Sunday, April 4, 2010

A Musical Interlude (and a few additions)

Since spring is in the air, and today's Easter for those who observe that sort of stuff, here's Astor Piazzolla's "Primavera Portena," part of a "Four Seasons" tango suite. It's seasonal, and all those raffish types in the 20s danced the tango in questionable bars in London (or at least, I like to think so), and tango music pretty much rocks in general, so here it is.



I've also added a couple more podcasts to the list. "Monster Talk" has great discussion about supposedly-true tales of odd crytids, from a skeptical and scientific point of view. The hosts are great, including Blake Smith, Dr. Karen Stollznow, and the ultracool Ben Radford, whom I was lucky enough to meet a few weeks ago. Also added is "Dial P for Pulp!", a great podcast that covers the Pulps and their fans. I was just introduced to it when the host emailed me, and I immediately gave it a listen. It's good stuff, folks! And lastly, "Celebrate Poe," which appears to be defunct (it hasn't been updated since October) but has a lot of great material and the host is genuinely enthusiastic about Poe.

I just returned home from visiting my parents, who live outside Hagerstown, MD. Watching the local TV station one evening, there was a local ad promoting reading Poe, with a local athletic coach reading "The Raven." It turns out to be a branch of the National Endowment for the Arts' "Big Read" program that is specializing in Poe this year. Wow! Their hope is to boost reading in the general public, and I hope it works. Also, it turns out the exceptional Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown currently has a Poe-related exhibit, so I may have to go up and take a look.

Hope all my readers are having a pleasant spring so far....

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