Mr. Toy's Mental Notes

Puzzle #1 Who in heck is behind Prop 29? The same measure was on the California ballot the last two elections. Both times it went down in flames and it is expected to fail again. But that's not the weird part. The weird part is that while the NO campaign has been reasonably convincing, there has been no visible campaign supporting it. Not this time nor the first two times. You'd think that after thrice going through the time, effort, and expense of gathering signatures to qualify for the ballot that they'd want to give people a reason to vote yes, but they haven't. So what's the point? Prop 29 is a phantom measure with no visible means of support. Puzzle #2 I can't help but wonder if the abrupt conversion of KGO radio from a news talk station to a sports talk station with an emphasis on betting has some connection to Propositions 26 & 27 which are all about sports gambling. An attempt to drum up interest in sports betting before the election, perhaps? The bi...

Why doesn’t KDFC play organ music? This question has been bugging me for a few years now. KDFC is a listener-funded classical music radio station based in San Francisco. With multiple transmitters scattered around Northern California, its signal reaches from the Monterey Peninsula up to Santa Rosa and beyond. Here on the Monterey Peninsula it can be heard loud and clear at 103.9 on the FM band. KDFC began broadcasting locally almost six years ago. After a couple of years I began to realize that I had never heard any organ music on the station. Oh, now and then they play music that has an organ mixed in with other instruments, most notably Saint-Saens famous “Organ Symphony,” but never any pure organ music. What tipped me off was Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which is arguably the most famous organ piece ever written. I noticed that KDFC always played the 20th Century orchestral arrangement that Leopold Stokowski put together for the Disney movie Fantasia. Bach’s original orga...

The Monterey Peninsula lost three of our resident celebrities in the past month, Michael Nesmith, John Madden, and Betty White. I have no stories to tell about the first two, but I do have a very brief one involving Betty White. A few decades ago my mother and sister Liz were visiting from Oregon. We were having lunch at The Thunderbird, a bookstore/restaurant just outside Carmel. Quite suddenly Betty White came around the corner and started browsing the bookshelves next to our table. Liz's jaw dropped. My mother had a puzzled look on her face. Once Betty White had moved out of earshot I asked my mom if she knew who that was. She said "No." When I told her it was Betty White she said "Oh, I thought she looked familiar. But I thought she was someone I knew when we lived here and I wondered if I should say something to her." That wasn't too far fetched because she would occasionally run into old friends on her frequent visits. Even though Betty White was a ...