I guess I start with my latest music recommendations. First is Pentangle -- Light Flight: The Anthology. I guess the best way to describe these guys (and gal) is jazz/folk fusion -- interesting arrangements of traditional songs, with a female vocalist almost (but not quite) in the class of Maddy Prior and Sandy Denny (of course, no one is in the class of Sandy Denny except perhaps Annie Haslam). I would download a couple of tracks first to make sure you like the sound.

The second one is Camel: Echoes. Camel is one of the lost bands from the prog rock era that was vaporized by the punk explosion of 1977, not that they ever had much of an audience to begin with. Of course, we were all grateful for the arrival of punk (unlike the arrival of grunge), but that didn't all the sudden make the music that came before it bad. Its hard to describe Camel's sound other than to say they were on the "far" edge of prog rock (think Caravan, not Yes). In fact, some of the same musicians played in both Caravan and Camel, so if you're familiar with the former's sound, you'll have an idea of Camel's sound, with the difference that there was more emphasis on musical virtuosity and less on the lyrical cleverness that Caravan was known for. (And if you're not familiar with Caravan, start there).

I generally try to write about music when I don't feel like writing about O. Well, my ordeal with the sanctioning process ended a few days ago. I purposely waited so that anything I wrote about it would seem objective, but I don't feel that is possible, so I will say very little about it, despite my desire to write something the size of a set of encyclopedias. The process at the very minimum, should be more open, and more efficient, among other changes that I don't care to voice. I volunteered to run it, and at the end of the day, I'm not running it. Intelligent people will differ in opinion as to whether USOF is better off or not. At least I can say I tried to improve things, rather than just whine.

Fair enough, I'll work to improve USOF the only way I can control, by trying to find controls faster, thereby forcing my competition to train harder. Hopefully I won't write anymore on this topic. There was no return on that investment.