[A] It's an upgrade, from an initial A- recorded in the database, to a full A in the review. The upgrade wasn't identified as such, because it occurred within the week (or possibly within the hour or two) of writing the initial review. Sometimes I'll write a grade down even before the album is over, then find I need to go back and tweak it a bit. Sometimes I'll finish a review, then play the record again and tweak the review a bit. The problem is that although I believe in the value of normalization -- a computer science term for only storing each bit of data in one place, so if you change it later, every place that uses the data will automatically update -- I'm sorry to way that my own website falls far short of that ideal. When I change a grade, I have to edit at least 4 and possibly up to 8-12 files to get all references to agree. Sometimes I miss an edit, producing a discrepancy such as this one. (Some I don't even bother with, like the weekly Music Week posts, since I use the monthly archives for reference.)

One consequence of this system is that it imposes an overhead for changing a grade, so I always have to ask myself whether the change is worth the effort to propagate it? If the change is minor or marginal, I often don't bother. This may make the system less rigorous, but I'm not one of those guys who only definitively grades something after 4-6 plays. My grades are always provisional, often fuzzy. I can imagine a grading system that uses complex numbers, one for grade and another to count how many times I've played the record -- a proxy for certainty, or the probability of any given grade for prospective future plays. (Come to think of it, I also imagined a grading system as a set of six numbers based on quark flavors: up, down, strange, charm, top, bottom.) But any such scheme would be a lot more work with more uncertainty most likely just leading to further confusion. On the other hand, plain grades simplify both for writer and reader: without them, I'd have to grope for words to explain whether I like the record or not, leaving readers to translate them back into some sort of pecking order.

[A] I got whatever Pi sent with the CD, which is probably the same as they emailed before the CD arrived. There once was once a day when I filed press releases, but my current practice is to trash them as soon as I've written my reviews. More than 90% of my email goes quickly to trash as well, which includes everything I get from Pi -- no disrespect, as they're a terrific label, in fact one I trust to send physical CDs when the time comes. After Google failed, I was able to fish it out of the email trash, and you're right that there are more specifics there: the main ones I missed are that Úlehla and Bajakian are married and living in New York.

There isn't much to my reviews: I usually try to jot down a bit of background context while I'm listening, which helps with who, where, when, and why. Then at the end, I usually add a line (or rarely two) of my impression, plus the grade -- which is itself just an impression, in succinctly relative form. Sometimes I'll give a record a second play, but usually I figure I got most of what I needed, and I'd rather move on. This review is pretty typical. Having re-read the press release, I'd probably change "worked in New York and Vancouver, but bio is short on specifics" with "worked in Vancouver but now lives in New York." But I'll leave that be for now. The one edit I did make was to change "Adam" to "Aram," which may have been a typo -- something I'm increasingly prone to, and much bothered by -- but could be some combination of bad eyesight and/or defective memory, as I've heard at least some of his previous work (Dálava should also have rung a bell), but don't recall noticing. Apologies for that.

[A] First, I should clarify that while there was much reason to despair after the 2024 election, my reason for suspending Speaking of Which had more to do with managing my limited time and energy. It had gotten to the point where I was spending 50-70% of my time just working on the weekly news post, and the worse things got, the more it sucked me in. I've been unhappy with this for some time, but figured the election was important enough to see it through. I would likely have shifted focus in any case, but the sense of my own ineffectiveness when faced with endless horrors made the decision for me.

It's tempting to write more about what possible role I see for myself, but I'll leave that for my planning documents. To return to your question, let's just talk about perception and hope. I don't know what you mean by "illusion," but perception is very polarized in the US, with about a third convinced that Trump walks on water, and more critically that anything you say against him, no matter how fact-based or logical, can be dismissed as "fake news" and/or "Trump derangement syndrome."

Meanwhile, at least as many people see right through him, and find him horrifying, regardless of what he does and/or says. I'm in this latter camp, although we are divided between those who see him as a personal threat, and those with much broader concerns, and the latter are further divided (most painful is the division between hawks and doves). I have no doubt that Trump will do major damage not just to his targets but to our sense of public order and justice, to civil society, to the environment, to the economy, and perhaps even to world peace. But I also expect that Trump's acts and policies will fail massively, and eventually provoke a reaction that will drive him from power. What happens then is up for grabs.

In some ways I'm more hopeful after the Trump victory than I would have been had Harris won. Trump's allure fades fast when he's in power, and even faster given the recklessness of his second term. But his win also discredits the neoliberal cabal that has controlled the Democratic Party from Clinton through Obama, Biden, and Harris, with its promises of growth for the rich, jobs for the poor, and shelter from Republican bigotry, and has, on the last point at least, categorically failed. Had Harris won, the best we could hope for was rational discussions and paltry reforms, fighting an uphill battle against trends that have been driving us to ruin for decades -- insert long list here, which starts with growing inequality and includes things like climate change and arms proliferation -- all parts of a game their variant of neoliberalism was designed to play smarter, not to escape from.

The next generation of Democratic leaders will be the ones who prove most effective at standing up to Trump. Hopefully, they also be ones who can look beyond Trump, to what needs to be done to repair and rebuild social and economic frameworks that will be needed for peaceful and prosperous decades to come. I wouldn't bet on that happening -- too many people only learn the hard way, and even then paradigm shifts take generations -- but in times when the ruling class is being battered from all sides, the political advantage shifts to those on the outside. That means not just anti-Trump, but outside the Democratic Party cabal that has managed to lose to him twice now. They should be ashamed of themselves. And while they may return to power as disgust with Trump grows, they will continue to fail if they don't do a serious rethink of their principles and program.