Most of you only know that the person your condoling me about is important to me: maybe you've gotten snippets over the years of my life with him, something he said, something we did together. I think since you're all being so very kind to me unconditionally, you deserve to know something about the guy. I'm not about to sanctify him, I'm just ( Read more... )

The nice fellow died this morning. It was almost completely unexpected. He had been ill for a while, enough to scare me. But I couldn't get him to the doctor until a week ago. Today was his last dose of antibiotic, he wasn't getting better, and Frank and I were trying to get him to the doctor and he just stopped breathing while I was trying to ( Read more... )

So the dear boy has a journal. Go read it: it's really good, though alarming. Culture clash! Linguistical revelations ( Read more... )

We went to see "Gypsy Caravan" and now I urge you to do the same. It's a concert tour movie, but it's also a lot more. And the music and the dancing are wonderful.

Something I found out: the song, "Djelem, djelem," which I had scooped up from somewhere long forgotten and put on my playlist and assumed was Middle Eastern or klezmer, turns out to ( Read more... )

Every so often I want to show off my kid. She's the middle one with the alarming hair do in the first picture ( Read more... )

Frank came in and asked me was he related to Johann Trollmann, the German boxer. I said "Heck if I know. There's a lot of Johann Trollmanns around." So we went looking and well I don't know about being related to the guy, but his story was a punch in the gut. In the pictures he has that Trollman mouth, but that could just be a coincidence, ( Read more... )

( peekaboo! )

The last couple of days I got caught up with taxes. By this I mean I did the 2003 taxes, just in time -- I had lost the papers for it and it turned out this is the last year I could get a refund for that year -- found and filled out the last form for 2005, and did the 2006 taxes ( Read more... )

So April 17 is the commemmoration of Enrico Caruso's last concert in San Francisco on the eve of the FIre and Earthquake. There's going to be a concert and singalong of Caruso numbers at the Yerba Buena Gardens at I think 5:30 pm, so if you can be in the City at that time I'll be grateful. Since I can't ( Read more... )

More music links.

Marley's Ghost which probably everybody else knows about but me. They do a little bit of everything American. They were live on the radio today and they sang "Religion in Rhythm" and you know what I did ( Read more... )