There's a Tiny Little Buddha in There?

On the windowsill in my office, up there with a small chunk of New Hampshire granite, a logo Slinky, and a tiny ceramic turtle-shaped planter (why do I have that?), I have a small red plastic box. It looks like a 1960s-era transistor radio, with a single speaker, a switch and a volume wheel.

It is a Buddha Machine, from FM3; "a little plastic box that plays music." In fact it contains two short loops of music that repeat in a drone that can be conducive to meditation, or intense work, or just weirding-out your co-workers.

I bought mine on-line a few years back after reading about it in The New Yorker. They are made by a couple of musicians in China -- one Chinese, the other a Westerner -- who also perform with groups of the machines as FM3.

Sasha Frere-Jones has written about the Buddha Machine again, both in the magazine and on his blog. I think it was his tip before that led me to the original. The news this time is that there is an updated version of the Buddha Machine, with more loops and options. There is also, apparently, an iPhone application.

Frere-Jones also points to a page with samples of some of the loops and to a cool site that offers a virtual wall of loop-playing machines that can be mixed and matched and played in dizzying combinations.

Think how much fun I can have with my office-mates now!

Meta-Meta-Meta-Web

A tweet this evening from Daily Show producer Miles Kahn (meta #1) pointed me to an article on the New York Observer web site, All That Twitters, (meta #2) which looks at the growth of twitter through the recent twitter-recruitment of Mr. Kahn by Daily Show performer John Hodgman:

“Producer miles Kahn thinks twitter is a waste of human time and resources,” Mr. Hodgman “tweeted” on his account, titled @hodgman, from his iPhone. “Obviously I agree with him, but I still like him,” he added.

A few minutes later, Mr. Kahn gave in and started his own account: @mileskahn. Mr. Hodgman linked to Mr. Kahn’s page and, almost instantly, hundreds of the more than 25,000 of Mr. Hodgman’s fans who subscribe to his Twitter updates started following @mileskahn.

I have to admit. I am one of the Hodgman fans who started following Miles Kahn that day (meta #3). I followed that exchange, and the good natured banter it engendered, and I continue to enjoy their twittering. (Mr. Kahn had a story idea shot down today).

This does all seem very circular. And I fully recognize that I'm over-twittered. But I'm enjoying twitter and I follow many people in my profession whose tweets add to my regular environmental scanning.

It's all about communication.

It's All In the Choices We Make

Sometimes the smallest details stand as editorial comments. Looking through Tuesday's front pages on the Newseum web site, I found several different photographs of a cute moment Monday in the Capitol Rotunda.

Mr. Obama was walking through the Rotunda with Nancy Pelosi and her crew. He stopped to talk to 5-year old Carter Metz, of Tennessee.

I was interested to see how that was played in different papers.

I was struck by the caption the editors of the Kansas City Star chose to put just above one version of the picture: "Obama meets with Capitol Hill leaders." Placed above this particular photo, this suggests that maybe the 5-year old is the leader.

By contrast, The Washington Times chose what I think is a cuter photo of Mr. Obama bending down to talk to young Carter and includes just a descriptive caption below. This highlights the fatherly Obama and the charm of the moment.

I may, of course, be reading way too much into these design choices. But that "meets with leaders" looks like the sort of thing I would have wanted to try to get away with.

I should also note that I Find the Times' version, with Pelosi and Rahm Emmanuel and the rest of the suits relegated to the background while the President-Elect speaks to a child, really cute.

What Music Do I Like?

I have eclectic taste in music. When I try to explain or demonstrate my taste, folks often simplify the discussion to one word "weird." I guess that's fair, my taste buds are spread all over the musical tongue.

I heard a piece on NPR this evening, however, that might help to illustrate what I love about the many different musics I like: an openness.

The story is about a group of Nashville session players who set aside their formulaic day-job playing once each week to play as The Time Jumpers in a regular Monday evening gig at a place called The Station Inn. They play standards from across the American music spectrum; generally as western swing. They play for love, fun, and friendship. They are not trying to be "successful." And they sound great.

