Journal Entries
Sometimes an amateur choral society makes better recordings than many professional ones
Posted Dec 27, 2020
Up until 2020, I sang in an amateur choral society in my area. They will be on hiatus until at least Fall of 2021. That's a pity. They hire professional orchestras and soloists for all their concerts, and the director is extremely capable. (I sang with them almost continuously form 1981 through 2019, and now consider myself retired. Singing is a young person's activity unless you are Hugues Cuenod or Vera Lynn or Tony Bennett or Barbara Cook.)
Anyway, members of the chorus always got CD recordings of our concerts. These were not for sale to the general public, for reasons of copyright and the rights of the professionals that we hired.
I have at least ten CD's of past Christmas concerts. I treasure them. They are really good, a tribute to the imagination of our director and the talent of our choristers. 
Right now I'm listening to the 2015 CD, which features an all-French lineup of composers.
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Latest reply: Dec 27, 2020
Looking for topics that don't yet have guide entries
Posted Dec 25, 2020
There's an expression "low-hanging fruit," which refers to a task that is easy. Or, it can mean the first tasks to be done.
I've been looking for things that don't yet have edited entries in the edited guide. For this I've used the search function (top right corner of the page). In Pliny, you only access *edited* entries. In Alabaster, you get unedited ones as well.
Here is some of what I've found:
No entry for "elk." Went extinct in Britain, but there are populations elsewhere in the northern hemisphere. Could be good for Britain's environment.
No entry for "irises" except as a part of the eye. Mentioned briefly in "Giving and getting flowers." Many people like to grow their own flowers. An entry on *growing* irises could be widely popular.
No entry for Joseph Haydn. I could submit the entry I wrote. Is it worth the effort? Haydn is extensively mentioned in entries on the string quartet, orchestral music, etc. On the other hand, there are separate entries for Mozart and Beethoven. And film composers such as Jerry Goldsmith and Joseph LoDuca. Haydn's music is in the soundtracks for 338 films Goldsmith compares with 134 (but 280 in "music department). LoDuca has compares with 100. But he' still alive, and could do more. Goldsmith died, but who is to say that his music might not be usedi n future movies?
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Latest reply: Dec 25, 2020
Christmas, turning from white to wet
Posted Dec 25, 2020
Christmas is less than half an hour away, and it is already kind of strange.
I've had telephone conversations with some other people in the Trailer park, and they keep hearing scary stories about the wind gusts up to 75 miles an hour that we'll likely get overnight and next morning.
75 miles an hour ? Really? Not even the national Weather Service is predicting that, though 60 or 65 mph gusts are possible "in some parts."
When I search for weather conditions for my specific area, I don't see gusts of more than 45 or 50 mph predicted. And the steady winds won't likely exceed 30 mph. I just stuck my had out the door, where we're getting 20 mph and occasional gusts of 35 mph. These are not frightening speeds.
Of course, wind speeds don't have to be ridiculously high to knock trees and power lines down *if* heavy snow is sitting on them, making them topheavy. But we are expected to get two inches f rain in the next 24 hours. That will wash any remaining snow from tree branches. Temps will be as high as 58 degrees F., so ice isn't going to weigh the trees down either.
I don't feel like being Chicken Little. The sky is not falling. I'm tired of scary headlines, which have been almost nonstop for almost a year.
Can't we have a peaceful Christmas? We can't get together with friends and/or relatives. I expect to fix myself a special feast*, but I will eat it along.
*Feast:
Breakfast: coffee, spinach/mushroom/sausage omelet, with two slices of toast and a banana
Lunch: tuna sandwich with tomato soup, key lime yogurt on fresh blueberries
Supper: Turkey, potatoes, and carrots in tomato sauce. sliced apple with peanut butter. Pumpkin bread with remaining yogurt.
There may be some Christmas cookies and other goodies between meals. My neighbors have given me boxes of goodies.
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Latest reply: Dec 25, 2020
Six degrees of connection
Posted Dec 23, 2020
Yes, it's usually six degrees of separation, but isn't connection more important?
Dirk Gently had an almost zen-like belief that connections in the universe pretty much guaranteed that he would get to his destination (solution to a mystery) no matter what direction he went.
It's just that the connections that help you may not be in the sequence you expect. Like a mouse in a maze, you may want to cut *through* walls for a more direct route to the cheese.
So, maybe Dirk Gently might have benefited from some streamlining, as could we all. But even a roundabout path is better than none at all. You get X amount of the way to your goal, and maybe someone else can get the rest of the way. Fermat's Last Theorem A521966 took centuries to solve, but every succeeding effort benefited from knowing what had *not* worked for earlier solvers. A521966 not that I could begin to explain how this process worked. I only know that the successful solver was, like Douglas Adams, a polymath. Someone who knew a lot about very different subjects.
Humanity is still able to make connections thanks to modern technology, including the Internet (Google et al streamline searches tremendously), though face-to-face connections are largely absent unless you're using Zoom or equivalents.
H2g2 has a wide geographical reach. Granted, if you don't know English, you'll need to use Google Translate and hope the translation is adequate. That other website that starts with W says that over two billion people speak English, making it the largest language. And four billion people use Google, with its translation capabilities.
So here's a lot of potential for connection between H2G2 and the rest of the Internet-using planet. And, again with the six degrees theme, those people who do use the Internet to connect may connect with the people around them. Indeed, they very likely do. Some people have an innate gift for connecting. You can call them opinion leaders if you wish (it's been done before).
And, even if some of our guide articles are on topics that are covered on other sites, we spend a lot of time on writing clearly and with an effort to make topics interesting. Like the mice who cut a direct path to the cheese, we want to be the ones who say what we say in such a memorable way that we are the ones who get read and appreciated the most.
Alas, Douglas Adams is not here to guide us into the future. We were lucky to have him as long as we did. I don't blame people who would rather we didn't link to that site that begins with W. It tries to cover *everything,* but things get lost in the shuffle. Yesterday I tried to use it to find global distribution of Cypress plants, but it divided cypresses into dozens of species. The Cypress as a family was not readily viewable on a distribution map.
The monthly user statistics continue to show that we score with our most readable entries on topics of broad interest. And we have an international reach.
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Latest reply: Dec 23, 2020
You never even called me by your name (country song parody)
Posted Dec 21, 2020
I mentioned this in another journal, but I think it deserves its own journal.
Steve Goodman collaborated with other country artists on a country song that would have *everything* that a country song could have.
This is my thread, so I'm allowed to give a link to a performance of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QUSQJQml40
Tears seem to be a permanent part of country songs
"It was all I could do to keep from crying
Sometimes it seemed so useless to remain."
And significant others who want to "improve" you
"You always tried to change me,
and that is why I'll always stay the same."
And standing in the rain (it rains a lot on the country)
"But I'll hang around as long as you will let me
I never minded standing in the rain.
You don't have to call me darling,'
but you never even called me buy my name."
And then he realizes, with mock horror, that he left out some big things like the death of Shep(the dog), mom going to prison, and Christmas. Nothing on the farm has been the same since. He worked Christmas into it by having mom break out at Christmas and driving the laundry truck into a train.
Just good silly fun! 
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Latest reply: Dec 21, 2020
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