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The first and only time composer Richard Wagner saw his opera Das Liebesverbot performed, things did not go well. The orchestra stumbled. The singers ad-libbed. The leading tenor sparked an affair with the leading lady, whose husband eventually stepped in with a left hook. Bloodshed ensued. When it was all over the composer complained in an 1836 letter, “They are all shit-heads [Scheisskerle] here!”

Like many people, I have been enjoying the Olympic Games. Although there are some sports that I find more interesting than others, I tune in for almost any competition or match-up.

With so much media attention on the medal winners and record setters, it is easy to overlook the other competitors who have each had their own long road to the Olympic Games.

A few weeks ago, vandals struck the side of the old Lipton soup factory in Albion, New York, proving Robert Frost right.

"Poetry is what gets lost in translation."

“That’s where it’s at,” Etta James once sang in a tune extolling the virtues of taking the party downstairs. There’s no cover, no one checks your ID and you can dance however you want since there’s “no one under you.”

At WXXI, the “it” factor is different than what Etta had in mind. The basement here is full of metal shelves and dusty cardboard boxes of audio tape. There are rows and rows of reel-to-reels: a whole section of City Sounds, another for old RPO broadcasts, dozens of Fascinatin’ Rhythm programs and who knows what else.

Off to Glimmerglass to see Wagner's Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love)

"You have this very close relationship with this thing that you’re bringing to musical life. It’s just between you and the notes and the musical ideas and a kind of imaginary (in some cases) ensemble of musicians that are making the music. And it’s a world I love to be in, and you need time for that. You need quiet space for that. You need to be kind of in the zone for that, and it’s very difficult to do that when you all lead busy lives." - American composer Joseph Schwantner

Finally, my garden is settling down, but now I'm facing an abundance of a different sort.

When I got started in this business, about two decades ago, July and August were "slow" months in the newsroom. It was hard to get any officials on the phone, election campaigns were still in startup mode, and people were thinking more about vacation than important issues of the day.

Reporters typically welcomed these two months. It gave us a chance to pursue some stories we had on the back burner - stories that took investigation, or lots of sound or video, or a little bit of travel to find just the right person to interview. It was a time to think about the big picture, and the best ways to bring it home to our audience. It was a much needed change in pace from breaking news and pressing deadlines.

But yesterday, we found ourselves in full court press.

The other day, a friend warned me to avoid the new Facebook game, Scramble. Too addictive, he said. If you use the online social networking site Facebook, you know it contains many such delightful ways to avoid work.

But it’s useful, too.

I went to the High Falls Brewery show yesterday. G. Love & Special Sauce headlined. Their PR - “tasty, post-hip-hop, Beatles-influenced blues-rock; spicy tropical island rhythms; well-seasoned Chambers Brothers-style funk-rock; sweet, blue-eyed Philly soul” - sounds better on paper. The band was pretty loose, at least for the first half-dozen tunes I heard. The highlight of the evening came earlier.

10 Questions for Lang Lang