same instinct in her kicked in again when Fiona was in danger. She didn't question the necessity or possibility of spending months flat on her back with her feet inclined, if that was what it took. If commitment was all that was needed, Fiona would be here today. (Of course, if commitment was all that was needed, Little Quinn would be here and Fiona wouldn't have happened.)

13. We used to associate certain teevee shows with the snack foods we'd eat while watching them. NYPDBlue was always chips-and-salsa. ER, when we still watched it, was often good ice cream. Now, good ice cream has been transposed to Grey's Anatomy.

14. "Our" first teevee show was LA Law.

15. Subsequent teevee shows of "ours" included ER, Mad About You, The Pretender, Profiler, CSI, Firefly, and more.

16. On our first Internet account, we set up our combined e-mail identity after the two main characers on The Pretender. We were "Jarod and Miss Parker". People familiar with the show wondered what that said about our relationship, since Jarod and Miss Parker aren't allies. In fact, Miss Parker was initially a villain but as the show went on her character became much more complex.

17. She started roller blading, got me hooked, and then promptly stopped roller blading. Now she prefers biking.

18. It was almost without warning that I met her parents for the first time. We started dating late February 1991; a couple of weeks later was spring break, for a week, so I came home to Buffalo. At the end of that week I tried calling her, only to learn from the old lady she was renting a room from that she wasn't home because of a death in her family. I remembered her saying something about a sick grandfather, and that's what turned out to have happened; her grandfather had passed away from Lou Gehrig's Disease. When I got back out to school, her entire family was there. So I met the future in-laws on the spot. Luckily, I seem to have made some kind of decent impression.

19. Our first long trip together was from Iowa to Idaho, to visit her family, a couple of weeks before school began in August of 1992. She had already graduated college, but I was in my senior year. While we were out there, the infamous Ruby Ridge Incident was taking place twenty miles down the road, so all week there were National Guard vehicles on the roads and helicopters overhead.

20. I am forever amazed at her ability to take some fabric and create a garment. This skill of hers looks like magic to me.

21. Her first pair of overalls were a gift from me. She thought the whole thing was goofy – maybe she still does! - but she wore them for years until at one point they became too small for her, and then a short while later they became too big for her. We didn't start wearing overalls together until we'd been dating for about a year.

22. Back in the 90s, on two different occasions, we picked out Persian kittens. Both were wonderful cats, both are gone now, and we miss them both dearly. The first was a beautiful tortoiseshell Persian named Jasmine; the second was a red Persian named Simba. Both died in the year preceding this blog's launch.

23. Adopting Lester and Julio was The Wife's idea. I'm still unsold on these two giant lummox goofballs.

24. The Wife also took The Daughter to adopt Comet, when The Daughter was only two.

25. Shortly after The Wife moved to Western New York to be near me, she adopted a cat from the shelter she named Lilac. That cat never really liked me all that much. Lilac died a few months after Little Quinn passed.

25a. She is directly responsible for all the animals with whom we currently live.














26. She loves to laugh, particularly at my expense. She is convinced I don't think she's funny, but that's just not the case.

27. Things with which she has a deft touch include: a pair of scissors, a needle and thread, a kitchen knife, the mixer, bread dough, a screwdriver, a lug wrench, and a shot glass.

28. It irritates her that The Daughter has inherited my tolerance for sunlight -- I tan, whereas The Wife burns.

29. The Wife likes to read, albeit not quite as much as I do. She always has a book going, and she reads every day.

30. She never used to use a bookmark, until I finally decided I was tired of watching her flip through a book looking for a passage that was familiar to her so she could find her place. I bought her a bookmark.

31. She loves nuts – except for walnuts and pecans, which I love. This makes it occasionally difficult find good brownies and similar items in bakeries, since many people default to putting pecans or walnuts in their brownies or other chocolate cookies.

32. When I first met her, she was a huge Anne Rice fan and read most of what Rice wrote until she decided that Rice's output wasn't interesting her much anymore. Since then she's read a lot of other authors, including a lot of unfamiliar names whose books I've plucked from the stacks of offerings at library book sales over the years. Interesting how obscure even the bestsellers of yesteryear eventually become, huh? Currently she really loves Gregory Maguire, the Wicked guy.

33. When we first met, she was a Washington Redskins fan. So of course, the first Super Bowl we were together was the one where the Redskins knocked the Bills on their collective arse. Oh well, at least she hated the Cowboys.

34. She prefers her KFC "extra crispy", where I'm an "Original Recipe" guy.

35. Movies that are particularly meaningful or nostalgic to us, in addition to Edward Scissorhands and Star Wars are Dances With Wolves, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, Singin' in the Rain, and the James Bond movies.

36. For some reason we didn't take any pictures when we were on our honeymoon or when we were on our vacation to Disney a year later. I think we were between working cameras at those points...but lately I really wish we'd have addressed that at the time.

37. Things we did on our honeymoon to Cape Cod, Boston, and New Hampshire: road a boat out to sea to watch the whales; visited the New England Aquarium; ate dim sum in Boston's Chinatown; bought lots of kitchenware at an outlet strip (don't laugh, we still have some of that stuff); visited the Boston Science Museum. While doing two days in Boston we stayed at a hotel about forty miles out and road the train into town; on the second day, on the way back, we fell asleep on each other's shoulders.

38. Our first argument as a couple resulted from a common misunderstanding between people when one is from Iowa and one is just living in Iowa for a while. I told her we'd meet for dinner, so she showed up at noon and got annoyed because I wasn't there. Well, duh! I said "dinner", not "lunch". Except, remember, she's a native Iowan, which means instead of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner like most (ahem) normal folks, she ate breakfast, dinner and supper. Thankfully, I've converted her since then. Whew!

39. Our first wedding anniversary saw us spending a week at Walt Disney World. What a wonderful time that was! Even if she managed to rip her toenail out two days into the trip, thus requiring me to push her around in a wheelchair the whole time after that.

40. She had long hair when we started dating, and I had short hair. Now we've reversed that.

41. Before we started dating, I had a beard. When I became interested in her, I shaved it so I'd look better. Then, I learned that she likes facial hair. So I grew the beard back a while later.

42. Foods I've tried because of her: asparagus, squash, rhubarb, grapefruit, and more that I don't recall.

43. She loves George Carlin.

44. She bought me my first cell phone, and my second cell phone.

45. When we were at the Erie County Fair in 2001, she wandered off to look at the Bernina sewing machines. When I came by ten minutes or so later, she was in the process of buying a Bernina sewing machine. I didn't complain; I just stood there, kind of looking shell-shocked.

46. Leading up to our wedding, she rigidly adhered to the notion that the groom should not see the bride in her wedding dress until she comes round the corner to walk down the aisle. So I didn't see her until she came round the corner to walk down the aisle.

47. Starting a family was her idea. Not that I was against it; I figured we'd get there eventually. She just picked the "eventually".

48. She picked The Daughter's first name, so I got to pick her middle name.

48a. And now, this:


49. Since Thanksgiving Break at college was only a four day weekend, I didn't go home for T-giving my junior year; instead, I spent the weekend with her. We went to see her extended family out in Storm Lake, Iowa, which is on the other side of the state. Since she has family over there on both sides of the family, we ended up having two Thanksgiving dinners that day. Some part of me is still full from those two meals.

50. Iowa delicacies that The Wife and I share are pork tenderloin sandwiches and broasted chicken.

51. Some of our early dates were sufficiently cheap that we had to look for ATM machines that would dispense cash in five dollar denominations.

52. She bought Simba, the above-mentioned red Persian kitten, while we were on a shopping trip to Erie, PA. She fell in love with the kitten as soon as she saw him in the pet store; we then spent the rest of the day walking around the mall with me listening to her as she tried to talk herself out of buying him. (Persian kittens are pricey little buggers.) Finally, while we were at dinner at Red Lobster, she decided to pull the trigger.

53. Before Little Quinn, the most heartbroken I ever saw The Wife was the day we finally had to end Simba's life. His kidneys were in failure.

54. Great gifts she's bought me through the years: my current winter coat, a cupboard-full of drinking vessels of all types, candles, incense burners, the Star Wars original trilogy on DVD, my anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings with paintings by Alan Lee, my star sapphire ring, my current wristwatch, and many more.

55. The first thing she ever gave me: a stuffed bear, around whose neck she tied a lavender ribbon. I think she doused it with perfume. I named that bear "Bertrand", after philosopher Bertrand Russell.

56. The first thing I bought her: a little two-inch high figurine of a laughing Buddha. I think this confused her a bit.

57. Despite my best efforts for a while, she's never much warmed to baseball. That used to bother me, but these days that doesn't bug me much at all. I'm pretty cool to baseball myself now.

