Note- I published this one on my original blog on April
1, 2016. The following post is identical to what went up on that day save for some formatting adjustments to the footnotes.
*******************************************************************
Hi all,
The first Friday post of each month is going to be a little different- it will resemble more of a newsletter than a blog post. I'll cover two general ideas each time.
First, an update on blog admin. This might include what happened last month, what I have coming up, and what I'm just thinking about. I'll comment on the blog in general, if appropriate. Sharing the blog process makes sense to me so expect this to be a fixture of some sort on these monthly posts.
The second section will include what enhanced my inner life in the past month. In general, I'll share anything I thought noteworthy that I do not foresee as the subject of its own blog post. Generally, expect a summary of the books I've read and any notable activities or discoveries from the previous month.
Well, without further ado...
Blog Admin- April 2016 edition
Q & A from March- actual questions from actual readers
Q: You actually 'actively take notes' for the sand county book?
A: Yup. But only by scribbling the page numbers onto a note card like I describe in my reading process post- no true note taking while I read.
Q: How long does each post take?
A: It depends. Writing a rough draft takes very little time but considering the editing and proofreading process (the true admin of the blog) moves the total amount of time upward. Maybe I'll get a stopwatch out for an upcoming post and take everyone behind the scenes a little further.
The following things were actually said about my blog in March
"I'll read it."
"That running post is really running away from you huh?"
"Maybe you can write a guest post on Tim's blog."
"Your footnote solution is good, actually."
"Damn long but surprisingly it kept me reading."
"Today I took uber because it was cheaper than the T." (*)
What was all the chatter about? March 2016 Blog Posts
*2/29- 2011 life changing books pt1- Keep The Change + Why We Get Fat
*3/4- Hubway Is Back
*3/8- 2011 life changing books pt2- Born To Run
*3/11- Bang Bangs @ Porter Sq
*3/15- 2011 life changing books pt3- The Checklist Manifesto
*3/18- Lost In Translation (w/ march madness)
*3/22- My Reading Process
*3/25- Leftovers- Born To Run
*3/28- Lost In Translation- Rd 1, part 1
*3/30- Lost In Translation- Rd 1, part 2
*4/1- Proper Admin, March 2016
The basic goal for this blog is to improve my writing skills. As long as I write regularly, I'll remain on the right track. So far, so good- I'm fairly content with month #1 in this regard. More on this topic in a couple of weeks.
In terms of topic selection, I tried to keep my approach very basic. If I thought about a topic repeatedly, I wrote about it. Any clear, interesting, or true piece of writing became a blog post.
Although improving discipline and organizational skills is not an explicit goal of mine at the moment, I don't think it will hurt to try and stick to an arbitrary schedule. So, I organized my current stockpile of ideas into an outline for the upcoming month. Any extra topics that did not fit into the tentative schedule are listed in a block at the end.
April schedule (tentative- M/W/F or T/F- posts published @ 11am ~ noon)
*4/4- Lost In Translation- Rd 1, part 3
*4/6- Lost In Translation- Rd 1, part 4
*4/8- Leftovers #1- The Checklist Manifesto (sample checklists)
*4/12- Why Blog
*4/15- Lean In + Sheryl Sandberg
*4/18- Lost In Translation- quarterfinal, part 1
*4/20- Lost In Translation- quarterfinal, part 2
*4/22 - Leftovers #2- The Checklist Manifesto (pride, etc)
*4/26- 2012 life changing books + note about pre-2011 next (not 2013)
*4/29- How To Be a Justice of the Peace
*5/3- Lost In Translation- Final Four
*5/6- Proper Admin, April 2016
*5/10- Lost In Translation- Final (w/ Book Notes Consolations as a postgame show)
*5/13- Pre-2011 life changing books pt1- Maniac Magee
*5/17- Book Notes- The Checklist Manifesto
*5/20- Pre-2011 life changing books pt2- Moneyball
*Rest of May...(*)?
*Considering whether to post or not on the days before and after Memorial Day (full holiday concept on this blog? Yes, I suspect so.)
Other topics I kind of started working on but unlikely to show up in the coming month...
