Richard Pennycuick responds to me concerning Dvorak String Quartets:

>>I find Dvorak's works perfect as an outlet for driving.
>
>Dvorak was something of a train buff, so there might be some cosmic
>connection, intended or otherwise.

To clear up this matter, I'll have to take a train ride, bring along my
protable equipment, and see if Dvorak by train is better than Dvorak by
automobile.

Richard wrote of the streamlined and small packaged set of Dvorak String
Quartets by the Prague String Quartet:

>Such sets don't take up as much space, but what I *hate* about them is
>that you can't remove the CD from its little paper sleeve without
>putting your fingers all over the playing surface.

My dad had a hard and fast rule about putting fingers on the playing
surface of a recording - do it and you're no longer part of the family.
So, being the good boy that I am, I have never put my fingers or any other
part of me on playing surfaces.  That also applies to the type of sets
Richard is talking about, and the Prague set is one of them.  Even if it
takes me a half-hour to get those cd's out of the paper cover, I'm not
fooling with the playing surface.  It can be troublesome, but I push, blow,
slam, huff-and-puff, whatever I need to do to get that disc out of the
sleeve and into the cd player.  One time, I just ripped the sleeve off; the
hell with it.

Don Satz
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