Donald's Blog
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This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison,
Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the
winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were
AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there. |
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In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever,
and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything
that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool
of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the
site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc.
to: dcmusicbox@earthlink.net.
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March 1, 2010O PennsylvaniaI am convinced that public services both government and commercial are getting worse and worse; I wonder how much this contributes to the Tea Party phenomenon. We pay our bills and our taxes and get less and less in return.
A few days ago I wrote about a problem with Qwest, the telephone company that operates in Iowa but not in Pennsylvania, and who were apparently trying to charge me on my final bill for service I must already have paid for. That problem has been resolved, but it took a query on my behalf from Watchdog, the consumer advocate at the Morning Call, to convince Qwest to look into it.
Meanwhile I am paying three or four times as much for my domestic energy as I was in Iowa, so I want to find out about the possibility of converting from fuel oil to natural gas. The Hoffman Brothers construction company tried to return my call, but the connection would not work; they had to try again later from another location: why is American cellphone service (and our broadband) worse than anyone else's, and why do we put up with this?
Certain aspects of trying to get connected in Pennsylvania remind me of Britain in the 1970s, when nothing worked (I hope to heaven we don't need a Thatcher to sort us out). Trying to call UGI Utilities today to find out whether gas is available in my street, and if so how much it would cost to bring it into the house, one of their customer service numbers has been disconnected and several other numbers (at 4:30 in the afternoon) yield the message "Your call cannot be completed at this time. Please try again later." I found a number on the Internet but it went dead after I was on hold for about a minute. I finally emailed UGI and gave up for the day. I do hope natural gas is available in Pennsylvania.
March 1, 2010But We'll Always Have PhiladelphiaI have now visited Philadelphia three times. The first time was about 60 years ago, with my parents; I remember seeing the Liberty Bell. The second time was a dozen years or so ago when Ethne was attending some gardening jamboree; on that occasion I had lunch with the estimable Jason Greshes, leader of the Mahler-List, and I saw my daughter and my grandchildren for the first time in many years (they live not far away in New Jersey). But I did not really see much of the city. Now Ethne and I have just spend a weekend in Philadelphia, only an hour away from home, and the amenities are such as to compensate for a lot of the inconvenience of modern living.
Ethne was judging and lecturing at the annual flower show; I saw one of those before, in Seattle, and they're fun. Next weekend she will be at the one in Chicago. These shows attract a huge, friendly, cosmopolitan crowd, and there's lots of fun stuff to look at. As a lecturer, Ethne can't be beat: some people get up there with a power-point presentation or read a speech through their noses as though they are trying to program an audience of robots; Ethne talks to the audience as though they were all her friends, and so they become her friends. She was talking about Hidcote Manor Garden, which I've heard a lot about over the years; even so, the lecture always tells me something new.
We were able to stay at the Union League club, as [paying] guests rather than members, because Ethne had lectured there once. It was amusing. It's a beautiful old building (Empire style, c.1868) with sumptuous fittings and furnishings, swanky restaurant, a comfy bar and even a barber shop; our room had about 50 pillows and bolsters in it and was so small that there was no place to put all the pillows when we wanted to go to bed. But the bed was wonderful, and the marble bathroom was almost as big as the bedroom. Perhaps because it is a privately-owned hotel, the TV was easy to use (no porn, no advertising), and to my surprise I was able to open the window on the fifth floor. I did not want to pack a change of clothes for only two nights away, but Ethne said, "Don't you want to have your jeans to slop around in?" So I wore my jeans: comfortable, warm for February, practical. But the Union League club has a dress code. After I'd changed my trousers a couple of times I gave up on the jeans.
We were centrally located, with the convention center, the Reading Terminal Market (lots of good food, including Bassett's ice cream shop), Macy's, Barnes & Noble, Borders and FYE close by, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art a short taxi ride. The museum is said to be the largest stone building in the USA; on Friday night we heard a jazz trio there, vibes, bass and drums, subbing for a 13-piece salsa band who'd canceled because of the weather (the forecast had been doubtful, but the weather was splendid). We saw a lot of lovely American art and furniture and I look forward to many more visits.
I mentioned FYE ("For Your Entertainment"). Most people know this as a chain of grubby stores in shopping malls that sell trashy videos and games to kids, and pretend to carry music. There's one in West Des Moines at the Jordan Creek mall and one in the Lehigh Valley Mall in Whitehall where I work a few hours a week at a Barnes & Noble, and they are not much use. But the FYE in downtown Philadelphia, where Tower Records used to be and serving a city of three million, is the best full-service record shop I have seen in many years; I don't know how it has survived. ("Records" of course means "recordings", not necessarily on vinyl, for any young people who may be reading.) I love Waterloo Records in Austin, and the Jazz Record Mart in Chicago, but the FYE in Phildelphia not only sells pop and rock, not only has a Von Freeman record on the Nessa label in the jazz department, but has the only decent classical record department that I know of. I spent half a morning there; I purchased Chamber Music From Theresienstadt 1941-1945 on the Channel Classics label, music by Gideon Klein and Viktor Ullman, who were murdered by the Nazis, a CD I would not have seen anywhere else; and on my way out, I found my favorite recording of Weber's Der Freischütz, conducted by Joseph Keilberth, once on Seraphim LPs and now on CD at last, for less than $14. I spent a good bit of time chatting with classical manager Ken Horowitz, a gentleman and a scholar who survives from the Tower years.
On Chestnut Street we also discovered DiBruno Brothers, one of those foodstores that's like Aladdin's cave, and Boyds, a high-class clothing store that has a good selection of suspenders (braces, for any Brits who may be reading). So in Philadelphia we've got culture and retail therapy: what more could we ask?