Readers of my personal blog might be interested in a little essay that I've just posted in my professional blog: Anthony Hecht, Czeslaw Milosz, and Poetry on the Web

I was excited to learn that Andrew Ross, the classical
music critic for The New Yorker Magazine
has a blog:The Rest
Is Noise. I developed a special interest in Ross after using of a quote by
Ross in my essay The
Cosmic Bach?:

"When people talk about Bach, they often sound
like Erich von Stroheim in 'Sunset Boulevard,' as he intones, in
tribute to Norma Desmond, 'She vas de greatest of dem all.' .... One
can end up saying, in a distinctly off-putting way, not only that
Bach...is the greatest but also that everything else is worthless."

Some other references to J. S. Bach in Ross' blog are:

The Rest Is Noise: Escaping the Museum:

                
 Were Baroque listeners uncultured

idiots? Or did they have a healthier attitude toward music’s place in
society? At about the time audiences began treating composers like
gods, it would seem, the truly godlike composers began to disappear.

Alex
Ross: The Rest Is Noise: Abba to Zywny:

                
 When it comes to the central figures

of musical history, the Grove gets the proportions right. Beethoven is
still champion after all these years, with forty-two double-columned
pages of biography and analysis. As in the previous edition,
Beethoven’s works are written up flawlessly by Joseph Kerman, the dean
of American musicologists. J. S. Bach gets thirty-six pages, Schubert
thirty-four, Haydn thirty-three, Handel thirty-one, Mozart
twenty-nine.

I am happily settling into the life of my own family in Toronto but am surprised by how fatigued I am. I slept a very sound 9 hours the last two nights, which is much more than the typical seven hours I get in Berkeley. Yesterday, I felt energetic, but after lunch today, I started to feel really weary. What's going on? Am I coming down with something? I need to remind myself that for many, many years that my visits to Toronto were opportunities to sleep and rest. I am somehow able to give myself permission or space (at some deep subconscious level perhaps) to sleep in.

Raymond -- fantasy preacher

Originally uploaded by Raymond Yee.

I've always thought that it would be cool to preach at my own church. Maybe one day, it'll become a reality. Until that day, I'll have to enjoy an image that a friend created for me.