58. For a few years we went to Cedar Point each fall. We haven't been there in a long time, but I always found being there with her in the fall, in the cool air, pretty romantic. I loved riding the Giant Wheel after dark, sitting up there with her hand in mine, looking out over Lake Erie.

59. At Cedar Point, she decided that she liked this one coaster that does loops, so I stayed on the ground while she rode it. I'm terrified of those things.

60. Why don't we play mini golf more often? We both love mini golf. The Daughter loves mini golf. What gives?

61. One day in 1996, we were eating lunch in Buffalo when we had "The Discussion". Any guy who's ever been dating the same girl for a period of time measurable in years will know what "The Discussion" is. So I agreed, it was time for us to take the "next step". Later on, while she was having her eyes examined at LensCrafters, I bopped over to Penney's to buy her a ring. I chose a nice emerald one that looked really pretty. Sadly, they didn't have it in her size, so they had to order it, which would take three weeks. So I figured, OK, I'll get the ring in three weeks and make this thing official. Yay, Me!

62. The next day, she proposed to me.

63. Three weeks later I showed up to get the ring. They had it, but they couldn't find the paperwork, so some poor guy at the pickup counter at Penney's spent his entire lunch hour trying to find the paperwork so I could give my already-fiancee her engagement ring.

64. I don't remember exactly when we picked out her wedding rings, but we each have an Irish wedding band, and each ring is set with the other person's birthstone. So my ring is set with four amethysts, which is her birthstone; hers is set with four sapphires, which is mine.

65. For years I wore my ring incorrectly. Apparently there's one way to wear an Irish wedding band that signifies being married, and another that signifies being single. I was wearing mine the "single" way. I was alerted to this by a guy I worked with at The Store; he said, "Yeah, you're telling all the women that you're available." I replied, "Yeah, and I'm beating them off with a stick."

66. On our honeymoon, it was important to her that she at least get to dip her toes in the Atlantic Ocean. So she did. The water was very cold, though.

66a. She replicated this moment years later when we took a trip to the Jersey Shore.


66b. We returned two years later.


67. It always bugged her mother that she saw Niagara Falls before her mother did. Later we took her mother to Niagara when she was out for a visit.

68. During the summer of 1991, when I was at home and she was still in Iowa, she came to spend a week with me. I took her to Buffalo and to Toronto, on the way to which we stopped to see Niagara Falls for her first time.

69. She was really confused the first time a Japanese tourist asked her to take his picture in front of the Falls.

70. At the time our beer of choice was Labatt's. It's pronounced "la-BATS", but we had a family friend at the time who liked to say it "LAB-uhts", which is how I said it at college just for fun and habit. So when she visited me that summer, we went to the bar where this friend hung out, and he was so impressed when she ordered a "LAB-uhts".

71. Our favorite mixed drink in college was the sloe gin fizz. A few years ago I tried making these again, discovering that her tastes had changed and she now found them sickeningly sweet. I like them still, but yeah, they're sugary. (And pink. When I told a friend at work who knows everything about liquor that I'd bought some sloe gin, he laughed and said, "Oh good! Now you can make pink drinks!")

72. She taught me the right way to do laundry.

73. I taught her the right way to crack open crab legs so as to not mangle the meat.

74. Our first major mistake of parenting was taking The Daughter to a fireworks display on the Fourth of July in 1999. The Daughter was all of fifteen days old. This was the big display in Lakewood, NY, which is right on the banks of Lake Chautauqua. The Daughter did not respond well to the fireworks detonating right over our heads; the sounds were bad and for years afterwards The Daughter was very scared of loud sounds.

75. We always say that we should go camping. We never actually do go camping. We need to do more camping.

76. Once for dinner I made some frozen cheese ravioli with sauce, a favorite meal of ours that we hadn't had in a long time. She said that she was looking forward to "eating some cheesy goodness". Unfortunately, the raviolis were a bit on the old and tough side, and the cheese never got nice and melty, so after the meal, she commented, "That wasn't really cheesy goodness."

77. She likes eggs over-easy. I'm not a big fan of those, but I try to make them for her when she's getting over being sick.

78. She makes fun of my over-reliance on boxed mixes in the kitchen.

78a. I'm much better about this now. Her main kitchen complaint about me is that I make way too big a mess when I cook.

79. In 1993, when Cheers aired its final episode, she bought pizza for my roommate and I.

80. She only swears when she's really annoyed.

81. She is not happy that her nine-year-old, fourth-grade daughter is now the same shoe size as she is.

82. A while back she had her hair colored a brighter shade of blond than is her natural color. It was awesome.

83. Before that she experimented with red. I've tried talking her into doing that again, but no dice.

84. When my aunt met her the night before our wedding, she made a comment to the effect that I was to be commended for adding blond hair and blue eyes to our gene pool.

85. The Daughter has blond hair and blue eyes. So did Little Quinn.

86. I'm not sure there's a variety of seafood she dislikes.

87. I love the way she looks when she's just come home from work and changed into her PJ's.

88. Adopting Lester and Julio was her idea, but she claims the upper hand on that anyway because she was helping out my mother.

89. For some reason, The Daughter and I like to bring up at the dinner table the fact that The Wife, as a kid, had to help the family out on Chicken Butchering Day. I don't know why.

90. She thinks Orlando Bloom is really attractive. I don't see it, myself, but you can't argue these things.

91. For my birthday in 1992 she drove me to Dyersville, IA so I could see the Field of Dreams.

92. If I want to spoil her, all I have to do is buy her blush wine, cashews, olives and chocolate. Cake helps, too.

93. She spoils me by looking the other way when I go to Borders; by making me waffles or French toast or Spanish rice; by cleaning the kitchen after I've messed it up; by indulging my love of pie; and a thousand other ways.

94. I'm always game for a pie in the face, but I'm pretty sure nobody pies me like she does. Or better.






95. I know I've found the perfect girl for me when she describes our Thanksgiving in 2006 as being perfect because, after dinner, we went to see Casino Royale. In her words: "We had a big turkey dinner, and then we watched James Bond kill people."

96. We both love laughing at David Caruso on CSI Miami.

96a. Sadly, CSI Miami is long gone, but now we thrill to the adventures of Team Machine on Person of Interest, of Castle and Beckett on Castle, and we enjoy Alton Brown's delicious brand of pure evil on Cutthroat Kitchen.

97. One time last year we were at the Y, and she got so engrossed in what she was doing that when I approached her, she didn't recognize me at first.

97a. She loves lilacs.


98. Maybe this is a personal failing on my part, but I can't bear it when she cries. It kills me inside. But I'm trying to get better at this, since as Gandalf said, "Not all tears are an evil."

99. I wish we were living lives that didn't include so many tears.

100. I love her more than I did last week at this time.

101. Number 100 on this list will be equally true next week at this time. And the week after. And so on.

102. She makes me happier than I thought possible.

103. She...oh, I guess that's where I need to stop. I love you, honey!

Something for Thursday

So if you remember the pop music of the 1980s, you remember a band called a-ha, which had one giant hit in the US called "Take On Me". They followed that up with a couple of less-successful singles (including the theme song for the 1987 James Bond movie The Living Daylights), and then as far as US music fans might recall, they disappeared, so it's not uncommon to hear a-ha referred to as a "one-hit wonder". Thing is, they weren't. a-ha was very successful in Europe (particularly their home country of Norway), and was a major act over there until the 2010s, when they broke up for a time. They have since come back together a few times to perform as a-ha, so they're not really gone.

Anyway, here's the song with its original, ground-breaking video (for reference)...


And here's the reason for this post: this cover of the song by an incredibly talented group of young musicians.


This is all occasioned by the appearance, very briefly, of an orchestrated version of the song in the latest trailer for the upcoming movie Ready Player One. Hopefully that version arises at some point or other.

(By the way, if you like the happy ending of the original video for "Take On Me", don't look up the video of the next single from a-ha, "The Sun Always Shines On TV". Trust me on this.)

Something for Thursday

Composer Johann Johannsson died the other day. I am not terribly familiar with his music, but I have liked what I've heard. He seems to do a lot of atmospheric work that relies on repetition of motifs and long, slow builds--not unlike, say, Vangelis.

Here are several samples of Johannsson's work. I'm glad he leaves such music behind, but I'm sorry that he won't be able to create more of it.

