AJ: (with mouth full and cheeks all puffed out like Dizzy Gillespie) Mommy, mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm?
Harriet: I beg your pardon?
AJ: (swallows, but cheeks are still puffed out) Do you know what �entire� means?
Harriet: What does �entire� mean?
AJ: It means the WHOOOOLE thing.
Harriet: AJ, did you put the entire banana in your mouth?
AJ: Mmm-hmm. I ate the WHOOOOLE thing.

-------

The bullfrog-like cheek capacity of three-year-olds aside, today has been remarkably uneventful in the way that only Sundays can be. I read my way through a full eight inches of Sunday papers, took AJ sledding a couple of times and assembled my overdue library books for immediate action. I�ll be hauling them down to school tomorrow for a research trip that is even more overdue than the books and to pick up a couple of packages (hi, elgan!) that have been sitting in my department for weeks waiting for me. I�m looking forward to a change of scene. Sure, it�s beautiful and bucolic. Who doesn�t like walking in a winter wonderland? But having spent the last several days slipping around solitarily on skis in the woods and sliding down snowy slopes on a sled (okay, the alliteration is a little much even for me), I am ready to be jostled and urbanified, if only for a little while.

I have been rather wrapped up in things musical for the last few days, which makes me a little reluctant to write and rather crabby with my family. When my head�s in my work, I�m not so much fun to be around. Mostly I�ve been working on the usual array of dissertation, papers, lectures. But I have also been working my way through a couple of Christmas gift CDs, both wonderful in very different ways. The first is a recording by the Hilliard Ensemble of Machaut motets (odalisk, you should have a listen) and the second a collection of Handel arias performed by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Both are excellently executed. While I have no doubt performed and studied more of Machaut�s music than most people, there were still things on this disc I had never heard � always a treat for a musicologist. Hunt Lieberson�s Handel interpretations are lovely. But the packaging of the CD is possibly even more arresting. The cover features Lieberson in an austere black gown, hands and eyes held heaven-ward. But when you open the case and remove the CD, you have just stripped bare a Renaissance virgin�s breasts. As someone who�s lectured repeatedly on Handel operas, I thought that was a rather interesting analogy. I was giving a talk on Handel�s Alcina to some Lyric opera subscribers a few years ago and found that most people thought of his operas as dull and rather tedious until they actually heard it and understood how it works. Then the breast is laid bare. You have to actually open and remove the CD, presumably to one�s waiting CD-player, before the drama and emotion become evident.

At this point, I�ve only really had the luxury of listening to these two discs while doing other things, so I�ll refrain from an actual review. But perhaps I�ll bring them on my schlep downtown tomorrow for more careful consideration. And now, to figure out how to fit a 12� cubed pile of books into a bag that appears to be somewhat smaller. There are few occasions where I wish to replace books with electronic media, but hauling them across three different forms of public transportation is one such occasion. Fortunately my biceps are in good shape after all the snow-shovelling.

0 people said it like they meant it