Wednesday in Santa Fe

02009-12-23 | Music | 8 comments

Catching up… and a little bit of music.

It’s been snowing off and on since yesterday evening. I think Santa Fe will have a white holiday this year.


Had no trouble driving my front-wheel drive car to have breakfast with Jon this Morning. Having Winter tires in the front makes a huge difference in the snow. Jon said he recently read that in many cases a front-wheel drive with Winter tires will cope with snow much better than a four-wheel drive vehicle with regular tires.

This Season Jon learned his family’s old Lebkuchen recipe and he gave me some of the results of his work. Yummy, especially with a cup of coffee… my first coffee in over a week.

Jon emailed a rough mix of Turkish Night with the new bass to me:

You can download the mp3 file here.

I think the chorus is great, very driving and energetic. I would like to try a different approach on the verses, though, making them less forward-moving, feeling almost suspended, maybe alternating between stark and lush. Stay tuned for a new version with a different bass for the verses, maybe next week. Maybe some keyboards by then as well?

Just finished reading Night Train to Lisbon, a novel by Pascal Mercier. Wonderful book. This was the first book I have read that described a man living with Bechterew’s disease – also known as Ankylosing Spondylitis, discovered by Vladimir Bekhterev – which was interesting to me, because my father suffered from that disease for most of his life.

Must visit Lisbon.

David Byrne has an interesting post on the limits of multiculturalism.

David Byrne’s Journal: 12.13.09: The Limits of Multiculturalism
Can we tolerate difference, without taking toleration to the extreme, where everyone is expected to accept insults and provocations? Tolerance shouldn’t mean we have to let anyone with a different lifestyle boss the rest of us around. It seems maybe there’s no absolute dividing line between what we tolerate and what we insist is unacceptable. The measure of how much we should tolerate is: does it help us get along? If it divides us further, then maybe it’s not a good idea. Granted we don’t want to have to compromise our own beliefs or ways of life — resentment will lie buried, festering, and will reassert itself in some form, later, maybe somewhere else seemingly completely unrelated. I don’t want to compromise my own activities, safety and way of life more than is reasonably necessary — but I can still accommodate somewhat. Where the line is might shift from time to time — it’s not fixed, or unchangeable forever. Adaptability and accommodation make us human. Absolutes are for machines and vengeful Gods. What we sometimes call common sense — not going by the book, whether that be the law or the Bible — might be how we survive. But being an ever-changing thing, it’s hard to define. It is learnt, I imagine, by living together, improvising, and innovating, not from a rulebook.

True, true! Common sense is learnt, I imagine, by living together, improvising, and innovating, not from a rulebook.

What else did I do this past week? I stayed in for the most part. I ate fresh figs:

I watched water for pasta come to a boil:

I played with Remo’s puddy pad – a practice pad for drummers:

I learned how to fold Shide:

I took lots of photographs of little things, simple things, like this gingko leaf:

Or this shadow of a glass, that appears to contain the shadow of a Martian or other alien…

More, ahem, alien activity in my house:

I also discovered a photo gallery by James Henkel. I especially like this series.

Visit Prague, 18 giga-pixel panorama.

8 Comments

  1. Vic

    Great pix, Ottmar.

    Reply
  2. Günter

    Dear Ottmar,
    Merry Christmas from Germany.
    Glad to hear you read and enjoyed Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon. For me he is among the best authors alive writing in the German language. I highly recommend his other three novels to you, especially Perlmann. He has also published a philosophical bestseller, something very rare, Das Handwerk der Freiheit.
    Best wishes
    Günter

    Reply
  3. Ottmar

    Thank you Günther. I looked for other books by Mercier on amazon.com, but they had nothing else available. Now I want to read the book again, in German. Too bad that one can’t order ebooks in any language… yet.

    Reply
  4. Panj

    I love this form of your journal…love the flow of words, time, vision…

    Reply
  5. Panj

    Ottmar…do you add in entries of certain Days, even after you have posted the original
    I sure hope so, otherwise I suffer from extreme ADD…:-)
    First of all “Catching up… and a little bit of music.”, that made me laugh very much out loud and even one huge ‘Sandra Bullock’ snort! :-)
    Not so happy was hearing that your Dad had to suffer so much for so long! I had not heard of this in detail before and truly send Prayers that it’s Genentic Path is broken!
    And for anyone reading this…Physical Therapy should be part of almost all our lives!
    Much Wellness to All…(Harmony)?…:-)

    Reply
  6. Ottmar

    Panj: Yes, I sometimes change entries after I have posted them. I also sometimes backdate new entries.

    I have read that Bechterev manifests in one’s thirties and I am turning 51 in February. Any posture problems I have are most likely due to playing guitar for four decades. :-)

    Reply
    • Pam christie

      Your music & sensitivity & humanity has reinsured my own creative spirit…. would love to meet you someday

      Reply
    • Pam christie

      Your music & sensitivity & humanity has revived my own creative spirit…. would love to meet you someday

      Reply

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