My notions of art were formed during high school. Three years of art history as part of a core of humanities classes made me something of an art snob. We memorized paintings and artists the way chemistry students memorize elements and atomic weights. It took decades to shake the snobbery, decades to go from “beauty…
I spent several hours yesterday morning doing a software rollout. It was a meticulous process, and I find that if I have music playing in the background for that kind of work, it blocks out everything else and I can focus better. I spent those hours listening to SiriusXM 70s on 7. I had a…
I found myself listening to Metallica’s …And Justice For All album after I finished a long day of meetings. The noise acts as a kind of palette-cleanser for the brain, blocking out much of everything else until my brain has had a chance to put everything back in order. Ironically, the loud, metal music actually…
Apple announced recently that Apple Music will now have an option for even higher fidelity music files. This did little to stir my blood. I realized long ago that the limits of my own video and audio perception are much lower than those technology is producing. This makes things like ultra-high definition and “spacial” and…
All the girls in the family have been watching a lot of Pink videos and singing Pink songs lately. This has been my introduction to Pink, whose songs I’d never heard before mainly because I listened to other stuff. I knew there was a performer called Pink, of course, but that was about the limit…
Someone mentioned that we recently passed the 30 year anniversary of the release of R.E.M.’s Out of Time album. That was a watershed album for me. Indeed, R.E.M. turned out to be the soundtrack of my college years, and the years immediately after. I knew of R.E.M. before college. In high school, during the Los…
In yesterday’s Washington Post, I read the obituary of Junior Mance, a jazz pianist who died on January 17 at the age of 92. I’d never heard of Mance, but his obituary was interesting (as obituaries often are) and it occurred to me that I could sample some of his music. I searched for Junior Mance on…
The weather cooperated with us this year. More often than not, when we leave for Florida in December, the weather here is cold and nasty. By the time we cross the St. Mary’s River from George in to Florida, the skies are clear, and the temperatures are warm. I open the windows to soak it…
Now and then, I see one of those memes asking parents to name something from their youth that their kids wouldn’t recognize or understand. There are plenty of obvious answers to this, but one occurred to me recently as I listened to my kids ask Alexa to play various songs for them (many of them…
The Little Man has been very much into watching Elmo videos on YouTube, as well as videos of things like Wheels on the Bus and after about 100 times, they can drive you absolutely nuts. So the other evening while Kelly was out at her girls night, I did a quick search for what I…
I have recently discovered a great way to entertain the little Z-man. In the early evening, when he’s getting ready to start climbing the walls, we go out to the new Kia. I put the Z-man in the drivers seat, I climb into the passenger seat. We put on the radio and we just hang…