Wintry mix

[Rain is now washing all the snow away; I'm staying in.]

1. Here's an interesting pictorial summary of the Bush presidency.
2. Today is the deadline for video submissions to the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Winning musicians will get to add the first 21st century reply to the age-old question "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"
3. How convenient for Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon that tomorrow's scheduled Sirius satellite radio broadcast of Lucia di Lammermoor has been "postponed" to Tuesday next week. (Read the note about the schedule change at the top of Sirius's website.) We all know why.
4. OONY needs a bailout too.
5. There's nothing going on in Chicago in 2009-10. San Francisco, on the other hand, has some curiosities: among others, Nadja Michael's Salome and Deborah Voigt's Minnie. We in New York won't see Michael till the 2011-12 season, as Lady Macbeth; hopefully she'll still have some voice left. And regarding Voigt, it seems she's sticking to the German rep. in town, wisely keeping the disasters elsewhere.
6. I'm having my biggest Valentine yet.
7. Ouch! YouTube has Netrebko's sad Mad Scene and Villazon's so-called "dramatic coup" (according to Tommasini) from that Lucia.