One thing that tends to happen when I'm on the road is that I pay virtually no attention to news. My internet access is limited, I play CDs instead of listening to the radio, and I almost never consider turning a TV on. One exceptional example was the weeks or I spent in Detroit in September-October 2008 working on my sister-in-law's house: at some point I happened to glance at a TV while I was waiting for some takeout BBQ and was shocked to notice that the stock market index had dropped more 3,000 points since I'd last noticed: the post-Lehman economy had collapsed and I hadn't even noticed it.

During the last couple weeks I've been only vaguely aware that anything was happening in the Ukraine. (That I was aware at all was because I spent the middle week with my wife, who never ever takes a break from the news. Indeed, it seems like she spent most of the time I was driving and birdwatching studying her twitter feeds and reading me most of Billmon's tweets.) What I do know is that there has been a period of anti-government protests that have often been met with police brutality, that the nation's elected president was ultimately deposed and later surfaced in Russia, and that Russia had intervened by taking military control of the majority-Russian Crimean peninsula. This has in turn spurred the US government to cajole and threaten Russia -- including State Secretary Kerry's insistence that all options are on the table -- while the usual warmongers like Lindsey Graham and John McCain blame Obama's wimpiness and are itching to turn this into a shooting war.

I don't have any real insights to offer about the Ukraine, nor even much that I am certain of regarding Putin's designs or intentions. But I do have an opinion on the following comment by Paul Woodward:

I guess Russia's move will render most of the anti-interventionists mute since the only interventions anyone feels moved to speak out against are those backed by the United States. "Down with American intervention!" "Intervention by anyone else -- who cares?"

I suppose I can be counted as an "anti-interventionist" who focuses on opposing American interventions, although I certainly don't subscribe to "who cares" when nations other than the US intervene in the affairs of other countries. I'm hard pressed to give any examples where foreign intervention has been a good thing. (As I recall, Chomsky regards India's 1971 intervention in support of independence for Bangla Desh as one such case, but that was extremely unusual and certainly can't be credited to good intentions: India saw its move as a way to cripple Pakistan.) There are a number of reasons why intervention is almost never helpful. Notably, it's almost impossible to launch an intervention without a selfish agenda -- democratic, neutral, and benign nations rarely have the capability much less the will to intervene. And even if one's intentions are laudable, the use of force inevitably tarnishes the action, leading to all sorts of unintended consequences.

The reason the US gets singled out is that the US intervenes more often and more powerfully than any other nation, and that the US often has an explicitly hegemonic and ideological agenda, and those goals require more coercion and manipulation than is necessary to simply establish popular government and civil order.

Music Week

Music: Current count 22882 [22868] rated (+14), 614 [596] unrated (+18).

Only a couple days since I got back from Florida, so not much here. That the quality level is fairly high owes to Michael Tatum, who found and reviewed most of this week's newly rated albums. Sure, I'm less enthusiastic -- even New Mendicants is marginal for me, but it's the first non-jazz 2014 release to crack my A-list. On the other hand, Revolutionary Snake Ensemble is my sixth A- jazz record this year. Sure, at this pace I'll wind up with barely more than a third as many A- records as last year. I'm not opposed to the notion that 2014 is off to a slow start, but the main factor is that I'm getting to fewer albums this year. The 2014 list currently has 83 records rated, a pace that would leave me shy of 500 -- less than half last year's total. So maybe I am hanging it up -- or at least taking it easy.

Last two weeks I only listened to music in the car, and only played previously rated CDs. Few sounded better to me than the Maria Muldaur album that I decided to bump up. Granted, the line about Obama didn't pan out, but just this week John McCain reminded us again why he would have been the worst president in US history. The difference between Obama and McCain is very similar to McGeorge Bundy's characterization of the foreign policy difference between Kennedy and Johnson: JFK wanted to be viewed as smart, where LBJ insisted on proving he was tough. That impulse was what let the hawks push Johnson into such a disastrous situation in Vietnam. So it shouldn't be surprising that hawks nowadays are preoccupied with challenging Obama's virility. Of course, to win a comparison with McCain, Obama needn't be very smart -- sane suffices.

