It snowed all day here yesterday, and there’s been just as much snow, unusually, in Jerusalem. Which handily if somewhat clumsily gives me an opportunity to post about the Anglican hymn “Jerusalem,” which I only vaguely knew until I sang in an Anglican church choir in university. The poem by William Blake is beautiful, thoughcontinue reading

I am a magazine junkie. These days, that means I read voraciously both online and in paper form. When I was a teenager, I had the good fortune to work at a bookstore, where one of the many perks was the ability to take home “stripped” magazines, i.e., magazines with the title pages ripped offcontinue reading

Il fait froid. But not as cold as this.

Another song with a whistle break and the only Japanese-language song ever to top the Billboard pop chart, “Sukiyaki” always makes me happy. The title has nothing to do with the song; it’s just the name of a Japanese dish easily pronounceable in English. (It’s a delicious dish.) The title in Japanese is “Ue ocontinue reading

This will explain a lot: I don’t really know how to download. I’ve never figured out bittorrents either. In some early experimentation with it, though, I ended up with this live performance of Elliot Smith performing John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy”. The original was released in 1971 and then, like all of the Lennon canon, wascontinue reading

Music and running. Some people can’t run without music, even when they’re with other people: they’re the ones you see with earplugs in even when there’s a cheering crowd to buoy them. Then there are those who are as pious about never running with music as those Luddites are about not owning a television. Icontinue reading

A friend who also studied Russian has been staying with me so I was happy to rewatch the delightful Russian film from 2008, “Stilyagi” (somewhat misleadingly translated as “Hipsters”) with her. The movie is a musical that takes place in 1950s Moscow, but the songs are from Russian bands in 1980s and early 1990s andcontinue reading