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Post by Russell Letson on Apr 1, 2024 11:19:01 GMT -5
When I saw the thread title, I thought, "Or, as we used to call them, '8 a.m. intro to lit courses.'"
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Post by Russell Letson on Apr 1, 2024 10:03:51 GMT -5
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
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Post by Russell Letson on Apr 1, 2024 9:54:03 GMT -5
Flat-foot Floogie with a Floy-floy! (Vout-o-reenee!)
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 31, 2024 23:43:42 GMT -5
Great coordination. Stunt arranging. I couldn't manage to get past the two-minute mark.
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 31, 2024 14:09:01 GMT -5
Since "compromise" seems to have become an emotive term*, how about "deal-making" or "working things out" or "getting things done"? The practical work of politicians (and others who have to devise policies, practices, and protocols) is doing stuff, and since there is rarely unanimity in figuring out what things need doing and how to do them, adjustments get made. People compromise all the time, in settings from families to the UN.
In matters of moral or practical importance, the crucial problem is nearly always where to draw lines, and when either party sees absolutes at stake, those lines are often hard--and that's where compromise is seen as a moral failing rather than as a practical mechanism. I strongly doubt that the proposition that compromise is a "progressive strategy" can stand up to close examination. (For that matter, I'm not sure that "progressive" is a category with hard, impermeable boundaries.)
*Actually, it already has a negative edge, thanks to its application to spies and women's virtue and structural integrity.
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 29, 2024 11:42:55 GMT -5
I also tune into NPR/BBC news (AKA "other people's miseries") until C. asks for music, since she can't fall back asleep to voices talking--she has to pay attention. Me, I just drift off whether it's massacres or Bach or Bill Evans.
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 29, 2024 11:13:19 GMT -5
I realize that every case of tinnitus is a bit different, but as far as I can tell, the brain's signal processing can alleviate its most annoying effects. Mine (which I've had at least since my teens) has gotten louder and more intrusive, but it still doesn't seem to interfere with most of my hearing needs (Is my guitar in tune? Is the furnace/toilet running? Is that a robin or a purple finch? Is that a diesel or ordinary SUV idling outside?) I understand that treatment for new cases consists mostly of adaptive training, along with some environmental adjustments such as white-noise generators at night. (My version of that: play music on the bedside radio. KBEM's streaming service runs jazz all night.)
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 29, 2024 10:50:32 GMT -5
It's the water the entire culture swims in. More often, progressive thinking believes itself to be moderate, and conservative knows itself to be counter culture. Every culture has a water in which it swims. And in every culture bigger than, say, a village or a clan there are currents and countercurrents. The culture I grew up in was a mixture of moderate Republicans and Democrats (leaning toward the GOP, then and there), Christian (Catholics allowed, Jews side-eyed but not openly persecuted), and heteronormative, among other things. The culture that surrounded me (off-campus) in grad school (different there/then) was redneck-conservative, fiercely heteronormative, and suspicious of Catholics (not really Christians) and hostile toward anybody darker than I was. (I'm pretty pale.) Times change, places remain variable, and presumed norms are all over the place. The public expressions of these norms are subject to all manner of pressures and fashions and market forces, but, as Wallace Stevens suggested, the squirming facts exceed the squamous mind. BTW, that silly quiz identifies me a progressive, though I can point to all the places where my particular and precise notions don't quite fit the three click-stops on offer. And that's before we get to the design of the questions themselves. Which is why I have very little patience with phone surveys that are attempting to map public opinion--my answers are most often "It depends."
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 27, 2024 13:28:00 GMT -5
I can't really do justice to "My Funny Valentine," which is conventionally a girl's song, but I'd do it in a NY minute if my pipes were up to it. But then, it's a love song to a guy that was written by a gay lyricist, so there's already some genderbending going on in it. (Gerswhin's "Someone to Watch Over Me" has a similar attraction, though uncomplicated by Ira's conventional orientation. I would just bull through "Though he might not be the man/Some girls think of as handsome," which is a brilliant phrase. I'm too old to be insecure about how I present.)
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 26, 2024 21:39:04 GMT -5
Brother John called it last Thursday and just changed the pronouns (and the disapproving parent to Ma). Worked just fine. Great song.
