CDs listened to today:

• Per Nørgård: Symphony No. 3
• Sponge: Rotting Piñata
• John Adams: Phrygian Gates
• Camille Saint-Saens: Symphony No. 3
• Various Artists: Best of Techno, Vol. 1
• White Mice: Versions
• Herbert: Scale
• Olivier Messiaen: Cantéyodjâya

CDs listened to today:

• Nirvana: In Utero
• Charles Wuorinen: String Trio
• Gustav Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
• Public Enemy: He Got Game
• Kai Winding: The Incredible Kai Winding Trombones
• White Mice: Versions

CDs listened to today:

• Joe Henderson: Big Band
• Neil Currie: Tumbling Strain
• Love and Rockets: (eponymous)
• The Guillemots: Through the Windowpane
• Lee Hoiby: Sextet for Wind Quintet and Piano
• White Mice: Versions

CDs listened to today:

• Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonatas for Cello and Piano, disk 1
• Dinosaur Jr.: Where You Been
• Forward Russia!: Give Me A Wall
• William Bolcom: Concerto for Violin in D
• William Bolcom: Songs of Innocence and Experience

CDs listened to today:

• Anton Bruckner: The Symphonies, disks 4-9

CDs listened to today:

• Johann Strauss: Tales from the Vienna Woods
• Samuel Adler: String Quartet No. 6
• The Beatles: Alternate Rarities
• Anton Bruckner: The Symphonies, disks 1-3

CDs listened to today:

• Dmitri Shostakovich: The String Quartets, disk 6
  
• Various Artists: Trojan Ska Box, disk 1
• Herbert: Scale
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Twelve German Dances (WoO 13)
• The Hives: Veni Vidi Vicious
• Christopher Rouse: Concerto for Flute
• Regina Spektor: Begin to Hope
• Olivier Messiaen: La Mort du Nombre
• OK Go: Oh No

CDs listened to today:

• The Spinanes: Arches and Aisles
• Kai Winding: The Incredible Kai Winding Trombones
• Peter Ruzicka: …über ein Verschwinden…
• Various Artists: Bare Essentials, Vol. 1
• John Adams: Phrygian Gates
• Johann Strauss: Tales of the Vienna Woods, disk 2

I had a good quarter, reading-wise.

That's partly my nephew's fault. I borrowed a couple of books from him (the Inheritance trilogy by Christopher Paolini), but it became a race between my own ability to finish those two while he finished some other book--both of us ready to start the third volume that was recently published. In the end, his parents took him on vacation and even though I won the race, he had already taken the book with him to Hawaii. I have another three-volume fantasy set waiting to go, but I don't feel like juggling two at once, so I've been reading nothing but Serious Literature and Serious Non-Fiction since then.

And looking over my recent choices, I realize that I have a real predilection for 19th-century novels-especially Russian novels. And I finally got a chance to read War and Peace, one of the books that has always intimidated me!

So, here's what I've been reading in the first quarter of this year:

• Civilization and Its Enemies; Lee Harris
  
• The Curse of Chalion; Lois McMaster Bujold
  
• Paladin of Souls; Lois McMaster Bujold
  
• Vanity Fair; William Makepeace Thackeray
  
• No god but God; Reza Aslan
  
• Year's Best SF 11; David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, eds.
  
• Bulfinch's Greek and Roman Mythology; Thomas Bulfinch
  
• Will and the World; Stephen Greenblatt
  
• Eragon; Christopher Paolini
• Eldest; Christopher Paolini
• Nana; Emile Zola
  
• Ever Since Darwin; Steven Jay Gould
  
• War and Peace; Leo Tolstoy

CDs listened to today:

• The Guillemots: Through the Windowpane
  
• Gustav Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde
• Public Enemy: Greatest Misses
• Charles Wuorinen: String Trio
• Luigi Nono: Como una fuerza y luz

How can we not pay attention?

