Banistration

When we first bought the house in Maine, a bit more than 3 years ago, the stairs looked like this:
the old banister
Our friend Scott Strang, who has built a few staircases in his day, pronounced the banister “butt ugly” (and he’s ordinarily a moderate sort of chap). He was right. My colleagues at Washington & Lee gave me a gift certificate at a fancy hardwood store as a Retirement present, and I cashed it in (more than a year ago) on the wherewithal for a replacement, newel post and balusters and banister and all. The pieces leaned meaningfully in a corner while I figured and schemed and thought about HOW to install them, and today Tim Lewis (who has built a few staircases in his day) did the installation in about 6 hours. It would have taken me several days… but now it’s glorious:
the new banister

Hop on board

I’m just downloading these to listen to over the next few days, so I can’t speak to their quality yet, but I’m betting that Chris Lydon has done his usual exemplary job of bringing out the eloquence of his interviewees in this collection of dialogs on Coltrane, in which he talks with Ben Ratliff, Amiri Baraka, Alain Pacowski, Bill Pierce and Michael Harper (107 MB altogether, about 1:45 of Real School). As for me, I’ve never fully appreciated jazz of the Coltrane era –I know there’s plenty of nourishment there, but I’ve never devoted the ears to the effort to grok the essence. High time, I suppose. Anyway, it’s REALLY nice to have Chris Lydon back again. I’ve missed him during the Summer Hiatus, and I am eagerly anticipating what he’ll do next.