seeline

I'm thinking pretty much the same thing, paul. (My copy *might* be here today, though...)

Yes, but we still don't know for certain what, exactly, was going on with him. Enough of this; we're going around in circles and will never be able to nail anything conclusively. As for the slippers, hey - I have serious problems getting a proper fit in most dress shoes (and many casual shoes) because of the way they're made. It hurts to wear them, and I end up with bruises and blisters if I keep them on for too long. I really need custom lasts, and a shoemaker - which is all unbelievably costly. Since I can't afford that, I compromise by kicking my shoes off whenever possible. I can absolutely see why someone might wear slippers in seemingly "inappropriate" settings, if only because I'd love to be able to pull that off every single day! (Not joking here at all.) I rest my case.

Well, back to square one, which is that we'd need all of these people (Bud, Monk, Lester, etc.) here, and alive, and we'd need a battery of docs and therapists to examine them and make decisions on what is/isn't happening with them physically and emotionally before we could come to any halfway absolute diagnoses. (Not wanting to imply that diagnosis is a science, or that it's ever terribly absolute, either.) So many things that appear to be solely psychological in nature can actually be indicative of serious organic/medical problems, just for starters... Which is one thing that burns me about Kay Jamison declaring that X, Y and Z were bipolar.

I don't need to, if only because I've spent a fair amount of time with kids and adults who are at various points on the autism spectrum myself. (Though I'm sure it would be an interesting conversation!) You're preaching to the choir, Allen. I've essentially been agreeing with you, while positing other "what ifs," because I honestly think they're valid questions and ideas...

Fine, and I really don't want to argue these points, but my personal feeling is that it's very easy to read too much into details and come out with conclusions that sound good but aren't necessarily watertight. (cf. my mentions of Kay Redfield Jamison and Freud above, re. their posthumous "analyses" of various artists and composers.) The thing is, none of us are Sherlock Holmes, and his reasoning only works so completely because Arthur Conan Doyle planned it that way. (Part of the reason that I'm saying this is that I'm very familiar with the methodology involved in both art history and music history.) All history is (imo) largely guesswork. We have artifacts - whether it's the Sutton Hoo ship burial hoard, Michelangelo's "Moses," some rare 78s by "obscure" blues singers, manuscript copies of maps or literary works, or kinescopes of "What's My Line?" (And whatever written records of a person's life might exist.) The rest is largely extrapolation, synthesis, and - like it or not - guesswork. And no matter how "right" one single pov/pronouncement might be, it's rarely the only valid one. (imo.)

Which is part of what I was alluding to earlier. And the side effects of the antipsychotic drugs used at that time were very extreme - often causing permanent neurological damage. I have seen that personally. So yeah, I'm going from my own observations as well. Either way, it's still largely guesswork. Your mention of Lester Young wearing bedroom slippers to a session could be "about" any number of things, from what you suggested to foot pain to him simply feeling more comfortable in slippers and not caring if anyone thought it was odd to... [ad infinitum]. We'll never know for certain.

MG, what Windows OS are you using? I haven't seen any prompts about "Dr. Watson" since I was using Win 98... which was a while ago.

I think "speculating" is valid, but definitive posthumous diagnoses (a la Kay Jamison and Freud) are another thing altogether.

Or maybe it's fairer to say wrong assumptions...?

Again, while I appreciate what you're saying, there's no way any of us can be sure of what was actually occurring, or why.... Diagnosing from a distance seems to be an armchair sport for some people in the mental health profession, with famous musicians, artists, etc. who've been dead for centuries. I guess I find myself getting impatient with that, especially when pronouncements are made with certainty. (Kay Redfield Jamison and Freud both come to mind.) There are just far too many variables that we have no way of knowing about, and I think we often read into people's lives in ways that say more about us than about the person (or people) we're retro-analyzing.

Allen, while I hear you on that, I'm also thinking that some of it could have come from side effects from psychotropic drugs. Tom Harrell has been dealing with that for many years now. And there wasn't much around in Monk's time - at least, the drugs that were commonly used at that time have very intense side effects, compared to some of the newer antipsychotics, SSRIs, etc. Agreed!

Yeah - excellent definition/description, and I can see how the possibility of Apergers (or something similar) could relate to Monk. Though knowing how rudimentary our understanding of autism (and the "spectrum" of disorders) is to this day, I can't imagine that docs in the 60s and 70s would have even caught that, or known how to deal with it if they had. (We still weren't out from under the profound misunderstanding of such conditions that came via psychoanalytic folks like Bruno Bettelheim.) I grew up around some autistic kids (I'm in my early 50s) and *nobody* understood what was wrong or how to help them. Most often, autistic people - and those with Aspergers - were mistakenly seen as "retarded," as so-called "idiot savants" and worse. I'm glad Monk was able to do as well as he did, out there in the real world. (Truly.) And I'm very much looking forward to reading the book - my copy should be here early this week.

