Tag Archives: Wall Street Journal

Destinations: Walk The Streets, Parks And Palaces Of Beethoven’s Vienna

From a Wall Street Journal online article:

Beethoven's Vienna WalkBeethoven moved nearly 70 times while living in Vienna. Two of his former homes are open to the public, and many more are marked with commemorative plaques.

High above Vienna’s historic center, at the edge of the hilly Vienna Woods, the city’s Beethoven Museum, is housed in a onetime bakery complex dating back to the late Middle Ages, with an 18th-century annex containing a small apartment where Beethoven spent the summer of 1802. While living here, he composed his tragic “Tempest” piano sonata and began work on his 3rd Symphony, the “Eroica.”

Where to Binge on Beethoven in Vienna - Wall Street Journal Sept 2019

Theater an der Wien - Beethoven's ViennaLUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN is as Viennese as apple strudel. Though born in Bonn, Germany in 1770, he moved to the Austrian capital when he was in his early 20s, and then spent the rest of his 56 years changing the course of Western music from the city on the Danube. A quirky, cantankerous celebrity in his own time, he premiered his groundbreaking symphonies and concertos in Vienna’s grand palaces, escaped the summer heat in what are now its sleepy suburbs, and moved around between dozens of supposedly squalid apartments that sprawl across much of the city.

To read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-to-binge-on-beethoven-in-vienna-11568303745

Medical Reviews: “Unnecessary” Leg Stent Surgery Can Make Vascular Disease Worse

From a Wall Street Jouranl online article:

The Price We Pay - Marty Makary MDDr. Makary examines the practice of performing unnecessary vascular procedures in a chapter of his new book, “The Price We Pay,” published Sept. 10. In it, he describes what seems to be the “predatory” practice of some doctors seeking out patients at health screenings in churches.

Dr. Hicks says performing unnecessary leg procedures like stenting can make vascular disease worse, creating blockage in narrow arteries or causing an artery to rupture. She says patients with early leg pain have a 1% to 2% risk of limb loss after five years. But aggressive procedures increase that risk to 5% to 10%.

Some physicians are stenting leg arteries and removing plaque at alarming rates, these doctors say. The often-avoidable procedures could put patients at risk of complications and worsening disease.

Johns Hopkins researchers published a study in June in the Journal of Vascular Surgery analyzing national data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency that administers the Medicare program. The research identified 320 physicians whose rates for conducting such procedures in patients newly diagnosed with leg pain were 14% or higher. The mean rate of all 5,664 physicians was 3.5%.

To read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/doctors-sound-an-alarm-over-leg-stent-surgery-11568127286?mod=cx_immersive&cx_navSource=cx_immersive&cx_tag=poptarget&cx_artPos=1#cxrecs_s

Top Museum Exhibits: “Buried by Vesuvius – Treasures from the Villa dei Papiri” At Getty Villa

From a Wall Street Journal article:

Getty Villa Buried by Vesuvius - Treasures from the Villa dei Papiri…the Getty Villa, despite some anomalies and insertions, is considered a strong likeness, which makes it a powerful locale for “Buried by Vesuvius: Treasures From the Villa dei Papiri,” the first major exhibition of works discovered in the Roman residence. The show includes Weber’s 1758 architectural map—used to build the Getty Villa—along with some of the approximately 90 sculptures pulled from the site, showing athletes, philosophers, rulers, poets and mythological figures. The exhibition also displays findings from the recent excavations.