Tone Poem Tuesday

In honor of tomorrow being Valentine's Day, here's one of the most famous musical treatments of one of the most famous love stories of all time: Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. I just listened to this the other day with fresh ears, after not having heard it in quite some time, and I was struck anew by its raw power in depicting the central conflict in the play (the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets) and the rapturous love of the two young people who think to rise above it all, only to be consumed by it in the end. It's a grand work, and it is almost the greatest musical treatment that Shakespeare's play has ever received. (The greatest, of course, is Berlioz's third symphony....)

Here is the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture.

John Mahoney

Actor John Mahoney died the other day. His most famous role was probably Martin Crane, father to Frasier and Niles Crane on Frasier, but he did a lot of work over the years, and for me the most memorable thing he did was also the first thing I ever saw him in: the great teen romance film Say Anything, in which he plays Diane Court's father in a complex and moving storyline.

Diane is graduating high school, and she is utterly brilliant, so much so that she has won a fellowship to study and live overseas. However, she meets a fellow senior named Lloyd Dobler, who is massively in love with her and who manages to get her to agree to a date. So begins a whirlwind romance that unfolds over the weeks after graduation, which is for many young people a time of great uncertainty if not outright fear.

Mr. Court, obviously, dislikes Lloyd, who has no real plan for his own future other than to date Diane as much as possible and maybe pursue kickboxing, which he indicates is "the sport of the future". (This was 1989, mind you.) This is the standard old trope, isn't it? The doting father of the highly-achieving girl detesting the "bad boy" that she is dating.

But the film subverts the trope. Lloyd isn't a "bad boy" at all; in fact, everyone who knows him loves him, from one end of the school's social ladder to the other. He is talented and smart in his own ways, even if he doesn't immediately scream out "future success story". Also, Diane's relationship with Mr. Court isn't typical for films like this. Many times the doting father is a stern figure who seems cold and distant, intent only on preserving the family's status or some such thing. Mr. Court, though, is warm and encouraging with Diane, clearly loving her deeply and wanting her to succeed. He doesn't seem terribly invested in his own life, and in actuality, the Courts' home life is presented as mainly comfortable, and not wealthy. Nice, but not too nice.

And that's the problem.

Rather than keep Mr. Court as just some obstacle for Diane and Lloyd, the film gives him his own motivations. It turns out that he has been embezzling from his own business for years, and that the IRS is closing in on him. His whole house of cards is about to collapse and he knows it. That is why he is so invested in getting Diane into that fellowship: it will get her free, it will keep her safe when his own actions come back to haunt him. Lloyd, though, represents a threat to that. If Diane stays in Seattle for Lloyd...if she foregoes this opportunity...Mr. Court sees those possibilities as sheer disaster.

Through all this John Mahoney plays Mr. Court brilliantly. He clearly loves his daughter very deeply, even as we learn that he has been lying to her for years. His distaste for Lloyd doesn't become personal until the very end, when he realizes that Diane is going to have both the schooling abroad and a life (for now) with this directionless, almost Zen-like boy. Mahoney shows Mr. Court's conflicting emotions and growing tension throughout, in scenes like one where he huddles in the bathtub in a moment of encroaching terror and another when he is buying luggage for Diane and starts to flirt a little--just a little--with the salesperson, but then has to stop when he credit card is denied. When Diane confronts him, giving him an opportunity to confess and he doesn't (after an IRS agent has asked her if her home is "nice...but not too nice"), he tries resisting at first, but then the shame is written clear on his face when Diane has to tell him that she found his stash of money.

I have always felt that Say Anything is one of the greatest teen romances ever filmed, if not the greatest, and I've never wavered from that opinion. John Mahoney's performance is a big part of that. The film has an open ending, leaving it up to us to decide what the future holds for Diane and for Lloyd and for Mr. Court, and if their relationships will ever heal. If not for the very human portrayal of Mr. Court, this wouldn't really work.

Mahoney was in a lot of stuff, obviously, and I was a big fan of Frasier through its run. Mahoney's Martin Crane was a blue collar man who didn't have very many ways to relate to his two academic sons, but he always found a way, such as in this wonderful scene where he comes up with a very distinctive way of cheering Frasier and Niles up.


There's another scene, in another episode, when Niles has a little too much to drink and indicates his belief that he and Frasier are both massive disappointments to their father, a supposition that sends Martin to very quick anger. Mahoney nails the emotion in that scene as he snarls, "You will not put these words in my mouth. I was always proud of you boys."

John Mahoney was a terrific actor, and I already miss him, even though I realize that I haven't seen him in anything new in some time. He did a number of memorable voice roles for animated films like Atlantis and The Iron Giant, and he was quite active on the stage as well. Thanks for the memories, John Mahoney. You were a great one.

Tone Poem Tuesday

I've listened to this piece four times tonight in succession, so beautiful did I find it. Karl Goldmark was a Hungarian composer in the Romantic era who lived much of his life in Vienna, and as such his music is highly reflective of the Viennese and the Germanic traditions of the time: there is much of Wagner's approach to color and orchestration in Goldmark's work. But this particular piece, the Sakuntala Overture, is full of lyricism and music of high yearning, particularly in the melody that is first heard at the 1:27 mark and which recurs throughout. The overture is a concert overture, not connected to any music drama or opera, and as such it is complete in its meditation upon an Indian legend that is told in the Mahabharata.

Here is Karl Goldmark's Sakuntala Overture. I hope you enjoy it.

Bad Joke Friday

Kinda forgot about this, didn't I?

Something for Thursday

One of the touchstone works of my life here: Mozart's Sinfonia concertante for solo violin, viola, and small orchestra. The orchestra here consists of nothing but strings, horns, and oboes -- and some of the most magical writing for solo violin and viola in music history. This work is, for me, one of the greatest examples of musical perfection ever composed. It is works like this that make me think that sometimes artists aren't so much creating works of art as breaking through, however briefly, into some other realm where all is light and wonder.

Note that this performance has no conductor, and that the performers all stand throughout.

Tone Poem Tuesday

The words of a truly great President seem apropos tonight, as a truly execrable President takes the stage.

Here is Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait.

Something for Thursday (Robert Burns edition)

Today is the birthday of Robert Burns, the great national poet of Scotland, whose verse flows in the very heart of that fine and noble land. In that honor, here is one of the finest Scottish singers of our day, Dougie Maclean, performing one of Burns's works. If it gets better than this, I'd rather not know how.


For more on Burns, as always, Sheila O'Malley has you covered.

From the Books: Ursula K. Le Guin on Tolkien

Author Ursula K. Le Guin has died.

Calling Le Guin an "author" is true, but it doesn't do her justice, and that's coming from one who has not read nearly enough of her work. Not even close. Le Guin was a cultural force, particularly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction where her influence is felt so keenly that her name ranks with the very highest of titans in the fields. Le Guin's brilliance shone for decades, not just in her fiction but in the examples she set in her interactions with the rest of the field and in her thoughts to which she gave voice in many essays. Le Guin was one of the absolute giants, and her passing at the age of 88 is one more milestone in the history of two genres that still strive for respect and acceptance.

I have a small book that I got years ago as a reader's companion volume to the Book of the Month Club's editions of The Lord of the Rings. (The book is cleverly titled, A Reader's Companion to THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS.) It contains a number of short essays about JRR Tolkien and his writing, and the final essay in the book, called "The Staring Eye", is Le Guin's. Here is a part of it:

They were displayed on the new acquisitions rack of the university library: three handsome books, in the Houghton Mifflin edition, with beige and black dust jackets, each centered with a staring black and red Eye.

Sometimes one, or two, or all three of them were out; sometimes all three were together. I was aware of them every time I was in the library, which was often. I was uneasily aware of them. They stared at me.

The Saturday Review had run a special notice upon the publication of the last volume, praising the work with uncharacteristic vigor and conviction. I had thought then, I must have a look at this. But when it appeared in the library, I shied away from it. i was afraid of it. It looks dull, I thought--like the Saturday Review. It's probably affected. It's probably allegorical. Once I went so far as to pick up Volume II, when it alone was on the rack, and look at the first page. "The Two Towers." People were rushing around on a hill, looking for one another. The language looked a bit stilted. I put it back. The Eye stared through me.

I was (for reasons now obscure to me) reading all of Gissing. I think I had gone to the library to return Born in Exile, when I stopped to circle warily about the new acquisitions rack, and there they were again, all three volumes, staring. I had had about enough of the Grub Street Blues. Oh well, why not? I checked out Volume I and went home with it.

Next morning I was there at nine, and checked out the others. I read the three volumes in three days. Three weeks later I was still, at times, inhabiting Middle Earth: walking, like the Elves, in dreams waking, seeing both worlds at once, the perishing and the imperishable.

