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SEX-AGE-narian

Frankly, I think retailers are crazy to maintain these “senior” discounts.

I find it mildly amusing that when someone gets to be 60, i.e. a sexagenarian, some young people seem to get all weirded out that people so OLD are still HAVING sex. Of course, the baby boomers never want to be getting older. “Sixty is the new forty,” and all that. Back in the 1970s, there was an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show called Mary and the Sexagenarian; I’m not remembering it specifically, but I’m sure there was a joke or two that today’s sixty-somethings would consider ageist.

I saw this story that sex only burns about 21 calories rather than, well, a whole lot more. On the other hand, it has other health benefits.

There are all these nifty benefits to getting older. The thresholds vary, but one can get lots of stuff at a savings, especially services, such as at restaurants and transportation. (But are they legal? Apparently, even though they are discriminatory against the younguns.)

Frankly, I think retailers are crazy to maintain these “senior” discounts. The boomer generation is HUGE in numbers in the United States and will likely live longer than their parents, to boot; this must be an economic drain on some businesses and will continue to be so for quite a while. (Dustbury wrote on this topic recently.)

I LOVE 60, as a number. It has prime factors of 2, 3, and 5, and is evenly divisible by 4, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30 as well. And time is based on 60 – seconds in a minute, minutes in an hour; gotta be SOMETHING to that.

This coming decade SHOULD be the one in which I leave my job. But I have an almost nine-year-old daughter; I may NEVER retire…
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Perennially hormonal

Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor

I continue to be moved by its chordal structure of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue.

From last.fm, copied verbatim in the Wikipedia: “The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, is a piece of organ music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach sometime between 1703 and 1707. The attribution of the piece to Bach has been challenged since the early 1980s by a number of scholars, and remains a controversial topic.”

This piece of music has been used in dozens of movies (The Tree of Life, Gremlins 2, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, Fantasia, among others), TV shows, and video games. Check out this list of Bach music, and find the toccata references. The music is usually used to suggest something scary in a way that has become an unfortunate cliche.

I, though, continue to be moved by its chordal structure. Here’s one recording; you can find several others on YouTube. Listen to the segment that starts at 7:20; the chord at 7:45 just wows me. By those last three chords which are as intense as any power chords by a rock guitarist, I’m in tears of awe.

Somehow, it puts me in the right frame of mind for the latter stages of Holy Week.

Sacred Songs by Daryl Hall

There were two obvious candidates for a single from Sacred Songs, the first two songs on the album.

darylhall.sacredsongs — Recorded in 1977, released in 1980

My old blogging buddy Johnny Bacardi was on Facebook, and I could see that he was on Spotify, one of those online music channels. He was listening to a song called ‘North Star’ by Robert Fripp [LISTEN], a founder of my favorite “progressive rock” band, King Crimson. The vocal, though, was, unmistakably, by Daryl Hall of the very successful singing duo Hall & Oates.

This got me to wonder what the relationship was between that song and the Daryl Hall solo album Sacred Songs, produced by Fripp, an LP that I own and love.

Sacred Songs has a complicated history. From Wikipedia, and confirmed in the liner notes of the CD: “Sacred Songs was recorded in a rather short span of three weeks [in 1977]. Most of the songs were initially recorded with Hall singing and playing piano alongside Fripp’s guitar work, followed by overdubs by Hall & Oates’ regular touring band…

“Fripp and Hall gave the album to RCA officials. Though still relatively pop-oriented, Sacred Songs was very different from Hall & Oates, and fearing the album might be unsuccessful and alienate Hall’s mainstream fans, the company shelved the record, and release was postponed indefinitely.” This, of course, ticked them off greatly, and so they “passed tapes… to music journalists and disc jockeys” to pressure the label to release the album, which they finally did, a couple of years later.

Meanwhile, Fripp’s solo debut, Exposure, had a bunch of Hall vocals as well. “However due to pressure from RCA and Hall’s management, this was cut back to just two songs on the final release (‘You Burn Me Up I’m a Cigarette’ and [the aforementioned] ‘North Star’).” These two songs now appear on the CD version of the Sacred Songs album.