Unpacking covers two weeks, everything since February 17. Still getting more stuff than I expected, plus a lot of download links I haven't had time to pursue.

New records rated this week:

• Against Me!: Transgender Dysphoria Blues (2014, Total Treble): post-punk [r]: B+(**)
• Katy B: Little Red (2014, Columbia): UK dance pop [r]: B+(***)
• Bruce Barth: Daybreak (2014, Savant): mainstream piano jazz [cd]: B+(**)
• Tyrone Birkett/Emancipation: Postmodern Spirituals: The Promised Land (2013 [2014], Araminta Music): gospel sax with some vocals [cd]: B+(**)
• Toni Braxton & Babyface: Love Marriage & Divorce (2014, Motown): concept album in neo-soul [r]: B+(***)
• Neneh Cherry: Blank Project (2014, Smalltown Supersound): oblique electropop [r]: B+(***)
• Jennifer Nettles: That Girl (Mercury Nashville): country diva [r]: B
• The New Mendicants: Into the Lime (2014, Ashmont): alt/indie soft rock [r]: A-
• Angel Olsen: Burn Your Fire for No Witness (2014, Jagjaguwar): low-budget singer-songwriter [r]: B+(**)
• Daniel Smith: Smokin' Hot Bassoon Blues (2013 [2014], Summit): bassoon blues [cd]: B+(*)
• St. Vincent: St. Vincent (2014, Loma Vista/Republic): alt singer-songwriter [r]: B+(***)
• Tinariwen: Emmaar (2013 [2014], Anti-): Malian desert blues [r]: B+(***)

Grade changes:

• Maria Muldaur and Her Garden of Joy: Good Time Music for Hard Times (2009, Stony Plain): [was A-]: A

Unpacking: Found in the mail the past two weeks:

• Juhani Aaltonen: To Future Memories (TUM)
• Jaime Affoumado/Alex Blake/Arturo O'Farrill/Bill Ware: The Puppeteers (Puppet's): March 18
• Matt Bauder and Day in Pictures: Nightshades (Clean Feed)
• The Nels Cline Singers: Macroscope (Mack Avenue): advance, April 15
• Kris Davis Trio: Waiting for You to Grow (Clean Feed)
• Michael Dessen Trio: Resonating Abstractions (Clean Feed)
• Henrik Otto Donner & TUMO: And It Happened . . . (TUM): March 18
• Dave Douglas/Chet Doxas/Steve Swallow/Jim Doxas: Riverside (Greenleaf Music): advance, April 15
• Benjamin Duboc: St. James Infirmary (Improvising Beings)
• Rachel Eckroth: Let Go (Virgo Sun)
• Erik Friedlander: Nighthawks (Skipstone): May 20
• International Orange (self-released)
• Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra: Habitat (Justin Time): March 11
• Jonas Kullhammar/Torbjörn Zetterberg/Espen Aalberg: Basement Sessions Vol. 2 (Clean Feed)
• Mike Longo: Step On It (CAP): March 4
• Noshir Mody: Stories From the Years of Living Passionately (self-released): May 6
• The North: Slow Down (This Isn't the Mainland) (Dowsett): April 15
• Itaru Oki: Chorul Zukan (Improvising Beings)
• Nicky Schrire: To the Spring (self-released, EP): March 11, digital only
• Kendra Shank & John Stowell: New York Conversations (TCB): April 8
• The Westerlies: Wish the Children Would Come on Home (Songlines): May 13
• The Young Mothers: A Mothers Work Is Never Done (Tektite): advance
• The Young Mothers: Sampler 1 (Tektite): promo?

Back Home

Got back home last night from my long road trip to south Florida. Got as far out as Islamadora in the Keys, but having been to Key West before I didn't figure it was worth the extra effort. Drove 4,551 miles. Figured I would dally a bit on the way back, but ran into a rainy day that made St. Augustine unpleasant, so I turned inland rather than exploring the Atlantic coast further. Then the weather reports made it advisable to try to get back to Wichita yesterday, when it was 50F and sunny, rather than today -- 24F and threats of frozen whatever, leading to snow tonight and a forecast high of 11F tomorrow. Had the weather not threatened so, I would have spent an extra day or two with relatives in Arkansas and Oklahoma, and maybe more time with a friend in Mississippi. (We wound up having a nice chat as our paths intersected in Hattiesburg.)