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 25, 2024 12:49:06 GMT -5
There's a phrase that English teachers use for a particular kind of student essay: "word salad."
Allow me to suggest "lick salad."
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 23, 2024 17:48:49 GMT -5
I first heard that line in a Johnny Carson routine about Carmine's All You Can Eat Buffet in New Jersey. "Carmine says that's all you can eat."
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 22, 2024 10:32:11 GMT -5
Somewhere in my library is an album of Regondi concertina pieces--not played by this guy--and the 19th-century parlor-music character is pretty clear. I wonder how tricky the fingering is on pieces like this--though at least the English concertina doesn't require changing bellows directions to sound different notes.
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 21, 2024 18:12:39 GMT -5
Just that particular location or the whole chain? I've often eaten at one or another when in need of a decent quick lunch when on my own in the Cities.
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 21, 2024 12:03:57 GMT -5
I recall that Bensusan also questioned why I had my guitar (my old Guild D-40) capoed at the second fret. At the time, the guitar was probably in need of a neck reset, and in any case I thought it sounded better tuned down a step and then capoed up to concert pitch. I don't recall Pierre's response, except that it probably wasn't all that sympathetic.
I don't usually get the benefit of a workshop on the spot--the technical parts especially just don't stick, and in any case I'm terrible at practicing. But it's always interesting to watch a great player up close and to observe teaching technique (one of my actual professional skillsets), and often enough something will sit in the mental basement and emerge into the daylight years or decades later and work its way into my playing. I think the slinky "Anji" might be one of those items.
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 21, 2024 11:35:42 GMT -5
Bensusan was a major inspiration for ambitious fingerstyle players in the 1970 and 80s--one of the reasons a lot of players took up DADGAD, Celtic style/repertory, and Lowdens. Maybe a bit less influential than John Renbourn in the States, but still a force. One of my earliest workshop memories is of a Bensusan session--at the start, he had everyone come up front and play a tune. I attempted "Anji," probably the most challenging piece I knew at the time, and I pretty much mimicked the Jansch version. Pierre said, "Why do you not play eet like zeese"? and proceeded to play it at a slower and very slinky tempo. My answer would have been, "Because I only know one way to play it." And 30-plus years on, I can almost manage the kind of transformation he wrought on the tune. Almost.
(And as much as I love the music, I never did manage to learn the material from his early albums, published in his first book. DADGAD just makes my head hurt.)
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 19, 2024 19:55:03 GMT -5
Or find some different guys.
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 18, 2024 19:04:53 GMT -5
Charlie made some really nice guitars. I have John's personal Hoffman parlor on loan while he has my Marin (which has its tonal hooks deep into him). I suppose he will eventually bring this new-old Hoffman along eventually and we can have a reunion duet.
Played with him last night at Bo Diddley's--a bit of a St. Paddy's celebration session (though John's surname is Hanson and he grew up in Montana), so I brought the 6-string banjo as well as a guitar. It wasn't all Irish--we also had a bass player and a fiddle/mando player friend, and we got as far afield as "San Francisco Bay Blues" and "A Day in the Life of a Fool" (aka "Manha de Carnaval"), which John has taken a liking to singing.
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 16, 2024 14:29:21 GMT -5
The Folk Society's Approximately St. Patrick's Day concert was a Quebec-Irish trio, Grosse Isle, and they played two first-rate sets to a full house. Nice people, too--traveling with the younger pair's two kids (11 and 13, I think). They're playing tonight at the Cedar before heading to Iowa for a St. Patrick's Day concert (Cafe Paradiso in Fairfield) and a residency in Davenport (Quad Cities Visiting Artists Series, 4/18-23). Worth a drive to hear them.
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 16, 2024 10:54:47 GMT -5
My daughter told me that 77 is the new 65. I think I would prefer it be the new 50. Thursday was Nancy's birthday, yesterday was our anniversary, today my birthday, and tomorrow a grandson's second birthday. A lot crammed into a short time. At least it's not Christmas as well. Though tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day. BTW, 79 is the old 78, which is the old 77, so you have something to look forward to. Twice. Enjoy the ride. It's not as bad as they say.
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