The Department of Homeland Security is into music psychology research? Does the brain naturally compose melodies to rival those by Mozart or Chopin? Researchers at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) think so. What’s more, they suggest that piano renditions of an individual’s cerebral music can help in dealing with insomnia and fatigue in [...]

Composers who wrote 9 symphonies and other numbers of symphonies.

I worry about posting sentences that are too long. Sometimes I break up sentences that I originally intended to be longer because I feel that they’re too long or I worry that someone else might think they’re too long. But why should I worry?

I might have mentioned before (I can’t remember for sure) that the local stores have not had Roman Meal Bread for over a year now. I know I never expressed to you the trauma, the hardship, the deprivation, the… Oh, okay! I might be exaggerating just a little bit. But starting today life is back [...]

On April 30, 1975 Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese. Thousands of South Vietnamese refugees came to the United States and started new lives here. For the past several years my husband and I have been privileged to know one of these people. His name is Tri (pronounced tree) He and my husband met at [...]

Some people are horrified by John Daly’s golf pants. This sort of thing amuses me. Ridiculous and intended to be offensive remarks like “visible from orbit” and the ever popular “You need sunglasses when you look at him/her” makes wearing bright colors, which I like anyway, even more fun. Of course you wouldn’t want to [...]

Someone this morning found their way here via this search. Uh… I hope I was helpful. I’m tempted to provide even more answers. Maybe later.

The Coral Book – 18th century illustrations The Art of the Timbrel Vault – beautiful architecture (via Materialicious) Accidental Mysteries – very nice blog; art, photography, vintage stuff, etc. (found at Nag on the Lake) Gearhead Desk – Very interesting. A cure for messy desks, perhaps? After paying that much for it you wouldn’t want [...]

The media are all excited about President Obama’s First Hundred Days. Don’t you know they’ve been planning for this since January? (Maybe even since November) Okay, so I was already thinking about it back in January myself. I expected to have more to say but I’ve gone back to my default mode which is to [...]

There is an Obama WordPress theme. Not for everyone, obviously. I like the colors though. (via Dustbury) I wondered if there were any more. As usual Google is there to help satisfy our curiosity. Here’s an all blue one. Here’s a more subtle one on the official WordPress site. You could almost miss the fact [...]

A couple of excellent posts by Tonio Kruger – one about movies, old and new and the lack of realistic (or any) Hispanic characters. I also like movies that are older than me. I like newer movies too. I just like good movies, or even bad ones if they’re entertaining enough. Hollywood is in the [...]

As usual XKCD puts things in perspective.

Fred expresses a bit of cynicism about the various surprise talents on Britain’s Got Talent. I like this line at the end: Britain’s Got Talent is an excellent reminder for us music snobs just how much it is true that, in the opinion of a great mass of people, music itself ought never aspire to [...]

This is one of my favorite scenes with Bea Arthur.

I have added four more pictures of the Guthrie Drug Store Museum to my Photostream. There is one more place in Guthrie that we visited – the State Capital Publishing Museum – but I haven’t decided yet which pictures of that I want to post. I’ll try to get around to it sometime this week [...]

By now you probably know that Bea Arthur died Saturday morning. Neatorama has a nice tribute with 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Bea Arthur. That should be six things because I’ll bet most people didn’t know that she was quite an attractive lady when she was young.

Twictionary Photos from Cassini – beautiful 8 Food Myths – I already knew all of them except the Alka-Seltzer thing. I’d never heard that one before. McDonald’s Diet – Someone who lost weight eating only McDonald’s food for 30 days. (via AMCGLTD) Rays – Beautiful sky photos (via Bifurcated Rivets) Artifacts From the Future Curvy [...]

I am really hating UPS right now. I’m so mad I can’t think about anything else so this might be all the blogging you get for a while. Until now I have trusted UPS. I’ve never had any trouble with them at all. I don’t want to go into detail. I’ll only say that there [...]

Much thanks to Brian Micklethwait for posting this delightful poem by Leonard Bernstein: Of time to think as a pure musician and ponder the art of composition. Four hours on end I brooded and mused on materiae musicae, used and abused; On aspects of unconventionality, Over the death in our time of tonality, Over the [...]

Yay! The Explosives Network Discovery Channel has actually had some new shows on in the last two weeks – best of all, new Mythbusters. There was also a new Time Warp this week. I’m not sure about that show. Sometimes I’ll see something on it that makes me say, “Wow, that was really cool,” but [...]

People who make broad generalizations. They’re so cute. — here If there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s playing with its food. — there “It means, ‘love of the doing’. So when I call someone an amateur musician, it’s the highest compliment that I can pay them.” — here A blog is alot cheaper than [...]

Sometimes knowing what you want can be a disadvantage. It’s nice when you can go into a store with just a broad, general idea of what you want and happily pick from what’s available without a lot of searching or angst but that doesn’t happen to me very often. Most of the time I know [...]

By far the most interesting place we visited in Guthrie was the Drugstore Museum. I could have spent hours there reading the labels on all the old stuff. * This is interesting. It would appear that medicine 100 years ago was more advanced than it is today. We know what causes old age (living a [...]

This is the creek that runs through the back of our place. This was at about 8 o’clock this morning.

This is the old railroad depot in Guthrie. There is a restaurant and a train museum inside. We ate at the restaurant. It wasn’t our original plan. We were looking for something else and were turning around when we noticed this place. The food was acceptable but not great. Unfortunately the museum is closed for [...]