The idea was half-mad: building a museum to look like an ancient Roman villa that was buried under 75 feet of debris when Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79 and had never really been seen since. But J. Paul Getty made his immense fortune by bringing ancient subterranean material (i.e. oil) to the surface, so he must have felt similar excitement in exhuming this villa, in concept if not reality. It opened as the home for his eponymous museum in 1974; now called the Getty Villa, and located in Los Angeles, it holds the institution’s Classical collections.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/buried-by-vesuvius-treasures-from-the-villa-dei-papiri-review-a-homecoming-of-sorts-11566941174

Boomers Hobbies: 75-Year Old Dave Hinz Of Michigan Spent Ten Years Building His 1936 A.J. Speciale

From a Wall Street Journal article by A.J. Baime:

Dave Hinz 1936 A.J. Speciale Interior Photo by Erin Kirkland for the Wall Street JournalI built a frame out of ash wood. Then I hand-formed and welded body panels onto the frame. I re-engineered the brakes, the steering and the clutch system to fit properly, and I hand-formed the grille out of aluminum. The seats I built out of plywood, foam and vinyl that looks like leather. When I started, I had no idea how to do any of this.

Dave Hinz, 75, a retired former software company co-owner from Harbor Springs, Mich., on what he calls his homemade 1936 A.J. Speciale, as told to A.J. Baime.

After I retired in 2005, I found a photo of a beautiful Bugatti online. I made the mistake of telling my friends that I was going to build a car just like it. I had no experience in metal forming. I knew nothing about car mechanics. But I had made this statement, and I was the butt of so many jokes, I had to try.

To read more click on the following link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-not-an-alfa-romeo-or-a-jaguarits-a-tribute-to-both-11566914306

Trends In Housing: Boomers’ Downsizing Leaves “Trail Of Luxury Ranches” In Colorado

From a Wall Street Journal article by Katherine Clark:

Tom Bradbury, a Denver real-estate developer, and his family are listing South Comanche Ranch for $22 million. PHOTO REBECCA STUMPF FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL“If you look back in the day to the ’70s and ’80s, there were these guys…raised with this mythology of the West,” said Ken Mirr, a local ranch broker. “It was attachment to something Hollywood produced. Their children aren’t necessarily always as interested in operating the properties. Sometimes the kids just see cows and think ‘What should I do with this?’”

Operating costs vary dramatically, depending on how much infrastructure ranchers have on their land and the level of agricultural activity but can often be millions a year.

Decades ago, a generation of America’s wealthiest, raised on television shows like “Howdy Doody” and “The Lone Ranger,” headed west with dreams of owning some of the country’s most prestigious ranches. Now, as those John Wayne- loving baby boomers age out of the lifestyle or die, they or their children are looking to sell those trophy properties.

To read more click on following link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/baby-boomers-are-leaving-behind-a-trail-of-luxury-ranches-11566487531?mod=hp_listc_pos3

White Wine Reviews: Mr. Sommelier, What Exactly Makes This A Dry Wine?

From a Wall Street Journal online article by Lettie Teague

Dry White Wines Wall Street Journal Illustration by Heather Landis 2019There is no official definition of what constitutes a dry wine in the U.S. The amount of sugar left in the wine after fermentation or added afterward is, however, sometimes noted on a wine’s label, in grams per liter. According to Mr. Ramey, a wine generally considered dry would have less than 1 gram per liter RS (residual sugar), or 0.1%. Beyond that, a wine with 1% RS (10 grams per liter) is off-dry, and a wine at 3% RS (30 grams per liter) or above is sweet.

WHAT’S A DRY WINE? If this seems like a question with a straightforward answer, then you probably don’t work in a wine store or restaurant. Retailers and sommeliers tell me they are regularly asked to recommend dry wines by customers who don’t seem to know what they really want. These customers offer examples of the “dry” wines they favor—which often turn out to be technically sweet.

To read more click on the following link:  https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-you-sure-that-wine-you-ordered-is-actually-dry-11566492508

Health Care Technology: Human Voice Sound Wave Analysis Detects Disease Onset, Checks Depression

From a Wall Street Journal online article by Sarah Krouse:

In medicine, measuring slight changes in voice is starting to help doctors detect the onset of diseases like Parkinson’s or more quickly measure the efficacy of treatments for illnesses like depression, researchers say.

Human voice technology Photo by Ellen Winstein for the Wall Street JournalSlower speech, for example, could indicate fatigue or sorrow at one point in time, but over longer periods could signal something more severe, co-founder Jim Harper said.

