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I think it is more to the point that the solutions seem pretty unpalatable to the population at large. Some things may not be as painful as they seem up front (transition to more renewable energy sources). But let's say the only way to "fix" climate change was to mandate the entire global population move to a 90% vegan diet and to completely forgo air travel. I'm not saying this is the case, but that does seem to be where the scientific recommendations are heading. How many people would willingly go along with that, and, more to the point, would support politicians who enforced it? With a few exceptions, not many. The problem is with the people in Western "democracies", not the politicians.

My condolences.

I believe (but am not 100% sure) that this is a different, non-tainted study showing that hydroxychloroquine is not an effective Covid treatment. https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid19-hydroxychloroquine-who-1.5596689

I did see that. Certainly ironic. My gut says they were right but for the wrong reasons. Regardless, I certainly won't be taking any hydroxychloroquine any time soon.

He should be very careful of what he is tweeting about. An open call to the Army to take out lowlife scum. I mean who knows how they might interpret that...

I've generally not minded train travel from New York to DC. Train travel from Detroit to Chicago used to be pretty good, with the emphasis on "used to." I've done the train from New York to Boston and it takes far too long, but isn't too bad. It's quite frankly ridiculous how long it takes to get between Toronto and Montreal on train (it doesn't help that virtually all the time you are routed up through Ottawa first ). But I lost my love of trains on the Chicago-New York route, which I did a couple of times (almost always coming in 4-6 hours late) and the New Orleans-Chicago train ride was truly terrible. There are all kinds of reasons train travel in North America is worse than the European experience, but the number one factor is that freight railroads are a much, much bigger player in North America and they own all the rails (except for Amtrak's Northeast Corridor) and thus passenger trains are always put second and quite literally are shunted to a side track while waiting for a freight train to go by, losing hours along the way for a particularly long train ride. The on-time performance of trains in the US is very poor outside a very few exceptions, including the Chicago-Milwaukee run interestingly enough. This is a structural (and political) issue that I do not believe will ever be resolved.

I have heard this (I can't remember if I bought the CD or just had a download). I wouldn't say it really stands up to repeated listening, but now that it has come up, I'm curious and will try to listen again. There was a self-produced CD called something like the Zen of the Bicycle Courier, which was sort of assembled from field recordings of bike couriers from Chicago back in the late 90s. Unfortunately, it didn't really live up to its promise, and I foisted it off on someone who was way more into cycling than I was.

It's been known for some time that asymptomatic carries are a big part of the problem, but I'm not sure anyone has really put a number to it yet. There is some research that seems to indicate 40-50% of people are essentially asymptomatic but potentially contagious. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/30/could-nearly-half-of-those-with-covid-19-have-no-idea-they-are-infected If true, that means there is almost no way to really get a handle on this without truly widescale testing. We're certainly not there yet, though in Ontario they are finally hitting their internal level of 20,000 tests a day and the number of new cases is heading down slowly. Personally, I'd like to see much more randomized testing and eventually an attempt to test anyone who is being called back into work by Sept.

You guys are trying to drag me back in... In this case, I will be strong (I must have 97% of the Mobley material as singles), but in another week or so I'll order the Desmond set.

I think it is an interesting approach for lesser-known writers, like Dawn Powell, Robert Maxwell, perhaps John Dos Passos and others where this is likely the only way this material will stay in print. It's probably not necessary for the Twains, Faulkners, Fitzgeralds and Hemingways of the literary world. It often is the only way that the short stories stay in print, though, maddeningly, some of the time they do selected stories and sometime they do the complete stories for that period. One might argue that this is not too dissimilar from the Mosaic treatment... I'm not sure, but I don't think that is accurate. Rights revert back to the authors and estates in many cases. I do know that many of these are held up by the estates, and I would imagine the major publishers would find it in their interest to cut a deal if they were the rights holders.

I imagine the estate wouldn't come to terms, and they have had to wait so long for these pieces to go into the public domain. I believe it is the same with the Fitzgerald but they had a bit more to work with so published the first LOA volume a while back. Due to the various extensions of copyright, it takes quite a while for these volumes to come out in the States. What is interesting is that Harper, apparently realizing that quite a few work will go into the public domain have come up with an e-book bundle that gathers up 9 of his novels, ending with The Garden of Eden. https://www.amazon.ca/Collected-Works-Ernest-Hemingway-Nine-Book-ebook/dp/B00IRDG7L8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=YPNVHA5GE2TM&keywords=collected+works+of+ernest+hemingway&qid=1590754578&sprefix=collected+ernest%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1 That said, this seems to be only available in Canada, as the copyright laws are different (looser) here, though they are being brought in closer alignment with the States due to the NAFTA re-negotiations.

I only just found out that Stephin Merritt (of the Magnetic Fields) had a case of Covid but recovered. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/26/stephin-merritt-magnetic-fields-quickies-interview Marianne Faithfull also beat it. I was worried about her. While Jackson Browne is in his early 70s and is definitely in a high risk category, he apparently had a quite mild case of Covid. Christopher Cross has had a much more severe case but does seem to be recovering.