Tonight, eighteen years later, just before sitting down to write this, I was reading aloud to our nine-year-old. We have just arrived at the ruined gates of Isengard, and found Merry and Pippin sitting amongst the ruins having a snack and a smoke. THe nine-year-old likes Merry, but doesn't much like Pippin. I never could tell them apart to that extent.

This is the third time I have read the book aloud--the nine-year-old has elder sisters, who read it now for themselves. We seem to have acquired three editions of it. I have no idea how many times I have read it myself. I reread a great deal, but have lost count only with Dickens, Tolstoy, and Tolkien.

Yet I believe tha tmy hesitation, my instinctive distrust of those three volumes in the university library, was well founded. To put it in the book's own terms: Something of great inherent power, even if wholly good in itself, may work destruction if used in ignorance, or at the wrong time. One must be ready; one must be strong enough.

I envy those who, born later than I, read Tolkien as children--my own children among them. I certainly have had no scruples about exposing them to it at a tender age, when their resistance is minimal. To have known, at age ten or thirteen, of the existence of Ents, and of Lothlorien--what luck!

In the essay Le Guin goes on to think about what her experience with Tolkien might have meant to her as a writer of the fantastic had she come to it earlier in life than when she did. It's interesting to consider. For myself? I came to Tolkien first when I was eight or so, via the animated The Hobbit, and three or four years later via the books. I have no idea how it affect me, as a writer of the fantastic, but then, Ursula Le Guin was a genius, and I'm only me.

I have intended to re-read Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea this year already; I have now moved it up in the planned rotation. I read it in eighth grade, I think; I recall liking it, but I never read past it. To this day my familiarity with Ursula Le Guin is more through her essays and nonfiction than through her fiction (I also read The Dispossessed, and remember it about as well, which is more reflective of me as a young reader than her as a writer). This needs to change.

Ursula K. Le Guin lived to be 88, and she leaves behind an enormous legacy not just in her own works but in all the authors on whom she was a huge influence. Her life may be over, but the ripples in time left by her having been here? Those are just beginning.

Thank you, Ursula K. Le Guin. You'll be read for a long, long time.

Tone Poem Tuesday

It's always worth remembering that classical music isn't just about dusty old works by composers long dead. British composer Eric Whitacre is still very much alive, and he is actually only a little less than two years older than me. I don't know a whole lot about him, actually. The work featured here is, to my knowledge, the only work of his that I have heard, but it's a beautiful piece indeed, for solo cello and strings. Called The River Cam, the work was composed in honor of cellist Julian Lloyd Webber's sixtieth birthday (and he is actually the featured soloist in this recording), and it is inspired by the titular River Cam in England, which flows through Cambridge. The work is meditative and dreamy in the tradition of Ralph Vaughan Williams, putting me a bit in mind of The Lark Ascending. The music rises and falls and churns, conveying the energy of a river without resorting to brisk tempi or harsh discord. There's a lot going on here as one listens, with the melodic lines going in different directions and at times creating dissonances that are nevertheless very beautiful to behold.

One thing is certain: I'll be attending more on the music of Eric Whitacre.

Symphony Saturday

At last, the kinda-sorta weekly feature returns!

I've been listening to this symphony a lot of late. I find it a very compelling work, with a wealth of Romantic melody, vigorous orchestration, and quite a bit of pleasing energy. It's also a mainly forgotten work, by composer John Knowles Paine. A big focus in this series has been to listen to a good many works of music that don't deserve the obscurity into which they have faded, and Paine's Symphony No. 2 certainly is that. Subtitled "In Spring", the symphony is in four titled movements:

I. Adagio sostenuto: "Departure of Winter"; Allegro ma non troppo: "Awakening of Nature"
II. Scherzo Allegro: "May-Night Fantasy"
III. Adagio: "A Romance of Springtime"
IV. Allegro giojoso: "The Glory of Nature"

This is one of the most genial works I have ever heard, which is one reason I keep returning to it. There is some occasional brooding to the music, but the brooding invariably gives way to song and optimism. Perhaps that's in keeping with the symphony's vernal inspiration, and I for one find it hard to hear the last movement singing its heart out and not feel something of that optimism myself.

What a wonderful symphony this is!

Something for Thursday

A sad note from earlier in the week was the passing of Dolores O'Riordan, singer for the band The Cranberries. I don't know their music very well, but you couldn't be alive in the 1990s and not hear it at some point. I always liked her voice, with its effortless pixie-ish lilt.

Tone Poem Tuesday

I heard this frankly amazing piece the other day on the radio, and I promptly listened to it three more times as soon as I got home from driving about. The work is the Russian Overture by Sergei Prokofiev, and it is simply a collection of tunes, some of which are actual Russian folk tunes and some of which are original themes of folkish nature composed by Prokofiev himself. Prokofiev isn't the type of Russian composer we often think of: he doesn't pour out songlike melody like a Borodin or a Tchaikovsky or a Rachmaninov. His is a more modern sensibility, a reaction against Romanticism but still without the full-on nods to the modern of a Stravinsky. I found this work an infectious listen, with its occasional singing, its frequent playfulness, and its variability between intimate song and boisterous showmanship.

Here is the Russian Overture by Prokofiev.

Greta Thyssen

Roger notified me of the passing recently of actress Greta Thyssen at the age of 90. I confess that I had no idea at all who she was, but thankfully, Roger provided context. In addition to her film career she later became an artist, and was married for a time to Cary Grant.

For my purposes, she starred in several Three Stooges shorts. I've never been a huge fan of the Stooges, but you can't deny that they elevated the fine art form on which Ms. Thyssen several times found herself on the receiving end:


Full points to Ms. Thyssen for her pie-faced slow burn!

Bad Joke Friday

A Star Wars one!

Heh!

Something for Thursday

Wow. Edward Scissorhands is twenty-seven years old. That's meaningful to me because back in February 1991, there was an oboe player in my college band that I suddenly realized was pretty cute. She let slip in conversation that she wanted to see this movie, as did I, so I invited her to see it with me.

Spoiler: she married me, and now we have dogs.

Here is a selection from what is, to me, the finest work Danny Elfman has ever done as a film composer.

Tone Poem Tuesday

Starting off 2018's musical selections with a short and lovely setting by Percy Grainger: a familiar folk tune from Scotland, "Ye Banks and Braes O' Bonnie Doon". Grainger is always worth returning to, for his sonorous settings and his ability to paint an amazing tonal picture in just a few minutes.

From the Books: THE COMING OF THE KING

So yesterday I saw a New York Times article linked on Twitter in which apparently some members of former European aristocracy are starting to raise the notion that maybe, just maybe, world problems might be helped somewhat by a return to monarchy. I confess I didn't bother reading the article because...well, the whole notion just sounds goofy. But I did note the name of the first person quoted in the article: one Count Nikolai Tolstoy, who is a member of onetime Russian nobility, a distant cousin of Leo Tolstoy of War and Peace fame, and the writer of a fantasy novel about the wizard Merlin called The Coming of the King.

As it happens, I bought this book way back when I was in college and going through the big Arthurian phase of my reading life. There was a couple of years where if I was reading a book not related to any of my classes, it was an Arthurian book of one sort or another: either fantasy novels retelling the tale, or a nonfiction book about the legends or the larger category of British folklore from which the Arthurian matter springs. Tolstoy's novel is...well, I started it and got about seventy pages in before I gave up. His writing style was very formal and almost stilted (not unlike The Silmarillion), but what got me was a passage that ranks as one of the strangest passages I have ever read in a fantasy novel. I thought that I had shared this before, but I did a cursory search of the archives and couldn't find it, so here is is anew.

I don't even recall the contextual events in which this takes place, save that it is a big feast-type party or something at the King's great hall. Tolstoy is describing some of the evening's entertainment here, and...well, this happens. I swear that this is from a novel that actually got published.

Low before the king bowed the seven newcomers; and bowed low they remained, with buttocks bare gleaming from the ruddy glare of the king's hearth. For they were the far-famed farters of the Island of the Mighty, whose skill in farting surpassed any that might be found in Prydyn, or Ywerdon, or distant Lydau across the Sea of Udd.

Wonderfully loud was the farting of the royal farters at the feasting of King Gwydno Garanhir upon the Kalan Gaeaf; wonderfully lour, skillfully sonorous, and evil-smelling beyond the achieving of all others of their calling. At first they emitted with rare delicacy the seven notes of the scale, moving up and down the line in harmony, high and low. Then they blew forth tunes such as cowherds and milkmaids sing. They whistled high and they whistled low in semblance of the whistling of the keepers of the king's kennels. or of unseen birds that pipe in the brake.

