Free Republic

Major and Minor are two of seven modes. The scale in this song uses an Ab in the key of G-minor, (that's imprecise, but the best way we can think of it). The flat-2 note in the III mode can be heard in traditional Catholic Church music (think Holy Modal Rounders); every week I actually sing this mode in the Lord Have Mercy (Kyrie Eleison in Greek), in Church called the Phrygian mode. The song composer, Flatbush Waltz, is mandolinist Andy Statman. The Quebe Sisters Texas Swing Band at the Library of Congress Andy Statman's FLATBUSH WALTZ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN1mODxfd18&t=15m56s

Russia has a string of young male prospects ready to plunder future Olympic gold in figure skating but top coach Alexei Mishin says his countrywomen are fit only to work on the railways. "Russian women are not very good for figure skating," Mishin told Reuters on Friday. "They are good for building rail tracks in Siberia, for example. They are just too strong and big." Mishin, a former medal-winning figure skater whose top pupil Yevgeny Plushenko won gold in the men's figure skating on Thursday, said he has a new generation under his charge ready to take over when the...

Rounders was born too soon. When the film debuted in September of 1998, televised poker was a once-a-year, one-hour proposition on ESPN. Online gambling sites virtually didn't exist. College students were still gambling on sporting events or in fantasy leagues. And so Rounders, starring Damon as a law student whose real talent is poker, never became a zeitgeist film. It never did for poker what Saturday Night Fever did for disco. -----snip----- Ebert, a casual poker player himself, astutely observed that Rounders is anything but a cautionary tale. "If this movie was about alcoholism," he wrote, "the hero would regain...