The part of the NPR story that caught my ear was toward the end, when guitarist Andy Reiss explained what he likes about playing this way:

The beauty of music is [that] when your ears are wide open, your heart is wide open. You're not even thinking. You're listening and you're part of something, and everybody is doing that. When that happens, it's pure magic. And as a musician, you know how rare that is.

What struck me is how similar this is to the way that the members of the Grateful Dead, who play what would seem an entirely different sort of music, describe what they seek on stage. They talk in very similar terms in their 2009 tour announcement (which I linked to over the week-end).

Mickey Hart calls it the "mind meld." The group describes the process in a video posted on their site as "all about listening. You listen more than you play..." Phil Lesh says that that sense of surprise is why he keeps playing:

For me, it’s the question mark that’s really pulling me in...what’s gonna happen? When you walk out on the stage the possibilities are infinite every time. The musical possibilities are infinite: there is no end to it, there’s no back wall and there’s no ceiling, there’s no floor. It’s infinite and therefore you can still explore it till the day that you die.

So here we have two different sorts of music that bear striking similarities. They both draw from the deep well of American songs, they both exist somewhat outside the main stream, and they both are played by musicians who understand that the beauty of the music is found in the other players.

This is what I like. The genre doesn't really matter; I'm interested in the process and the surprise.

Books in 2009

I've chosen a tool to try out as my books and reading tracker for 2009. I was looking for a way to track my reading for the year; different from the WordPress blog I tried in 2008.

I did some poking around and looked into several different book-lover sites. I also considered creating a Google Docs spreadsheet to track my books. But when I took a look at goodreads, set up to "improve the process of reading and learning throughout the world," I decided to give it a shot.

It looks like it will allow me to maintain a list of books organized into "shelves." I'm starting with to-read, currently-reading, read, library-book, and owned. I may add more later. It comes with lots of metadata about books built-in and is set up as a social site, encouraging reviews and recommendations among users.

I've added a goodreads widget to the left-hand side-bar. It tracks books as I finish them. We'll see how it works out.

Heads Up!

Deadheads take note: The Dead will tour this spring! Bobby Wier, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, and Billy Kruetzmann will be joined by guitarist Warren Haynes and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti. It's the same line-up that toured in 2004.

The group had not gotten together much lately, but a few fund-raising shows for Barack Obama last year seem to have planted a seed among the band-members and they are ready to try on the full Dead thing again.

All four of the remaining original Grateful Dead have been busy on solo projects for years. They have grown and changed and I think want to hear what they'll sound like playing together again.

The tour will start in April in North Carolina and be mostly an east-coast affair, though it will head west, stop in Colorado and end in California in May. There will be five shows near me in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

I hope to make at least one.

A Year in Books

I read 63 and one-half books in 2008, an average of one book every 5.7 days. That's one of the findings of my year-long Reading Log experiment.

Starting a year ago today, with Custer’s Brother’s Horse, and running through The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which I started on December 29 and was halfway through as the ball dropped between 2008 and 2009, I have kept a blog-style reading list. I have recorded title, author, publication date, publisher and a few short thoughts about each book that I have read.

The word-cloud that decorates this post (thanks wordle!) is built from the tags I used for each post. It suggests that I prefer fiction to non-fiction and favor historical fiction and fantasy (often in combination). Most books I read are set in the US or the UK and many had to do with war or its effects on folks.

Just over 56% of the books I read (36) were from the Lewes Library. Of the remaining 44%, most were books I bought or was given as gifts, except for a few that were loaners from my brother Matt.

The overwhelming majority (60) were novels. Two were collections of essays, one was organizational self-help, and one was biography.

I'm not certain how to carry forward into 2009. I know I'll keep reading. I always have, as far back as I can remember. But I don't know that I still want to "blog" my reading. I have a day or two to consider, while I finish 2008's final book. Then I may create an on-line spreadsheet, or look for some twitter-like tool that will let me keep track.

Any suggestions?

