@thane16 Aaron Copland owes much to Charles Ives. It’s the whole “standing on the shoulders of giants” foundation and progression that is art. Copland’s music (the more programmatic pieces, anyway … not so much the avant garde ones from later in his career) do give a sweeping sense of Americana. Maybe it’s that sense of nostalgia that appeals to…[Read more]

@thane16 Love Fanfare for the Common Man! I think part of the reason I love Copland’s music is because of his use of open fifths. Such resonant chords. In high school my wind ensemble played El Salon Mexico. Quite a challenge for a small-town Indiana band, but we loved it.

And I love it that as a young’un, you thought ELP composed that music.…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u Aaron Copland is my favorite composer. He kept his private life very quiet, while composing gorgeous music across a spectrum that ranged from the programmatic style he’s best known for, to a more avant garde style. Appalachian Spring moved me to tears the first time I heard it, and still does.

@mudlark I’m sorry about the death of…[Read more]

@thane16 Wow, what an experience! Did you continue playing oboe after that?

I had something similar happen last April, when my five-piece local band was still rehearsing together. We were about a third of the way into our first piece when I fainted. I was only out for a few seconds. Fortunately we were seated in chairs on a thick rug in the home…[Read more]

@thane16 Oboe is a gorgeous instrument! Also very difficult to play. IMO, oboe is the most challenging woodwind instrument, and french horn is the most challenging brass instrument. Both make a gorgeous sound … when played well. Mastering the technique to create that beautiful sound is what’s so difficult. I admire the players who do it!

@thane16 Congratulations on your upcoming conducting job! Brahms is challenging, but mastering those pieces gives us such a thrill of achievement.

My father taught music in public schools until he switched gears to teach counseling and teacher education at the university level. He was primarily a high school band director, but early in his career…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent Well, who’s to say? If cassette tapes can come back into vogue, then why not VHS tapes? Though it could be that the player mechanism for cassette tapes is much simpler than for VHS, so there’s that. We gave away our VHS tapes back in 2011, so I think there was still demand for them then.

@devilishrobby I’m so sorry about your health issues. This must be a scary, overwhelming experience. I hope that your wait for a pacemaker/defibrillator is not long, and that once it’s implanted, it restores your heart back to proper function.

@dentarthurdent Wow, you scored in the collectibles department! LPs and turntables are indeed in demand.…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent Pleased to hear your father’s Leicas were ‘collectable’, it’s nice when that happens.

Yes, it is! That made me so happy, especially since a charitable organization we support benefited from it.

Happy New Year to you and all! @mudlark @winston @janetteb @ps1l0v3y0u @thane16 and of course @craig

@dentarthurdent Fair point about having the camera with you. The FZ300 is too large to fit into a pocket. So I use the neck strap, but it can be cumbersome. I use my cellphone the way you do your camera. If I don’t have my FZ300 with me, or I just don’t want to be encumbered by it, then I use my cellphone camera. For landscape shots, it often…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent The FZ300 has a 25-600mm focal range, so yours is quite impressive. The main advantage the FZ300 has over some other bridge cameras is that it maintains a constant f/2.8 aperture across the entire zoom, so it’s good for low-light and distance shots. I really like both the FZ200 and FZ300 image stabilization systems, as well. And…[Read more]

@thane16 @syzygy Good to hear from you! And thank you for that bit of trivia on how much a cloud weighs. A hundred elephants, eh? Heavier than I would have guessed. As is often the case with this group, I learned something!

@winston I’m glad that you are able to celebrate with family! Sadly, we don’t have any family in our immediate vicinity, so we visit with friends. Still, it’s a jolly time, and we are doing our own share of overeating.

@dentarthurdent Interesting that you mentioned your Konica cameras! Our first digital camera was a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z5,…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent I was only teasing about the “bragging”! I’m glad that you have this opportunity to swim daily. You enjoy it, and that’s so important in life. Our daytime hours are similar in the summer. Like you, I love having such long days.

The most time-consuming part for me (and I think it’s the same with you) is weeding out all the photos I…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent OK, now you’re just bragging! Oh, to be able to swim in the ocean at this time of year (especially in our hemisphere). Come to think of it, here I’m not sure I’d do it any time of year. Most of the time, the water is too cold for me. Some folks here do polar plunges. I’m not one of them!

Re: your digital photos, I could not do…[Read more]

@janetteb Thank you! Merry Yuletide/winter solstice/summer solstice/Christmas/holiday season to you and all!

This isn’t exactly a Doctor Who memory, but it’s related to Doctor Who. My husband found this hilarious Rowan Atkinson sketch that was remarkably prescient:

The comments are pretty funny, too.

@ps1l0v3y0u The “rage bait” is so true. I engage far less with social media than I used to, but I still see a lot of it. And there’s been a big increase in AI-generated content to attract clicks. It’s sad to me that people of all political stripes fall for it … and share it.

@dentarthurdent Yup. The whole “individual rights over the public good” mantra took an ugly turn during the pandemic, and it doesn’t seem to be losing steam.

What’s strange to me is the speed with which many people forgot how bad it was. Governments, along with health care and public health personnel, were feeling their way through terrifying…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent Ah, thanks for clarifying that. Now I know the particular “why” you were questioning. Why do it that way? Dunno. Maybe there’s an underlying social media reference I didn’t pick up on, though I can’t think of anything done alphabetically. Even my “Friends” list is ordered, not alphabetically, but some other way.

@ps1l0v3y0u I…[Read more]