File this in the “it’s too crazy to make up” department. Turns out Mad Cow Disease might change the way we hear classical music.

A new report reveals that the regulations overseeing the use of certain animal tissue – like beef gut – could force musical instrument companies to rely on different materials to create violin and cello strings.

Regulations which tightly control the use of certain types of animal tissue are unwittingly threatening the centuries-old technique of making musical instrument strings out of beef gut.

The craft is covered by the same strict controls on raw materials from cows, even though campaigners say that to catch Creutzfeldt – Jakob disease, (CJD) – the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy – from violin or cello strings from an infected animal you would need to eat several metres of them.

(more…)

A few years ago, I re-connected with a guy I hadn’t seen in about 50 years.  We’d been friends in junior high, but once my family moved, Gary and I wound up attending different high schools.  Which is pretty much like living on different planets. 

After he came across my stuff on the Internet, Gary contacted me and suggested getting together for lunch.  And so we did.  While reminiscing about the old days, I told him that I was still grateful that he’d taught me to play tennis.  He was surprised to hear that I still played.  But his surprise was nothing compared to mine when he said that he was grateful that I’d introduced him to good books and great music.  Quite honestly, I hadn’t realized I’d done that.  Unlike his teaching me tennis, it wasn’t something I’d set out to do.  But he assured me that I was the first person he’d ever known who read Steinbeck and Dickens, Salinger and Dostoyefsky, Hugo and Twain, Robert Benchley and S.J. Perelman, and who listened to classical music.  (more…)