ART NOTES #1 - a collection of Realist and Naturalist works from the late-19th and early-20th centuries is at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts through April 5th.
BOOK NOTES - nearly completing its 50 Greatest Books series: a Canadian newspaper lists Diderot's Encyclopedia - published in France between 1751 and 1772.
TRAVEL NOTES #1 - Argentina's capital of Buenos Aires has long been a tourist destination with European style at Latin American prices. In addition, its reputation as being open and tolerant (in a region where homophobia remains prevalent) as well as a regional leader in expanding gay rights has made it appealing to gay travellers.
SHE'S Baa-aaa-ck - pop singers Madonna and .... you-know-who's-comeback.
 
MUSIC NOTES - at age 77, the classical pianist Alfred Brendel will perform for the last time this Thursday in Vienna, Austria - ending a 60 year career.
POLITICAL NOTES - since its two main presidential candidates garnered 49% and 48% respectively in a recent election, the African nation of Ghana will hold a decisive runoff on December 28th.
SCIENCE NOTES - astronomers have detected water vapor on an exoplanet 63 light-years from Earth.
CELEBRITY NOTES - try your luck at this movie star Dead or Alive? quiz, with 36 famous film star names in it.
SPORTING NOTES - one challenge for the referee in a soccer match (after calling a foul and awarding a free kick) is to push the defenders back the required 10 yards. Argentina will begin (next year) to use an aerosol spray to mark a white line defenders must retreat behind (the spray-markings wear off after 30 seconds).
WEDNESDAY's CHILD #1 is named Gatsby the Cat - one of "The Twelve Cats of Christmas" up for adoption in Albert Lea, Minnesota.
BELIEVING that BRITISH PUBS are "part of our heritage and an essential part of the vibrancy of life", The Guardian issues an In Praise Of editorial, noting one reason for their decline is "the use of securitisation to finance leveraged expansion by the big pub-owning corporations".
THE WORLD'S LARGEST ISLAND has voted for independence from Denmark - Greenland expects to be a sovereign nation within a decade.
SEPARATED at BIRTH #1 - actor/producer Orlando Jones (MADtv) ....
 
... and rapper/actor Mos Def (who portrays Chuck Berry in the new "Cadillac Records" film).
IN a PROFILE of the Academy Award-winning British director Sam Mendes - citing his current film/stage projects in the US and the UK - it believes him to be "one of the busiest men in New York".
YUK for today - when the Denver Post sportswriter Woody Paige appears on ESPN's "Around the Horn" show: next to him is a chalkboard with a quip written on it. Last Friday's entry? "If the #2 pencil is the best, why is it still #2?"
TRAVEL NOTES #2 - from Indonesia to Mexico to Norway, Ten best diving adventures offer travel ideas for 2009.
BUSINESS NOTES #1 - Michael Lewis, the author of Liar's Poker in 1989 about the idiocy of Wall Street that he thought would end: now says that it took another twenty years to crash-land.
ART NOTES #2 - a former interrogation site for the Gestapo in Berlin, Germany (located near the old Checkpoint Charlie) is now home to ..... contemporary art from India.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD #2 despite being female is named Edgar the Cat - a Masschusetts kitty who has recovered from reconstructive surgery quite well.
BUSINESS NOTES #2 - in a Toronto Star essay, business writer David Olive thinks history will note the GOP as "eager ... to populate U.S. highways exclusively with products engineered by Europeans and Asians" and that "they gave up on America".
A RECENT CARTOON by Tom Tomorrow features the return of "The Invisible Hand".
ART NOTES #3 - an exhibit of Baroque paintings entitled Capture Emotions is at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California through May 3rd.
GROANER of the day - in recounting the tale of a North Carolina man who (initially) told police that the gunshot wound he suffered resulted from his kitty jumping onto a loveseat where his .45-caliber pistol lay (before admitting that was untrue) - Kitty-kitty bang-bang? was the story's title.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD #3 is Mischief the Cat - at age 27, believed to be Britain's oldest kitty.
WITH CANADA'S LIBERAL PARTY naming as its new leader Michael Ignatieff a few months early, it will be interesting to see how this affects Parliament when it reconvenes at the end of January.
IN THE SAME YEAR that Paul Newman died: it was learned that the man he portrayed in 1969 - the notorious American outlaw Butch Cassidy - was the son of a woman who emigrated from .... Newcastle, England.
SEPARATED at BIRTH #2 - Reason Magazine editor Nick Gillespie and your-friend-and-mine, Rod Blagojevich.
 
....... and for a song of the day ............................................................. .. one reviewer called him "the most listened-to jazz pianist of all time" and with the Christmas season upon us, it might well be true that Vince Guaraldi achieved that status - in a quiet way - due to a certain comic strip.
A native of San Francisco, Guaraldi attended San Francisco State College and worked as an Army cook in the Korean War. His career began in 1956 (playing in Woody Herman's band) and went on to perform with such varied musicians as Nina Simone, Cal Tjader, Stan Getz, Jimmy Witherspoon, Paul Winter and Mongo Santamaria before forming his own piano trio. In the "File under Impossible Tasks" department, it was written that his first important gig was .... "filling-in for Art Tatum".
His breakthrough hit (in more ways than one) was the 1963 Grammy-winning tune Cast Your Fate to the Wind ....
... a gorgeous melody that 8 years later the James Gang's guitarist Joe Walsh (later to join The Eagles) worked into a medley with a hard rock song entitled The Bomber back in 1971. Guaraldi was successful in the jazz world, yet comparatively unknown to the American public.
That changed - dramatically - with a 1965 cab ride that TV producer Lee Mendelson took across the Golden Gate Bridge. In much the same way that the Sopranos producer David Chase decided upon his show's theme song (by the band "Alabama 3"), Lee Mendelson heard "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" on that radio in that cab ride and (via music writer Ralph Gleason) contacted Guaraldi about composing for the upcoming Charlie Brown Christmas special.
Sixteen TV shows (and one feature film) later, the music of Vince Guaraldi is an integral part of the Peanuts experience - with the theme song Linus and Lucy .....
plus the irresistible song Skating among his best-loved Peanuts music.
Vince Guaraldi died in 1976 (at the age of 47) in-between sets of a gig in Menlo Park California. The musician David Benoit has cited Guaraldi as an early inspiration, and it's difficult to imagine Peanuts with any other music backing it.
For the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis it is what made "Peanuts" so special.
And while most of his tunes are instrumentals: appropriately for the season, the song Christmas Time Is Here (fair-use extract below) had lyrics written by the show's producer Lee Mendelson for kids to sing.
A nice grown-up version was recorded a few years ago by Diane Reeves who was the featured nightclub singer in the film "Good Night and Good Luck".
And at this link you can hear Vince Guaraldi's original version.
Christmas time is here
Happiness and cheer
Fun for all that children call
Their favorite time of year
Snowflakes in the air
Carols everywhere
Olden times and ancient rhymes
Of love and dreams to share
Sleigh bells in the air
Beauty everywhere
Yuletide by the fireside
And joyful memories there
Christmas time is here
We'll be drawing near
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year...
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