Gentlemen, and Robbie,

Our ISP here was down for a few days with his mail server (Cellular
One), which gave me an opportunity to catch up on this and that.

1. I would mention that there should be no problem with the printing or
   typing of various little things like umlauts and accents graves, and
   aigue, and maybe even cedillas.  If you do not want to get into
   accent worries, it is perfectly acceptable to CAPITALIZE the word,
   and leave the accents out.  This eliminates 90% of the problem.

2. You might also note on some of the Dutch and German organs and
   others boxes of whistles etc. the words Bruder and Gebruder...there
   is a difference. If you think of the letters "GE" as the beginning
   of a collective noun, and the other form, simply as brothers, you
   would understand it very well.  Smith Brothers cough drops, if the
   two brothers were really brothers and not a company, they would have
   an umlaut over the u (BRUEDER), but if they were a collective noun
   as in a corporation or such, they would be the GEBRUDER SMITH.  Note
   in the capitalization, I did not use the umlaut to so the plural
   thing.

3. Robbie mentioned the Levant recording, and just last Sunday, as
   Cellone IPS was down, I went to a special Sunday sale at one of our
   lesser known record stores, "The Last Vestige". On thumbing through
   the back room goodies, I got a 78 collection with Zez Confrey doing
   his Dizzy Fingers and Kitten on the Keys. Sounded terribly like a
   piano roll, but my 78 player is a bit old and the record a bity
   scratchy... but for $1 , what could I do?  What I did was , pick up a
   33 !/3 (which the salesperson indicated to me was not a 33 1/3
   anymore, but a vinyl... it was the Levant, "Rhapsody in Blue"
   Columbia CL700, which included with the Rhapsody, An American in
   Paris with the NY Philharmonic and ending with Concerto in F for
   piano and orchestra.  Very expensive...only 50 cents, and plays
   nicely at 33.1/3 regardless of what it was made out of. It advises I
   NOT use an osmium or sapphire needle on it, though it did sound like
   someone used a fingernail on it. So there you were, for $1.50 and
   one of the few sunny Sunday New York afternoons in the town where
   once Boardman and Gray and Marshall and Wendell held court in the
   piano and reproducing business.

4. Someone mentioned the bells and carillon playing at the old closed
   huge St Joseph's church in Albany. The church, with its 4 manual
   Odell pipe organ had been owned by an antique dealer, and has now
   been returned to the diocese, I believe... however, in driving
   through that section of Albany on route to the store with the
   records "The Last Vestige", I did note that there were danger signs
   all around the church mentioning DANGER falling rocks etc...meaning,
   that the gargoyles on it, were loose again. The organ is still
   playable, though any dissonance, or even sonance in the pedal (such
   as trying toe find the low "B" in a Charles Ives piece for the organ
   pedal, would definitely bring down the entire structure, gargoyles,
   apses, naves and organ itself. That Odell is a wonderful organ and
   many a time I played a wedding there, even during the condemnation
   of the building.

5. A note on language, one more time, for those of you with a little
   funtime on your language skills and those who buy a travel
   guidebook..you can get more French out of  David Burke's two books,
   Street French and More Street French, and his Street Spanish. Good
   clean stuff.  Again, on Sunday when thumbing through Barnes and
   Noble, I find (honest!!) a book for those who love German, also in
   the disguise of the German you did not learn in school, ...there was
   one called "Scheisse", by a Gertrude Besserwisser. (besserwisser
   might mean "to know better"). This book is really something else...
   There is no end to handbooks. While reviewing some late notes in
   "Boardwatch" magazine, I see that Chris Babb's monthly column on
   electronics and computers mentions the "nutsite of the month".

   The "nutsite" this month (Apr 97 edition) is "Dirty things to say
   in German". It was quite guttural, a website on the net, and would
   lead anyone knowing German into rolls of laughter. If you are
   interested, and Robbie doesn't snip this, it is

       http://cobweb.wintermute.co.uk/moviestar_europe/swear.htm

    ...almost as bad as the other German book, and now finally...

6. The Rhodes and Kravitz team mentioned a computer based discussion or
   digest plan for mechanical music and promised not to mention Linux
   too much... probably due to its high learning curve.  "Boardwatch"
   magazine monthly has a great column called "Linus Redux" which a
   quite professional, but this month's issue of the almost
   "forbidden-by-the-FCC" magazine <2600>, there is an offer by some
   publisher in the Ohio area to see bumper stickers to anarachists and
   insurrectionists and the like which read, in bright colors "Linux
   for 97, for anarchists and rebels".  Some strange things must have
   happened to those who tried to load Linux and DOS or something on a
   MAC.

right Robbie?   Bill

P.S. That 'naughty German book" don't get scheissen and schiessen mixed
up. The first verb which is the imperative of the verb in the un-nice
one (scheissen,scheisst,gescheisst) and the word to shoot (like a gun)
is schiessen (ie is pronounced "ee" and "ei" is pronounced "eye"),
schoss, geschossen. So much today for Language, Linux, Levant, and Lost
Churches.  ..and thax for the remarks on the Telectra piano. There will
be more on that when I look west from my home toward Buffalo and stop
in Dolgeville for a pianoless coffeehouse, ...or in North Tonawanda.  The
"T" in Wurlitzer is definitely not for  Tonawanda, though there is one
"playing" little Wurlitzer theatre organ there.  There is a picture of
the Wurlitzer factory however there, with the big T, and you can see
this on the net here at

    http://www.wcbi.com/organs

So long for now, "i'muss ma jetzt ausbeugen'  Bill.