*Pre-2011 life changing books (x5)
*Gordon Bombay was definitely fired by USA Hockey
*If you can read, you can...bake banana bread
*All the shit that I own (five part series? every wed starting in the summer? cover the four types of stuff, then comment on materialism? just a list? wait until i move?)
*Hubway follow ups (prequel + sequel to original post)
*Bang Bang follow up- (eating like a pig/how to cook gyozas/second place theory?)
*Favorite Harry Potter analogies
*Life changing books (series)
-> 2013 books
-> 2014 books
-> 2015 books
-> 2016 books (in 2017)
*What I learned at work (series)
My(assumed) return to regular work will
force a transition on this blog. This will happen at
some point between next week and next year ASAP but I see no
urgency to plan too far ahead. From where I see things today, the most
likely future of this blog will involve a weekly post describing a book I just
read. I'll probably include my book notes in some form and connect the
book to some larger concept or previous post. If I have too much to say about a
given topic, I might drop by with a 'leftovers' post similar to last week's Born To Run blog or the upcoming posts about The Checklist Manifesto.
What else happened in March?
This month, I finished reading seventeen books (as of March 30). The pace is significantly higher than observed in each of the past two years, when I finished exactly 100 books (and therefore read just over eight books per month). I suspect most of this is due to my recent 'policy change' of immediately requesting any book numbering 200 pages or less. However, I conceded that I do have a little more time to read since my late January sacking (*).
*I finished sixteen books in January, a month during which I worked full-time. Given that I generally start the year by completing some unfinished books and that many of the January books were very short, the 'true' pace might be closer to ten or twelve books a month. I'll estimate, then, that March was about 40% more reading than the average month.
Here are the books I read grouped into 'categories' along with any comments (if I had them).
I'll definitely re-read it...
*M Train by Patti Smith
This was the best book I read in March but I unfortunately do not recall too many specific details.
If you ever played The Sims, at least read a chapter of...
*Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
The second essay in this book is about 'The Sims'. My ten second summary of The Sims- it is a game where you play the mundane events of everyday life. According to Klosterman (I should say, according to my memory of what he wrote) this is a video game where 'you escape to where you already are'.
The essay, unlike the events of the game, is not mundane. I consider it worth the price of the book (and if you go to the library, you can pretend you haggled the price down to $0). The commentaries on children's imaginations and the 'red herring' of the game are my personal highlights (*).
This book is so famous you probably already know if you are going to read it or not...
*100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This book was assigned to me (and my classmates) as a high school summer homework assignment for AP Spanish. I believe it was due on day one of my senior year of high school, so that makes my completion of this novel approximately ten years or so overdue. Beats having the tail of a pig.
Although I do not aim to justify my, er, preference for careful reading, I do think reading this book in March was the appropriate time for me. I just cannot imagine how the themes would have made any sense to me as a seventeen year old.
I'd say read it- its about 85 pages...
*Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
Books I am considering blogging about at some point...
*Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon
*Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
*The Crossroads of Should and Must by Elle Luna
*Quack This Way by Bryan A. Garner (with David Foster Wallace)
The first three all touch on similar themes about creativity and the artistic process. The primary concepts linking the books is how to best apply one's own strengths and discover one's passions. I find those two ideas applicable in many different areas and therefore feel these books contain valuable ideas for both artists and non-artists to benefit from.
Quack This Way is a transcript of an interview and I found the discussion about good writing fascinating. I intend to refer to it in the future but not sure if there is enough from this book directly to constitute its own post.
Worth reading if you like the author or are interested in the subject...
*Singin' and Swingin' and Getting Merry Like Christmas by Maya Angelou
*When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
*Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman
*A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
*Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Year of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
*The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami
*No One Writes to the Colonel and other stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*An Epidemic of Abscence by Moises Valesquez-Manoff
*A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
The first three are memoirs, although Angelou's writing about her early adulthood might be better cataloged as 'autobiographical'. The late Kalanithi reflects on his terminal cancer diagnosis while Klosterman describes his relationship with heavy metal...Three Murakami books but none I considered as interesting as my current top three- Sputnik Sweetheart, A Wind Up Bird Chronicle, and Norwegian Wood...There were a couple of very good short stories in Marquez's book and I'll likely work my way through the rest of his work over the course of the next year and a half...I finally got around to reading An Epidemic of Absence and found it full of both insightful thinking and laborious reading. Another example of a system- in this case, the immune system- finding negative outcomes stemming from too much sterility and predictability in surrounding conditions...Leopold writes about nature and, although the book lacked any particular chapters or essays which I considered profound, I found his style of interjecting a casual but clever observation in the midst of otherwise routine descriptions of the outdoors appealing. Often, these comments took a mundane landscape or event and turned the moment into one of deep insight into the world we inhabit.
