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"Texas residents warned of tap water tainted with brain-eating microbe" Quite the headline! https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/26/texas-tap-water-tainted-brain-eating-microbe

As of yesterday, 35 US colleges and universities had reported at least 1000 cases of COVID (each). It works out to 130,000 cases when adding up all the universities below 1000 cases. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-college-cases-tracker.html With a few exceptions, Canadian universities are virtual-only and relatively few students are now living on campus, but the experiment in our case will be the school children back in school.

Anyone tuning in tonight or tomorrow to Kenny Barron streaming at the Vanguard? https://villagevanguard.com/event/barron-trio They say they've overhauled their system (I guess in response to a lot of complaints). I haven't entirely decided, but at $10, I'll probably give it a whirl...

There's been a bit of back and forth between the Province and the Mayors about who can really call for stricter standards, particularly at bars and nightclubs. Right now the private gathering numbers have been cut back, but stores, gyms, movie theatres, etc. continue as before in the Phase 3 reopening. However, they announced two new restrictions, Ontario-wide: Last call at bars and restaurants, including nightclubs, is 11 p.m. All strip clubs will be closed until further notice. I might even have gone with 10 pm last call, but this may help a bit. The daily Provincial new COVID cases are definitely up around 400 (from 150 or so) but it may have leveled off for the moment and doesn't seem to be headed to 500+ or anything. I really hope I don't have to eat my words in another few weeks. Quite a lot of kids are doing on-line only learning but a sizable number are in school at least part of the time a few days a week, including mine. The real question is whether this will drive up cases or not. Supposedly in the next week or so, we'll be able to go to the pharmacy for an instant COVID test. Depending on how things go, this could bring some relief to the standard COVID testing centres, especially for all the kids that get a case of the sniffles and can't go back to school without a COVID test.

Ripped from the headlines - "Trump claims White House can overrule FDA's attempt to toughen guidelines for coronavirus vaccine" https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/23/politics/trump-fda-coronavirus-vaccine/index.html My worry is that we may never actually know what the FDA recommendations are because the WH runs interference. In any case, I do hope that any vaccine that reaches the US market is thoroughly vetted by the firms themselves. But I'll only have what is released in Canada anyway.

You do what you want. Given the track record of the political appointees over-riding the core recommendations of the scientists at CDC and FDA, and then only coming clean later or reversing themselves under pressure, I no longer have faith in these institutions. Sad...

My copy arrived , though it was just left on the front lawn, not on my stoop . What an odyssey! Curious to find out more about the upcoming releases on Impulse!

I don't think anyone recommended Hutcherson's Dialogue, but I think it's swell session with several Hill compositions.

RIP I may well have seen him over the years at the Chicago Jazz Festival in an ensemble. However, The only time I know for sure that I saw him was at this amazing concert where he was one of several tenor players - March 19, 2005: The Great Chicago Tenor Saxes, featuring Johnny Griffin, Ira Sullivan, Von Freeman, Franz Jackson and Eric Alexander. The Art Institute of Chicago Rubloff Auditorium Still can't believe this wasn't recorded (or at least made publicly available)...

That sounds good, though I might prefer the Viking burial approach where all my junk is loaded onto a ship in Lake Ontario and then set on fire.

I think the real issue is that there is so little confidence in the CDC (at this point) that the public expects the first vaccine in the US will be rushed out (and indeed maybe from Russia). I wouldn't have any faith in that either. I do plan on taking a vaccine that has been vetted by Canadian and/or European authorities when it is available.

I'll probably leave a note that the Mosaics may still have some resale value but almost nothing else is particularly rare and certainly not worth sorting through to try to put up on eBay (or entice a college radio station with it). As I mentioned elsewhere, my children are basically appalled by the idea of having a big stack of CDs, so I assume they'll take it to a used music shop (if those even still exist) and what isn't taken will end up in the dump. Same thing with my books, though I expect in my next move (probably downsizing to a condo), I'll get rid of the vast majority of them. Certainly a bit depressing if I think too long about it.

