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Birthdays
and anniversaries: my own and others'.
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
appy new year to all, and my thanks for reading the blog (if you do read the blog, and otherwise thanks for dropping by.) I am looking forward to what this new year will bring. Ring out the old, ring in the new...
Numerological note as of January 1st: today is 1/1/11! Do something observant at 1:11, 11:11, and 20:11.
posted afternoon of December 31st, 2010: 2 responses
Teresa's Christmas post is very much worth checking out: Luke 2, 1-14 in a plethora of different translations. Read about Mary's revelation in Dutch, Portuguese, Lowland Scots, Greek, Slavonic, various Englishes...
posted afternoon of December 27th, 2010: 1 response ➳ More posts about The Bible
Tell me Rapacious conqueror
conquered by my persistence --
Where has your arrogance gone,
how will you disrupt my solid grace?
Now even though you conquer
with the tip of your harpoon
the hardest heart
What matters this violent rage
if in spite of your conquest
reason lives on?
Sylvia's birthday party at the Raptor Trust was great fun and for me, a chance to see something new; I had never been there before. Sylvia got this great shot of a turkey vulture peering out at us.
Mountain Station played the Lenox Pl. block party and we had a ball with it. Several mix-ups on both our parts in terms of what lyrics were coming next... But from where I was standing it came out sounding very good. In the next few days I should get a chance to listen to what the recording sounds like.
posted evening of September 19th, 2010: 1 response ➳ More posts about Sylvia
Lots of stuff going on this weekend! Sylvia (a child of the millenium, a dragon baby) is as of today, no longer able to write her age with a single digit (assuming of course that she is writing in decimal notation). We are having a birthday dinner with some friends this evening, and tomorrow afternoon her party will be at the Raptor Trust in the Great Swamp.
The other big activity for me, outside of celebrating Sylvia's birthday, is fiddling. Barbara Lamb is in town this weekend, she's giving a concert at Menzel Violins tomorrow afternoon -- I can't make it because of the party, alas, but I've arranged for a fiddle lesson this morning. Really looking forward to it! I've learned her jig "Twisty Girl", I'm hoping she'll teach me "Älgen på taket". And the fiddling continues this afternoon, when Mountain Station (i.e. me and John) will have its first gig, at John's neighborhood block party. I'm pretty shocked at the amount of music we are comfortable playing -- we didn't work out a set list exactly, but we have enough songs to play for an hour set easily, and the order of the songs will determine itself...
posted morning of September 18th, 2010: 4 responses ➳ More posts about Fiddling
So I your host begin my fifth decade this morning. A lot has happened for Ellen and me during my fourth decade: Sylvia came to be a part of our family; we moved from Queens to South Orange, and bought our house; I changed jobs a couple of times; Sylvia grew older; I started playing violin; we made lots of new friends and lost contact with some old friends; Sylvia grew older... A big thing for me in my fourth decade had been the establishment of this blog. (Thanks for reading it!)
I'm sort of taken aback by what a long time ten years is. (Let alone forty years! I can't even begin to grasp that duration of time. And yet I have lived it.) Looking forward to lots happening in the next ten...
שנה טובה! Today is also the start of a new year for Sylvia; she is turning 9. Lots of fun this weekend, what with going to Ellen's family for Rosh Hashanah tomorrow, and taking Sylvia's friends to the bowling alley for a birthday party on Sunday. (This is a party choice of Sylvia's that I am totally on board with!) I hope your weekend is a good one too, and your coming year likewise.
posted afternoon of September 18th, 2009: 1 response
Hi everyone, hope you are well. It is time for me to observe the passing of my 38th year on this earth and the beginning of my 39th.* A nice round number, 39 -- not until I am 416 will I again be a number followed by its square. (Or I guess 101 would qualify depending how you think about it.)
Anyway -- thanks for reading my blog this year, I appreciate your presence here. We're experiencing a little intermittency in blogging currently because I've been spending most of my free time on recording music -- if all goes well I will have some music to share in a little while.
Meantime come in and sit down, have a slice of virtual cake! Good stuff below the fold. If you're trying to think of a good birthday present to give me, I always appreciate fun links; leave 'em in the comments.
* Wait, no that's wrong -- I am mixing up cardinal numbers with ordinal again. This is the beginning of my 40th year of life.
At The Song in My Head Today, Holly is thinking about Alan Price's "O Lucky Man!", on the occasion of Price's 67th birthday. A fine song to have in one's head:
posted afternoon of April 19th, 2009: Respond ➳ More posts about O Lucky Man!
William Wordsworth is just turning 239 years old today -- he is 200 years and a few months older than I. (In the picture at left he is 28, ten years my junior.)
Wordsworth is a poet whom I'm always thinking I ought to be more familiar with than I am. I know a couple of his poems but I don't really have any clear sense of his persona as an author -- know him better by way of his influence on some of my favorite writers and thinkers. (And come to think of it, here I am thinking more of "the English romantics" than of Wordsworth individually.)
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
-- from "Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood"
posted morning of April 7th, 2009: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
A nice round number, 39 -- not until I am 416 will I again be a number followed by its square. (Or I guess 101 would qualify depending how you think about it.)