Hospice Volunteering
I began training to volunteer with a local hospice organization. I considered the idea all throughout January, going so far as to begin filling out an online volunteer application at one point, but nothing of true consequence happened until the last Sunday of the month.
On that day, for the first time since our family's move to the US in 1994, my cousins from Japan visited. We ate lunch atNorwood's
only coffee shop, my mother's favorite coffee shop, Perks.
On my way to the restroom, I noticed a flyer advertising for hospice
volunteers. I took a photo of the contact information using my brand new
iPhone (*), got in touch with the volunteer coordinator and, two months later,
I am set to begin (**).
I intend to write 'of' hospice volunteering. I emphasize 'of' because I cannot legally share any specific details about it (and I do not really anticipate wanting or needing to). The experience relates to this blog already, however, because I've written posts about ideas or books that cover similar ground to what the initial volunteer training sessions emphasized- the importance of facing pain, focusing on process, being present, being true to your own gifts, and so on.
One crucial distinction between this role and roles from my past volunteer work is the standard for 'a job well done'. Most roles ask volunteers to complete a set of functions or tasks in a specified way. This approach simplifies the training process because trainees are taught everything they need to know. It increases an organization's resilience to missed shifts or turnover because replacing volunteers becomes a matter of properly training new people.
In these roles, people are volunteers and good volunteers are those who achieve defined outcomes.
The hospice role asks volunteers to focus on two broad concepts- be present and be open. This approach means both experienced and new volunteers always have something to learn. The training process is complicated because prospective volunteers, in a sense, already know everything a good volunteer must know. The training instead seeks to help new people address whatever is preventing them from being naturally open or present. I imagine some people need no training to accomplish this while others benefit from ongoing, regular training.
In this role, people volunteer and defined outcomes cannot be set to measure good volunteering.
The key distinction- whether you volunteer or are volunteering- defines the extent to which a given individual's contributions are measurable by tracking outcomes. Generally inclined to perfecting process over achieving perfect outcomes, I am naturally drawn to jobs, assignments, or roles where there is significant latitude to apply my own strengths and trust my own instincts. My initial instinct that I match the requirements for the hospice volunteer role is based mostly on this understanding.
Even if I am wrong about this, volunteering is a good place to try because the consequences of error are pretty good- at the minimum, I'll contribute to an important organization while learning a little more about my own true nature.
Did I leave the apartment at all?
I went to the Lilypad in Inman Square to see the Tomeka Reid Quartet. Reid (a cellist, who according to the New York Times is 'a new jazz power source') and her quartet have an album out (called The Tomeka Reid Quartet- described as 'a tightly synchronized mix of cello and guitar' by Fresh Air). She was also involved in a second album called Artifacts.
I'm not a technically savvy music guy so I will refrain from remarking on those quotes in the previous paragraph (*)- overall I'll just say the show was outstanding and I'll try to go back the next chance I get. I recommend checking it out to anyone remotely interested in the particular group, the style of music, or in just leaving the house.
I echo the same for the Lilypad- I enjoy each show I see there and trust my instincts enough to recommend it to anyone who liked the above links.
There is a lot of tremendous music out there which I will never become aware of without outside help so, as always, I appreciate those who take the time to send me recommendations.
That is about all I have for today. Thanks as always for reading and let me know if any comments or suggestions about the blog.
Back on Monday with more Lost In Translation...
Hope everyone has a terrific April.
Tim
*******************************************************************
Hi all,
The first Friday post of each month is going to be a little different- it will resemble more of a newsletter than a blog post. I'll cover two general ideas each time.
First, an update on blog admin. This might include what happened last month, what I have coming up, and what I'm just thinking about. I'll comment on the blog in general, if appropriate. Sharing the blog process makes sense to me so expect this to be a fixture of some sort on these monthly posts.
