An End & A Start, 2018-2019
The last 24 hours has seen a lovely explosion of blogging here. With the holidays, people seem to have more time to write about their lives, both about this year & their hopes & plans for the next. Here are my thoughts. Image: snow in a forest.
On 8 Nov 1998 I met Patti Smith & bought her new lyrics book, Patti Smith Complete. I was just getting to know her. She already felt like a close friend, a sister to me. When I got home I opened the book and was surprised to find her writing about Maria Callas in her introduction.
I was especially moved by Maria Callas. Her emotional intensity. How she seemed to draw from every fiber to create a whisper. Her arias soared from the turntable…
The image of an elegant Callas sitting at her piano at home was on the next page in the book. Oddly, this told me that I had a lot to learn about Patti Smith! Callas was born in 1923, more than twenty years before Patti or myself and she had been gone for more than two decades when I got the book. Of course, I knew who Callas was, but I had no recollection of having ever seen her perform. But I made a mental note to be open to exploring her work when the right time came.
It came today, when I saw a video of her singing Tosca. It was obvious why Callas had been a big influence in Patti’s early life. She performed exactly the way Patti had described her.
My thanks to the one who provided me with that link.
I Have a Dream
That one day you’ll no longer have to explain why there are no Likes on Micro.blog
Because they’ll already know why that’s better!
From the longest running podcast of ALL TIME, by Christopher Lydon, is a brilliant exposition about Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. If you love American music, listen to this program! Thanks to @frankm who pointed to this first. I saved the link & just listened to it. 🎶
I think one thing we might reflect upon around this time is what a huge difference one person can make in this world. Jesus was living in the Middle East over 2,000 years ago and look at what a huge impact he still has in this world every day! Lincoln is another. He was on the political stage for a very short time, but look at what he accomplished.
It concerns me to see so much pessimism, especially among young people since the 2016 election. Self reliance, hard work & optimism have always seemed central to the American Way in my mind. The country has been through very rough times before, and yet the overall trajectory has been upward, for a better world, in large part due to the individual actions of many great people. I am optimistic that this can & will continue into the future.
After all, we now have the advantage that, more than ever before, men & women of all kinds of backgrounds, races, cultures, religions and more have a real opportunity to contribute to our path forward. Surely this will lead to good things. That’s how I see it anyway.
My friends, I hope you will all enjoy a wonderful holiday season and will be ready to do more great things in 2019 and years to come.
On the impact of Likes and images on the web, there is this. It goes back to when Google pulled the plug on its RSS Reader, which led to tough times for some blogs. It turns out @manton wasn’t the first to focus upon encouraging conversation in rebuilding from the ashes.
Warriors Named Sportsperson of the Year
“…impossible to overlook the influence that the Warriors, as a collective group, have had on their sport and the broader culture over the last half-decade… the likes of which we might not see again for decades, if at all.” 🏀
Our Christmas cactus 🌵 is pretty sure that Christmas is coming. ❄️
I got the new iOS update of the official app. Zoom-in to all images is now working and auto-fill of user names is working, both GREAT 👍 features. Thanks much!! @manton
Here’s some fun stories about some concerts in the Midwest in 1964 and 1962, back in my school days.
“I remember thinking, ‘I’ll never see anything as great as this again in my life.’ It was absolutely unbelievable.”
Went out to dinner with friends last night. I had the special: a Sloppy Joe with fries, the first I’ve had in many years. I used to eat them regularly for lunch in junior & senior HS. The one last night (with mustard) was so sloppy, I had to eat it with a spoon. Yum! 😋
My Dylan River of News is working, something I’ve wanted since Dave first demonstrated his new tool. @AndySylvester got it all set up & working for me! Huge thanks to him. This is only the beginning! cc: @frankm @johnjohnston @JohnPhilpin @bradenslen @antonzuiker @amit
Gigantic news in my world. Watching the River Flow is now live & flowing along. This is my new Bob Dylan River of News. This is entirely because of the work of @AndySylvester the expert on Rivers (other than Dave himself, who invented them), sumpin I’ve wanted for years!
