The Michael Canfield Channel

Weight Loss Challenges of the Operatically Proportioned

I found this while searching online for the calorie count in Nyquil. I didn't find out, (but one news site says Nyquil-like substances contain 19 grams of carbs, so I'm guessing 1 dose of Nyquil is around 80 calories) but I found this article on the nutritional challenges of opera singers strange and compelling. If you guessed the authors of this study can't resist opening with a bit about "the fat lady singing" you are right. The Diva Syndrome:

Not all, but an inordinate proportion of professional singers, both males and females, appear to suffer from the diva syndrome. [...]

Most singers have sick-day food rituals. According to them, nearly all illnesses (and all medications) have effects on their voices, so virtually all illnesses are viewed by them as voice-connected. Many teachers and vocal coaches advise their singers on medications, foods, and drinks both for their voice-related problems and for their more general illnesses. One singer reported that when she had a temperature of 103[degrees] her teacher counseled her to exercise until she worked up a sweat and then to wrap up in a blanket, take Nyquil at bedtime, buy a specific throat lozenge, and abstain from taking any antihistamines. After finally seeing a physician, she called to cancel her voice lesson, but her voice teacher insisted she come to her lesson anyway. Singers self-medicate with herbal teas, lemon and honey drinks, and specific throat lozenges to permit them to continue with the performance when feeling ill or not singing well. They also use home remedies to alleviate the discomfort of the cold or allergy.

Tags: Opera Nyquil

Fair Use XI

Some declarative sentences from P.G. Wodehouse's Full Moon:

"It's all perfectly on the level. My name is Lister. Miss Garland and I are engaged. And this blighted Wedge woman is keeping her under lock and key and watching her every move. A devil of a female. What she needs is a spoonful of arsenic in her soup one of these evenings. You couldn't attend to that, I suppose?" he said genially, for now that everything was going so smoothly he was in a merry mood.

Tags: Books  Reading Writing

US Postage will increase in 2006.

Forces conspired against me in the form of many story rejections coming in over the post holiday weekend. The stories have all gone out again, and curiously for the 21st century, all four happen to be bound for markets that do not accept electronic submissions. No matter, but it did remind me that first class postage within the United States is going up to 39¢ sometime early 2006. Fortunately I had some one cent-ers on hand to stick on the SASEs. If I'd forgotten, Krishna knows what those editors would have thought of me 6 to 8 months from now when the get around to replying.

Incidentally, I've heard that the USPS is finally going to print stamps without the actual price on them (I heard they are doing it starting 2007, I think) so they can be used even after a price increase. This will save me the biannual task of buying make-up stamps. It will also give the USPS a nice cash inflow just before increases happen, when companies and individual buy a lot of stamps at the old price to stock up before an increase. Apparently in the past the USPS thought this would be a bad thing.

Tag: Writing

Fair Use X

From Chapter III of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Vol. I 1776):

The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of a state, in which a single person, by whatsoever name he may be distinguished, is intrusted with the execution of the laws, the management of the revenue, and the command of the army. But, unless public liberty is protected by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a magistrate will soon degenerate into despotism. The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people. * A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against enterprises of an aspiring prince.

Tags: Books  Reading Writing

Fair Use IX

Today an extended passage from Chapter II Volume I of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire :

The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. 

Fair Use VIII

From the first chapter of P.G. Wodehouse's Full Moon:

Lord Emsworth gave a quick, convulsive leap, then became strangely rigid. Like so many fathers of the English upper classes, he was somewhat allergic to younger sons, and was never at his happiest when entertaining the one whom unkind Fate had added to his quiver. Freddie, when at Blandings, had a way of mooning and looking like a bored and despairing sheep, with glassy eyes staring out over an eleven-inch cigarette holder, which had always been enough to bring a black frost into this Eden of his.

Tags: Books  Reading  Writing

Happy Thanksgiving!

That's it for today.

Fair Use VII

From the soon to be missed Scifi.com, Gerald Kersh's "The Queen of Pig Island":

The story of the Baroness von Wagner, that came to its sordid and bloody end after she, with certain others, had tried to make an earthly paradise on a desert island, was so fantastic that if it had not first been published as news, even the editors of the sensational crime magazines would have thought twice before publishing it.

Tags: Fiction Books

Favorite Stories in BASS 2005

Best American Short Stories 2005. For the first time in a long time I finished most of the stories in an entire collection. These are my very favorites, the cream of the cream, listed in the order they appear in the book:

"Until Gwen" Dennis Lehane
"Old Friends" Thomas McGuane
"Death Defier" Tom Bissell
"Anda's Game" Cory Doctorow
"The Cousins" Joyce Carol Oates
"Natasha" David Bezmozgis
"Hart and Boot" Tim Pratt

Tags: Books Reading Writing

Fair Use VI

Am nearing the end of the Best American Short Stories 2005 edited by Michael Chabon. I'll post a list of my favorites soon. Today's quote is from one of those favorites, Tim Pratt's "Hart and Boot":

The man's head and torso emerged from a hole in the ground, just a few feet from the rock where Pearl Hart sat smoking her last cigarette.

Tags: Books  Writing