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Posts published by “David Yearsley”

Election Time: A Vote for Bach

Ithaca, New York. Next week brings local elections to this college town in the Finger Lakes region of the Empire State. There will be a new mayor and a new town council. A couple of…

Bach & the Catskill Golden Spike

One thing the American public schools used to teach—or tried to—was the memorization of dates. At the top of that list were 1620, 1776, 1861, 1945. One of my favorite bathroom books remains the Timetables of…

A Last Farewell To Summer

This year we set out on the last weekend of September for our annual trek from Ithaca at the south end of Lake Cayuga to Watkins Glen at the south end of the next Finger…

To Gotham With Dexter Gordon

To drive out of the city of Ithaca in Upstate New York in October you need music. The hills are just beginning to show the golds, reds and rusts of autumn. The sumptuous melancholy of…

What To Do With The Old Piano?

The National Association of Piano Dealers reported 364,545 sales of new instruments in the United States in 1909. That was four times the number of automobiles manufactured in the country that same year. This output…

Amerika Uber Alles

Try whistling a few bars of the Star-Spangled Banner in downtown Kabul if you want to find out how effective a national anthem is at making enemies. A less deadly outbreak of red-flag-waving hymnody made…

Disastrous Handel

For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead…

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