Puttering in the Study

Goodbye Alice in Wonderland - Jewel

I bought this last year and completely forgot to post on it after listening to it.  I saw Jewel on Las Vegas last year and was really blown away at how good her music was and how well she performed (I knew who she was before that, but didn't know what songs were hers and had never seen her perform).  Especially the ones where she just laid back and rocked - specifically "Only One Too".  So I got the album and was really impressed with how good overall it is.

Symphony 3 "Sorrowful Songs" - Henryk Gorecki

I've had this CD since about 1993, and decided to listen to it today in the study while trying to paint a test board for the study ceiling (with books on Palladio out seemed something classical was called for).  This is a very simple but very touching piece, and grows on you the more you hear it. 

Band of Brothers - DVD

I watched this a few years ago, and then lost the DVDs in the move to our new house.  But once I had the movie room set up I really wanted to see it again so I broke down and bought another copy, and watched it over the last six months, just finishing this morning.

This is an incredible series.  The scope is unparalleled (excepting Lord of the Rings, of course) and the quality is unbelievable.  The characters and the acting are just outstanding, and the story is as well.  I can't say enough good things about it.  No doubt I'll watch it again in another year or two.

Briefcases: The Territory Ahead's "Guy Stuff Laptop Brief" versus Levenger's "Bomber Jacket Office"

  Sometimes I think that being a lawyer is just an excuse for the search for the right briefcase - the one that holds everything you need, with the right things easily accessible, and will bring order to a world of chaos.  More or less, anyway.  My two most recent forays into the wonderful world of briefcases are The Territory Ahead's "Guy Stuff Laptop Brief" and Levenger's "Bomber Jacket Office."  Both are very definite style choices, part of a line of leather goods that are intended to appeal to your self-image as (1) a "guy stuff" kind of guy; or (2) a fighter pilot.  I'm neither, but I do appreciate the attention paid to marketing.
I got the TA bag several months ago, and initially it was the worst purchase I'd ever made.  The snaps that close everything on it were defective and came apart literally the first time you tried to unsnap something.  We sent it back the same day it came in, and it returned a couple of weeks later with all but one of the snaps replaced with ones that worked.  The "Guy Stuff" style is a rumpled-looking canvas and tan leather that's well-suited for carrying over your shoulder (it was my bag of choice for three weeks of travel in Europe).  It has two really nice features that have made it my favorite bag of the several I've had so far.  First of all, the outside end pockets, which are probably meant for water bottles, are where I keep my power cables.  Riding outside the bag they're out of the way and yet always there, so I don't have to wonder if I packed them.  Second, and most important, are the two zippered outside pockets (visible in the picture).  The outermost I reserve for my Palm and phone, so they're always available.  The inner one has all the pen and card slots, and while it isn't adequate for all the stuff I carry, at least I know where everything is.  One other nice feature is the Gladstone-bag type opening on top, which opens when it unzips so it has a larger mouth.  I also like the leather and canvas look - it's casual enough that I don't worry about it getting dirty, and I can carry it with anything - the interior holds the laptop and the notebooks and bags I need for everyday use, as well as trips to the courthouse.
Those are the good features.  The bad feature continues to be the zippers.  One of the two zipper on the inner pocket doesn't work well, and the zippers on the top (because of the light canvas construction) require two hands to close when the top is completely open - as it has to be to get anything out.  The prro quality of the zippers isn't the only thing - the snaps, while not falling apart now, are still an effort to get open and closed for the handle, and frequently I just don't use them.  On balance, despite an overall good design and appearance - which I'd have given a solid "A" - the execution drops this bag to a "B+".
I've been a Levenger junkie since 1991, and the only thing that has saved me from complete financial ruin at their hands is their persistence in styling their furniture products so modern that most of the time can't buy them because it wouldn't work with everything else I have.  That and the cost of their products is so high that it's often not hard to say no.  Such as with this somewhat pretentious "bomber jacket" collection.  Levenger has wrapped everything from reading chairs to pencil holders in brown leather, and called it a collection.  Not that I dislike any of it - it's tasteful and well-done, and with a few enormous exceptions (the leather laptop docking station whose synthetic back melted the finish on a sofa table and my new cherry credenza) the quality is good.  I'm just not so enthralled that I'm interested in buying any of it.  But the price on the "Bomber Jacket Office" briefcase just kept dropping, and when it hit 60% off I thought I'd give it a try.
The bag itself is good brown leather, with good zippers (which are aided by the structure provided by the heavy leather - all can be operated one-handed.  It has a side for files and a side for bulk (laptop, notebook and three pouches I can use for power cords) which can be doubled in size by unzipping an expandable center.  Although the bag is about 8-10" think even unexpanded, and sits just fine when using the shoulder strap.
The true test of a good bag, to me, is what outside storage it has for all the things you need to stuff in it to free your hands, and there this bag comes up a bit short.  Unlike the Levenger, there isn't an outside pocket (for papers) and no actual outside zippered pockets.  What it does have is a flapped outside pocket that has protected storage for a phone and Palm and a pen.  That's it.  If you have papers or a phone headset, you're out of luck.  While you can leave the zipper partially unzipped and drop things in (and retrieve them) easily when the bag is down, if you are carrying it or have the handle snapped shut, you can't get to them for anything other than dropping in keys (as I discovered Friday).  Part of this is simply being prepared in how you carry the bag (leave the handle unsnapped and the zippers arranged right) but if you don't have the bag set up right, you have to set it down to hold anything.  Part of that is perhaps that its' "office" name is actually accurate - everything is well-organized and accessible when it is sitting, with files on one side and bulk on the other, with electronics and a pen in the flap.  It's just less flexible when on the move. (It also seems to be designed for one of those "portable office" pouches Levenger sells, where you keep your pens and other briefcase essentials in a pouch that you transfer from bag to bag.  I haven't needed one before, but I think I will now).
So it's a trade-off.  One is better for carrying and stashing - the other is better as a portable office with lots of paperwork.  So my search for the perfect bag continues - but at least the bags I have are now markedly better for these two uses than what I had before.

