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the Family Album
Pictures of us, of our friends, of our stuffed animals, of the places we live and the places we visit; all courtesy of Flicker.
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.
I was once again unable to resist cutting up my fiddle, though I think with potentially better results (cf.) this time. I bought a new C string -- a Super Sensitive Red Label from Musician's Friend -- and found it a huge improvement on the string that had come with the instrument. Suddenly I wanted to play on the bottom strings which made me notice a problem with the bridge; namely, when I cut grooves for the strings I did not make enough space to accomodate the width of the C string. So I cut a little more away and have been playing almost exclusively for the past couple of practice sessions on the bottom 3 strings. See whatcha think of this recording I made of "Walkin After Midnight" : After Midnight by The Modesto Kid
posted evening of January 20th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
So I am thinking (as 2012 rolls itself out before me like a glittering carpet...) that the READIN reading theme of 2012 might just be rereading. Somehow the Savage Detectives reread of the last few months seems to have primed me for getting new insight from books I am already familiar with... Rereading The Crying of Lot 49 last week set the course; and today it looks like I am starting to reread The Corrections (a book, it must be said, which owes a whole lot to TCoL49 if my memory of it is any guide).
Here is me reading The Corrections. Thanks for the photo, Sylvia!
posted morning of January 8th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Tsundoku
2011 has been a long and interesting year. Here's hoping 2012 is likewise -- may we all live in interesting times!
We three went on vacation and spent from Christmas Day until this morning with Michele and Kaydi in Chapel Hill. Everyone had a good time, Ellen and I saw some lovely music in the person of Tim Stambaugh and looked wistfully at (and played a few of! and started thinking about building something similar to one of!) the instruments at the Electric Violin Shop in Durham, we all went on some fun hikes around the area.
In reading and writing news, I devoured The Crying of Lot 49, which I think I have not read since college(!) -- I remember loving it then; it had a similar impact the second time around. Have been working on a translation of Zupcic's "Who Killed You, Vinko Spolovtiva" and maybe "The Real Death of Vinko Spolovtiva" to go along with it, meaning to contact him with a couple of questions. Read and loved The Little Stranger on (I believe) Andrea's reccommendation... midway through Juan Gabriel Vásquez' masterful The Informers (another fantastic translation by Anne McLean -- and actually prior to Costaguana -- I am very happy to have learned of Juan Gabriel's work this year).
posted afternoon of December 31st, 2011: 1 response
...And I find that I don't have much original or meaningful to say about seeing old friends, about celebrations and reunions, nor yet about the queasy feeling of coming home and hoping that everything will be like you left it, the sense of relief when it is. We had a lovely Thanksgiving visit to my brother's house in Urbana, more of the family than has been together in one place for several years now.
Ellen and Sylvia met me at the museum this evening after work. Saw some great paintings together and got some nice photos of each other -- click through to see a couple more.
posted evening of November 11th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Sylvia
Man, am I glad we cut down that dogwood tree this summer! The storm last night brought down large (but ultimately insignificant to the giant tree) pieces of maple and most of the burning bush on the side of the house -- the power lines are rather miraculously none the worse for wear.
posted evening of October 30th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about The garden
Robyn Hitchcock will be online tomorrow afternoon (2pm EST) for a live birthday chat with Roch Parisiens -- head over there now to post questions you'd like to ask of him.
Ellen and I saw some lovely music in the person of 
publishes scans