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Excellent with the accordion and all. [...] Due to my preadolescent enthusiasm for Weird Al Yankovic, I've long had a soft spot for that most huggable of instruments. Which probably goes at least part way to explaining the disproportionate zydeco representation in my current music library. Not to mention the place of Paul Simon's "Graceland" near the top of the all-time-favorite-albums pile -- with its brilliant mixing the accordions of Soweto, Louisiana, and East L.A.

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Books I've been reading: Russell Banks' Cloudsplitter, about John Brown's family; a collection of short stories by gen-x Spanish-language authors. [Se habla espan~ol: voces latinas en USA] Como se dice epiphany? Not sure, not that I'm good enough to recognize them when they pop up. And I think I'm going to try a Nobel laureate a month for 2005 -- Mr. January has been the Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert (depending on how you count he's my second-favorite Slavic poet, or my least-favorite, the one other being Old Man Milosz, RIP [not true -- you forgot Zbigniew Herbert, and one or two more -- ed.]). Mr. Feb will be Kenzaburo Oe, the Japanese novelist.