No, Thursday's Out....

My new electric toothbrush wanted me to install an app on my phone so that so I could select my brushing experience. I refused to give it my name, address, astrological sign, or telephone number, just as if it were a guy pestering me in a bar (an experience I have actually never had). I did have a guy persist once, but it turned out he knew me, and in fact was a nice academic librarian I had met when I made a trip to visit his university, so guess who was embarrassed that time. Yeah. Anyway, I gave the new electric toothbrush the cold shoulder, and now it is judging me harshly, making frowny faces at me. (Okay, if I brush for a while I get a smiley face, and if I brush for ages I get a smiley face with stars for eyes, but still.) The invitation to select my brushing experience reminds me of my only stay in a W Hotel, in New Orleans*, where the front desk person answered my perplexed calls with a breathy, seductive, “W…. How may we enhance your experience?” The W was high on design. My ...

I spend part of every day deleting and unsubscribing, and am always behind in my reading, but even so, I’ll humbly recommend the free weekly newsletter, Reasons to Be Cheerful , a compendium of positive news stories. You may not like being cheerful, or worry that if others become cheerful, they won’t keep fighting the Good Fight. Or you may not care that the New York Public Library is giving away half a million books in its latest literacy campaign, nor that traditional cheesemaking is having a resurgence in Bosnia, benefitting both the economy and the environment. That’s fine. But if you are so moved, do give it a try. You can always unsubscribe. My own local reason to be cheerful today is that InitiativePetition 17 got enough signatures to make the November ballot.    IP 17 “would require a permit and safety training to buy a gun in Oregon [and] would also ban high-capacity magazines, which hold more bullets than a regular firearm. ” Actually, the petition got more t...

Yesterday, I walked over to Reed for an open rehearsal (free!) of Chamber Music Northwest. They were working on George Crumb’s American Songbook, part 2, which features a singer, a pianist, and 120 percussion instruments (yes, I know, the piano is also a percussion instrument). The 120 items are played by three people, each in the center of what amounts to a Percussion Fort. In the Q&A afterward, a musician showed us two rocks that he uses in one section. He found them in a stream in New Jersey.   I admired his rock playing, but I coveted this one item that looked like a whisk, and that made otherworldly whirring noises when he whipped it around.   (Now I’m hearing all the W’s in the end of that sentence.) The music was terrific, and, as one of the musicians promised, moving. (I worry that I am not smart enough to “get” a lot of modern music, but this wasn’t like that.) In each segment, the singer performed a spiritual – Swing Low, Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho, I Wen...

Many years ago, when I was a young middle-management type, we got a new CEO. I didn’t spend much time in the CEO’s orbit, but I hated his bullying style, and I was particularly alarmed in one meeting when he excitedly referred to a badly-written bid from a big customer as our “license to steal.”   I took my alarm to our Finance guy, a retired-military straight arrow. He wasn’t remotely a pal, but he was one of those reliably honest and trustworthy people. He gave me a few minutes’ hearing. It turned out Col. Finance was also bothered by the new CEO, for additional reasons.   I was about to do some work at our parent company in the UK, and Col. Finance suggested I ask to have lunch with a particular parent-company Bigwig, and tell him our concerns. Col. Finance believed Bigwig would listen to me, and perhaps speak to the owners, if he (Bigwig) thought that was wise. The telephone had already been invented at this time. I don’t know why Col. Finance didn’t call Bigwig...