Also, I had two more reasons to get back on Feb. 28: Josh Ruebner was in town promoting his book Shattered Hopes: The Failure of Obama's Middle East Process (sponsored by my wife's Palestinian Study Group) -- I missed the book reading but crashed the after-party -- and my wife's cousin, comic and sometime-sportscaster Mike Leiderman, was also in town to do a "shtick sermon" at a local synagogue, so we got a chance to see him. The latter was especially satisfying since one of the main points of the Florida trip was to see his parents -- my wife's aunt and uncle -- in Palm Beach.

Had several challenges when I got back. Both the CD players weren't working, probably the result of a power outage when I was gone. After some work, the main one skipped and stuttered a bit, then settled into what seems to be working order. Still have to fiddle with the upstairs system, so don't know yet whether it's cooked or merely contrary. Seems like we've gone through a lot of component CD changers in the last few years: they've become increasingly fragile whereas my amplifiers and speakers have an average of 30 years' reliable service.

A more annoying problem came when I booted my main computer. It's hooked on a KVM switch which was disconnected, so the software that probes for monitor type and size failed and selected a much coarser resolution (1024x768 as opposed to 1920x1280). I've run into this problem before, but rebooting didn't fix it, and the fixes that I had previously resorted to -- mostly hacking the "xorg.conf" file -- seem to have been closed off by an increasingly opaque configuration process. (The machine is running Ubuntu 12.04.4, which also has the disadvantage of not being the latest release.) I spent hours reading bulletin boards and poking values into something called xrandr to little avail last night, but somehow got it working today. There was a day when lesser resolutions were acceptable, but the 23-inch Samsung is wide enough I can keep a stack of browser windows on the left and my emacs editor on the right with no overlap. I typically keep 50 browser tabs and 50 text files open at once, and find it hard to imagine working otherwise. And that's just my main workspace: I've configured the window manager for six, so I can use another for mail, a third for gimp, yet another just for the Christgau website.

A second machine, which I run Rhapsody and Facebook on, came up fine. I copied the website files I had changed on the antique laptop to the main machine, then did a belated software update there (585 packages -- it's still on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS) and it seems OK, ready to be ignored until the next road trip.

Finally, I started to look at 452 emails, which is likely to take several days, mixed with catching up on old newspapers, unopened mail, and recorded TV -- also getting back into the stream of everyday life, and getting started on some long-considered, long-delayed projects.

Daily Log

Wrote this to Connie:

Got back last night, a bit of a rush to get in before the weather gets even worse. Was 91F in Miami the day we left -- hotter than I really wanted, but it was down in the 40s by the time I got to Tallahassee. Saw Jerry going out and coming back. Stayed over night in Picayune, MS second day out. Went up to see him at his house that evening, then he came down to Picayune for brunch next day. He described house as a "trailer" but looked more like a manufactured home, double-wide but not real long. Marianne had gone to bed, so I didn't see her. The joint was overrun by 17 dogs, most in a pen and 5-6 smaller cages, and the house reeked of bleach. Wasn't easy to find, since it shares a street address with several other houses that are pretty scattered. The afternoon I was coming back, he had to take Marianne to see a doctor in Hattiesburg, so I went there from Biloxi and we hooked up at a restaurant. Marianne said she had heard a lot about me ("not all of it good"), but didn't say much after that. Jerry couldn't stay long -- wanted to get home while it was still daylight, something about cataracts. He promised to keep in touch better -- said I make him smile. I asked about his computers and photography equipment, and tried to encourage him to do more of that. Taking care of Marianne and all those dogs gives him much to do every day, which is more than you can say for the rut he was in when he left here, but I'd like to see him doing something more challenging.

