Jeremy’s Mom gave Alex this cool toy. She can draw a picture on the Plexiglas and then light it up. I love it.

I recently discovered Mozart Y Mambo.

I subscribed to Primephonic.

It’s actually a pretty good app. There is info about albums, composers, and performers provided, plus sometimes you can download the booklet that comes with the CD. I especially like  that.

That’s how I found Mozart y Mambo.

It’s a clever album. It seems to have a progression from unadulterated Mozart and Mambo in the first two cuts and then the Horn takes a cadenza that ends up being influenced by Mambo. From there on out, it’s mix and match, Mozart y Mambo.  I couldn’t figure out how to embed a YouTube playlist but the whole album is there plus on Spotify.

Not sure if this play list will work for you but there it is for the heck of it.

I have been rereading James Joyce for sheer comfort reading.

My current interest in Homer and Shakespeare connects to Joyce.

I dipped into Ulysses’s 9th chapter sometimes referred to as the Scylla and Charybdis chapter and enjoyed the discussion the characters have about Shakespeare.

I’ve also been reading in Stuart Gilbert’s book.

I’ve had this book since I was kid but have never read the whole thing straight through. Armed with  my new understandings of Homer and Shakespeare, all of this stuff seems more interesting and easier than ever.

However, I was discouraged when presumably referring to reading it in Greek,  Gilbert writes: “… the Odyssey is quite easy reading; a smattering of Greek (seconded by a good dictionary and W. W. Merry’s notes) suffices.”

I am totally self-taught in what little Greek I know. Learning has not been “quite easy.” I can only guess that he is writing when most educated people had Greek and Latin in their education and simply had to brush up on the basics and learn Homeric idioms (which admittedly are not insurmountable at all if you have the basic Greek).

Obama shares his favorite songs of 2020

It’s the time of year for lists. I have bookmarked some music lists to check out later.

NYTimes: The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2020

NYTimes: Swapping Songs With Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov

Alex made three pictures lately that I really like. I like the kite picture of course. I do like kites. I even wrote a song from the point of view of a kite many years ago. It’s goofy but it’s proof of a lifelong admiration. I like the tree in the picture a lot as well.

These two pictures are very clever. They are assembly instructions with parts and then assembled. The one above is a cat.

I just asked her what this was and she said it was “dogs in building process.” How cool is that?

I listened to this podcast this morning while exercising. I like that it talked about the word “media” and asked listeners to think about it in it’s singular form.

The OED defines medium as “Something which is intermediate between two degrees, amounts, qualities, or classes; a middle state.”

It gives this obvious etymology   “classical Latin medium middle, centre, midst, intermediate course, intermediary…”

There are many obsolete meanings cited. I love the quotes.

For the obsolete usage as “average” it gives this:

1729   J. Swift Modest Proposal 7   I have reckoned upon a Medium, that a Child just born will weigh 12 pounds.

For the obsolete meaning of “a middle course, a compromise”

1719   D. Defoe Life Robinson Crusoe 38   When I let him know my Reason, he own’d it to be just, and offer’d me this Medium, that he [etc.].

The definition that fits the discussion is