I have to agree with JennW when it comes to Andrew Lloyd Weber. So saccharine it makes my teeth hurt, and "All I Ask of You" makes me want to throw up--even seeing it live can't save it for me (but I completely admit that I'm a music snob). I second the Gilbert and Sullivan suggestion because they were such a big influence on later British and American musicals. And G&S are popular enough that you can probably find a production in your area. The Kings Singers also have a fun G&S CD that I enjoy.

totally inappropriate for little kids--yuck.

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I'm very picky when it comes to music, so I probably wouldn't use Discovering Music for several reasons: 1) Naxos CDs are kind of cheap. They're not necessarily bad recordings, but they are rarely the best available. 2) No medieval or Renaissance music 3) I wouldn't listen to Schoenberg for fun, but I don't think that you can adequately study 20th-century music without touching on Schoenberg and 12-tone music. Overall, it seems weak on 20th-c. music in general. (#2 and #3 are probably due to the fact that it only covers 300 years of music) 4) I'm not sure how much listening guidance there is. The one unit available for preview was on 19th-c. opera, and it seemed more focused on libretto, staging, opera houses, etc. Hard to tell if there might be more guidance in the other units. The "Viewing Guide" questions don't seem to focus much on actual music, either. Related to this, I'd like to have some listening quizzes, and I'm not sure that this program offers those. 5) I'm not a huge fan of video lectures. I'm also guessing that the video lecture format mainly uses excerpts, which I dislike (to me, listening to one movement of a symphony is like just reading chapter three in novel) I think that some of the units look promising, though, and it might be useful for someone with little or no background in music. In my case, I feel like I have better recordings of the pieces included in the CD set, and I'd prefer more guided listening. And I guess for $139, I'd want a more comprehensive music history, not just 300 years. Lastly, one nitpicky thing: the book individually lists a Naxos link for every composer in the unit under "Websites", which seems like a useless space-filler to me. Seems simple enough just to tell the student to refer to the Naxos page for each composer ...

Yes, I'm thinking of doing something along the lines of a simplified Grout. We have a big CD and score collection, and we play a lot of music just for fun, but I'd also like to do a more systematic study. I don't necessarily need a curriculum that tells me exactly what to say, but I'm not sure that I could do a good job on the fly, either. I might try to make a list of essential concepts/pieces/terms/etc. and see where that leads me (I think that paring down to a do-able amount of music will be the hard part for me). I have the some of the Celenza books, and I especially like the one about the Goldberg variations. I also like Lemony Snicket's The Composer is Dead, which I think does a great job illustrating the essence of each instrument's role in the orchestra. But I haven't had much luck finding children's books about medieval or Renaissance music--the only one I have right now is a book about Guido of Arezzo and his music notation.

I'm wondering if there is a good music history curriculum that doesn't just involve composer studies. DH and I have graduate degrees in music (concentrating in music theory and music history, respectively), and it is the one area of WTM that we're not thrilled about. I feel that some of the composers listed in WTM are "popular" but not necessarily important from a scholarly perspective. Conversely, WTM's lists don't include a number of composers that I would consider significant, especially pre-Bach. I'm also not sold on mainly using biographies to learn about classical music. Basically, I'd like something that is structured more like a college music history sequence, starting from chant, going on to medieval, Renaissance before hitting Bach & Vivaldi (which seems to be where most "children's" music histories start). While I think that it would be nice to do music history along with SOTW, I'm not sure it's realistic. There isn't much music for the ancient year (and neither DH or I want to do much world music), and in the later years, it might be too tightly packed (and I don't think that it would always dovetail nicely with the history lessons). I also don't really like using excerpts unless it's for something like the Ring Cycle, so I don't think that the singalong classical CDs are my thing, either. So my question is: does anything like this exist? Or am I just going to have to write my own curriculum? DS is still very young, so I'd have some time to work on it, if necessary.

I guess I'm in the minority because I prefer MDs because I feel that their training is more rigorous. Plus, some (and I'm not saying all) DOs go the DO route because they couldn't get into medical school. My small-town hospital/clinic has a mix of MDs and DOs, and DH and I have been very happy with the MDs we've seen in pediatrics, family practice, OB/GYN, etc. DS's pediatrician doesn't push medication for every little thing, and I like that.

If I don't have too many, I line them up on the window sill in front of the kitchen sink--but I tend to go through them pretty quickly. I find refrigerated tomatoes completely tasteless, so I never, ever refrigerate them.

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I really liked Note by Note: the Making of Steinway L1037. It follows the making of a Steinway concert grand, and you get to see what a painstaking process it is.

Country. I love that I don't see any other houses from my own, and it is so nice and quiet. At night, there are no streetlights and very few houses, so it's dark enough to see a lot of stuff in the sky. DH and I grew up in suburbs, so we still lock our doors at night out of habit, but our nearest neighbors (10 minute walk away) told us right when we moved in that they never locked their doors. I never, ever want to leave this place.

There are some Amish where I live in Wisconsin, and they seem pretty traditional with the buggies, clothing, draft horses, etc. However, I have seen some women using the laundromat in town (I guess they are still technically living without electricity since they're using the laundromat's electricity), and I saw a few recently at the Lands' End summer warehouse sale. The discounts there are pretty steep, so I'm sure it's much cheaper than sewing your own clothes. I tend to avoid Amish produce because I've heard that some use a lot of pesticides. An Amish man who did some house repairs for my neighbor told him that he uses a pesticide that isn't even recommended for grass on his strawberries (my neighbor was kind of appalled).

What about skorts as a compromise? Lands End has some that seem both pretty and comfortable (I'm sure that other places sell them, too, but LE is the first to come to mind). Personally, I don't much care for shorts on anyone in church, though I think that women and girls can look nice in dressier pants (i.e. not jeans).