The Fredösphere

No doubt I'm the last to find out.  The new movie Jumper was partially filmed right here in Ann Arbor.

Labels: local, movie

While at my parents last week, and on my mother's advice, we stopped at a used book store in the nanocity of Orland, Indiana.  The town is a terribly quaint and slightly melancholy place with a village green and an empty row of classic store fronts in a state of disrepair.  In the store I purchased two science fiction titles--it would almost be more precise to say I purchased the two science fiction titles--but the real finds were in the absurdly well-stocked classical CD section.

My music collection naturally reflects my tastes, which is to say, it is freakishly deep and narrow.  I own nothing by Beethoven, for example.  Let that sink in:  I own no recordings of any Beethoven music.  This was not planned; remember, I'm not on some kind of anti-Beethoven crusade.  (He's not Haydn, after all.)  Only in the last few years have I begun to aspire to stylistic omnivorousness.

The point is, it's not hard for me to find music I don't own.  For example, in Orland I bought the four Brahms symphonies and Handel's Water Music, plus a no-name group singing barbershop classics.  (There is evidence the quartet is Fred, but they get no credit on the cover.)  These are disks you might find anywhere.  But who would imagine finding disk with Le Sacre and Apollo in rural Indiana?  And imagine my excitement at finding a Chanticleer disk I didn't yet own.

I'm enjoying the Stravinsky especially.  I find it impossible to listen to Le Sacre; Apollo is first on the disk, and when its sane nobility completes, I'm so satisfied, I can't bring myself to shift gears into Le Sacre's grinding rhythms.

Lean your ear in close to the computer.  Do you hear that melody:  Duh-DA duh-DA, duh-DA duh-DA?  That's the first movement of the Apollo which I'm listening to right now.  As Bjork would say:  gorgeousness!

Labels: local

Fumes from newly refinished wood floors compelled the Fredöfamily to seek shelter at my parent's farm for a couple of days earlier this month.  The time away was slow-paced and enjoyable.  On Saturday my parents took us on a field trip to the surrealistically anachronistic Greenfield Mills.

In my adolescent years I hauled many wagonloads of wheat to Greenfield, so the visit stirred deep memories.  Just seeing the old, dorky slogan "New Wrinkle Four For Quality" preserved on the face of the main building like an artifact out of a time capsule was enough to stir deep and indescribable feelings in me.  Not all of them are positive:  old man Wrinkle could get grumpy if I delivered wheat with high moisture content, and I couldn't help taking it personally.

The mill produces and sells all kinds of flour products, but the truly odd side of the business is the electricity generation.  They are the smallest utility in the state of Indiana, serving only twelve customers.  Multiple generations of the Wrinkle family maintain the dam, the generator, and the transmission lines:  not your typical family business, to say the least.  As we toured the mill, I half expected to hear a lecture on the superior virtues of small-batch hand-generated electricity, how it was "richer" or "more complex" or "healthier" than the vulgar homogenized current produced giant corporate utilities.  I imagine the Wrinkles have cousins in Pennsylvania in the oil refinery business.

Labels: Culture, local

Leonard Slatkin is coming to Detroit? That's good news.

Labels: Culture, local