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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.
So for about 3 years now I've had the vague notion that I would really like to take a two-week vacation from work, travel to Mexico or some other Latin American country and enroll in an intensive Spanish language program. Unfortunately the artisan who fashioned me and put me here on Earth did not see fit to give me any capability of making plans; so it has remained a vague, unrealized notion. Every quality has its antithesis, every vacuum has its corresponding completeness; and Ellen is a very good planner. So thanks to her persistence it looks like we have a plan, a palpable plan, for the three of us to travel to southern Mexico late next summer and study Spanish as a family, at the Instituto Cultural Oaxaca. I can't wait!
posted evening of October 18th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Ellen
Sylvia got a lovely birthday present from my parents, a bunch of merch from Moomin Shop, in Finland. A "Little My" nightgown, a mug with a likeness of Moominmamma, copies of "The Book About Moomin, Mymble, and Little My" in both English and Finnish -- Sylvia and I spent a little while watching this (beautiful) 2009 production of "Kuinkas Sitten Kävikään?" and reading along...
posted evening of October 15th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Moomins
Bob and Janis are coming over this afternoon to play some tunes -- I'm eagerly anticipating my first jam using the custom shoulder rest I carved this morning. Ever since I got this fiddle I have been thinking that a wooden block shoulder rest would work better than the contraption the maker provided, to attach a standard violin shoulder rest. Fate forced my hand a few weeks ago by ordaining that I should lose the said contraption... (come to think of it, I've been playing with no shoulder rest for a few weeks, and have been making some interesting music that way too... Mountain Station recorded a fun take on Odds & Ends last week.) Turns out I was right! It's extremely comfortable to hold the violin with this extension.
I've been listening to some old (well not that old I guess but from like last year) Mountain Station tracks lately and enjoying our sound. And it is just getting better -- our new "St. James Infirmary" is a different, more organized and complex song than our first recording of it.
Also -- bought a pickup for the fiddle, I decided to get a saxophone pickup that will clip onto the bell. This will help with amplification when we play at Studio 12 in Montclair next Friday.
Laura's wishing Peter would just
Give up this pretension, would just
Break this patterned silence
Where he builds his lonesome castle. Now she
Cries out in the morning when she
Wakes and finds him missing. Wishes
He'd reach out and touch her, wants
To hold him in his grief -- she wants to
Have back these long years that
she's been waiting for his voice. Peter's
Walking in the garden, where he
Knows the paths are laid,
Planted crocus in the springtime, planted
Hostas in the shade, wanders
Down the road to town, but nothing's
Open Sunday morning, now he
Rubs his eyes and wonders if he'll
ever find his home.
Expectation conquers knowledge and the
Evidence of senses; what I
see and hear and feel
I'll never grasp if I decline;
For all I wish and want and hope I'll never
Stand beside my grave, I'm seeing
Gauzy patterns traced out
On the page of wounded time.
She gets up, groggy, runs the water,
Steaming up the mirror, she hears
Peter downstairs in the kitchen,
hopes he's making coffee,
Laura's tired out, she didn't sleep well,
Combs her hair and squints and in the
Mirror she can see the look of
anguish on her face.
She's downstairs with a cup of coffee,
Looking quizzically at Peter,
Peter's solemn face that just
can't seem to meet her gaze.
A question's in the air and they both know it, but the
heavy silence keeps their lips held tight; keeps
Heavy thoughts drawn back to yesterday.
Last night was a blast! Met up with Christine and Miriam and John to see Crooked Still's show at The Bell House, and fell in love with the opening act.
Two sets of high energy old time music from two such distinctly different bands was about as much as I could have asked for. Amazing fiddling and banjoing and singing and thumping. Brought home two CD's from the merchandise table.
This song has been in my head all day since last night when I was listening to Old & In the Way playing it, on the Sonoma State concert tape. Vassar Clemens' fiddling is extraordinary of course; but there is a whole lot to be said for the original as well.
posted evening of October 11th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
One of the big attractions for me about reading this edition of Cosmicomics was its completeness -- all the Cosmicomics stories Calvino ever published, including seven that have never previously been translated. The collector in me loves getting the opportunity to read and reread them all at once...
And what about it? I'm nearly at the end of the book now, is it a good thing to have the stories all bundled up like this for reading together? I think it is. My memory of first reading Cosmicomics (just the first 12 stories) is of being excited and stimulated and pulled through the book -- that is very similar to what's happening this time with the 34 stories. While the first volume felt complete on its own, the subsequent additions certainly hold their own and complement it.
The newly translated stories (translated by Martin McLaughlin, who also wrote the introduction to this collection) are seven stories from the 1968 collection World Memory and other Cosmicomics Stories. They are not all in the vein of the earlier stories -- some certainly are similar, such as "The Meteorites", and some are distinctly different, such as the exquisite "Solar Storm." The title story, "World Memory" (the only one that was already translated, by Tim Parks) is a... well a sui generis story, but sort of a murder mystery. They reinforce the themes and ideas of the earlier stories, and they branch out and diverge into their own stylistic innovations and subtleties.
posted evening of October 9th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Cosmicomics
Roy Edroso's novel is out! Morgue for Whores "is a neo-noir set in Brooklyn, and has lots of violence, sex, and hard-boiled palaver as only Roy Edroso, semi-known internet buffoon, can deliver."
fiddle I have been thinking that a wooden block shoulder rest would work better than the contraption the maker provided, to attach a standard violin shoulder rest. Fate forced my hand a few weeks ago by ordaining that I should lose the said contraption... (come to think of it, I've been playing with no shoulder rest for a few weeks, and have been making some interesting music that way too... Mountain Station recorded a fun take on 
