On a non-Tweed-related note, my grandmother, Alphild Glatzert, turns 100 this week. Longevity runs in her family — her older sister Gertrude lived to be 98. Kristin, Sophie, and I will be joining the rest of our family in Pennsylvania this for the celebration.

In 1904:

• There were 45 states in the Union
• Theodore Roosevelt was elected to his first term as president
• The New York subway opened
• Ground was broken in construction of the Panama Canal
• A newspaper cost one cent

Some famous people born in 1904:

• Cary Grant
• Dr. Seuss
• Sally Rand (of ‘fan dance’ fame)
• Joan Crawford
• Jimmy Dorsey
• Glenn Miller
• Joseph Campbell
• B.F. Skinner
• Robert Oppenheimer
• Salvador Dali
• Fats Waller
• Pablo Neruda
• Deng Xiaoping
• Count Basie

My grandmother has outlasted them all.

We’re getting closer to our November 12th recording date, and we’re busy getting ready.

We’re recording on the second floor of Scott’s two flat. It’s a nice, bright, open space with high ceilings. It’s also a surprisingly live room acoustically, so we’re going to have to spend some time deadening it. We’re bringing in carpets, blankets, drapes, anything to help deaden the space. We’ll probably end up using the couch as a bass trap in one corner, and a mattress in another corner for a similar purpose.

We’re also trying to pick the tunes that we’re going to tape. Although we’re busily writing new material (we just knocked off another song in rehearsal this week), we’re probably going to spend the bulk of our time recording the more traditional tunes that make up our repertoire. Given the nature of this recording experiment (live to two-track), it makes sense to concentrate on the material we’re most comfortable with.

If you have any suggestions for tunes that we should record, drop us a line. Likewise with record titles.