Listening to the new Erato compilation of Rita Gorr singing 'Airs d'opéras français et italiens' (a misnomer as the album includes two Wagner arias in German). My god! what an astonishing voice. Amazing high notes for a woman who sings so low comfortably. A force of nature and a treasure.

Happy Lunar New Year! May the year of the Fire Horse bring fresh energy, renewed freedom, and much needed changes for the better.

The doctor is out. #grickledoodle #coffee #latte #horror #cafe #cartoon #art #drawing #funny

#SundaySarton “How wonderful it was when the poet H.D., whom I had loved since I was a child, wrote me after my first novel came out…” (p90) — May Sarton, PLANT DREAMING DEEP

Goodnight. 🖼️ Julia Geiser

Faith Wilding Energies, 2023 Watercolor, colored pencil, and gold leaf on paper anatebgi.com/artists/fait... b. 1943, Paraguay lives and works in Massachusetts

Perhaps it's just my mood (sold my late father's home today), but has there ever been a more consistently low-key melancholy composer than C. P. E. Bach? Not big histrionic depression or deep wallowing suicidality, but just pure measured melancholy?

I would watch this Ring!

My only new thing: The penalty of light forever Over the heads of those who were there And back into the night, the cough of the finishing petal. - John Ashbery, "To Redoute"

If you see this, post something pink.

Bezos isn't destroying the Washington Post because it isn't profitable. He's destroying the Washington Post because he's calculated that a robust free press threatens the ability of his class to warp society around their interests

Charlie Jane joyfully talked about a huge range of books for WaPo, and now yet another outlet celebrating diversity and curiosity in fiction is lost. Definitely sub to her newsletter, because it's a great read every time.

Sick of this dystopian tech overlord men with no panache and bad haircuts enabling a pants shitting president and bald hitler wannabe trying to undo things that can’t be undone ass reality we are living. They are so tedious and venal. It’s galling.

A correction for the ages (from The Guardian's review of 'Melania'):

Have fallen down an Elisabeth Rethberg rabbit hole after listening to that 1939 Met Simon Boccanegra. What an extraordinary voice! So focused, like a laser, and so penetrating. It doesn't strike me as exceptionally large but I think that focus would have made it audible in even the biggest houses.

Tibbett and Pinza. What an extraordinary duo. (Listening to the 1939 Simon Boccanegra with these two gentlemen.) open.spotify.com/album/1UNdft...

No new pictures. Where are you at mentally?

Hi. I'm your quagmire, turlough, pocosin, playa kind of friend. Run away while you can! 🤣

This is something really special, from one of my favorite science communicators, but also one of my favorite cultural commentators. Do yourself a favor and set aside some time to watch it. Your dishwasher will thank you.

I genuinely have no idea how to convey this to the American people, but I think the biggest impediment to any kind of immigration reform is that people are convinced that "legal" and "illegal" are immutable, intrinsic categories instead of a rapidly-shifting arbitrary constellation of regulations.

My new avian friends: www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-wi...

My beautiful and unexpected redwing blackbirds are back again this year. Last year was the first time I encountered them in my backyard or even this general area. Today, I had a whole small flock (approx. 10 birds) settle on the branches of my fig tree and watch as I pruned the bougainvillea.

Unreal. He’s shutting down the Kennedy Center, after his flunkies caused mass defections of artists? Everything the man touches turns to ash. Our cultural heritage; destroyed. Our national treasures; plundered.

I hate the captive princess narrative so much. It tends to be applied disproportionately to women who are considered conventionally attractive, eg Melania Trump. The fact is that women who choose to marry awful men are usually awful themselves. That’s why they like those men. Adult women have agency

Trump's antisemitism envoy: "It is utterly inappropriate to compare Anne Frank to children hiding from ICE. This demeans the experience of those who died in the Holocaust." Actual Holocaust survivors in Florida: "This reminds us of Anne Frank."

Never mind the jobs you've had or the classes you took, tell me 5 things you can eat until you explode. #FoodSky Asparagus (green, white, purple, whatever!) Feine Leberwurst Abalone (a favourite of my childhood days in Mexico) Roasted tree nuts (walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, almonds) Schillerlocken

So Alex Pretti's killers were both Border Patrol. Not surprised. They are ALL, INVARIABLY, scum of the earth. May they never have another restful moment and may no one ever again look on them with love or admiration.

