@Bernard said in Artists: I can't say I have a favorite, there are simply too many great artists and paintings. But I do have some that I'm partial to. This. So many, so different, and such personal subjective taste. My son in law dislikes all the earlier religious icon stuff so in the National Gallery we turned right and avoided the Sainsbury Wing, lol. My good friend and artist dislikes chocolate box art yet loved this quite simple architectural daub by Heslop, a painter from County Durham. [image: 1770877328745-20230531_102905-resized.jpg] It was charming and I'd definitely hang it in my house. Another local, Norman Cornish ("as good as Rembrandt") is now quite famous. He painted pit scenes, colliery life and comradeship, local people living. He captures the wonderful incandescent gleam of a pint in in his pub, which is the essence of transferring light onto paper [image: 1770879484861-screenshot_20260212-063614_duckduckgo.jpg] [image: 1770879937055-20250919_114128-resized.jpg] His big booted miners are filled with animation. Here's a lovely intimate portrait of his mother [image: 1770878550809-20250919_114220.jpg] Her hands, face, the cardigan... I've spent some time looking at the detail in this twilight charcoal drawing [image: 1770878823626-20230531_102653-resized.jpg] Much more on the Web of course

@Bernard said in Musical Interlude — Dick Hyman: Wow. And he plays so much with his eyes closed. I wish had such good blind knowledge of the geography of the keyboard! I noticed that! No dramatic contortions either. Not to mention…isn’t he over 90 years old? Not too shabby.

Very timely. Pull up a chair, this will be long. [image: IMG-5201.jpg] Sharon made this and she got called away before she finished it. She told me to finish it without sending me the recipe. Big chunks of ham, bits of potato (must have taken hours to chop them like that) and the most remarkable broth! Thought it must be a Jacques Pepin recipe, thoroughly enjoyed cutting up the pieces of ham in the bowl. Sprinkled chopped green onions on top. Fantastic! Then she sent the recipe! It’s a standard midwestern crock pot recipe and I generally despise crock pot recipes. Frozen hash browns? Canned soup? Yikes! But - wow! Here’s the recipe [image: IMG-5202.png] A classic midwestern crock pot dump recipe. I would have passed it by but it works! Except… I didn’t add the cream cheese even though Sharon set aside Boursin cheese for the purpose. Cream cheese is fine but Boursin is next level and Sharon is fancy like that. She got mad when I told her I loved it without the cheese. So I had a second bowl. Added the Boursin. Yikes! It’s the richest, most decadent cream of potato soup I’ve ever eaten. Indulgent. Possibly sinful. Absolutely delicious! But for me, it’s better without the cheese. I might tart it up next time with some thyme because I put thyme in everything. But no cheese. Not even Boursin. It’s not Mediterranean. It’s not even healthy but yikes! It’s fantastic and takes no time (thyme) at all!

I like croutons after they've soaked up a bit of soup and go a bit soft.

Hi, @Big-John ! Nice to hear from you. Funny, you crossed my mind just a few weeks ago; I was wondering how you were doing. I saw a picture of lake Michigan along Chicago and was reminded of the time you showed me some sites.

Your robins are so much cuter than ours! Ours are known as a sign of spring.

The difference, I suppose, is that the therapists know your insurer is going to pay them.

Thanks for the information! I'd suffer all of it-- if I were rich and young.

All the cool kids on Reddit are naming their starters so I named mine. Right now Bad Barmy is serving as a control to see if the 80° water bath makes any difference. [image: IMG-5198.jpg] That’s Yeastie Boys in the water bath.

@RealPlayer said in What are you reading?: @AndyD Your picture of The Pianist’s Mentor reminded me that there are a number of books on pianism by famous teachers (Neuhaus, Whiteside et al.) and I haven’t read any of them. The ones I’ve glanced at seem kind of dry, and it must be hard to describe fine muscle movements in lively prose. One study, The Great Pianists and Their Technique, does have comments by pupils of Liszt, Chopin and others which are interesting. In my teens I read one and picked out the essence. This is my youthful writing at the back of an address book (in which I listed all the songs I liked A-Z) [image: 1770623505317-20260209_074920-resized.jpg]

@ShiroKuro That's no thread drift. I should change the title to something more generic, like US Olympics. I don't have TV either, so I can only catch the meager offerings NBC posts on YouTube (and it's stingy to say the best). Here is something I'm not getting: They are using drones now for some events. Alpine skiing, for instance. Now, when I watch videos from vloggers I don't hear nary a peep from the drones they use. Why is it, a "professional" outfit like NBC has these drones that whine and wheez and buzz and distract like crazy? Surely, they can either mute the drone footage, or edit out the sound. It seems very sloppy to me. I'd also love it if more than one media outlet were allowed to cover the games.

@Mik said in Alcaraz breaks 88 Year Old Record: That's awesome. I wish we had kept our fantastic seats at the Cincinnati open. We've seen the changing of the guard so many times and so many thrilling matches. But as they said in one of the later Rocky movies, "Time...it's undefeated.". Great line.

[image: 1770543050853-screenshot_20260208-092910_duckduckgo.jpg]

Link to video Omg. She's wonderful.

I won't ever know if Melania wears Prada. I liked her first inaugural outfit. Her choice of the "I don't care. Do you?" designer makes everything she's worn from the swearing in ceremony to today a run away train to nowhere in particular.

https://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0720/Sections/0720.303.html This might be useful.