The second section will include what enhanced my inner life in the past month. In general, I'll share anything I thought noteworthy that I do not foresee as the subject of its own blog post. Generally, expect a summary of the books I've read and any notable activities or discoveries from the previous month.
Well, without further ado...
Blog Admin- April 2016 edition
Q & A from March- actual questions from actual readers
Q: You actually 'actively take notes' for the sand county book?
A: Yup. But only by scribbling the page numbers onto a note card like I describe in my reading process post- no true note taking while I read.
Q: How long does each post take?
A: It depends. Writing a rough draft takes very little time but considering the editing and proofreading process (the true admin of the blog) moves the total amount of time upward. Maybe I'll get a stopwatch out for an upcoming post and take everyone behind the scenes a little further.
The following things were actually said about my blog in March
"I'll read it."
"That running post is really running away from you huh?"
"Maybe you can write a guest post on Tim's blog."
"Your footnote solution is good, actually."
"Damn long but surprisingly it kept me reading."
"Today I took uber because it was cheaper than the T." (*)
*OK, maybe the last one was not about the blog.
What was all the chatter about? March 2016 Blog Posts
*2/29- 2011 life changing books pt1- Keep The Change + Why We Get Fat
*3/4- Hubway Is Back
*3/8- 2011 life changing books pt2- Born To Run
*3/11- Bang Bangs @ Porter Sq
*3/15- 2011 life changing books pt3- The Checklist Manifesto
*3/18- Lost In Translation (w/ march madness)
*3/22- My Reading Process
*3/25- Leftovers- Born To Run
*3/28- Lost In Translation- Rd 1, part 1
*3/30- Lost In Translation- Rd 1, part 2
*4/1- Proper Admin, March 2016
The basic goal for this blog is to improve my writing skills. As long as I write regularly, I'll remain on the right track. So far, so good- I'm fairly content with month #1 in this regard. More on this topic in a couple of weeks.
In terms of topic selection, I tried to keep my approach very basic. If I thought about a topic repeatedly, I wrote about it. Any clear, interesting, or true piece of writing became a blog post.
Although improving discipline and organizational skills is not an explicit goal of mine at the moment, I don't think it will hurt to try and stick to an arbitrary schedule. So, I organized my current stockpile of ideas into an outline for the upcoming month. Any extra topics that did not fit into the tentative schedule are listed in a block at the end.
April schedule (tentative- M/W/F or T/F- posts published @ 11am ~ noon)
*4/4- Lost In Translation- Rd 1, part 3
*4/6- Lost In Translation- Rd 1, part 4
*4/8- Leftovers #1- The Checklist Manifesto (sample checklists)
*4/12- Why Blog
*4/15- Lean In + Sheryl Sandberg
*4/18- Lost In Translation- quarterfinal, part 1
*4/20- Lost In Translation- quarterfinal, part 2
*4/22 - Leftovers #2- The Checklist Manifesto (pride, etc)
*4/26- 2012 life changing books + note about pre-2011 next (not 2013)
*4/29- How To Be a Justice of the Peace
*5/3- Lost In Translation- Final Four
*5/6- Proper Admin, April 2016
*5/10- Lost In Translation- Final (w/ Book Notes Consolations as a postgame show)
*5/13- Pre-2011 life changing books pt1- Maniac Magee
*5/17- Book Notes- The Checklist Manifesto
*5/20- Pre-2011 life changing books pt2- Moneyball
*Rest of May...(*)?
*Considering whether to post or not on the days before and after Memorial Day (full holiday concept on this blog? Yes, I suspect so.)
Other topics I kind of started working on but unlikely to show up in the coming month...
*Pre-2011 life changing books (x5)
*Gordon Bombay was definitely fired by USA Hockey
*If you can read, you can...bake banana bread
*All the shit that I own (five part series? every wed starting in the summer? cover the four types of stuff, then comment on materialism? just a list? wait until i move?)
*Hubway follow ups (prequel + sequel to original post)
*Bang Bang follow up- (eating like a pig/how to cook gyozas/second place theory?)
