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I snuck in Elizabeth Bowen's The Hotel, as it was short. It was ok, nothing amazing. In a few weeks I'll be tackling The House in Paris -- and some day The Little Girls and few of the others. I've just launched into Platonov's The Foundation Pit. I think it will be a bit challenging, but looking forward to it. This will officially wrap up my 6 or so month foray into Russian authors. Definitely time for a change. But I perhaps will end up easing myself into European and American fiction by way of Mittel-Europa. Gregor Von Rezzori and probably some Kafka. Maybe even some Stephan Zweig. We'll see... Quite excited about An Ermine in Czernopol, but I'm going to hold off a bit longer on Rezzori's other novels.

Oddly disc 6 of the Farlow is the only disc of any Mosaic that wouldn't rip for me. I tried two MacBooks and two disc drives and ended up ripping the Elite instead. I've never noticed the distortion. Well, now I am curious/nervous. I'm almost certain I ripped the set shortly after purchasing, and I can't remember any problems, but I guess I should go check it out...

In terms of jazz instrumental standards (as opposed to vocal standards), I would probably also count "There's a boat dat's leaving soon." But maybe that's just me. There are so many great Gershwin standards, though I think my favorite of all is "Someone to Watch Over Me," though that's from Oh Kay! which has relatively few other hits (and arguably just that one). So I was checking something else on my hard drive and found the oddest Gershwin medley: Someone to Watch Over Me sandwiched between Summertime and Porgy. How odd. This is on Dorothy Ashby's Concierto de Aranjuez.

I like the Farmer-Golson Jazztet box, but haven't pulled it out in forever. I really ought to soon. Congrats to whomever got one on this go-around.

Porgy and Bess?

I saw the Swingle Singers in 1988 or 1989. I really can't recall too much of the program, but I think it was far more traditional vocal jazz (Lullaby of Birdland, etc.) than anything pulled from the Bach playbook. But it was a long time ago... Wow - my memory is totally shot. I actually turned up the program on-line - it was Dec. 1987 and there were two short Bach pieces on the program. But rather than being primarily jazz, it was primarily a Christmas themed concert. If interested, it is here: http://media.aadl.org/documents/pdf/ums/programs_19871210e.pdf

Brad, that was exactly the outlook of Mickey Mantle. I believe that all of the men in his family died before they reached 50. Mantle assumed that he would die young too, so he didn't take care of himself. I gather that he was very surprised to turn 50. I knew someone in grad school where almost no one in her family had made it out of their mid 40s! So she definitely had a party-hard, die-young mentality. Wonder where she is now? She'd be about 43... Most of the folks in my family made it to 80 and a few to 90, so we'll see.

I remember vague rumors, but they certainly didn't put those front and center as the reason for their opposition. Back then, private lives were far more off-limits to the press (indeed, it really did seem to be Gary Hart and then Clinton that kind of brought down the walls). Reagan claimed to be opposing it since he didn't want one more federal holiday (to save the tax-payers) and didn't think it was reasonable to downgrade Washington's and/or Lincoln's birthdays in favor of MLK. That's how I remember it.

Apparently, Scotland (and Canada) still get Victoria Day off. Plus, every time the Royals get hitched they can call a bank holiday in the UK. Must be nice.

It's combined in different ways from the original books. It starts with Fritz Kocher's Essays but there is a separate story called "A Schoolboy's Diary" and it ends with "Hans". I enjoyed Hello Moscow, though I don't think it is for everyone, as it is pretty bleak. I'm about 1/3 through Carter's Nights at the Circus. It's entertaining, and it is starting to get just a bit Felliniesque as this reporter goes undercover as a clown to join a touring circus and see if the main attraction (a winged woman) is a fraud or genuine.

I think I've seen him [Mabern] in the last year or two, and it was a bit of a surprise, but maybe I am just misremembering. I do know that I somewhat foolishly passed up a chance to see him in Vancouver last summer. A few days from now (Thurs actually) I plan on seeing Camper van Beethoven play in Toronto. I haven't seen them live in some time, probably at least 5 or 6 years. I've always enjoyed their gigs, though I have started feeling old after the shows...

RIP. I have to admit I've known of Stone for a long time but never read anything by him. I even moved a copy of Outerbridge Reach several times without ever reading it. I may still get to it one of these days, but I suspect that A Hall of Mirrors (his first) is likely to be the novel that works best for me.

That was not there either but it is pretty incredible. I think I'll add it to my blog post. I saw it in Paris in my youth. They used to have impressionists and post-impressionists in the Jeu de Paume. Don't know where they are now. It was very controversial with the art students to whom I taught art history and who were being taught to draw "correctly" :-) If I recall a very small handful of French impressionists or really proto-impressionists are at the Louvre. Almost everything impressionist to say 1930s or early 40s is in Musee d'Orsay (which is where red onions is now) and then after that moves to the Pompidieu Centre with some exceptions. I believe cubists are mostly grouped with the contemporary art. And of course there are a bunch of other museums that break up this flow -- Ongeries, Museum of the city of Paris, etc. Never enough time when visiting Paris...

That was not there either but it is pretty incredible. I think I'll add it to my blog post. It was a nice show, though if I am being honest only 5 of the 19 blew me away (the later ones), but absolutely worth checking out, since I am figuratively down the street.