Wrote this to Jan:

Back in Wichita last night. Had every intention of stopping to see Elsie Lee, but 40 miles short I decided I couldn't do that and still get home before the blizzard hits (about an hour ago). Saw a lot of alligators and dolphins, both brown and white pelicans, roseate spoonbills and lots of storks and vultures, even more herons and egrets; took a glass-bottom boat over a coral reef and saw barracudas and sea turtles and sharks and rays, but none of the big game fish folks get excited about in the Keys (tarpons, marlin, sailfish), and the only Florida panther we saw was stuffed. Drove 4591 miles. Good weather: ran into rain only three times, a few sprinkles in Arkansas, a few hours driving up the Florida coast to St. Augustine then west to Lake City, and a torrential downpour driving semi-lost in southwest Miami. Saw Laura's 96-year-old aunt and uncle in Palm Beach, a good friend from Wichita who's being treated for cancer in Miami (her son is a doctor there), and another friend who ran off to south Mississippi. Nothing bad happened, although I will say that Dallas and Miami are among the worst traffic cities in the country.

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Music Week

Music: Current count 22868 [22868] rated (+0), 596 [596] unrated (+0). In other words, no change. I've been on the road all week. Didn't take any new unrated music with me -- just three travel cases with familiar discs, about half left over from previous trips. (I thought I was going to take the new Allen Lowe set, but decided the packaging could neither be left behind nor survive the trip.) Also haven't played any Rhapsody, nor written much other than trip notes (and not much there either). I have been able to check mail nightly, but my ancient laptop isn't up for much more than that. Also, the proxy server schemes used by more and more hotels these days -- combined with my use of NoScript, but hey, it's my computer and I have my rights -- has been especially painful. (I was only able to get through Best Western's trap tonight by running Epiphany -- my usual choice is Firefox with NoScript -- and as soon as it connected the browser crashed.)

Don't know whether I'll be home next Monday -- probably, but not by much, and certainly won't have much in the way of ratings to report.

Daily Log

Naples to Kendall.

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Homestead to Naples.

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Start and end: Florida City, FL. Drove about 100 miles today. Had breakfast at IHOP. (Tip: I had the same Belgian waffle combo as last week, but got the waitress to microsave the syrup, so the waffle stayed warm instead of freezing up.) Picked up Laura and drove to Flamingo in Everglades National Park. Had lunch (way overpriced) and walked around a bit: saw a bunch of roseate spoonbills, an osprey nest with adult and chick, a small aligator. On the drive back, stopped several places, including a pond with black vultures, a mahogany stand, an elevated view of the sawgrass, and finally took the Anhinga trail. Saw turkey vultures, and several storks by the side of the road: at one point I saw three white backs out in the grasas -- first thought was sheep. Anhinga Trail had several dozen anhingas, mostly settled in trees, and a fair number of herons (some quite large) and turtles, plus at least a dozen alligators (various sizes, one swimming that must have been 8-10 feet long, one rather small pulled up on the grass near the walkway). Nearly dusk by the time we finished the last trail, so no time for the nearby Gumbo Limbo trail (similar, I suspect, to the mahogany stand, which had quite a few gumbo limbo trees). Also saw a couple baldcypress swamps -- most of the trees were white dwarfs that appeared dead but evidently defoliate for the dry winters.

Had dinner at Cracker Barrel. Was rather late by the time we got back.

A Downloader's Diary (36): February 2013

Insert text from here.

This is the 36th installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 867 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter. Comments are open (subject to moderation).

Daily Log

Started West Palm Beach; ended Florida City. Drive 190 miles.

Tried to find a bagel place for breakfast/lunch, but couldn't locate it. Went to Applebee's instead -- not a good choice. Drove to Palm Beach to see and say goodbye to Laura's aunt and uncle. Very brief. Lots of traffic coming down to and past Miami. Tried jogging west to pick up I-75 and missed, so drove back roads until picking up ???.

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Laura made a two-day reservation at the Hilton Palm Beach Airport -- super-expensive in my opinion, but she assured me there were no good alternatives. I could check in at 3PM, but got there around 5PM and waited in the lobby. The real plus for me was that she could get a shuttle from the airport, saving me from having to navigate parking at the airport. It was hard enough to find the hotel, even with a phone smart enough to show maps.

Music Week

Music: Current count 22868 [22850] rated (+18), 596 [596] unrated (+0).