*Favorite Harry Potter analogies
*Life changing books (series)
-> 2013 books
-> 2014 books
-> 2015 books
-> 2016 books (in 2017)
*What I learned at work (series)
My
What else happened in March?
This month, I finished reading seventeen books (as of March 30). The pace is significantly higher than observed in each of the past two years, when I finished exactly 100 books (and therefore read just over eight books per month). I suspect most of this is due to my recent 'policy change' of immediately requesting any book numbering 200 pages or less. However, I conceded that I do have a little more time to read since my late January sacking (*).
*I finished sixteen books in January, a month during which I worked full-time. Given that I generally start the year by completing some unfinished books and that many of the January books were very short, the 'true' pace might be closer to ten or twelve books a month. I'll estimate, then, that March was about 40% more reading than the average month.
Here are the books I read grouped into 'categories' along with any comments (if I had them).
I'll definitely re-read it...
*M Train by Patti Smith
This was the best book I read in March but I unfortunately do not recall too many specific details.
If you ever played The Sims, at least read a chapter of...
*Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
The second essay in this book is about 'The Sims'. My ten second summary of The Sims- it is a game where you play the mundane events of everyday life. According to Klosterman (I should say, according to my memory of what he wrote) this is a video game where 'you escape to where you already are'.
The essay, unlike the events of the game, is not mundane. I consider it worth the price of the book (and if you go to the library, you can pretend you haggled the price down to $0). The commentaries on children's imaginations and the 'red herring' of the game are my personal highlights (*).
*My recall of specific lines from the essay is better than anyone you know. I possess this priceless gift due to an annual reading of this essay (aloud, I might add). This reading takes place while playing against my brother, head to head, in the Playstation version of this game each time we are both home for the holidays.
Now, you may wonder what this means- 'playing against my brother, head to head'- how can you 'compete' in a game where there is no competition? That is the beauty of it- it is a pure reflection on life in the sense that no one ever 'wins' anything and yet everyone seems embroiled in some form of competition at all times.
I generally claim to 'win' although the reality is that no one really wins (except the Norwood electric company, I suppose). However, I do think I won the most recent round given that my brother was overheard muttering statements such as 'are there ways you can kill your Sim?' On the other hand, the game tends to end when he does something 'in real life', such as leaving the house, taking a shower, or going to bed- so perhaps I am the loser by default.
This book is so famous you probably already know if you are going to read it or not...
*100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This book was assigned to me (and my classmates) as a high school summer homework assignment for AP Spanish. I believe it was due on day one of my senior year of high school, so that makes my completion of this novel approximately ten years or so overdue. Beats having the tail of a pig.
Although I do not aim to justify my, er, preference for careful reading, I do think reading this book in March was the appropriate time for me. I just cannot imagine how the themes would have made any sense to me as a seventeen year old.
I'd say read it- its about 85 pages...
*Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
Books I am considering blogging about at some point...
*Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon
*Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
*The Crossroads of Should and Must by Elle Luna
*Quack This Way by Bryan A. Garner (with David Foster Wallace)
The first three all touch on similar themes about creativity and the artistic process. The primary concepts linking the books is how to best apply one's own strengths and discover one's passions. I find those two ideas applicable in many different areas and therefore feel these books contain valuable ideas for both artists and non-artists to benefit from.
Quack This Way is a transcript of an interview and I found the discussion about good writing fascinating. I intend to refer to it in the future but not sure if there is enough from this book directly to constitute its own post.
Worth reading if you like the author or are interested in the subject...
*Singin' and Swingin' and Getting Merry Like Christmas by Maya Angelou
*When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
*Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman
*A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
*Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Year of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
*The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami
*No One Writes to the Colonel and other stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*An Epidemic of Abscence by Moises Valesquez-Manoff
*A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
The first three are memoirs, although Angelou's writing about her early adulthood might be better cataloged as 'autobiographical'. The late Kalanithi reflects on his terminal cancer diagnosis while Klosterman describes his relationship with heavy metal...Three Murakami books but none I considered as interesting as my current top three- Sputnik Sweetheart, A Wind Up Bird Chronicle, and Norwegian Wood...There were a couple of very good short stories in Marquez's book and I'll likely work my way through the rest of his work over the course of the next year and a half...I finally got around to reading An Epidemic of Absence and found it full of both insightful thinking and laborious reading. Another example of a system- in this case, the immune system- finding negative outcomes stemming from too much sterility and predictability in surrounding conditions...Leopold writes about nature and, although the book lacked any particular chapters or essays which I considered profound, I found his style of interjecting a casual but clever observation in the midst of otherwise routine descriptions of the outdoors appealing. Often, these comments took a mundane landscape or event and turned the moment into one of deep insight into the world we inhabit.
