Larry Kart

About Hersch and Moran, after Hersch was told that it was a Moran track he'd been taking apart some, he said that he admires Moran in general and that they're good friends, but that he stands by how he felt about that performance, and that not everyone can get it right musically every time, etc. After all you've contributed to the magazine over the years, you can't leverage a free subscription? That ain't right! DB eats its young, and its old, too.

The Blindfold Test with Hersch in the current Downbeat is interesting. Hersch has some detailed, pointed (as in not very positive) things to say about tracks by Horace Silver, Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer. He's more positive about Tatum and Andrew Hill. In the first case, I think he's reacting honestly to a track ("Mexican Hip Dance" from "The Jody Grind") that he regards (again with supporting detail) as not that successful (though he makes an odd mistake in passing, referring to Joe Henderson and Freddie Hubbard [no...] as sidemen from Silver's glory days). His cavils about Moran and Iyer are again honest, pointed, and detailed. I'd summarize a bit, but I can't check out that issue from the library as yet. Perhaps someone else has a copy of that issue and can paraphrase within the limits of what's fair by forum rules.

Computer problems/doubts can really batter the psyche.

Admirers of Thompson also should try to track down Tad Shull's insightful essay ""When Backward Comes Out Ahead: Lucky Thompson's Phrasing and Improvisation" in the "Annual Review of Jazz Studies 12, 2002." Shull is himself a talented tenor saxophonist who made several recordings for Criss Cross. http://www.jazz.com/encyclopedia/shull-tad-thomas-barclay-shull-jr

Too late, I already deleted it. The Apple police will be knocking on my door. My problem was that it wasn't on my dock but would be actively running as an application or be in the process of setting itself up to run whenever I'd restart my computer, and then it would take a minute or so before it had finished and I could get out of it.

A Safari that will work for your version of Tiger is in the link below. Sorry I didn't check that in the earlier post since you gave your version number. Safari for 10.4.11 The latest version of the latest OS (Snow Leopard) is 10.6.6. Not much sense in getting Snow Leopard now as Lion is coming out fairly soon. (Also Lion may not have as much to offer to older machines as some features relate to multi-finger wipes on trackpads that only more recent laptops will recognize.) Thanks -- I already found and downloaded that version of Safari last night, though I was so punch drunk I don't remember the circumstances now.

On my old Windows, there was a place I could check and uncheck the applications that I wanted to open automatically at start-up. I'm not sure where that happens on a Mac. iChat shouldn't be showing up without you clicking on it. I'll nose around my system preferences and see if I can find a place that allows you to switch it off. Perhaps it's something with the ichat software preferences. Let us know what happens with Safari and Firefox. I'll be interested to hear the result of the update and reboot of your system. Well, I took care of IChat (I hope) by putting it in the trash and dumping it (took a long time).

All that was waiting there in Software Update was an update of Safari, so I thought "Why the hell not?" and updated that. Whether that will make any difference elsewhere, e.g. ability to update Firefox, remains to be seen. Perhaps it's a good idea, as you and others had said, to have an updated Safari on the computer. Another perhaps connected recent glitch -- whenever I restart my computer IChat is the first thing that pops up, and I've never used IChat before, though I may have clicked on it once by mistake.

Hmm -- seems like each fix presents new problems. For instance, I can't download the current version of Safari because I have OS X version 10.4.11, and the current Safari requires version OS X 10.5.3.

Also, Shawn, if I get that far, how do I know whether I have the correct account level on my computer? Further -- and this is proof of how little I know about this stuff -- if I delete Firefox from my computer and thus have no browser application on my computer any more, how do I got to Firefox's site to download a new version of Firefox? Don't I need a browser to get there?

Yes, I have a Mac. I went to System Preferences/Account and it said that I was the administrator. Also, per my response to Jim above, if deleting the Firefox application is what I want to do, and then download the most recent version of Firefox, apparently just putting the icon in the trash and emptying the trash isn't good enough?

Don't know about a Mac, but it's a general rule of thumb to uninstall software rather than just delete it, if that's what you're saying you did. Uninstalling should get rid of register keys, DLL files, etc, Of course, that's what should happen, not what always does, but it's still the way to get rid of a program you'll no longer be wanting. So how I do uninstall software?

I have gone to Firefox's website and nosed around there, but I don't see any information that answers my problem.

At some point within the last year I changed my browser from Safari to Firefox. Then a few months ago, in the name of neatness, I put my Safari software in the trash and emptied it. All well and good, or so I thought, but now I have two problems. First, even though there's no Safari software left on my computer, I keep getting updates from Safari, which I ignore, but still it's a bit annoying. Second and more troublesome (though probably there's no connection between the two things), when I get a notice that there's an update for Firefox, it won't update but instead tells me that I don't have the systems permission required to install the update and that I should contact my system administrator, whoever or whatever that is, or "try again from an account that has permission to install software on this computer." I have no idea what, if anything, to do. Any ideas?