There is a quite obscure CD (& leader) Russell Baba: Earth Prayer. With Andrew Hill on piano! Hill very rarely recorded as a sideman, particularly this late in his career (1992). I did track this down (and may even still have it). I truly can't remember that much about the music, and it is likely for Hill completists only.

This one (Gyorgy Sandor on Columbia (Sony)) looks like it is of pretty recent vintage: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Album-Collection-Gyorgy-Sandor/dp/B07Z761RMM/ref=pd_sbs_15_3/135-6325363-3848646?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07Z761RMM&pd_rd_r=3c98c445-54f7-4c03-9a7a-a10ef1bb8e3f&pd_rd_w=zwQ4c&pd_rd_wg=53YQp&pf_rd_p=12b8d3e2-e203-4b23-a8bc-68a7d2806477&pf_rd_r=19BN12FD489PN19XZFBV&psc=1&refRID=19BN12FD489PN19XZFBV I haven't sprung for the box set, but most of the individual albums appear to be on the usual streaming services. I was listening to some of the Bartok Piano Concertos and am moving over to Mikrokosmos now.

Not that long ago. This was 1993-4. Actually Ontario didn't outright ban smoking in bars until 2005-6 (and this was basically the same in Montreal, though they were allowing smoking on patios a bit longer). Toronto itself was slightly faster - 2001 to ban smoking in restaurants and 2004 smoking was banned in bars.

It is back to being a deal-breaker for me (not that it is really relevant). But I spent an astonishing amount of time around smokers that year. And as I point out to incredulous Millennials, you could still smoke inside all bars and most restaurants and even in the basement of Hart House at UToronto! Sometimes I get a kick out of reading the advice to Dan Savage among others, and the mind boggles that there are people who tolerate being in relationships with major drug addicts (cocaine, meth, heroin, etc.) and are still trying to make things work out.

It may be more subconscious, but people definitely do consider all kinds of trade-offs, particularly in early stages of going out together. Anytime you've heard someone say that X or Y is a "deal-breaker," then they are engaged in this sort of thinking. Of course things change. When I was a callow youth of 19, smoking was a deal-breaker. In my mid 20s, I was hanging out with an "occasional" smoker. Problem was she smoked under stress, and grad school was stressful, so there you go. If she had decided to get more serious, it would have been a hard decision, and I probably would have waived my objections to the smoking...

Just read that Patrick Ewing has tested positive for Covid-19. https://www.cbc.ca/sports/basketball/nba/new-york-knicks-patrick-ewing-coronavirus-1.5581608 Best wishes for a quick recovery for him.

Ontario public schools will remain remote learning through end of school year (late June for us). Some talk of doing some pilots over the summer to see what social distancing in Sept. looks like. Basically in many, though not all, schools there will not be enough rooms and certainly not enough teachers to thin classes out to 10 or fewer (average class size about 25 in Toronto last year). Not following what's going on in Quebec as closely. I think they were going to try to open schools except Montreal, but there may have been some setbacks. In general, I do think the Quebec premiere is moving too fast with reopening.

The pre-order is a pretty sweet deal, so I took the plunge. Only a few more days and we'll get the rest of the tracks.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/masks-fan-pods-and-sanitation-foggers-arkansas-concert-to-go-ahead-amid-virus-1.5574481 There's an awful lot in the article itself that crosses the line into politics, but it is interesting that concert promoters (and the licensing authorities) are ready to give it a try. It strikes me as incredibly foolish and premature, and I'll leave it at that.

You mean Steppin' Out? I have that as a TOCJ. Haven't spun in a while. I don't think I've ever even heard of his Don't Look Back LP, so definitely hope that gets reissued. Don't know anything about this outfit, but apparently they have put a remastered Don't Look Back out on vinyl. https://thevinylfactory.com/news/harold-vick-dont-look-back-vinyl/

The province is fairly close to reopening libraries on a drop-off/pick-up basis, which is less than ideal, but better than nothing. Presumably Toronto will follow suit, though they may need a bit more time to get organized. I assume that means they will expand the hold system and there will be no browsing. Not really sure how we will arrange to get a time slot for the pick up, but they'll figure something out. This means that the clock is now restarting on the library books I borrowed before this all went down. And I definitely need to pivot back to print from all the e-books. At least the weather is a bit nicer, and I have been able to go outside more often. Anyway, I will now buckle down and get through Camus's The Plague (I really have enjoyed what I have read so far, but there have been so many distractions...) and Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Haven't really settled on what's after that, but maybe the next major book will be the Grossman translation of Don Quixote.

I've gone into other stores, including re-opened hardware stores, but I've never really been much of a crate digger, and thus will be able to hold off for quite a while. Bookstores are more my weakness, but even so, I think I can wait until at least the late fall, and then it will be mask for sure and probably gloves.

I was starting to get a bit panicky, but I read it again and the article says the first PRESSING has sold out, and there will be another pressing by the end of May. And this is confirmed on the Mosaic site. I know there is definitely some built-in demand for this set, but 2500 units in a couple of weeks?