I thought you might like it...

I'm sorry to hear this, though also hopeful that her next job is a good one and something that she really wants to do. She's one of the best - and nicest - customer service people I've met/talked with, anywhere.

There's a fair amount of Barry Sisters material in print, if you do some looking. I like them a lot, along with a lot of Yiddish theatre music and Yiddish-language pop from the 40s-mid 50s. But... that's just me. You can listen to a song by them here. (Reissued as part of the Yiddish Radio Project.)

Chet Baker & the Mariachi Brass? Nothing so (umm) "interesting." (or mariachi-like, really.) Brass bands are a big thing on the coast, in the state of Sinaloa. People in Mexico and the US have been doing remixes of the music for a while, combining it with hip hop and so on. Both kinds of music (old-school and the newer pop stuff) are called banda. It's kinda cool. I have some recordings of brass bands from various parts of Cuba, also Asia and Africa. The rhythms are so different than what most US brass bands play; I'd imagine that's equally true for the colliery bands over your way. I'm on my way over. I'll bring some pakoras and samosas. Deal! Oh, and... welcome back, MG!!!

I guess my collection of Bollywood scores from the 40s-60s might qualify, but I'm sure *someone* here would like them. (TTK, maybe.) So... maybe the Mexican and Indian brass band music I've got? btw, I love chansons and a fair amount of French pop music. And the kinds of sermons TMG and JSngry have in their collections.

Smithsonian Folkways has been doing CD-Rs for years now - before that, they did cassettes on demand, with full liners...

Well, i was anti-iPod myself, until I got one! (after having a really bad experience with a supposedly comparable player.) if the e-reading device is a good one, no, you won't skim any more than you might already with a physical book. I've only used the Kindle (v. 1 and 2) and it's *not* like trying to read on a computer screen. It's not exactly like paper, either, but it's far closer than a backlit computer screen could ever be (at least, the kind we have now). E-ink also works at quite a few different angles, much like "real" books - and unlike computer monitors and most flat-screen TVs.

i personally can't stand it, but it seems like a lot of people use it for technical-type text. i can see that it might work reasonably for that, but it sure is *not* something i would be able to listen to for any length of time. apparently it's also a big plus for visually impaired people, which makes sense.

Bev, I kind of hate to bring this up, but your post is reminding me of your (and my) objections to MP3 players - before you (and I, and a lot of other people) bought one and tried it out. I bet eventual price drops will make e-readers pretty common, though that's probably some distance in the future. You might even find yourself owning one eventually!

I'm a huge fan of both the search function and the note-taking capabilities, also the highlighting - and the fact that all of those notes are automatically saved to a separate text file. I've had mine since March now, and still love it - and, as you say, it's a lighter way to travel. (Both figuratively and literally.) I still love "real" books, and there are distinct advantages to each medium (paper and ebook), as well as disadvantages. Overall, I'm happy with both, and I think they can coexist peacefully. One thing that I really need to be able to do is to sell or donate a lot of my personal library of books. it's been 7 years since I last thinned it out, and I need to do so again. Part of this has to do with very practical things, like the cost (and stress) of storing and moving lots of books. With used books being so easily available now (on the internet), I generally buy what little I want from used booksellers and/or trade for them via Paperback Swap.com And I borrow a lot from the public library. But the Kindle is a godsend in many ways - so much text can be stored on it, from books that I largely don't *need* to own in physical form anymore. I'll always love books - they're one of my greatest passions. In fact, I was deeply skeptical about e-reading devices before getting one myself, mainly because I didn't think there was decent enough technology to make reading on this kind of device a pleasurable experience. But I was wrong about that, insofar as the Kindle is concerned. (I've not had the chance to try any other e-reading devices, so I have no way to make comparisons, but I'm sure that some are pretty awkward and hard on the eyes.) I also love the changeable font size option! It's a godsend for me (at my age).

Yeah, I saw that last week. The writer said that he was being extremely tongue-in-cheek, but a lot of people seem to have missed the humor. Oh well.

Not that I was planning on seeing this, but if I'd ever entertained a single stray thought in that direction, you just talked me out of it. Really appreciate your POV on this.

Yes - check a few pages back in this thread...