I saw a compact but quite nice exhibit of 19 still lifes by Cezanne at the Art Gallery of Hamilton (Ontario). It was on display in Philadelphia at the Barnes Foundation last year. There are three weeks left. It's probably worth trying to see if you are in Toronto, Buffalo or Detroit. Not sure how much beyond that I'd travel to see it. I have blogged about the exhibit and have images of a few of the pieces and some that probably should have been in the show (had insurance and such not been prohibitive): http://erics-hangout.blogspot.ca/2015/01/cezanne-in-hamilton.html

Some Bowen novels are more avant garde than others. My wife and I were both defeated by the complexity of The House in Paris, but very taken by The Heat of the Day and The Death of the Heart. Bowen's "The Little Girls" is terrific, IMO. I'll try to get to it, one of these days. The Toronto Public Library's copy doesn't circulate (the number of novels they have locked up is kind of mind-blowing) but I can get one out of Robarts. I just finished Platonov's Happy Moscow. While parts of it are bleak and the plot itself is pretty thin, I liked it quite a bit. For me, it works better than Soul, which I found a bit tedious. I'll see how it measures up against The Foundation Pit in another week or so. I'm following it with Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus to which it is tangentially related through the figure of a woman entertainer flying through the air. I've been planning to read this novel for years now, and it is time. I'm also working through Walser's A Schoolboy's Diary, which is another interesting NYRB offering.

I have to admit that I found Elizabeth Bowen's To the North a bit unfulfilling. I expect I will like The Hotel (her first) and The Heat of the Day more. Jury is definitely still out on The House in Paris and The Death of the Heart. I did enjoy Krzhizhanovsky's Autobiography of a Corpse (NYRB) quite a bit. He is sometimes compared to Kafka, and I think that is generally a fair comparison. I'm just starting Platonov's Happy Moscow (NYRB) now. It looks promising, but it is an unfinished novel, so there is always some disappointment that he didn't see it through.

Speaking of surreal, there is this British show (not sure how influential it was, but it seems a precursor to Monty Python, etc.). I have to admit, I have the Region 2 DVD but haven't watched all the way through, but I will one of these days!

Barney Kessel perhaps?

I saw very little jazz in 2014, at least that I paid for, so it really comes down to Rudresh Mahanthappa and Alexander Hawkins (2 different shows) at the Vancouver Jazz Festival and a few free gigs around that time. I believe that included The Partisans, a group from the UK. I really focused on classical concerts in 2014, really too many to sort through, though I do recall a pretty rousing Beethoven's 9th Symphony at the TSO. Also a couple of Nielsen symphonies at the TSO. The last concert of the VSO of its 2013/14 season was also quite good, including Britten's Passacaglia from Peter Grimes, Elgar's Violin Concerto (played by James Ehnes) and ending with Respighi's Pines of Rome. Definitely a Vancouver highlight. The Toronto highlight so far would be Anne-Sophie Mutter and her group doing Mendelssohn's Octet and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.

$30 is the most I can remember* spending on a few ultra-rare (at the time) BN imports -- most likely Andrew Hill and Bobby Hutcherson. Of course these were later reissued, but that only applies for BN. Other stuff disappears forever, so you just never know. * If I did spend more than $30, I must be blocking it out...

It's somewhat interesting that I have been thinking a lot about high school education and testing for this creative writing project I am working on. Obviously 8th grade isn't quite there, but it is close, and I have been having some strong flashbacks to my youth. I remember clearly when we had to give oral reports in either 7th or 8th grade, and these were video taped. (Probably for some initiative where the school was trying to get a grant -- things were simpler in those days when teachers weren't really questioned about what they were up to.) Mine was on Wolfe and Montcalm and the Battle on the Plains of Abraham. This is a case where I knew it was an important turning point, but I didn't know enough about the larger geopolitics to realize that France probably would have lost their North American colonies at some point or another, simply because they couldn't convince enough French people (peasants?) to come over and settle. Still, looking back, I thought it was a pretty decent topic for middle school. It is going to be very interesting seeing what my children learn and how much U.S. history I have to teach them on top of the Canadian history they will be learning.

I think it varies quite a bit. It would be very rare for 8th graders to have to pass a history exit exam to graduate, but they might well have to pass a history course, and this looks like it might be a pop quiz from such a course. Most of the time these things are not expected to show off demonstrated mastery of a subject, but just that the kids were paying at least some attention. Usually my history classes from middle school to high school would have had a part that was multiple choice, some matching (or even more frequently sequencing of key events) and then some short essays. The final exam (by high school) would have leaned towards more essay questions. You have to remember that teachers have so many students and only so many hours in the day to grade, so some multiple choice testing is pretty much inevitable. In 10th grade, I had a history teacher who was far more into discussing causes than memorization of names and dates. I think he would have been totally on board with the idea that you look those things up (a la Wikipedia), but it is understanding sequences and how history develops that is important. He also handed out the final exam on the first day of class and made us take it, and he joked that anyone who could pass didn't have to stick around. I got a B on it, but still had to stick it out...

28/30. A couple were guesses, and I had the tip about Jamestown. But I feel good knowing that I could still pass 8th grade. It actually won't be that long before I have to help my son study for social studies/history.