In 1836 Victoria, then still Princess of Kent, attended a performance of Donizetti's Marino Faliero, in which the famous bass Luigi Lablache was singing in the title role. She sketched some pencil drawings of him and Giulia Grisi.

Excited to share that my translation of Wong Yi's 黃怡 "Overseas Bride" has been selected for BEST LITERARY TRANSLATIONS 2026. This is a timely story about the losses involved in immigration, esp. language, & is a love letter to Cantonese. Congrats to all the translators & thank you to the editors!

EARLY MUSIC PEOPLE!! My Vicente Lusitano research partner and BGSU musicologist Arne Spohr have just finished the world's first edited edition of Vicente Lusitano's complete works!

This is literally a world-changing publication that makes the music of a sixteenth century composer of African descent more accessible to everyone, and Joe has worked on it for six years! That poster was made by Juilliard asst. dean/flutist/composer Alice H. Jones for a George Floyd rally in 2020

Listening to the new Prima Classics recording of Verdi's 'Simon Boccanegra' (1881 revision). It's been a least a decade, perhaps more, since I've heard this opera and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Some interesting and rather unusual (for Verdi) orchestration; shimmery, almost Tchaikovskian sometimes.

Josiah Wedgwood's trial tray for jasperware, 1773. Each trial is carefully numbered to correspond with an entry in Josiah’s experiment books, which were written in code because of the risk of industrial espionage. Ref WE.4241-2014, V & A Museum.

My partner watches Legal Eagle religiously and I see his work occasionally and have always liked it but this is different and a cut above; eloquent, emotional but well-reasoned, and moving. Well worth watching.

My friend Sara posted this about the superb care her father received from with Alex Pretti Absolutely heartbreaking

A reminder to the news media: “conflicting accounts” is what you say BEFORE the incontrovertible video evidence appears. After that, your job is to ask why one side is lying, not to repeat the lie and pretend no one knows the truth.

Now more than ever you must believe your own eyes.

“There’s no point to calling because my senators already agree with me” “There’s no point to calling because my senators won’t listen” These are both false information and you should correct and/or block anyone circulating them. Your calls are tallied and create support and/or real pressure.

I keep thinking “my god the people they’ve killed seem like exceptionally good folks” and I think the lesson there is that they’re not exceptional, but that wonderful people abound and that a baseline distrust in humanity is a shitty conservative trope that privileges power over collective strength

Kare 11 local news just read, in full, this statement from Michael and Susan Pretti, the parents of Alex Pretti. "Please get the truth out about our son."

Listening to Molter's Good Friday oratorio, Höchst schmerzensvoller Tag in a new recording from Camerata Bachiensis on Brilliant Classics. Beautiful, moving, and sadly appropriate for this painful day. www.prestomusic.com/classical/pr...

“In May 1968, Paris was burning. Out of the student uprising came a new wave in French music that matched the country’s mood, darker & more introspective than yé-yé, France’s cultural revolution allowed the previously separate worlds of chanson, jazz, pop & film soundtracks to blend into each other”

normal dog, switzerland, 15th century

“There are no sidelines any more, friends.” - @philtajitsunash.bsky.social 1942. Mochida Family awaiting deportation in Centerville, CA. Photo by Dorothea Lange. 2026. Five year old Liam Ramos taken away by ICE returning home from pre-school, Photo via Columbus Heights Elementary, Minneapolis.

Marimo, Mon Amour, new from Karen An-hwei Lee, coming September: "What starts off as a plague journal narrated by a chibi Rabelais becomes by way of limitless lists, alliteration, and logophilia something darker and more serious, a meditation on meaning, death, and God in the manner of Donne."

Here it is: a map of London marked with every location in any Iris Murdoch novel, for those who might want or need it. Thank you @joshuajfriedman.com.

I am such a sap. Finally watched K-Pop Demon Hunters and actually teared up at the end. (Jinu! Nooooo!) For those in the know (@jacquiwine.bsky.social for sure), we had popcorn complete with the special oil and Flavonol salt. Maybe that was the source of the tears. LOL!

JFC. Could a search engine actually be worse than Duck Duck Go? It is just astonishingly bad, the single worst search engine I've ever used. Worse than current Google in terms of results (maybe not privacy?) and that is REALLY saying something. What do y'all use?