News of the week of May 30, 2017

Meeting Report

We played:

Spring tide at Ravensheugh - geograph.org.uk - 721144

Schedule

We meet on Tuesdays, starting at 7:45pm, at 233 Broadway,
Cambridge, as long as enough people have told me they plan on
coming by Monday night.

The next modification to that schedule that I know about will
be on June 13, which is the Boston Early
Music Festival
week. We will not meet on that day.

News of the week of May 23, 2017

Meeting Report

We played:

Merrill, Ella and Singing School of Keene New Hampshire (4538193092)

Schedule

We meet on Tuesdays, starting at 7:45pm, at 233 Broadway,
Cambridge, as long as enough people have told me they plan on
coming by Monday night.

The next modification to that schedule that I know about will
be on June 13, which is the Boston Early
Music Festival
week. We will not meet on that day.

Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts | Environment | The Guardian

Here’s another story that might have better coverage if the front page weren’t so cluttered by White House news.

Note that I’m not saying they shouldn’t cover what’s happening at the White House, or that the reporters covering the White House should go to Norway and cover this instead. I just think the editors of the front page could organize the coverage a little differently.

It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.

Source: Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts | Environment | The Guardian

Where have all the insects gone? | Science | AAAS

I’ve been scouring my newsfeeds trying to find the stories that would be getting better coverage if the front pages weren’t so cluttered with stories about the mess in the White House. This might be a good example.

Entomologists call it the windshield phenomenon. “If you talk to people, they have a gut feeling. They remember how insects used to smash on your windscreen,” says Wolfgang Wägele, director of the Leibniz Institute for Animal Biodiversity in Bonn, Germany. Today, drivers spend less time scraping and scrubbing. “I’m a very data-driven person,” says Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, Oregon. “But it is a visceral reaction when you realize you don’t see that mess anymore.”

Source: Where have all the insects gone? | Science | AAAS

News of the week of May 16, 2017

Meeting Report

We played:

Hylas and the Water Nymphs

Schedule

We meet on Tuesdays, starting at 7:45pm, at 233 Broadway,
Cambridge, as long as enough people have told me they plan on
coming by Monday night.

The next modification to that schedule that I know about will
be on June 13, which is the Boston Early
Music Festival
week. We will not meet on that day.

News of the weeks of May 2 and May 9, 2017

[Cantabile]

Meeting Reports

May 2

We played the program for the Walk for Hunger, i.e. the same
pieces we played Last
week
, except that we did fewer rounds and more Susato.

May 9

We played:

Performance report

A lot of good things happened: it didn’t pour rain; there was a
critical mass of recorder players to just read through a lot of
music arranged for SATB recorders; we seemed to have
rehearsed the group set sufficiently.

On the minus side, the wind was very hard to deal with, and
between the people who were performing without rehearsing and the
people who had rehearsed but weren’t performing much, some of the
careful orchestrations got lost.

But on the whole, everyone had fun, and the crowd and the Walk
organisers seemed to appreciate us. The organisers gave us a huge
box of Entenmans blueberry muffins in one-ounce packages, about
half of which are still in a box on my dining room floor. They have a
sell-by date of June 17, so if anyone wants some, please come take
them.

Schedule

We meet on Tuesdays, starting at 7:45pm, at 233 Broadway,
Cambridge, as long as enough people have told me they plan on
coming by Monday night.

The next modification to that schedule that I know about will
be on June 13, which is the Boston Early
Music Festival
week. We will not meet on that day.