That voice-based data isn’t yet robust enough to base medical decisions on alone, but is being used alongside clinical trials for drugs to treat depression, Mr. Harper said.

The sound of your voice is becoming a new type of fingerprint.

Increasingly sophisticated technology that detects nuances in sound inaudible to humans is capturing clues about people’s likely locations, medical conditions and even physical features.

To read more click on the following link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-your-voice-reveals-about-you-11565716426

Books On Boomers: “Stop Mugging Grandma” By Jennie Bristow Seeks To Edify The Boomer Bashers

From a Wall Street Journal book review by Daniel Akst:

Stop Mugging Grandma by Jennie BristowAt the center of the attack on those of us born between 1946 and 1964, days when the U.S. birth rate was extraordinarily high, is our supposed radical individualism. Its roots are said to be found in the excesses of the 1960s, a decade for which “boomers have become fall guys.”

Ms. Bristow, to her everlasting credit, isn’t buying it. “What about the two catastrophic world wars that had dominated the first half of the century; the cynical hedonism of the ‘Roaring Twenties’; the parasitism of colonialism and racial segregation?”

Ms. Bristow, a sociology professor in England, shrewdly situates this new resentment in the context of today’s vogue for collective responsibility and the transmission of guilt across many generations. “Generationalism,” as she calls it, “has come to find its most comfortable home within identity politics, that shrill sentiment of victimisation and grievance that has become an increasingly powerful cultural force.”

To read more click on the following link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-mugging-grandma-review-defying-the-boomer-bashers-11565651816

Iconic Movies: Film Noir Thriller “Double Indemnity” (1944) Directed By Billy Wilder Turns 75

Feom a Wall Street Journal Arts & Entertainment article:

Double_Indemnity_publSeventy-five years ago, “Double Indemnity” opened in theaters across America. It was an instant hit, and remains to this day a staple offering of revival houses and on cable TV and streaming video. Yet little journalistic notice has been taken of the birthday of Billy Wilder’s first great screen drama, a homicidal thriller that nonetheless had—and has—something truly unsettling to say about the dark crosscurrents of middle-class American life.

Directed by Wilder and co-written by him and Raymond Chandler, the celebrated mystery novelist, “Double Indemnity” is the story of a restless insurance salesman who helps a sexy, frustrated housewife murder her husband for profit. Though neither Wilder nor Chandler realized it at the time, it would later be acknowledged by critics and scholars as the first fully developed example of film noir, in which a flawed but basically innocent protagonist is presented with a moral choice, makes the wrong call, and is plunged into a violent after-hours world of passion and crime.

To read more click on following link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-film-noir-icon-turns-75-11565637941

Vintage Road Trips: 1966 Ford Country Squire Station Wagon Drives The Mississippi River Valley

From a Wall Street Journal Off Duty Travel article by By Matthew Kronsberg::

The Country Squire in the Stockholm, Wis. PHOTO ACKERMAN + GRUBER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALChoosing a landscape for a car is like choosing a wine for a meal. The Country Squire—which, I discovered, handled with all the nimbleness of a riverboat—felt like a natural pairing for the Mississippi River valley south of the Twin Cities. The curves would be gentle, and the views sweeping: high bluffs on one side of the car, water on the other. My family and I would pick up Highway 61 in St. Paul, hopscotching between it and Wisconsin’s fantastically scenic Great River Road, exploring the small waterfront towns along the way. We’d stop for the first night in Red Wing, Minn., and the next in Alma, Wis., 98 miles downriver. The car came with a 150-mile-a-day allowance, and a request that we not venture farther than 100 miles from Minneapolis, should anything happen.

To read more click on the following link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-road-trip-with-retro-charmand-a-car-to-match-11565352147

To rent the Ford Country Squire: http://morriesheritage.com/cars/1966-ford-country-squire/?portfolioCats=1077%2C1078%2C1079%2C1081