But these wonderful feats were as nothing to what followed, and an ecstasy came upon the Men of the North as each of the performers excelled his fellow with some new and marvelous display of art and skill. Marvelously true to reality was the snorting of war horses, the braying of trumpets, the roaring of stags, the rumble of thunder, the bellowing of bulls, the snarling of wildcats, and long, low drone of a homing cockchafer on a summer's eve.

Well-fed were the performers upon dulse and lentils and beans, but not beyond the space of half an hour were they able to sustain their skillful performance. There came a moment when their conductor gave vent to a long, low whistling sound like a serpent retiring to its heathery laid; so sibilantly soft, stealthy-sounding, and stalely stinking as to instill an awed silence upon the assembled company. It was a signal for the departure of the troop, and with a final effort of such loudness and force and vigor that men swore afterward it set the goblets rattling upon the royal board, and all but extinguished the pine torches flaring in their sockets and even the great hearth burning beneath the royal cauldron.

Like the gale before which no man is able to stand upright, which blows without ceasing from the mouth of that Cave in the land of Gwent which men call Chwith Gwent, was that mightiest of farts which was in the North at that time. There were those in the king's hall, however, who feared lest the performance might arouse storms and tempests in the winter sky, avowing they could hear afar off in the mountains the rolling of Taran's wheel.

It was amid smoke and confusion and stench that the king's farters flew from the banquet hall to the hostel set apart for them. It was long before the pleasure passed and laughter died away and tongues were stilled, so delightful was their performance to the Men of the North.

As noted, I have little idea what to make of this, and I recall that I read very little farther in the book after this.

As for the novel itself, it was apparently at one point to be the first book in a trilogy of novels about Merlin, but the next books never appeared. Count Tolstoy was apparently involved in some sort of legal action involving libel, which put a bit of a kibosh on his writing at the time. To my knowledge these books have never appeared.

And there, folks, is the strangest thing I've ever read in a fantasy novel.

Something for Thursday

I must admit that I love a good cheesy hard rock ballad, and this might be the greatest of them all.


(And yes, I like the movie that it came from. It's so gloriously entertaining in its jaw-dropping badness that I can never look away from it. It's the cinematic equivalent of a lava lamp.)

From the Books: THE RETURN OF THE KING

It's JRR Tolkien's birthday!

Tolkien is, naturally, one of my favorite of all authors. He wasn't my first foray into epic fantasy--that would be Lloyd Alexander--but Tolkien cemented my love of that genre for keeps. He is, for me, as profound an influence on my own storytelling as George Lucas.

Here is one my very favorite passages in a book chock-full of favorite passages. This is from The Return of the King, the chapter titled "The Siege of Gondor".

In rode the Lord of the Nazgul. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazgul, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face. 

All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, streadfast as a graven image in Rath Dinen. 

'You cannot enter here,' said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. 'Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!' 

The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter. 

'Old fool!' he said. 'Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!' And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade.


Gandalf did not move. And in that very moment, away in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn. 

And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last. 

That is one of those passages that, every time I read it, I pray to whatever powers there are that one day I might write something half so wonderful.

Happy birthday, Professor Tolkien! Long may your stories shine, into the next Age and beyond!

Looking back at 2017

I do this quiz every year, so let's get on with it....

Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

As I pretty much keep my resolutions to “Read a lot, write a lot, and do cool stuff,” I think I did pretty well on the ‘keeping resolutions” front, since I did all of those things. 2016 was a bad year for me for reading, but I nicely rebounded in 2017: I set a goal on Goodreads of reading 50 books, and I did 57!

It wasn’t a New Year’s resolution, but at some point I decided that I want to add a lot of pink to my wardrobe. And I did. Yay!

In 2018 I’ll stick to “Read a lot, write a lot, and do cool stuff.” Works for me. (I thought about bumping my Goodreads challenge to 60 books, but my reading list currently has a lot of really long books on it, so I’m keeping it at 50.)

And one more: I will be engaging my elected representatives more often, most likely by either e-mail or physical letter. I like my Senators and I deeply dislike my Representative, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

No. A woman at work is very near to doing so, but I don’t think she’s gone yet. That’s about it. She’s not particularly close to me, but I get along with her, so there’s that.

Did anyone close to you die?

No. I’m increasingly wary of my continuing to successfully dodge this particular bullet.

What countries did you visit?

Never left the US, as occasionally tempting as it was to do just that.

What would you like to have in 2018 that you lacked in 2017?

More writing success. Less elected Republicans.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Getting Amongst the Stars out the door, and completing edits (for now, before I make one more pass) on The Chilling Killing Wind, which is something totally new! I also learned how to use my Instant Pot and started a very overdue reorganization project of my workspace at The Store. (My work room looks like an Ace Hardware store caught fire and a True Value store was dropped on top of it to smother the flames. Not good.)

What was your biggest failure?

There was actually not a lot of failure in my world this year, thank goodness. I do need to engage my elected representatives more (see above), and I do not like making phone calls, so I’m leaning toward good old-fashioned letters in the mail. As long as we have a postal service, that is.

What was the best thing you bought?

Acquisitions I liked: jewelry for The Wife, a new pair of raw denim vintage Lee overalls for me, and a pit bull mix for The Daughter.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

My whole family’s, many of my friends, and nationally, anyone in The Resistance who protested, worked to advocate against bad policy (and there was a shit-ton of that), and who showed up to vote against Republicans.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Republicans. That party is one giant ball of moral rot right now.

Where did most of your money go?

Food, rum, whiskey, books, clothes, and a couple of expensive trips to an antique mall in Rochester.

What did you get really excited about?

The afore-mentioned antiquing trips, the afore-mentioned pair of vintage overalls, and most of all, the entire family getting together (on both sides!) for The Daughter’s high school graduation.

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

About the same, which is amazing given the state of the world. I am in this odd place of being long-term optimistic about humanity and pessimistic about my own country.

Thinner or fatter?

A little fatter. That’s a disappointment. I need to eat more veggies.

Richer or poorer?

A little richer.

What do you wish you'd done more of?

Reading and writing. Always reading and writing. I didn’t blog nearly enough, and only two pies found their way into my face this year.

What do you wish you'd done less of?

Late-night staring at the Internet. I have been working to do that a lot less.

How did you spend Christmas?

With family, unpacking wonderful gifts, and eating and drinking way too much. In short, it was exactly what Christmas should be.

Did you fall in love in 2016?

I fall in love on a daily basis.

How many one-night stands?

Pshaw. Like I’m gonna tell you.

What was your favorite TV program?

We’re in something of a transitional period as far as teevee goes, with not as many shows we catch regularly. Stranger Things made us happy, and I deeply loved Luke Cage. We also discovered Blackish, which is always funny and often brilliant, and we continue to love Brooklyn Nine Nine, which is always funny and even more often brilliant.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

I really try not to hate, but in these times, it’s hard not to. There are some local political activists on the right who are as ugly a bunch of souls as I’ve ever encountered, and I’ll be honest: of the current pack of miscreants dominating the political scene in Washington DC, the one whose image tends to anger me the most when I see it is Speaker Paul Ryan’s.

What was the best book you read?

The Sculptor by Scott McCloud;
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker;
Memoirs by Hector Berlioz;
The Girl with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

I spent a lot of time listening to classical works by composers who, for one reason or another, never quite broke through into the “standard repertoire”, even though the music is often very, very good. It’s always sad to me to reflect on how much art gets forgotten that in no way deserves to be.

What did you want and get?

Some really nifty new Star Wars music by John Williams! That’s always a delight. I hope there’s one more in store from him....

What did you want and not get?

I’m honestly not sure I want an impeachment, given what a dunderheaded weirdo the Vice President is. I don’t know, really. Maybe more book sales? I never have enough book sales.

What were your favorite films of this year?

As always, I tend to be pretty bad at seeing movies in the year they are released, so I’d go right now with Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 and The Last Jedi.

The best movie experience I had was either seeing Castle in the Sky or Casablanca on the big screen. I love both films (indeed, the latter might be my favorite movie of all time that doesn’t take place in a galaxy far, far away), and to see them in their big-screen glory was just fantastic.

What did you do on your birthday?

On my birthday? Went to work. We continued our tradition of enjoying a weekend getaway right after my birthday, to a farm-and-craft festival in Ithaca, NY. It was a great, great time.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2016?

Vintage workwear chic, now with added pink!




What kept you sane?

My family; the cats and the dogs; writing; reading; going on adventures and doing silly things.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

So many brilliant people doing brilliant work! I can’t name any, but for a time that feels as dark as this, there are an awful lot of brightly-shining lights out there.

