The Fredösphere

I'm listening to the Holy Sonnets of John Donne -- just following orders.  The library had a recording by tenor Philip Langridge (and pianist Steuart Bedford).  A fine performance, but I am undemanding; in this situation, my motto is A.B.P.P.:  Anybody But Peter Pears.  I can't really relate to this "O my blacke soule" business.  My soul is charcoal grey with a tastefully subtle pinstripe.

Elsewhere in the blogöpshere... my friend Jeremy, who suffers from sleep apnea, is taking a week off from work in order to switch to a polyphasic sleep schedule.  It's weird and fascinating:  you get your sleep from a number of short naps rather than once through the night.  This means the rest of us are monophasic sleepers, which sounds like we're a bunch of deep-cover agents for an ancient eastern heresy.  Jeremy is blogging his experience, naturally....Meanwhile, Divertimenti has found the Gallery of "Misused" Quotation Marks and NPR's Piano Puzzler.  Of the latter, I recommend you skip to the "Hear the Entire Feature" link...Finally, the Well-Tempered Blog links to this story of a North Korean jazz pianist, and a song called "A girl innovator dashing like a steed."