“The secret life of vegetable peelers”

Kitchen tool as pencil sharpener? Yes. It’s part of the secret life of vegetable peelers.

And while we’re on the subject: the late, great Joe Ades at work.

The oldest (?) man in New York City

“Even though life is disgusting sometimes, I’ll get up again”: so says the oldest (?) man in New York City. His name is Carl Berner, and he is 108.

Rova Saxophone Quartet

Gelvin Noel Gallery
Krannert Art Museum
Champaign, Illinois
March 18, 2010

Bruce Ackley, soprano and tenor
Jon Raskin, baritone and alto
Steve Adams, alto
Larry Ochs, tenor

The Blocks (Adams)
Cobalt Filaments (Adams)
Konitz (Raskin)
Slip Slide Memorandum (Adams)
Contours of the Glass Head (Ackley - Adams - Ochs - Raskin)

It was a rare pleasure to hear the Rova Saxophone Quartet (est. 1977) in east-central Illinois. What most impressed me in the performance: the communication among the musicians and the beauty and range of sound they drew from their instruments. Glances, sideways movements, and hand signals marked shifts from one compositional episode to another, some wholly notated, some most likely recipes for rhythmic or tonal textures, flutters, overtones, wails. The sheer sound of the Rova quartet is an inspiring thing — sometimes massive and proclamatory, sometimes densely foggy, sometimes luminous and airy, always deeply disciplined and deeply expressive.

It’s difficult — and ultimately unnecessary — to slap a label onto the group’s work. Is it “jazz”? Is it “new music”? As Duke Ellington always insisted, there are only two kinds of music. Rova’s is the good kind.

Many thanks to Jason Finkelman, who runs the Sudden Sound concert series at the Krannert and brought Rova to Champaign.

More
Rova:Arts/Rova Saxophone Quartet

Deep talk v. small talk

From the New York Times:

It may sound counterintuitive, but people who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier, said Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona who published a study on the subject.

Read and discuss:

Roni Caryn Rabin, Talk Deeply, Be Happy? (New York Times)

WNEW jingles

“Nice things happen to people who listen to radio eleven-three-oh in the metropolitan area”: just one assertion from almost nine minutes of WNEW jingles. I’m realizing only now how much of this stuff has stuck from my kidhood in “the metropolitan area.”

My favorites: “It’s springtime in New York” and “Nice things.”

A related post
Five radios

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Oh Kosmos! Ah Ireland!

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

It is a minor but abiding happiness to know that I am not a quarter-Irish but half-Irish. A cousin did the research just a few years ago. Yes, our grandmother’s people came over from England, as my dad had been told. But what that meant was that they sailed to the States from England (Liverpool). They were Irish. Ah Ireland! Represent! Partly!

Fred Rogers and Pittsburgh

From an article on Fred Rogers and Pittsburgh, seven years after Rogers’ death and two years after PBS stopped offering Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood as a daily show (shame on you, PBS):

In November, WQED, the local public television station here, decided to reinstall the Neighborhood of Make-Believe set at its studio where Mr. Rogers filmed his show from 1968 to 2001, with the intention that a couple of hundred people might show up to reminisce. Instead, a line stretched down the sidewalk, and more than 5,000 people over two days took the tour.

Read more:

Sean D. Hamill, Pittsburgh Keeps Alive the Legacy of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (New York Times)

One bright note: PBS has online a handful of excerpts and complete shows. Go to PBS KIDS, and navigate through the Flash until you find a list of shows. The Neighborhood offerings include two complete operas, Spoon Mountain and Windstorm in Bubbleland (here called Neighborhood Opera).

Related posts
Blaming Mister Rogers
“The Essay Writing Song”
Lady Elaine’s can (with a comment from Betty Aberlin!)

A man and a moon

A well-dressed man and a moon, at work for their respective employers, Savvi Formalwear and the Moonrise Hotel, on Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis, Missouri.

[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

Happiness and joy

What’s the difference?

The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.

J.D. Salinger, “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period,” in Nine Stories (1953)

Related posts
A Salinger catalogue
A Salinger sentence
Another Salinger catalogue
“[D]ark, wordy, academic deaths”

Pockets and purses

A New York Times slideshow: the contents of pockets and purses.