|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 16, 2022 14:07:26 GMT -5
All those terms apply. Also "industrial-scale production." There are not-dissimilar operations in China.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 16, 2022 12:17:55 GMT -5
I notice that the Motorbiscuit list does not include any Subarus. We're still driving a 2006 Outback. Just sayin'.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 16, 2022 11:19:42 GMT -5
It's more than 20 years ago now, but at a Chetfest I got to spend some time with Gibson's custom-shop manager Mike Volz, who had also set up the company's Epiphone operation in China. He told me that there was no problem getting first-rate product out of those factories, but that you had to be quite specific about specifications and such and write everything into the contracts. There were early samples of Epis from those factories in the dealer room, and they were absolutely respectable instruments--cleanly made, good sounding, and well set up. This is the same pattern I found when Chinese-originated brands like Blueridge and Eastman started showing up years later.
I recall similar evolutions as manufacturing of all kinds moved around Asia, chasing cheap labor but also pushing quality standards up, from Japan to Hong Kong to Korea and now to mainland China.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 13, 2022 18:45:11 GMT -5
Too many for a single favorite. That entire Pat & Mike duo album is excellent, as is Eclectricity, Mike's album with accordionist/producer David Lange.
Reaching back, this has stuck in my memory from when I reviewed the album for AG years ago:
Bucky did a lot of fine collaborating--his 1979 album with Grappelli is also wonderful, and the complete-sessions release includes between-take chat and startups.
Grappelli, of course, played with everybody.
Then there are the Ella/Joe Pass albums. . . .
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 12, 2022 16:40:17 GMT -5
James--Check you messages.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 11, 2022 14:08:54 GMT -5
Maybe it's just a coincidence, but our longtime drain-clogging problems were finally addressed by a Roto-Rooter franchisee. Our old, finally-retired drain guys (a two-man operation) were pretty good and accommodating, but the R-R guys seem to have newer gear (smaller, lighter) and even niftier video. No drain can withstand a pair of thirsty oak trees forever, but we have now had the longest backup-free run since moving in 45 years ago.
(FWIW, the R-R shop is also a full-service plumbing-contracting outfit, so that additional investment in equipment might make a difference.)
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 10, 2022 17:03:11 GMT -5
Google recognizes either spelling--also shmear and smear. Since Yiddish uses the Hebrew alphabet, there's probably a degree of wiggle-room in rendering. Though schmear is the most common English spelling I see in the results.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 10, 2022 16:22:36 GMT -5
Afternoon snack: piece of leftover garlic naan from our favorite local Indian restaurant, a schmeer of garlic hummus, washed down with a glass of Pepin Heights cider. Is this a great country or what.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 9, 2022 19:38:29 GMT -5
Sounds like "Emily"--Johnny Mandel, for The Americanization of Emily. Garner and Julie Andrews and a terrific cast.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 8, 2022 12:51:28 GMT -5
Pesky old direct quotations with links to supporting articles and videos.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 8, 2022 12:16:31 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 6, 2022 21:57:44 GMT -5
I know. Nevertheless, he remains within the boundaries of what he has called "revealed, dogmatic religion."
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 6, 2022 18:19:15 GMT -5
Evan, Dreher might be a perfectly nice person socially/personally and still promote ideas that have a slender connection to the world that many of the rest of us inhabit. The "Putin Gets It" essay is filled with such ideas, with a common thread of quasi-apocalyptic, civilizational-struggle, death-of-western-civilization anxiety. Putin, Orban, and all the illiberal leaders that our baizuocracy loves to hate are all completely clear and completely correct on the society-destroying nature of wokeness and postliberal leftism. It should not be that way, but it is. Meanwhile, our Democratic political class, and the baizuocrats throughout the American elite (e.g., those who run corporations, universities, the media, law, medicine, sports, the military), are actively destroying this country and its founding values with their ideology. Or this: [W]hy do we allow these people who actually hate us and want to see us crushed hold so much power? We allow these institutions, run by and filled with people who hate us, to credential the ruling class, and yet we sit by hoping that one day, they will wake up and realize that our arguments are better, and change? I'm a lifelong liberal and civil libertarian and I don't hate Rod Dreher, even though his worldview is one I walked away from decades ago precisely because it was authoritarian. (Actually, the Catholicism I walked away from was more liberal and less authoritarian than the variety I see in Dreher and especially in many of his fans.)
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 6, 2022 17:06:54 GMT -5
So Dreher has gone right over the edge and is floating untethered out in the Crazy Zone, where any cultural feature that offends him originates or is promoted by cabals and internal enemies and the woke and the baizuocracy. (Interesting to see a "conservative" commentator borrowing vocabulary from Chinese Communist Party flacks and casting admiring glances in the direction of authoritarian bullies like Orban.)
A stroll through the comment thread of the "Putin Gets It" column is illuminating and frightening. So much delusion, so much paranoia.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 6, 2022 15:24:48 GMT -5
My friend Eleanor likes the Ole and Lenas from the Ingebretsen's Nordic Marketplace site. (I've edited them lightly--the Ingebretsens add useless detail.)
One Sunday morning, the pastor notices Ole standing in the foyer of the church staring up at a large plaque, covered with names and with small American flags mounted on either side of it. He says, "Pastor, vat is dis?" The pastor says, "It's a memorial to all the men and women who died in the service."
Ole looks real nervous and says, ”Vich service, da 8:30 or da 10:45?”
*******************
Ole goes to the library to get a book, and a few days later, he comes back and says to librarian at the counter, "Dis book was very boring. It had too many characters and too many numbers, so I would like to return it."
The librarian turns away and says, "Hey I found the person who took our phone book!"
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 5, 2022 10:59:55 GMT -5
Main course: Schmear of jus from a medium-rare Kobe beef steak, applied to solar-heated Ming Dynasty porcelain plate with a boar-bristle brush.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 5, 2022 10:54:23 GMT -5
Dunno about the mint--seems like overkill to me.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 4, 2022 0:28:44 GMT -5
Coming in under the wire (Central Time, anyway) and probably after bedtime. Nevertheless, hope it was a good birthday and that subsequent days are even better.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 3, 2022 17:41:14 GMT -5
Posted by a FB friend:
A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Mar 2, 2022 12:28:17 GMT -5
To the shared-with-Howard birthday list add Peter Straub, jazz-loving writer of scary books. Nice neighborhood. Happy, etc.
|
|