Category: Uncategorized

I just started watching this movie my friend Howard copied for me, I’ll Never Forget You, a 1951 time travel love story, but the movie barely started when I immediately and instantly fell in love with the music. Within seconds.  I stopped the movie and have been googling the guy who wrote the music, William Alwyn, ever since.  There’s a lot of him on itunes, and now I want to see the movie Odd Man Out, which he also scored apparently, just to hear the whole soundtrack.

The funniest thing just happened while going through Alwyn on itunes. I picked out a few I liked to begin with, but my favorite far and away was something called Mirages.  I thought it was so beautiful I couldn’t believe Alwyn wasn’t more famous.

Then I read the first review of it on itunes and the reviewer said it wasn’t Alwyn’s Mirages but Brahms Piano Concerto 2!  I listened to another recording of the Brahms and sure enough that’s what it was.  Itunes mixed it up. (Kinda proud it stood out for me.)

So now I have to buy the Brahms Piano Concerto 2 too, what a lovely concerto. And I have to go back and re-decide where to begin with Alwyn.  

(The picture is the cover of a recent biography.)

I just got the plea below in my email and I plan to attend. (New York is one of the worst states for dog fighting, I read.)  Coincidentally, the National Geographic show Dogtown is airing the episode Saving the Michael Vick Dogs tonight, which is about the efforts of the organization that emailed me below.

Dear Best Friends Network Members,

Seven members of a New York City dog-fighting ring are scheduled to appear in court September 8 for a hearing on charges of animal fighting, promoting gambling, and possessing animals for fighting.

This is an opportunity on one of the biggest stages in the world to show our resolve to rid the world of dog fighting.

“It is important there is a large turnout,” says Regina Massaro of the Spay Neuter Intervention Project (SNIP), a member of the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC Animals.

She is urging citizens who oppose dog fighting to “join together and seek justice.”

Thanks for all you do to help animals, always.
The Best Friends Network

WHAT YOU CAN DO — WE NEED YOU TO SHOW UP!

Where: Bronx Supreme Court Criminal Division
265 East 161st Street
Bronx, New York
(718) 618-3100

When: September 8 at 9:00 am

If I’m understanding the email, it will be in the courtroom of Justice Steven Barrett.

Public Transportation Directions
Take the C, D or 4 train to the Yankee Stadium/161st Street Station.
Take the BX 6 or BX 13 to East 161st Street & Sheridan Avenue; the BX 1 to East 161st Street & Grand Concourse.

WHO TO CONTACT

If you can attend, contact SNIP at SNIPNYC@aol.com and try to bring signs, posters, banners or photographs.

If you can’t attend, please write a letter to the Bronx District Attorney and forward by email to SNIPNYC@aol.com. Regina Massaro will hand deliver it. Please thank the Bronx District Attorney, Assistant District Attorney Jacob Kaplan and Justice Steven Barrett. Request the defendants be held accountable for their actions and receive the maximum sentence allowed by law.

I posted about the tiles across the street from St. Vincent’s, so I made a little movie of them on my way to the gym this morning.  The name on the tile I walked up to at the end is David Reed Gamboa Brandhorst, who was only three years old. He died along with his fathers Daniel R. Brandhorst and Ronald Gamboa, who were all on United Airlines Flight 175.

The quality really does go down by the time it gets to YouTube.  I compress it, then they compress it further.  Oh well. At one point you can hear the subway go by underneath my feet.

I liked the outside of this place, except there were some people standing out front so I didn’t get the pictures I would have liked.  I would have preferred to move in closer.  Anyway, I stopped in to say it’s WAY too hot out there.  Stacy to the weather:  quit it.

Good God, will I be glad when 2008 is over.  I am sick of politics, heartsick about the endless us vs them battle and the unremitting hate.  Enough.   

I want a little grace.  Is that too much to ask?? I want to see intelligence, hope, tolerance, unity, not just in America but with the rest of the world, and advancement in knowledge in all fields and understanding about ourselves and others, and progress in protecting the environment.  I’m going to die, there’s nothing I can do about it.  I’d like to die seeing that the people who come after me have just as much a chance to live their short time on earth as pleasantly as I got to live mine, if not more so.  I want to see progress made towards improving the lives of those who aren’t getting to live their lives as pleasantly.  And again, I am not talking just about Americans.  Or even humans.  I’m talking about all life.  Okay, maybe not certain viruses.

Here Finney and I close our eyes and dream of better days.  We are wimps.  We admit it.