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/a-glass-ceiling-for-women-in-the-orchestra-pit-1875075.html http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/10/entertainment/ca-women10 To the names mentioned in the first story, I would add JoAnn Falleta, Jane Glover, Sian Edwards and, back in the day, Nadia Boulanger. Also, the late famed director of the CSO chorus, Margaret Hillis, was a conductor par excellence, although one didn't know for sure how broad her repertoire was outside the choral realm (having met and talked some about music with her, I would guess that it was broad as can be). My experience of female conductors, other than Hillis, is spotty. What I've heard of Glover (in Bach, Mozart, and Haydn) -- all in concert) was neat and springy but not terrific. Edwards did a nice job on record with works by Judith Weir. The most impressive, I thought, based only on one recording, though (orchestral works by Karol Rathaus), was Falletta. The Alsop I've heard (one of her Barber discs for Naxos) was OK. Also, Susan Davenny-Wyner, formerly an expert singer of mainly modern music (she is married to the excellent composer Yehudi Wyner), became a talented conductor after injuries suffered in a bicycle accident forced her to stop singing: http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Davenny-Wyner-Susan.htm I've only heard her conduct her husband's works, but she does that very well.

Now if they'd looked that, I would have been happy.

Indeed. I wouldn't have brought this up if I didn't think that I was more or less the butt of the episode.

But that superior suggestion didn't occur to me until I was on my way home. Also, her "But I can't have you setting off other alarms" was such a sideswipe that for the remainder of our brief encounter I was in effect upside down.

That didn't occur to me until it was too late -- perhaps because I've been in situations lots of times before where the alarm went off because the zapping action wasn't effective on a book you've checked out, and they have to zap it again. So I might have half-assumed that this common remedy wasn't available to her for some reason or she would have resorted to it. Zapping five books surely would have been easier for her than gouging off those five plastic patches with a razor blade, but I don't think she was into easier. See "One Flew Over The Cuckoos' Nest."

OK -- I unexpectedly need this guy for real. Today I stopped by a nearby library where deacessioned books often are on sale, and saw on the shelves the five-volume 1965 Oxford University Press edition of Addison and Steele's "The Spectator" for $1 a volume. They're well-used but in readable shape, so I take them to the front desk, give the librarian $5 and start to walk out, whereupon I set off the library's electronic security wicket. I return to the front desk, maybe five feet behind me, where the librarian determines that each volume still has a plastic patch stuck inside the front cover with a bit of wiring underneath that sets off that alarm unless it's been electronically zapped at the front desk. So she snips off the dust jacket, and starts to attack the first volume's plastic patch with a razor blade. (Why she doesn't just zap each volume I don't know, but this is her chosen solution.) So I say something like, "Hey, there's no need to disfigure these books. I just paid you for them, so stop chopping up the inside of the front covers and let me walk out with the books, even though the alarm will go off." And she says, displaying the seat-of-the-pants genius with which a seasoned pro responds to stress, "But I can't have you setting off other alarms." To this I say, "I'm just going to take them home -- I don't have an alarm system there," but I know when I'm defeated. (From the set of her jaw, I think that if I had at this point just taken the books from her and walked out the door, she would have called the cops.) And she proceeds to chop away at the inside covers of all five volumes of "The Spectator" to her bureaucratic heart's delight, though perhaps a bit less so than she might have done otherwise. Seems to me that in this case, which I think is far from unique, the "but the person is just doing their job" explanation/excuse doesn't hold up.

Have you cleaned out the exhaust? Lots of lint can build up. When I finally did that for the first time several years ago, I saw that I was fortunate that the house hadn't burned down. And if the exhaust vents through a tube of some sort to the outside (which always is the case, no?), clean the lint out of that, too. Easy to do with a vacuum cleaner. Heloise is here for you.

Upon further investigation on the 'net, I discover that durability is an issue. I would suggest taking a look at Bed, Bath & Beyond where I got mine (Dryer Max "Dryer Balls," four for $9.95) because in my experience BB&B stands behind what they sell almost unto eternity.

If you do laundry and use a dryer, I discovered today that "Dryer Balls" (round spiked softish rubber objects, about the size of a handball and blue in my case, $9.95 for four, that you put into the dryer with your clothes, towels, whatever to decrease drying time and to soften fabrics without the use of fabric softeners by bouncing around with and aerating the clothes etc.) actually do just what they're supposed to do -- like gangbusters. Cuts drying time almost in half. Infinitely satisfying.

And a Jimmy Raney-Attila Zoller duet:

And while I'm on that kick, two by the late Belgian guitarist Rene Thomas -- one with (I think) Eddy Louis and an unidentified drummer, the other with Stan Getz, Louis, and Bernard Lubat (Thomas's solo begins at the 5:06 mark). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA0phKL1djQ