October 2008 Archives

I hadn't checked in on Andrew Hurvitz's Here in Van Nuys in a while and was surprised to see that he moved the blog from Blogger to WordPress.

While Here in Van Nuys has always looked good, it looks even better in WordPress, where it has an uncomplicated but pleasing layout and choice of fonts.

I'm in full agreement with Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing that persimmons — which grow like crazy in Southern California — are best eaten dried.

We tend to get them already dried at the Encino Farmers Market, and as yet we don't have our own persimmon tree. However, our next-door neighbor has graciously allowed us to pick some of his.

Mark points to an article in Mother Earth News about how to make your own dried persimmons:

If you want to try it yourself, use astringent persimmons, such as 'Hachiya' or 'Honan Red.' Pick or buy fruits when they are orange but still hard and inedible. If picking them yourself, use a clipper and cut the stem twig so it forms a small T above the fruit for easy hanging. Peel the fruit with a knife or vegetable peeler. Use sturdy string to tie the fruits from their twigs in a line, so they do not touch when hung vertically. Hang outside in a place that is protected from rain and snow, such as from nails or a horizontal pole under the eaves of the house. (I have also had luck drying persimmons without stems using clips or on flat baskets -- just make sure to turn often.) When the fruit begins to soften (one to two weeks), gently squeeze and massage each one. Repeat this after a few more weeks. They are done when dark brown, leathery and shrunken, but not overly hard -- about one or two months. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator or a cool, dry place. Enjoy Japanese style, as a snack with roasted green tea (hojicha) or ginger tea.

The hardest part seems to be finding a place to dry the persimmons where critters can't eat them.

Pierce College isn't exactly keeping it a secret that its music department have two extremely well-known and experienced guitar instructors on its faculty: John Schneider (pictured at right) and Ron Anthony (below).

Way back when I was a classical guitar student in the '80s, I didn't study with John Schneider, but I was a regular listener to "Soundboard," his KPFK-FM radio show that featured, as I remember it "music for the fretted string," meaning fretted instruments of all kinds. He's an expert in microtonal music, and that means freaky fretboards to reproduce unusual, multitonal temperaments (if I have that word and phrase right; I'm almost sure I don't).

I didn't study with Ron Anthony either, and a little jazz study would do me a whole lot of good, but that's another story for another time. Anthony is famed for his associations with George Shearing and Frank Sinatra. I used his excellent instruction book, "Comping," to help me find my way through the charts I was playing from while a very unexperienced guitarist in the Grant High School Stage Band even earlier in the '80s.

Very few books have ever been written about jazz accompaniment on the guitar, and Anthony's book was probably the best I'd seen. At some point, I lost track of it, but I do remember it fondly.