A Bit More on the Red Clover Inn

We're home from our week of wandering north of here and I have had a chance to yank photos from the trip off my camera. Many are of the Red Clover Inn, which we felt we helped pioneer this past week with our friends Andy and Lynn and our collections of daughters.

That's the main Inn building to the right there. Andy and Lynn and their girls had rooms in the main building. Karen and I stayed in a large room in a separate carriage house. Colleen and Christina were in the carriage house as well. Their room was above a dedicated room where our old friend Andrea, a massage therapist we visited for years at The Tyler Place, has begun to create a new spa.

The Red Clover Inn is an old Inn that was built on an even older farm. It served vacationers for many years and developed a strong reputation. The owners turned their Inn over to new managers and retired some years ago and the place seems to have declined. In the last year, the owners sold the property to the Tyler family who spent eight months fixing and mending and redecorating; they created a lovely new/old Inn which reopened just a few weeks ago.

A major attraction of the Inn is a wonderful restaurant that integrates gently into the main building. The Tylers found a great chef and he has put together a tasty menu that features local ingredients and sustainable foods. The restaurant seems to do a steady business beyond the Inn guests; that's a good thing.

There is also a comfortable lounge, with a fireplace and sofas and chairs and games and windows overlooking the property. A comfortable spot after a day of skiing or hiking or golfing or which-ever of the attractions of this part of Vermont you choose to enjoy.

The guest rooms vary from spacious and elegant to small and cozy. Several have fireplaces. Some feature hot-tubs (fabulous for aching old-guy muscles that hadn't been on skis in 30 years).

Am I gushing? yes, I am. But with good reason. The Tyler family are great inn-keepers and they find and support high-level employees. We've spent the last decade getting to know these folks. They give us vacations to celebrate and I think it is only right that I pass on to you information about those vacation opportunities.

Ski Report (Sorta)

We're in Mendon Vermont for a few days on a mini winter vacation. We're staying at the Red Clover Inn, an old inn that has been taken over by our friends who run The Tyler Place.

As I've noted before, we outgrew the Tyler Place and were sad to leave it behind. When we heard that the Tylers had bought and fixed up an Inn in Southern Vermont we decided we had to give it a try. Our friends the Southmayds (who led us to the Tyler Place in the first place) were interested as well.

The Red Clover Inn is a cool place. It has location and an elderly charm. The folks from the Tyler Place (family and long-time employees) have spent the fall putting a high gloss on the place. They've created a warm, friendly, luxurious Inn.

And we've spent parts of the last two days at the Killington ski resort. Karen has skied before, but only a few times and long ago. Neither of our girls had ever tried it. I skied all through high school, but stopped when I entered college, almost 30 years ago.

We took a family/group ski lesson yesterday. I learned that I can still ski. The girls learned that skiing is tough. Today we took a snow boarding lesson. I learned that I prefer to ski. The girls found that, though snow boarding is tough, they prefer it to skiing.

We're all bruised and battered. Colleen's nursing a sprained (I hope just sprained) wrist. We all have bruised knees. I may have sprained a rib. Fun times.

After the lesson, I traded back to skis and did some more traditional ski runs. It turns out that skiing is like riding a bike. I can still do the basic moves, but my legs at 46 are nowehere near what they were at 16 and 17 years old.

Now we're relaxing, trying to find a low-impact dinner choice, and thinking about our long drive back south tomorrow.

Convergence: Puppies and Kitties

The first thing to say is that one reads these messages from bottom to top. This is a screen capture from Twitter today; a look at a moment of tweeting by two of the people I follow. They are not talking to each other; they are both entering messages and I happen to be listening to both of them.

dacagle is a cartoonist with MSNBC. thatselbert is a blogger from southwest Sussex County here in Delaware. dcagle was posting some cartoons that involved puppies and kittens and was tracking reader reactions. That led him to declare a theorem about the web: people love kitties and puppies and the web delivers. And, right on cue, thatselbert delivered a cute kitty picture.

I love the Internet.