Wrapped this up on Thursday evening so I would be ready to post it on Monday (assuming Internet access). So everything here reflects about one half of a normal week, but then the next two weeks won't be normal at all: I'll be on the road, traveling around Florida, then eventually heading back to Wichita.

Most of the half-week's newly rated records already appeared in Rhapsody Streamnotes, but Thursday added a couple pretty good new jazz records. I'm a bit on the fence about James Brandon Lewis -- hard to say exactly why I gave him the edge and held it back from Jon Irabagon's latest, but the latter slips a bit from two superior albums, and the former is a new face backed by William Parker and Gerald Cleaver. Still, seemed firm enough until I played the Craig Handy disc and loved every minute of it. Only question there is whether further play bumps it up another notch.

Adding this bit on Monday: I'm in Florida, after a pleasant if uneventful drive and a lot of minor nuissances involving living on the road -- lousy, overpriced hotels; lousy food. Stopped and spent some time with a good friend I hadn't seen in nearly a year. Saw a lot of varying degrees of swampland, but thus far not much ocean. The aged laptop computer I brought along is very slow and erratic, so it looks like I'm going to get even less done than imagined.

New records rated this week:

• Arild Andersen/Tommy Smith/Paolo Vinaccia: Mira (2012 [2014], ECM): bassist-led sax trio [dl]: B+(***)
• Scott H. Biram: Nothin' but Blood (2014, Bloodshot): roots rocking bluesman [r]: B+(***)
• Cities Aviv: Come to Life (2014, Young One): underground rap [r]: B+(*)
• Craig Handy: Craig Handy & 2nd Line Smith (2011 [2014], Okeh): sax man goes back to r&b [cdr]: A-
• Jon Irabagon/Mark Helias/Barry Altschul: It Takes All Kinds (2013 [2014], Irabbagast/Jazzwerkstatt): avant sax trio [cd]: B+(***)
• James Brandon Lewis: Divine Travels (2011 [2014], Okeh): avant sax trio [cd]: A-
• Eleni Mandell: Let's Fly a Kite (2014, Yep Roc): singer-songwriter [r]: B+(*)
• Young Fathers: Tape Two (2013, Anticon, EP): Scottish beats, universal hip-hop [r]: B+(**)
• Young Fathers: Dead (2014, Anticon): more doom and gloom [r]: B+(*)

Old records rated this week:

• Clancy Hayes: Swingin' Minstrel (1956-58 [1963], Good Time Jazz): banjo-playing trad jazz singer [r]: B+(**)
• Rex Stewart/Dicky Wells: Chatter Jazz (1959, RCA): small swing group led by cornet-trombone duo [r]: A-
• Clarence Williams: Dreaming the Hours Away: The Columbia Recordings Volume One (1926-28 [1998], Frog): classic jazz plus some blues singers [r]: A-
• Clarence Williams: Gimme Blues: Washboard Bands 1926-1929 (1926-29 [2011], Frog): washboard band jazz [r]: B+(***)
• Clarence Williams: Shake 'Em Up: The Vocalion, Brunswick, Victor, Paramount & Grey Gull Recordings 1927-1929 (1927-29 [1998], Frog): classic jazz starts to swing [r]: A-
• Clarence Williams: Whoop It Up: The Columbia Recordings Volume 2 (1929-31 [1998], Frog): classic jazz [r]: B+(***)
• Mary Lou Williams: Zoning (1974 [1995], Smithsonian Folkways): piano flash and motion [r]: A-
• Mary Lou Williams Trio: At Rick's Café Americain (1979 [1999], Storyville): piano trio [r]: B+(***)
• Lester Young, Roy Eldridge and Harry Edison: Laughin' to Keep From Cryin' (1958 [2000], Verve): easy swinging veterans [r]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Regina Carter: Southern Comfort (Sony Masterworks)
• Lisa Hilton: Kaleidoscope (Ruby Slippers): March 11
• Matt Newton: Within Reach (self-released): February 21
• Dan Weiss: Fourteen (Pi): March 25

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Rhapsody Streamnotes (February 2014)

Pick up text here.

Mar 2001