What political issue stirred you the most?

Oh lord. All of them. I’ve never seen a political party stake out stances on issues that are so completely wrong and just plain mean.

Who did you miss?

Barack Obama.

Who was the best new person you met?

Captain Fashnatan Strel of Orion’s Huntress. If all goes according to plan, you might get to meet her in 2019.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2017:

Elections matter.

But the old lessons apply, don’t they? So, as I always end up copying-and-pasting:

Read a lot, write a lot. Listen to music. Go for walks and look at sunsets. Take all the pictures you want. Learn new things and try new stuff. If you have a dog, take him for walks. Buy books for your daughter, even when she complains that she likes to pick her own books (let her do that, too). Nothing fits your hand so well as your lover’s hand. Eating out is fine, but learn to cook things, too. Have a place to go where they know you and what you order. Don’t be afraid to revisit your childhood passions now and again; you weren’t always wrong back then. Overalls are awesome, it’s OK to wear double denim, and a pie in the face is a wonderful thing!

If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:












And then there were the usual pies in my face:




Videos here and here, if you're curious!

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm
Come in, she said
I'll give ya shelter from the storm.


I’m not sure what I hope 2018 brings most, but what I think it all boils down to is that I hope we can all come in and find shelter from the storm.

Thus I end my 2017. See you all next year!

2017: What I Said, When I Said It

My annual rundown of content here commences...now!

Richard Thompson and Cul de sac
Dear 44
Dear 45
"I am one with the Force and the Force is with me": Thoughts on Rogue One
VHS Memories

Ear infections and why they suck
In which I continue to love my wife
Happy Pi Day! (in which I get hit in the face with a pie)
In which I made gluten-free fried chicken
"Let me help" (Thoughts on the fiftieth anniversary of City on the Edge of Forever)

Dogs and sniffing
On being married twenty years
Nobody did it better: In memoriam, Sir Roger Moore
The Force will be with you always: Star Wars at 40
Larry Havers, 1946-1967

He'll save every one of us! (On seeing Flash Gordon
again on the big screen)
"I believe in love" (Thoughts on Wonder Woman
Twenty years of Harry Potter
On choosing happiness (in which I dip myself in magic waters and get hit in the face with a pie)
A Box of Dreams

One Memory of Each Grandmother
On Fantasy in Film
"I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution!" (Thoughts on The African Queen)
A Guide to Making Good Life Choices

Tornadoes in the Forest
The 15 Greatest Science Fiction Movies EVER (according to me)
On Combos, the world's finest junk food
On Immigration

The Hobbit at 80
On the pleasures of raw denim
In which Mark Hamill is aware, for a second or two, of my existence
The Final Victory of JR Ewing, and other thoughts one year into the Age of Trump

I also had an interview on another website! The fine folks at The Geekiverse had me over, and you can read that here. And don't forget to check out my content at ForgottenStars.net.

I've made much better use of my Goodreads account this year, using it to track my reading. Most of my content that relates to specific books is over there now, and to see what I read (and what I thought about what I read) in 2017, check it out.

Finally, photos and videos, via my Flickr stream.

Bad Joke Friday

Tomorrow I'll have my usual rundown of 2017, but for now, here's the final Bad Joke of the year!

Something for Thursday

A non-musical item now!

I continue to be vexed by Aaron Sorkin, whose faults as a writer and storyteller are legion and yet who, when he manages to get it right, gets it really right. This clip (excuse the video quality, but the sound is fine and with Sorkin the dialog is mainly the thing) stitches together a small story Sorkin manages to tell in just two scenes from a single episode of The West Wing. Here he creates emotional heft, laugh-out-loud comedy based on clever wordplay, and some wonderful chemistry between two characters. I swear that my new "headcanon" is that after she left the White House in the series finale, CJ Cregg eschewed her existing job offers and instead partnered with Art and Antiquities Expert Bernard Thatch to find stolen works of art (many of which he'll hate) and return them to their rightful owners.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas: Christmas Day Edition!!!

The day is here! Let there be light and merriment and all wonderful things to all people!

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

It's Christmas Eve. What wonders will tomorrow bring?

Your Daily Dose of Christmas (yesterday edition because I forgot to hit "publish")

Another album, if you like the Vienna Boys' Choir. (I do.)

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Here's an entire album for you! The Many Moods of Christmas is a collection of four suites of Christmas carols, set by Robert Russell Bennett. It was recorded in the 1960s, and then it was re-recorded in the 1990s for the Telarc label by Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. It's one of the best such recordings in existence, and here it is!

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

From Mr. Lennon, via Ms. McLachlan.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Sometimes you gotta swing!

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

I remember watching this sketch on Saturday Night Live years ago, but I'd never seen it on YouTube until now.


And then there's this, which I've used before:

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

An eternal favorite. Judy Garland's performance of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is, for me, so iconic that I can barely stand any others. (Insert my usual rant about Frank Sinatra destroying the song's meaning by changing the lyrics here.)

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

From King's College in London, here is "O Holy Night".

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Victor Herbert's "March of the Toys".

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Well, seeing as how nuclear annihilation seems to be back on the table as an option, here's Weird Al and "Christmas At Ground Zero".

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

I first heard this piece by John Rutter performed by the local high school choir at a Christmas concert a few years ago. It is, quite simply, one of the most achingly beautiful pieces I have ever heard. Here is the Candlelight Carol.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Several different versions of "The Little Drummer Boy". Which do you prefer?

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

This piece isn't performed by the Canadian Brass, even though it's titled "A Canadian Brass Christmas Suite". Nevertheless, it's pretty cool.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

A few Christmas selections by Yo Yo Ma (and whichever friends he brings along)!

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Here's one I play each year in acknowledgement of Christmas's way of making us think, amidst the joy and light and gift-giving, of the loves that might have been, the lives we might have lived, and the dreams that sometimes we barely remember dreaming.

Bad Joke Friday (Christmas edition)

Apologies! I genuinely thought I had already scheduled this to post, but it turned out that I didn't do anything at all with it. So....

BWAAA HAAA HAHAHA oh never mind.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

The United States military is home to some really good musicians, and they do a lot more than just play "Hail to the Chief" and "The Stars and Stripes Forever".

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

A Christmas Overture by John Rutter. Rutter is mainly known for his melodic and lyrical choral music, but this is quite nice. (Rutter will likely turn up again this month.)

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

I love John Williams, obviously, but I do have to admit that I prefer his music to have a darker tinge to it. When he gets into full-on "happy" mode, I find that...well, it's like eating a very rich and very sweet dessert. A little goes a long way.

This is a suite someone cobbled together out of several Christmas-related tracks from Williams film scores. And just in case you need some "darker" Williams after that, well, go to YouTube and dig up any track from Revenge of the Sith. That should do it!

Tone Poem Tuesday

A break from the Christmas music! Here we have the Welsh Rhapsody by Sir Edward German, a composer who lived from 1862 to 1936. He is most well-known for several of his light operas, as he was seen during his career as something of a successor to Sir Arthur Sullivan. German lived a long enough life to see the musical style that he favored fall out of fashion, and like many fine composers, his work fell into neglect and obscurity. This piece does not deserve that fate, though -- it is a thoroughly enjoyable work of late-Romantic orchestral writing, thrilling and lyrical and muscular. Enjoy!

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

One of my every-year favorites. Here is Tchaikovsky's Suite from The Nutcracker.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

In Generations, the first Star Trek movie to feature the cast of The Next Generation, the plot involves an evil scientist whose goal is to do whatever he needs to do to get back into "the Nexus", which is some kind of alternate dimension where wishes are fulfilled or some such thing. The whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense, but late in the movie Captain Picard finds himself there, and his temptation to remain is a Very English Christmas that looks like something out of one of the rich family scenes in a Dickens novel. Not much to write home about, really, but Dennis McCarthy's scoring of this dream-like sequence is interesting ethereal.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

I don't know anything at all about the band Sixpence None the Richer, but I gave a random listen to their rendition of my favorite Christmas hymn, "Angels We Have Heard On High", and...well, hear it for yourself. I quite fancied it.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Baroque composer Arcangelo Corelli wrote this wonderful concerto grosso and inscribed it: "Made for the Night of Christmas. It's not known exactly when he wrote it; it survives because of its publication in a posthumous collection of all of Corelli's concerti grossi. In a concerto grosso, the music alternates between being performed by a group of soloists within a larger ensemble and by the entire ensemble itself. At this point in music history the concerto had not yet developed into a showpiece for soloist with orchestra.

There are no familiar Christmas tunes here, but I always find that the intimate sound of various chamber ensembles lends itself to the more peaceful and contemplative aspects of Christmas.

