Teleidoscope

Wed, Dec 12, 2007

Pratchett is ill

Posted at 10:33 pm MST to Media

Damn.

Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimers.

I hope some of the recent advances in treatment turn out to be useful for him. It hurts to think of a mind like that disintegrating slowly.

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Christmas Revels

Posted at 10:23 pm MST to Miscellaneous

Today was cleaning lady day. I left them cards and small cash presents. Some years I leave them cookies, too. but I haven't done any baking yet this year. The next cleaning day is the day after Christmas: less than two weeks to go.

All of my out of town presents have been wrapped and shipped, or ordered for direct delivery, and most of my Christmas cards have been sent (I don't send many cards). All of the local gifts are bought and ready to wrap.

I hope the weather is decent on Friday evening and Sunday afternoon. Nanette and I want to attend a concert involving a friend of ours on Friday evening.

And we have tickets for the Christmas Revels (Rocky Mountain Edition) on Sunday afternoon. They are doing an Irish theme this year, with step dancers. Last year the Rocky Mountain Revels were Scottish themed.

In 2004, when I was stuck living in Boston, I was able to attend the Christmas Revels with the founding Revels company (on Yule, which was neat), with a performance on the Harvard campus. That one had a Quebecois theme with lots of fiddling and dancing and Canadian folktales.

The Boston Revels troupe puts on Revels at Midsummer and in spring and fall as well as at Christmas. It might be nice to attend some of the other kinds of Revels, some day, but not if it means living in Boston again for any length of time. Maybe the Rocky Mountain group will branch out and do a spring or harvest festival some time as they get more established. I think they are scheduled for more performances this year than last year, which is a good sign.

The Revels organization was founded in 1971 and they are doing 18 performances this Christams season.

I used to have the original Christmas Revels album on vinyl, then tape: now I have almost all of the Revels CDs, I think. Maybe they will have a new one available on Sunday. (I wouldn't mind one with the Quebecois music I saw live.)

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