My brother David, with Grandmother - Kate (Dollie) Kanouse.

December 1944

Battlestar Galactica

Season three concluded Sunday night, and what a finale it was! I don't watch much television - some news, the Daily Show and Colbert Report on occasion, Bill Maher on Friday nights, Angel games during the baseball season - but three long-running shows have hooked me in recent years: The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Battlestar Galactica. Battlestar is a remake of a mediocre series of the same name from the 1970s, with vastly more interesting characters and complex, nuanced takes on current issues.

It's also downright fun. This is a future (or past?) of warp-speed space travel and dazzling high-tech war rooms, but not cordless phones; radios and pop-up toasters are right out of the 1950s, and people still smoke cigarettes in the workplace. And now we have "All Along the Watchtower" (what's with that?!?). Unfortunately, we have to wait until January 2008 to find out what happens next.

Marijuana

Andrew Sullivan has a link to an interesting report on drugs and toxicity - and once again, marijuana ranks as the least addictive, most benign substance.

My sentiments exactly

Photo by Nick Calyx. Thanks to Harry Myhre for both title and link.

For Slatkin / Zlotkin friends and fans...

Review from the New York Sun:

Fashioning a Lyrical, Fluid Line Classical Music
BY FRED KIRSHNIT
March 14, 2007

Cellist Frederick Zlotkin had the honor of introducing the most beautiful melody ever written by Robert Schumann, the main theme of the Andante cantabile from his Piano Quartet, aboard the chamber music barge Sunday afternoon at Brooklyn's Fulton Ferry Landing. Mr. Zlotkin is most likely tired of being described as Leonard Slatkin's brother, so let's introduce him instead as the son of the fine cellist Eleanor Aller. This day, he teamed with another local celebrity, concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic Glenn Dicterow, along with violist Karen Dreyfus and pianist Gerald Robbins.

Mr. Zlotkin made the most of his opportunity, fashioning a lyrical line notable for its fluidity and grace. He did not employ a great deal of vibrato, but did include a delicious portamento slide toward the conclusion of this infectious melody that brought to this reviewer a flood of memories and at least a trickle of tears. The other two string players each had their turn at this type of gorgeous music making and each acquitted themselves admirably.
...
Although it was the third movement of Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 3 in C Minor that grew out of the aforementioned Schumann Andante cantabile, it was the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor that the quartet performed this day. The piece has a special place in the history of the California ex-pat community so dear to Mr. Zlotkin's parents, as it was this mighty work of chamber music that Otto Klemperer convinced Arnold Schoenberg to orchestrate so that he could conduct it with his Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.

My son with his daughter

Darryl with Kaitlin at a family picnic in Griffith Park.

Joining the world of hybrid cars

We bought a brand spanking new car today, a Honda Civic Hybrid. It has an EPA rating of 49 city / 51 highway, and a cool cockpit with GPS navigation and XM radio. What fun! What a huge car payment! (photo by Robin)