Missing In Action…Again

Sorry to have been so inconsistent in posting of late. Today all I have to offer is a bit of miscellanea. Between a quick trip to New York and juggling of multiple projects, I just can’t seem to marshall any coherent thoughts into decent prose.

  1. John’s appearance at the Tribeca Performings Arts Center as part of their Salute to Lost Jazz Shrines went well, and they gave him a very lovely plaque — at this rate he’s going to need a trophy room.

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  2. In my May 1st post, I wrote “there must be a reason why immigrants risk life and limb to get here illegally; if the legal alternative was feasible don’t you think they’d prefer it?” In the May 17 issue of The Press Democrat an article, “The Waiting Game,” by Martin Espinoza contains the following information:

    The Census Bureau estimates about 500,000 illegal immigrants enter the country every year, but only about 5,000 visas are available to low-skilled workers. Immigration attorneys said the door is closed to millions of foreign-born nationals with no family or employers in the United States to sponsor them.

    Read the whole article here.

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  3. A friend emailed me a copy of “Love will outlast Bush” by Garrison Keillor which ends with:

    Take the day off, dear reader, and ignore the world and let the president play his fiddle. Find the one who means the most to you and make yourselves happy. If that be ignorance, make the most of it.

    You can also read it here and here.

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  4. I used to love PBS – masterpiece theatre and the Mystery series were among my favorites, but “they” seem to have lost their taste. You know how I feel about Ramsey Lewis’ so-called jazz program , and now I hear from Terry Teachout that the Nat Cole program was a travesty. How disappointing!

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  5. A press release from IDC with the headline “Billion Dollar Opportunity: Internet Video Services Primed for Explosive Growth, According to IDC,” began “FRAMINGHAM, Mass., April 5, 2006 – Internet video services are on the brink of becoming a mainstream phenomenon in the United States…” On the brink? The release mentions hurdles that include licensing and other legal issues, but it seems to me that we are already there.

    Video stories are featured on most major newspaper web sites. CultureGrrl recently noted video clips on the New York Philharmonic web site. She wrote:

    Something new, informative and enjoyable on the NY Philharmonic’s website : video clips of composers, conductors and musicians involved in upcoming performances.

    Most poignant is the clip of the 97-year-old Elliott Carter, explaining that his “Allegro scorrevole” of 1996 was inspired by a bubble in a painting by Chardin, which “symbolizes the fragility of life…finally disappearing into the sky.”

    And I recently became addicted to the amazing assortment of free video clips at VideoGoogle – my most recent discovery there is their archive of American Television Interviews (from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation) with people such as Norman Lear, Julia Child, Ted Turner, Richard Crenna, Carroll O’Connor, Diahann Carroll, Ossie Davis, and Fess Parker to name just a few. As a biographer, interviews fascinate me.