Hardly Children

Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) is one of the most significant composers of the mid-20th century, and yet her music remains largely unknown. In the period be- tween the two world wars, she studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, like so many American, British, and Polish composers, but during her lifetime her reputation rarely translated itself into frequent performances outside her native Poland. Bacewicz had a distinctive creative personality and an intuitive approach to form that rewards close study. Her experience as an orchestral leader and concert violinist informed and enriched the string writing in the string quartets, violin concerts and sonatas which have received some attention on record.

When a television series runs for ten years, it's pretty clearly a success: having run from 1974-1984, Little House on the Prairie certainly merits a release on DVD, and Imavision has stepped up to the plate with season boxed sets. Little House on the Prairie: Season 3 continues the story of the Ingalls family: Charles and Caroline Ingalls and their children Mary, Laura, and Carrie, trying to raise a family and run a farm in the pioneer town of Walnut Grove. Little House on the Prairie is "family entertainment" in the best sense of the phrase: it's clearly intended to be a show that the adults and children in a family will watch and enjoy together.

Even though I was a kid while the show was on the air, for some reason I never watched it, so this DVD set was my first taste of the series (but not the premise, as I've read all the Little House books several times). I was half expecting the show to be too dated, but it's not: it has aged well and I have to say, it's fun to watch. The stories are fairly straightforward and pretty lightweight, but nonetheless they're very watchable and surprisingly satisfying. If I had to describe Little House on the Prairie in one word, it would be "sweet"… and most importantly, it manages to be sweet and genuinely heart-warming without slipping over the line into saccharine sentimentality. The characters are likable, and the stories do a nice job of using not just the Ingalls family but also quite a few recurring characters from the town in the various episodes, giving a sense of continuity overall even though the episodes are generally self-contained.

"A collection of about 2000 questions asked by children forms the foundation on which this book is built. Rather than decide what it is that children ought to know, or what knowledge could best be fitted into some educational theory, an attempt was made to find out what children want to know. The obvious way to discover this was to let them ask questions.
The questions collected were asked by several hundred children in the upper elementary grades, over a period of a year and a half. They were then sorted and classified according to the scientific principles needed in order to answer them. These principles constitute the skeleton of this course. The questions gave a very fair indication of the parts of science in which children are most interested. Physics, in simple, qualitative form,-not mathematical physics, of course,-comes first; astronomy next; chemistry, geology, and certain forms of physical geography (weather, volcanoes, earthquakes, etc.) come third; biology, with physiology and hygiene, is a close fourth; and nature study, in the ordinary school sense of the term, comes in hardly at all.
The chapter headings of this book might indicate that the course has to do with physics and chemistry only. This is because general physical and chemical principles form a unifying and inclusive matrix for the mass of applications. But the examples and descriptions throughout the book include physical geography and the life sciences. Descriptive astronomy and geology have, however, been omitted. These two subjects can be best grasped in a reading course and field trips, and they have been incorporated in separate books.

This is a fan's dream. A monumental 2012 collection with all 59 albums that the legendary Johnny Cash released on Columbia from his arrival from Sun Records in 1958, until he was unceremoniously dropped by the label 28 years later. Additionally, it includes three bonus discs: "Johnny Cash With His Hot & Blue Guitar", which includes recordings from Cash's pre-Columbia period with Sun Records, and the two-disc "The Singles Plus", with singles Cash released on Columbia, plus Cash's guest appearances on other artist's albums. A great Christmas gift for all my Avax friends. Enjoy.