Hospice Volunteering
I began training to volunteer with a local hospice organization. I considered the idea all throughout January, going so far as to begin filling out an online volunteer application at one point, but nothing of true consequence happened until the last Sunday of the month.
On that day, for the first time since our family's move to the US in 1994, my cousins from Japan visited. We ate lunch at
*Gotcha! APRIL FOOLS. I still have a flip phone- I copied the information onto a piece of scrap paper.
**Technically, I ended up volunteering with a different organization than the one I originally contacted. Turns out that organizations advertising on Norwood bulletin boards are better suited for volunteers who live near Norwood. Luckily, I found another organization more or less doing the same thing and I am currently involved in training for a couple of volunteer roles.
I intend to write 'of' hospice volunteering. I emphasize 'of' because I cannot legally share any specific details about it (and I do not really anticipate wanting or needing to). The experience relates to this blog already, however, because I've written posts about ideas or books that cover similar ground to what the initial volunteer training sessions emphasized- the importance of facing pain, focusing on process, being present, being true to your own gifts, and so on.
One crucial distinction between this role and roles from my past volunteer work is the standard for 'a job well done'. Most roles ask volunteers to complete a set of functions or tasks in a specified way. This approach simplifies the training process because trainees are taught everything they need to know. It increases an organization's resilience to missed shifts or turnover because replacing volunteers becomes a matter of properly training new people.
In these roles, people are volunteers and good volunteers are those who achieve defined outcomes.
The hospice role asks volunteers to focus on two broad concepts- be present and be open. This approach means both experienced and new volunteers always have something to learn. The training process is complicated because prospective volunteers, in a sense, already know everything a good volunteer must know. The training instead seeks to help new people address whatever is preventing them from being naturally open or present. I imagine some people need no training to accomplish this while others benefit from ongoing, regular training.
In this role, people volunteer and defined outcomes cannot be set to measure good volunteering.
The key distinction- whether you volunteer or are volunteering- defines the extent to which a given individual's contributions are measurable by tracking outcomes. Generally inclined to perfecting process over achieving perfect outcomes, I am naturally drawn to jobs, assignments, or roles where there is significant latitude to apply my own strengths and trust my own instincts. My initial instinct that I match the requirements for the hospice volunteer role is based mostly on this understanding.
Even if I am wrong about this, volunteering is a good place to try because the consequences of error are pretty good- at the minimum, I'll contribute to an important organization while learning a little more about my own true nature.
Did I leave the apartment at all?
I went to the Lilypad in Inman Square to see the Tomeka Reid Quartet. Reid (a cellist, who according to the New York Times is 'a new jazz power source') and her quartet have an album out (called The Tomeka Reid Quartet- described as 'a tightly synchronized mix of cello and guitar' by Fresh Air). She was also involved in a second album called Artifacts.
I'm not a technically savvy music guy so I will refrain from remarking on those quotes in the previous paragraph (*)- overall I'll just say the show was outstanding and I'll try to go back the next chance I get. I recommend checking it out to anyone remotely interested in the particular group, the style of music, or in just leaving the house.
*Although I suspect being described as a 'power source' is particularly high praise in music and could go over well in general. Anyone who can describe me as a blogging 'power source' will make the quote board next month, no doubt about it.
I echo the same for the Lilypad- I enjoy each show I see there and trust my instincts enough to recommend it to anyone who liked the above links.
There is a lot of tremendous music out there which I will never become aware of without outside help so, as always, I appreciate those who take the time to send me recommendations.
That is about all I have for today. Thanks as always for reading and let me know if any comments or suggestions about the blog.
Back on Monday with more Lost In Translation...
Hope everyone has a terrific April.
Tim