Fatherhood: An Anthology - John Lewis_Stempel

I just finished this book, which I have been working on for a year or two now.  It's an anthology of writings on fatherhood, separated into sections on becoming a father, fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, and so forth.  I really liked it, and recommend it to another father (or son) as it offers a lot of useful insights into the nature of, well, fatherhood.

Greece: Secrets of the Past: IMAX

I ordered this as soon as it was clear that it was the standard DVD, and not the much higher resolution WMVHD (since I couldn't play that on anything but my laptop).  It was okay, but frankly, the resolution was poor for the image size (constant slow helicopter passes don't do well without the higher res format), indicating that I really need a HD image for IMAX movies on the projector.  Also, the movie was essentially some observations on the pre-eruption culture on Santorini, and a recreation of the Parthenon.  While I enjoyed both (the Parhenon recreation was outstanding) there just wasn't a lot of story to go with it.  Good eye candy, but didn't just blow me away.

First Men in the Moon - DVD

I have wanted to sit down and watch this movie since I saw a little of it on late night TV in 1975 or so and read the book - my favorites by Wells.  I finally got the TV and trooped upstairs with the boys to watch, and really enjoyed it.  To my surprise, it was a solid production - good detail on both space expeditions, and good performances by everyone (a little dated, but not much).  The thing that impressed me was how well-done the production design was, with Moon exterior and interiors that were uniformly detailed and beautiful - not the '60's sci-fi look.  The book is faithful to the Wells original in spirit, if not detail, and even imports the ending from The War of the Worlds to bookend the 1899 story with the 1960's "present day" story.  Overall, I was not disappointed.

Daddy's martin house - found

In gathering pictures for Daddy's funeral, we ran across pictures of the gigantic martin house he built, and eventually narrowed down the date he made it to a little before May of 1990 (when at least the second of these pictures was developed).  But no one knew where it ended up.  The day after the funeral we found the little cross-topped tower in his workshop shed in Yantis, and yesterday while going through some workshop stuff he left with a friend near Marshall, we found the rest.  Obviously it's a little the worse for wear, and houses dirt daubers instead of martins, but it's been protected from weather for the last ten years or so, so it's certainly repairable (although what happened to the shingle roof he installed is a bit of a mystery - although I'll bet the parts are all in a box someplace ready to be reinstalled).

Now if we could just find the doghouse!

The Planets - Dava Sobel

There are few small books as good as Dava Sobel's Longitude, and this book is not of them either.  Sobel's collection of essays on the planets is a sort of fragment of Bill Bryson's Short History of Everything that is presented as a little gem of a book.  But the writing that gets so much praise is more than occasionally unclear and opaque (what the hell is a tantivy?) so that you have to really think to figure out what she's trying to say.  Adding to the confusion is my pet peeve in a book like this that there are no photographs, and almost no illustrations at all.  The subject is a deeply visual one, yet there are no pictures of the planets themselves, or the many interesting people that Sobel talks about.  I assume that's so that a later fully-illustrated edition can be produced (I think this was done with Longitude), but it's annoying to have to go locate another book to see what she is talking about.
Sobel obviously is fascinated by the planets, and writing this book was a very personal effort for her, but it reads more like a magazine article - eccentric and wordy - than a book.  It is personal observations about the planets - selected excerpts from the history of their exploration by science.  It's overall well-done - very well-done if you can follow the language easily - but to me needed some editing for clarity and illustrations to assist the reader in following what she's talking about.  As it is, it's like listening to someone at a telescope lecture about the planets without letting you look.

The Club Dumas - Arturo Perez-Reverte

I read this book in paperback several years ago after the Roman Polanski treatment of it in The Ninth Gate came out.  I found a hardcover edition in Santa Fe last year and picked it up, and decided to reread it a few months ago.  As usual, the main thing that impresses me about Perez-Reverte books is how good the translation is - it's never awkward as, for example even the best translations of Verne from French to English are.  Maybe Spanish just translates better, but P-R's prose is really rich and sharp in English - he's one of the best writers I know in terms of his language and ability to paint a picture, which is saying a lot for a translation.
His talent for crafting characters and situations is one of the highlights of the book, as well as the dusty rare book book world that's just fun to read about.  The chills that the book's detours into demonic manuscripts create are also a highlight.  The actual plot is not much - just being along for the ride is the reason for reading it.  I enjoyed it, although my recollection is that the movie (which I think discards most of the Dumas elements) is actually a better tale.