First meal on the floor of our sun porch on a warm Saturday afternoon using a hot pot. Feast for 20% of the native Thai population of our Midwestern town.
New image feature on the official iOS app
Or just noticed it? Usually images have been a fixed size. But I clicked on an image from Rose, it opened in a new window which also let me zoom in! Ditto for images by @bitdepth & @kimonostereo. Pics posted by others, nope. @manton
First Big Goal for US was, “… all men are created … certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Stating that goal made America great, but in 1963 MLK pointed out it had not been achieved for all. Harder than man on the moon!
The accomplishments of NASA are one of the things that made America great. It was started by Ike. In grade school, I wore an I Like Ike button. I still have it. It was JFK who created the Big Goal of putting a man on the moon. What are our Big Goals today?
For Micro Monday, I’m recommending Brad, @bradenslen for many reasons. He’s a power user on many platforms, he recommends interesting web tools, and he doesn’t just pontificate. Instead of complaining about Google search, he’s working on developing alternative search tools!
Touchdown confirmed!!
Supreme Court agrees to hear antitrust case against Apple. Trump sides with Apple, many states line up against Apple.
Rumor: Austin developer (MR) has filed an amicus brief, asking for smaller developer fees. Large demonstration expected in Washington DC at the court.
Yesterday a friend here on Micro.blog (@AndySylvester) posted to alert me that Bob Dylan might make an appearance on The Tonight Show last night. As I found out today, my college roommate had also called on the landline from Asia (Manila) to give me the same heads up. I’m sooooo glad that I didn’t insist that my wife stay up to watch it, because it was a silly waste of time. Bob was on camera for about one minute with Fallon, did not speak a word, and the purpose was just to produce a product placement for a new line of whiskey that Dylan is a partner in.
But sometimes one thing can lead to another! Tonight I searched for whatever media the show might have triggered, to have something I might point to here, for any who might have wondered how Andy’s advice came out. The full video is out there, and commentary from several sources. One of them ended with a pitch for a new podcast series called The Opus, which is now doing a series of four podcasts about Bob’s new bootleg box set on his masterpiece, Blood on the Tracks. The Opus was the treasure I found as a result of Andy giving me his heads up!
I already listened to the first two episodes of The Opus. Young musicians were discussing the genius of one of Dylan’s many great albums. It gave me such a nice feeling. We had always thought that his music would live forever, that we were so fortunate to live in the same time that he was creating and performing his music. And here I was witnessing this on the podcast, another generation of young people blown away by his brilliance, discussing it with the latest technology that seems to be all the rage these days. We used the Usenet newsgroup, rec.music.dylan, fifteen years after the album was released, to come to grips with his musical achievement and now more than 25 years after that, a new generation of music lovers were doing the same thing, using a different medium.
As I mentioned last night, Dylan had come to NYC for an eight day run (six shows) at the Beacon Theater in NYC. I strongly encourage any of you in the NY area to go see Bob at one of those shows. He does a little under 100 shows per year, but none of us will live forever, even though his MUSIC likely WILL live forever. If you’ve never seen him in the flesh, please do so during this week. You know, when I was first discovering his music (1967) he was holed up in Woodstock and not performing. We had to rely on playing his first seven albums over and over and over on our record players. Since then he has produced many more albums, but he has also made himself very available with live shows all over the world. Eliminate any possibility of experiencing FOMO (or not just the fear, but actually missing out) over this next week while he is so nearby. Go see one of his shows!
First Thanksgiving turkey cooked by my native Thai wife. She did a great job! She never had a turkey back in Thailand, though she said some people do have them there.
I wrote about how I’m using Dropbox Paper to keep a daily listing of my work. Now also using it to keep track of stuff on Micro.blog. For an interesting thread, I add a line about it in Paper, then add a link to the URL for the thread. Can keyword search for it later.