On Tuesday, there was a gun massacre in North Carolina at a long-term care facility. On Friday, an unrelated massacre at a community center in New York. I've said this before, our nation is awash in a sea of guns and the tide of these cursed things is now making things even worse in Mexico, where arms shipped from the United States are allowing the narcotrafficantes to outgun the Mexican authorities. The death toll is appalling.

Consider this from the head of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence: "In the space of four months, up to nine Americans died as a result of bacteria-laden peanut butter crackers, and the government quickly took action." To which I add this question for the people who argue that guns make our society safer: Today, while a lunatic shot a dozen innocent souls, how many lives did your precious weapons save? What about Tuesday? How many lives must we lose to this curse? Do you really think that killing sprees would be easier without firearms?

CDs listened to today:

• William Bolcom: Songs of Innocence and Experience, disks 2-3
  
• Sydney Hodkinson: The Edge Of The Olde One
  
• Nirvana: Nevermind

You may have heard about the University of Colorado professor, Ward Churchill.

Yesterday, a jury found that he had been fired wrongly, for political reasons and awarded Mr. Churchill one dollar. I think it was the wrong verdict, that while the reasons his work came to public light were undoubtedly related to his nasty, vicious political activities, his scholarship is still deficient at best. I'm sad to hear that the fool we have for an ex-governor who managed to make political what could have been professional. After all, Mr. Churchill (I usually call university professors "doctor", but he lacks a Ph.D.) was carefully uncovered by the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News and was shown to be a plagiarist and a fraud who fabricated research and claimed an ethnic background that's little more than wishful thinking. Oh, and shouldn't a department head hold the required degree?

Anyway, here's why I dislike people like Mr. Churchill. It's not that he's self-righteous and abusive toward those who disagree with him. It's that his arrogance leads him to feel that a fabricated claim is justified if he feels it serves a greater moral truth. In the end, his field of ethnic studies is only harmed by his kind. There are plenty of academics who do honest, valuable work in ethnic studies, but Ward Churchill isn't one of them.

CDs listened to today:

• Anton Bruckner: The Symphonies, disk 9
• Ernest Bloch: Symphony for Trombone Solo and Orchestra (Branimir Slokar, trombone)
• The Reverend Horton Heat: The Full-Custom Gospel Sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat
• Forward Russia!: Give Me A Wall
• George Crumb: Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death
• Johann Strauss: Tales of the Vienna Woods, disk 2
• Joe Lovano: Joyous Encounter
• William Bolcom: Songs of Innocence and Experience, disk 1

CDs listened to today:

• Anton Bruckner: The Symphonies, disks 3-8
  
• Johann Strauss: Tales of the Vienna Woods, disk 2
  

A sign of how cheap I am.

I don't like to take the bus, but I hate driving even more. I actually wouldn't mind the bus, except for the cost! You see, it's now $2 bus fare each way when I go to work, meaning a total of $4 per day. Meanwhile, if I'm willing to walk 7 blocks from parking to the office, my parking only costs $1.50 per day (gasoline for the short round trip is probably about 50¢). Because of the long walk between parking and the car, the bus and car trips both take about a half-hour, so the only difference is the cost. Well, that, and I really don't like to drive. But to save about $2 per day, I do it! Even on days like today when it's likely to snow and make my return commute hazardous and slow, I just can't stand the thought of paying $4. What makes it especially galling to me is that I have to walk six blocks to the bus stop, and then the entire bus ride is a mere 22 blocks!

CDs listened to today:

• The Zutons: Tired of Hanging Around
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Seven Bagatelles
• Digital Underground: Sex Packets
• Anton Bruckner: The Symphonies, disks 1-2
• Johann Strauss: Tales of the Vienna Woods, disk 1

CDs listened to today:

• Christopher Rouse: Concerto for Flute
  
• Regina Spektor: Begin to Hope
  
• Olivier Messiaen: La Mort du Nombre
  
• OK Go: Oh No
  
• Thomas Adès: Arcadiana
  
• Johann Strauss: Tales of the Vienna Woods, disk 1