Bad Joke Friday (Christmas Edition)

All of this month's Bad Jokes will be themed to the upcoming holiday. Enjoy! (Or not. Because the jokes will still be bad.)

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

It's December, so here we go with our daily roundup of Christmas favorites old and new!

Something for Thursday

The twelfth anniversary of Little Quinn's passing came, and went, the other day. This song always makes me think of him, and other things.

AHHHHHHH

Late last night, I dragged myself, weary and bloodied, across the NaNoWriMo finish line.

Well, not bloodied, but I was quite tired when I got there...especially since at one point Scrivener had my word count at 50,200 but when I plugged my text into NaNo's validator, it came back with a result of 49,850. So I had to stay up a bit and do a little extra work to get myself over that line. I could have just done it today, but when I'm that close, I just want to kick it into gear and get it done.

So after three consecutive years of falling short during NaNoWriMo, I've resumed winning. Huzzah!!!

Bad Joke Friday

This has been going around Facebook lately so if you're over there you've likely seen it already, but it still made me laugh, so:

Something for Thursday: Thankfulness Edition

If anything, the months since the last Thanksgiving have certainly reestablished in my mind how important it is to be centered before one goes forth to fight the good fight.

Here's a bit of Mr. Copland (I don't usually like to excerpt longer works, but this is an exception).

Thankfulness 2017

I remember it being very difficult to summon up true thankfulness a year ago as it seemed as if a darkness was settling over everything. And it has, to be honest--but it's not an all-encompassing darkness. There have been encouraging signs, though. People are showing up with lanterns to fight the darkness. After all....


Here's a list of things for which I am thankful this year:

Carla, the new dee-oh-gee
Cane, the not-as-new dee-oh-gee
Lester and Julio, the really-not-new cats
Rum
Bourbon
Scotch
Gin
Sparkling wine
Paula's Donuts
Ithaca, NY
Autumn Leaves Books
The Rochester Lilac Festival
Knowing where a bunch of gluten-free restaurants are between here and the Finger Lakes
The Finger Lakes
Letchworth State Park
Taughannock Falls
The Ontario County Antique Mall
Fountain pens
Fountain pen ink
Making waffles
Popcorn with butter
Kettlecorn
Corn dogs
Chiavetta's chicken barbecue
The Erie County Fair
Hot dogs at Taffy's
Hot dogs at Ted's
Hot dogs at home, on the grill
Star Wars
Casablanca
Hayao Miyazaki and the rest of Studio Ghibli
The Scarlet Pimpernel
88 Cups of Tea (podcast)
Functional Nerds (podcast)
Sword and Laser (podcast)
Our backyard firepit
All my various methods of making coffee (pourover, French press, Moka pot)
Mississippi Roast
The Instant Pot (which I still don't even use as much as I should)
Art and craft shows where I can buy gifts right from the person that made them
Picking out jewelry for The Wife
The Great Lakes region
Pittsburgh, PA (honorary Great Lakes city in my heart)
New York City
The two friends of mine who are finding a lot of new purpose in their lives of late
Chestnut Ridge Park
Sprague Brook Park
Emery Park
Canalside and the Outer Harbor
Knox Farm State Park
The Mill Road Overlook in East Aurora
Roads: US 20A, NY 240, NY 39, Girdle Road, Two Rod Road
Fried chicken
Chicken and waffles
Hot sauce
John Oliver and Last Week Tonight
The Resistance
Hector Berlioz
Sergei Rachmaninov
Alexander Borodin
JS Bach
Ludwig von Beethoven
John Williams
Jerry Goldsmith
Max Steiner
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Howard Shore
James Horner
All the new authors on my shelf whose works I an thrilled to read
The emergence of so many authors of color and the opportunity to read them and learn from their experiences and perspectives
Goodreads
Twitter (the parts without Nazis)
Harry Potter
My Fair Lady
The Chilling Killing Wind
The Song of Forgotten Stars
Princesses Tariana and Margeth Osono
Lieutenant Penda Rasharri
The characters you haven't met yet
The characters I haven't met yet
The days when the writing is easy
The days when the writing is hard
Pies on the table
Pies in my face
Well-worn bib overalls
Stiff raw-denim bib overalls
Vintage bib overalls
The Daughter
The Wife
The world
Our universe

That's not so bad, is it?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

22 November

Tone Poem Tuesday

I've been exploring with some fascination the American composers of the late Romantic era, the ones whose music is rarely heard these days because none of it really goes beyond the stylings of what was going on musically in Europe at the time. Everyone was basically writing European-style music in America, with no real nationalistic material to incorporate as a way of standing out. American music didn't start to break out until the arrivals of Modernism and jazz, but there was still important and meaningful work being written, and a lot of it is undeserving of its obscurity.

Case in point: the tone poem Hero and Leander by Victor Herbert. Herbert was primarily known as a composer of operettas in the earliest days of the American musical theater (which, again, didn't really start to catch fire until jazz showed up), and his name is still slightly familiar to audiences because of his work Babes in Toyland, which still shows up in excerpts around Christmas each year (especially the "March of the Toys").

Hero and Leander is an impressive work, dreamy and Wagnerian, telling the story of two doomed lovers from Greek myth. Guided by a lamp she lit for him, Hero would swim to Leander's island tower each night. But one day a storm arose, blowing out the lamp and leaving him at sea to drown. When Leander saw Hero's body floating in the waves, she threw herself into the sea to be with him forever. Herbert composed this half-hour symphonic poem for his own Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and hearing it now I'm struck by its skill even if the musical language is straight out of the Liszt-Wagner-Strauss lineage.

Here is Hero and Leander by Victor Herbert.

Bad Joke Friday

Kind of existential....

Something for Thursday

Heavens, was today busy! Lots of stuff going on between my NaNoWriMo efforts and a seasonal uptick in things at The Store that need my attention.

And dogs. Mustn't forget the dogs. For one thing, if you do, they bark.

Anyway, here's a bit of Lerner and Loewe. It's always good to return to Lerner and Loewe.

Tone Poem Tuesday

Urg.

It's been a busy and hectic several days here, what with The Store ramping up for Thanksgiving and an annual visit from the people whose name is on the front of the building, to pounding out words for NaNoWriMo (I'm on track, yay me!), and having a cold the last few days. So I forgot to post anything at all.

It's not a tone poem, it's a waltz. But it is a tone poem. I'd explain, but I've had some rum and I'd rather just listen to the music. So here is the greatest waltz of all time, On the Beautiful Blue Danube, in the wonderful video from the New Years From Vienna a few years back when they intercut the performance with video taken from the Danube from source to where it empties into the Black Sea.


There's not a single day of the year when I couldn't listen to this piece and not feel better about the world.

The Final Victory of JR Ewing, and other thoughts on one year of Trump

One year ago today the American people, by virtue of the country's very odd system of voting for President, committed what might wind up being known as the greatest act of electoral malpractice in the country's history.

I.

Donald Trump ran a cynical, mean-spirited campaign that was almost perfectly designed to appeal to the id of every angry white voter in this country. He was the perfect candidate at the perfect time for a party that had been trending this way for decades. Many prominent Republicans have started to notice the rot at the heart of their party, but even now those same prominent Republicans are not coming to any kind of grips with the fact that Trump's emergence (or the emergence of someone like Trump) is something that many on my side of the political fence have been expecting for years. This past weekend, former President George HW Bush went on record as not approving of Trump or what he represents, but for anyone who has paid attention for years, there's a line to be drawn connecting Trump to the Lee Atwater-run campaign that got Bush the Elder elected twenty-nine years ago.

I'm reminded of a line from Aaron Sorkin's script to A Few Good Men, when toward the end of the movie Lt. Kaffee (Tom Cruise) is putting Col. Jessup (Jack Nicholson) on the stand in something of a Hail Mary move:

Lt. Weinberg: And now you think you can get him to just say it?

Kaffee: I think he wants to say it. I think he's pissed off that he's gotta hide from this. I think he wants to say that he made a command decision and that's the end of it.

[Starts imitating Jessup]

Kaffee: He eats breakfast 300 yards away from 4000 Cubans that are trained to kill him. And nobody's going to tell him how to run his unit least of all the Harvard mouth in his faggoty white uniform. I need to shake him, put him on the defensive and lead him right where he's dying to go.

That's what Trump did to the Republican field, and then to the Republican party, and then to a lot of Americans. It's hard escaping that conclusion, given the sheer glee with which so many people are embracing the ugliest strains of thought that have been bubbling beneath the surface of American society pretty much since the beginning. Trump shook them, put them on the defensive, and then he led them right where they were dying to go.

