Noise Between Stations

Flavors of the One Love

  • Orpheus-style leadership

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    1 min read

    This book review reminded me of the conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra… …which has forged a successful recording and performance career without the need of a conductor. Their group is not leaderless, members are keen to emphasize; rather, the leadership role shifts among them within a performance and even within a piece. Echoing Peter Drucker, the…

  • David Byrne’s Journal

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    2 min read

    David Byrne always presents something new, something interesting, all wrapped in a consistent and genuine funky catchiness. He’s posted an mp3 of his song My Fair Lady to OurMedia, has a new album of opera-influenced songs and has been writing an online journal. From the latter, there’s introspection and honesty not common among his peers:…

  • The Story of the Weeping Camel

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    1 min read

    “The Story of the Weeping Camel” is the best movie I’ve seen recently. Their description introduces it nicely… An enchanting tale about a family of herders in Mongolia’s Gobi desert who face a crisis when a mother camel unexpectedly rejects her newborn calf. Uniquely composed of equal parts reality, drama and magic, the movie provides…

  • The Gates,

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    1 min read

    People At

  • Recycle those old CDs

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    1 min read

    We’re taking the digital+hard drive plunge and getting rid of our CDs. Ulrike discovered Second Spin to buy our used CDs. One just types in the UPC code and they tell you how much they’ll pay. After you’ve entered the discs in their system and get a receipt, you pack them up and ship them…

  • We are all in this together

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    1 min read

    Just returned from San Francisco where one of the best things I saw was a billboard of Mark Mumford’s WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.

  • The best cooking show ever

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    1 min read

    New Scandinavian Cooking is just so wonderful. I love when someone takes a format that is already popular and full of variation and just takes it in a whole other direction. In the episode I saw, host Andreas Viestad skied through a sunny day over to a man pulling three char out of a fishing…

  • Espresso has less caffeine than brewed coffee

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    1 min read

    Zap recently told me this, and I was happy to confirm it: 1 oz. of espresso has 35mg of caffeine while 8 oz. of coffee has 250mg (31.25mg per ounce). So I’m happily downing my second double-espresso of the morning.

  • The Postal Service, explained

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    1 min read

    A lot of bloggers are getting hip to The Postal Service (iTunes), the band behind the infectious electronic The District Sleeps Alone and others from the album “Give Up”. Most don’t seem to know the mind behind the songs is Ben Gibbard, front man of Death Cab for Cutie. To explore Death Cab, I’d recommend…

  • The Flamenco store

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    1 min read

    Juan Sebastian gives me a heads up to es flamenco, a storefront crafted with care and content. Once spare time returns to my life I plan to study some Flamenco guitar, instead of the pigeon technique I have now.

  • Terminal 5

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    1 min read

    Oh yes, we youngins finally get to see the inside of Terminal 5, Eero Saarinen’s gorgeous sculpture of a building at JFK airport in New York. And if that wasn’t enough, there will be — inside the terminal — an exhibition featuring “major artists responding to the site with works reflecting on the transitory nature…

  • JPG Magazine

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    1 min read

    From Heather and Derek: “JPG Magazine is for people who love imagemaking without attitude. It’s about the kind of photography you get when you love the moment more than the camera. It’s for photographers who, like us, have found themselves online, sharing their work, and would like to see that work in print.”

  • A foray into paper publishing

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    1 min read

    An essay I wrote in 1991, Music and Censorship, will be included in an upcoming Pearson textbook, Music and Culture. Even more surprising is my company, the likes of (beware shameless name dropping) Copland, Paglia, Quindlen, and Bloom. It is some of my better writing: though the argument is weak in sections my style hasn’t…

  • Blather

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    1 min read

    Blather “is words. bunches of words, strewn about in a twisty tangly web of pontification, insight and nonsensical delight.” Exposing the intertwingularity of language. I used to love the smell of freshly-mowed grass. It smelled like barbecues at dusk. Mosquitoes, kids with chicken greased fingers butterflies, and Spring. The hot sun on my freckled face.

  • Ted Kooser

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    1 min read

    Ted Kooser was just named the new U.S. Poet Laureate. Here is A Happy Birthday: This evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness. I could easily have switched on a lamp, but I wanted to ride…