Already discussed to some point, but this article has a detailed map and timeline showing how the new Postmaster General's policies led to a dramatic slowdown in mail deliveries. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/21/usps-post-office-mail-slowdowns-louis-dejoy In other words, it wasn't just your imagination it was the direct result of Trump's appointee.

Let's hope they are a bit smarter next time on the contractual side of things...

Also on iTunes as of today. This is a case where I think I do want to sample the newly available outtakes before committing to buy yet another edition of the album. But I'm moderately likely to order this in the end.

And iTunes! I'm glad they ironed out all these contractual wrinkles.

She spoke at my commencement, and I saved the text of her speech somewhere. She will be sorely missed, and her passing at this particular time makes 2020 a shoo-in for worst year of my entire life. No point in going on any further, as it will just break forum rules...

He's not the only one, but he may be the only one to write an anti-lockdown song... https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/bv8e83/noel-gallagher-oasis-ian-brown-stone-roses-anti-maskers-covid-hoax Have lost so much respect for him I probably will remove him entirely from my music rotation.

Nice. Congrats. I'm now thinking I'll have my copy by early next week. We'll see.

Supposedly, now available on Amazon.ca again with release date of tomorrow. I'll have to have my wife put in the order as I don't have Prime. (While definitely a first-world problem, I'm still PO'ed that they jumped the gun and completely cancelled the order instead of just pushing back delivery date, since it seemed likely it would be made available to Canada along with the US. In the process, they disrupted a bundled order that did qualify for free shipping but no longer does after I have to buy the Monk as a stand-alone item.)

We're going to see rollbacks in parts of Ontario (almost certainly Toronto and Peel Region) so that the max indoor gatherings will be 10 (instead of 50). I'm not entirely sure if this applies to stores, movie theatres and gyms (prob. not as there isn't "gathering" per se), but if so, then these will all shut back down. It does mean that the concert I was going to go to (with 50 socially distanced in the audience) is going to be cancelled or postponed again. I'm not saying this is an over-reaction, but I am disappointed to say the least. Actually, probably the movie theatres in Toronto will be shut back down, but I may not have the details until later tonight. I know they are talking very seriously about cutting back hours that bars can serve alcohol, and I do think that is a good idea as there have been quite a few outbreaks linked to bars.

He is apparently also on Sea Breeze - Bass - Takashi Mizuhashi Drums – George Ohtsuka Electric Piano – Hideo Ichikawa Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone –Takao Uematsu Trumpet, Flugelhorn – Shunzo Ohno Sea Breeze Fool On The Hill Cannibal Potato Chips Jumping Cats

I have a newish printer and it has a slot for a cable that connects to the computer (a USB connection not the old, old printer ports). This is good as the wifi routing to the printer is very iffy. But you could certainly ask at Staples or Best Buy about whether the printer has a direct connection (I would think most do) - and more importantly if the right cable is included in the box (not as standard) or you have to track one down. I am mostly listening to music digitally these days and the files are (mostly) backed up on a couple of hard drives (and sometimes even burned to a DVD) but I haven't crossed over to storing everything in the cloud. Maybe some day...

I've gotten a bit side-tracked but I will start Don Quixote soon. I'll probably watch the lecture series on Quixote referenced earlier in the thread, and I also stumbled across Nabokov's Lectures on Don Quixote, which looks pretty interesting. Apparently he has a somewhat unorthodox take on the novel. In the meantime, I'm struggling to get through the Collected Writings of Joe Brainard (Library of America). It's extremely unclear to me why his very random thoughts and often undercooked personal essays would merit such a tome. Some of his pieces do have the somewhat tossed off feel of something from a poet from the New York School (say Ted Berrigan, who Brainard knew, or Frank O'Hara), but what works in a poem often doesn't work in a longer, supposedly more structured piece. That's my take anyway. I'm definitely leaning towards just dropping this and moving on to something that I will enjoy more.

I do find it extremely droll to watch Millennials (and it does mostly seem to be them driving the recent push to put pop/rock and even punk bands out on vinyl) buying up these new releases and then getting extremely tense when they can't find the download card (since they are actually planning to listen to the music on their phones and tables).