II. 

Donald Trump knows nothing at all. Nearly every time he opens his mouth about policy, one of three things becomes clear: he knows nothing about it, or he doesn't give a shit about it, or both. And that's it. Any policy discussion coming from this man is a nonstarter, and he is enabled in Congress by both houses in control of his own party that has been more and more firmly embracing ignorance across the board for years. It's clear to me that we're witnessing a slow unraveling of a lot of what Americans have spent the better part of the last century building. How far this process gets is a matter of concern, but things will be worse before they get better, and all Democrats can hope to do is contain some of the damage. But having one of the two main political parties in the most powerful and richest nation on Earth in the total grip of pure ignorance is a deeply dangerous state of affairs. Right now the main reason that things haven't fallen off a cliff is that in addition to being a know-nothing, Donald Trump is not especially competent. But this poses dangers of its own. Just looking at the averages, we are due for a recession any year now. When things start going south to a degree that genuinely affects Americans' livelihoods in a big way, look out.

III.

No, it's not Hillary Clinton's fault, either. We're the ones who make the decision. We're the ones who cast the ballots. We're the ones who call the shots, in the end. It's our fault. Saying anything else reduces elections to the political equivalent of Olympic figure skating, with us as the East German judges: "Sure, she's more qualified, but she didn't campaign in Wisconsin enough and she fell on that very last triple Salchow, so what can we do?"

Voting is an action, and actions have consequences. The consequences of America's vote in 2016 will be felt for decades, and there's no getting around it.

We screwed up. Everything that happens as a result is our fault.

IV.

As a writer I look at the world through the prism of fiction much of the time, and I can't help thinking that the rise of a Donald Trump figure is predictable in a country whose popular culture thirty years ago--when today's adults-in-the-prime-of-life were kids--was so deeply dedicated to celebrating the rich, the powerful, and the businesslike. I can't help thinking that Donald Trump's every move should be accompanied by a voiceover by Robin Leach, and I also keep thinking about JR Ewing.

I was a huge fan of DALLAS back in the 80s, and let me tell you, even as you winced at some of the shit JR Ewing pulled, it was really hard not to like the guy. For one thing, Larry Hagman's portrayal of JR is one of the great marriages of character and actor in teevee history, and for another thing, JR was often the focus of some really good writing. If you're a writer and you want tips on creating a delicious villain, you could do a lot worse than study JR Ewing (during the show's first seven or eight seasons, anyway).

But JR Ewing also seems to me redolent of the kind of "businessman" Donald Trump seems to portray himself as, which is the kind of person a lot of Americans seem to think is the way a real businessman is. Business in this view is all about maximizing one's money, and it doesn't much matter who gets hurt along the way. Business isn't about making a thing and selling it, so much as about buying things for no other reason than to sell them again sometime down the line. JR Ewing would cheat and swindle. He would do unethical things, make shady deals, and trick partners into giving him money only to wind up with nothing. And he was a womanizer who repeatedly cheated on his wife.

Did we elect Donald Trump because we loved watching JR Ewing on teevee thirty years ago? I'm not saying that, but it is illustrative to note that Americans have, for most of my lifetime, tended to equate money, and the having of lots of it, as a gauge of intelligence. At one of last year's debates, Hillary Clinton noted with disdain Trump's apparent success at avoiding paying taxes decades ago. One would expect that people would find that sickening; I know that I did, since I pay all my taxes. Trump's caustic reply, though? "That makes me smart." A lot of people approve of that.

For an awful lot of people, it was not a mark against Trump that he bankrupted a casino, or that his roster of utter failures in business far outstrips his roster of successes, or that his retail brands involved products made in China, or any of that. I suspect this is because of how we view money: we all want it, and in America we seem to inherently respect anyone who has it. We view money as a measure of success, and the lack thereof as a measure of failure. And if Donald Trump has ever done anything, it's convince lots of people that he has worked himself to the bone in order to pile up gobs of money.

But for all that, Trump has always been playing a part. Yes, he has all that money, but he started off rich, and he has always been adept at failing upwards, using various oddities in US bankruptcy and tax laws to make sure that even when his ventures implode he comes away with more money than with which he went in. I suppose there's some kind of perverse competence at work there, but for an awful lot of Americans none of that matters. All they see is a filthy rich man who has failed a lot and is still filthy rich, and they think that merely being filthy rich is a qualification in itself for office. It's the same impulse that drove a lot of people to support Ross Perot in 1992, despite his lack of policy knowledge (and he seemed like a total wonk in comparison to Trump). It's what led to Mitt Romney's odd stint at the top of Republican circles -- yes, he was a governor for a single term, but he won that by virtue of being a rich guy with a lot of money. This is why the pledge to "run government like a business" seems to carry so much weight with Americans, despite it being pretty much utter nonsense.

My own representative in Congress, Chris Collins, is pretty much worthless from a policy standpoint. He ran for Erie County Executive some years ago, literally entirely on the basis of "I'm a successful businessman," and he pledged after winning to do some weird business thing called "Six Sigma" in Erie County government, which was going to make everything better. Exactly how was never clear, but hey, he was a businessman! He must know a lot and be really good at running things! Except he wasn't, and he was defeated after a single term of not getting much done at all except pissing people off.

Of course, this being America where lots of people are impressed by businessmen, Collins was able to turn his failure as County Executive into several terms thus far in Congress (with, I am sure, more to come because his seat is incredibly safe, unless it gets redistricted out of existence).

JR Ewing (and other depictions of business people in the 1980s) shaped our idea of what business looks like and what kind of person is successful at business. This, couple with our idea that business is in itself the finest of callings (remember all the talk of George W. Bush being our "first MBA president"? Remember how well that turned out?). We see being successful at business as having the necessary skillset for anything, and since we also view our government as largely sluggish and incompetent, well then, what better sort of person to cut through all the nonsense and make it all better? Why, a businessperson! That is what we need. Businesspeople are all about getting shit done. They take no crap. Screw up and you're fired. There's no time for bureaucracy. (Which will come as news to anyone who has ever tried to cancel cable service.)

Thus we get President Donald Trump, a president who acts like he is the fictional head of a Texas oil company. We don't expect thoughtful, deliberate process; we expect quick and decisive action of the type that only a businessperson can provide. President Donald Trump is not just the unfortunate (and, it is to be hoped, ultimate) expression of our nation's sometimes-latent, sometimes-overt racism, sexism, homophobia, and general authoritarianism. He is also the expression of a nation that worships wealth and forgives nearly any sin committed to get it.

Tone Poem Tuesday

I heard this work a few weeks ago while driving home, and made sure to make note of it. Ernest Farrar was a British composer born in 1885, but his life and career were ended in September 1918, when he was killed in action in World War I, less than two months before the war ended. So many young people of promise, snuffed out in those trenches and on those fields.

This work, an orchestral rhapsody titled The Open Road, seems to be a musical portrayal of a walk through Scotland (or so I assume, from the bagpipe-like sound of the work's open bars and a motif that recurs). It's vigorous music in the Romantic mode, unsurprising and melodic and competent. In short, it's a pleasurable work, maybe not a masterpiece but not everything needs to be.

Bad Joke Friday

A bit of geek humor!

Something for Thursday

Here's a piece to which I return many times throughout the years. I'm actually finding that the onward lurch of current events from one awful thing to the next (seriously, humanity, why are we building such an awful future?!) particularly lends itself to the reexamination of great works of art and music from earlier periods. It's a constant effort to remind myself that humanity isn't just capable of staggering acts of being terrible.

Here is The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams. (By the way, make note of the album cover pictured in the video, and if you ever see that album in a store, buy it. It's one of the great classical albums.)

NaNoWriMo begins!!!

Time for my sixth attempt at writing 50,000 words in thirty days! Can I do it? Stick with me and we'll find out! The project this year is The Savior Worlds, which will be Book Four of The Song of Forgotten Stars. I succeeded at hitting the 50K mark both of my first two years of NaNoWriMo, but the last three years all ended in failure: 2014 had some plot struggles with what ended up being Amongst the Stars, and then 2015 was a truncated month in which we traveled to New York City, so I wasn't able to cross the finish line despite a valiant effort. The less said about last year the better, but basically the results of the 2016 election sent me into a creative tailspin that had me unable to write anything at all for several weeks.

This year, we'll see. I'm optimistic, but you never know. At least we're not on the cusp of doing something so wildly bizarre as electing Donald Trump to the Presidency this year, right? Right?

America?

Hello?

Anyway, hopefully onward and upward! Zap! Pow!!