“Upon release, Sacred Songs sold fairly well, peaking at #58 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart; however, there was no hit single from the record. It has since come to be regarded as a high point in the careers of both Hall and Fripp.”

There were two obvious candidates for a single, the first two songs on the album, the title track, and Something in 4/4 Time [LISTEN]. When I got out this album, I loved it all over again. Oddly, I’ve recently had it stuck in my mind that some a capella group ought to cover 4/4 Time, complete with that Frippertronics in the bridge.

Listen to 30 seconds of each track of the original album HERE.
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Watch the 62nd episode of Live from Daryl’s House, in which Daryl and the group Minus the Bear perform NYCNY from the Sacred Songs album.

The Lydster, Part 108: Another natal day

She continues to surprise me with not just her vocabulary, but her understanding of concepts.

Last year, the Daughter was at least 4’6″; now she’s very close to 4’10” (147 cm). There are some adults she’s practically looking in the eye. I’m only 5’11.5″, but my wife is about 5’10” and her brothers are all about 6’3″, so I can only imagine how tall she’ll get to be.

After performing in the Nutcracker, she seems to have tired of formal ballet lessons, though she’s forever moving about and even choreographing for her cousins and friends.

She discovered soccer in the fall, and I suspect she’ll do that again. She liked doing field hockey in school, and that led her to get her to take her to an Albany Devils’ ice hockey game. What I know about hockey would fit on top of a puck, but she seemed to enjoy the experience.

On TV, she watches figure skating and Dancing with the Stars with her mother, and old Dick van Dyke Show episodes with me. She still likes Wild Kratts, a cartoon about nature.

At least half of the fairy books by Daisy Meadows (a pseudonym for the four writers of the Rainbow Magic books), she’s consumed; for a time, she’d read nothing else. In recent months, though, she’s expanded her reading repertoire.

She continues to be very good at math and spelling. I help her with most of her homework, but her mother practices clarinet with her.

Going to Sunday School seems to be the highlight of the week; she’s getting good at her Bible history. She likes being invited to do special things at church, such as the unveiling of a diorama of our church, or ringing the church bell (tougher than it looks).

Lessee: she continues to surprise me with not just her vocabulary, but her understanding of concepts.

She has well over a dozen dolls. She knows all their names (I don’t), including the new American Girl doll, Sophia, who kinda looks like her. There is actually a floor plan she drew up to determine who sleeps where, with a rotation of who gets to sleep with her.

I suspect that the Newtown, CT shootings have affected her deeply, though she mentions it only in passing.

She’s a good kid who gets along with a variety of people. But I think she NEEDS a number of friends; when she’s with one friend for too long, or too often, the relationship frays a bit.

I guess that’s enough for this year.

Happy birthday, my dear daughter.

K is for Killing

The current debate over gun violence likely will not be ended so easily.

My church, First Presbyterian Church in Albany, NY, is celebrating its 250th anniversary this year. The church donated some artifacts to the Albany Institute of History & Art, itself founded in 1791. The Institute has an exhibit, ongoing through April 17, showing some of the church history over the years.

Some of the church members included John Jay, eventually the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury; and Aaron Burr, third Vice-President of United States, and the first NOT to go on to become President.

After Burr killed Hamilton in a duel in 1804, the pastor Eliphalet Nott delivered a jeremiad against dueling. As it was a particularly long and significant sermon, it was published by the Dutch Reformed Church in Albany. (I listened to the re-enacted speech a few years ago.) Eliphalet Nott had the remarkable effect of, almost singlehandedly, effectively ending what had been considered an “honorable” way for gentlemen to settle their differences.

The current debate over gun violence likely will not be ended so easily. The solutions seem to be fewer guns on one side, more guns on the other. The latter group clings to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The notion of a militia, to me, seems to be a state-run National Guard.

In any case, here’s a list of murders with firearms (most recent) by country. And here are twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States. Nothing here, I suspect, will change anyone’s mind about the next steps to take. No Eliphalet Nott sermon will save the day anymore.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12