Monday, October 31, 2005

Standard time

This "Resource of the Week" on ResourceShelf discusses so-called daylight saving time. I rise early in order to locate my commutes at times of low traffic. Most of the year my morning ride takes place in the dark. Without DST, I'd have many more weeks of morning light. Since I prefer light to dark, I'm not a fan of this time shift and am not at all pleased that it is to start earlier and end later beginning in 2006.

During my couple years in London there was concern about the dangers faced by school children going to school in the dark. I wonder why that's not an issue here.

Here's the piece on DST:
Resource of the Week
By Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor

It's getting to be that time of the year again here in most of the U.S. We'll be turning our clocks back one hour, on the last Sunday in October, which marks the end of Daylight Saving Time...until April 2, 2006, the first Sunday in April, when we set our clocks ahead one hour for another DST go-around. What the heck is this all about, anyhow? How did it start? Is it done in other countries? Check out this week's resource and become a fountain of information about Daylight Saving Time.

Dayline Saving Time (DST)
Source: Web Exhibits (Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement)
Daylight Saving Time
"The main purpose of Daylight Saving Time (called 'Summer Time' many places in the world) is to make better use of daylight. We change our clocks during the summer months to move an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening. Countries have different change dates." You probably already knew this, but maybe you didn't know...
+ This past August 5, President G.W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (PDF; 2.6 MB) which -- among its many other provisions -- moves up the start of DST to the second Sunday of March, and pushes the ending back the first Sunday of November. The Secretary of Energy will report to Congress regarding the impact of this on energy savings, and Congress reserves the right to revert back to the previous schedule.
+ "In the European Union, Summer Time begins and ends at 1 am Universal Time (Greenwich Mean Time). It starts the last Sunday in March, and ends the last Sunday in October." Unlike in the United States, where each time zone switches over at the same time, all the EU time zones change simultaneously. Some counties -- mostly equatorial and tropical -- do not observe DST because the daylight hours are pretty much the same year round in the lower latitudes. But most other countries do, to one extent or another.
+ Benjamin Franklin is generally credited with the idea of DST in "a discourse on the thrift of natural versus artificial lighting," published as a letter to the authors of the Journal of Paris in 1784.
+ "Daylight Saving Time has been used in the United States and in many European countries since World War I." The Uniform Time Act of 1966 (15 U.S. Code Section 260a), signed into law by President L.B. Johnson, set the beginning of DST on the last Sunday of April and the end on the last Sunday of October.

Find out here who does and does not like DST and why, and read about its checked history, including a collection of interesting anecdotes contributed by Dr. David Prerau, author of Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time and our leading national expert on DST.

"The Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement (IDEA) is committed to enriching and informing lives through public service projects and the subsequent application of innovative, learning-based technologies." The WebExhibits site features an eclectic mix of science-oriented online exhibits such as Calendars Through the Ages, Causes of Colors, and Butter (which explores "the history and making of butter)." One presentation takes a look at Scientific Integrity in Policymaking; another examines Bogus Science, and presents you with seven warning signs.

For more information about Daylight Saving Time, see:
+ Saving Time, Saving Energy: Daylight Saving Time, Its History, and Why We Use It (California Energy Commission)
+ When Does Daylight Time Begin and End? (U.S. Naval Observatory)
+ Directive 2000/84/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 January 2001 on summer-time arrangements (EUR-Lex)

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Car trouble and a true friend

Interesting day yesterday. Late morning started off on some errands: fuel for Spit, a stop at the puplic library, a lengthy visit to a warehouse sale of old books and LPs, a drop-in at a bike shop which didn't have what I wanted, and a short expedition to a nearby Whole Foods supermarket. Only the warehouse absorbed much time, hours as it turned out. I was looking for LPs and, in absence of any order whatever, found myself looking through dozens of record-filled liquor boxes to find the 10 or so ones I wanted (at $1 each). Also spent time looking for a few books.

Meanwhile B, visiting friends in the Brookland part of DC (near Catholic U.), is calling the home phone to say it's Richard's birthday and we're invited for dinner. I finally return home, take the messages (all 4), call back, collect antipasto makings she requests, and set off.

Maybe three-quarters of the way there I hear a clunk as I go over a little pothole (very little). There then is an alarming scraping noise from the area where the front right suspension is located. I manage to get off the road into a parking lot. I guy walking by lets me know what's wrong: part of the suspension has broken. The front right wheel is no longer full attached to the frame.

The good news: A couple walking by are able to direct me to a public phone close by. I'm able to call Richard's house. He drives over and we use his cell phone to call a towing outfit.

The tow truck turns out to be the kind that winches the car onto its deck rather than lifting the front and dragging pulling the car which then rolls on its back wheels. Three of us spend more than an hour trying to get the front wheel sufficiently usable so that the car can be dragged up the deck of the truck. A good part of this time we used the Spit's jack and a piece of 4x4 lumber in a most precarious and in retrospect pretty scary way. Finally I sit in the car and the tow guy (Teddy) winches ever so slowly with the wheel cooperating just enough for the manoeuver to work.

We take it to Tony Lee's and drop it near the front gate. By the time we get to R's house for the birthday dinner more than 2.5 hours have gone by.

Richard seems to me the personification of friend in need: spending cold, tense, dark hours on a project that often looks like it won't ever succeed and staying cheerful and encouraging the while.

Here's what broke.

The upper ball joint is at the end of a wishbone brace. The wishbone is hinged so it can swing up and down. The ball joint permits the wheel to be turned. It's attached to the front wheel by post and nut. The wishbone is number 14 in the diagram. The ball joint and post are number 2. The part of the wheel to which they attach is 18. The nut and lock washer are behind the part number ed 18.

What seems to have happened is that the large nut that holds the ball joint post to the wheel bracked got loose and finally dropped off. Perhaps the last mechanic to work on it forgot the lock washer or just failed to tighten it enough. Once the nut was gone, the ball joint and wishbone then pulled out of the wheel bracket and the wheel was being held only the other (lower) wishbone and its ball joint, post, and attached bracket.

The ball joint is pictured in the second image below. The last one shows both wishbones, ball joints, and attached wheel on an actual Spitfire.








By the way, have you ever wondered why it's "antipasto" and not "antepasto" or "antepasta"? I'm sure it matters little. Etymology from one source: Italian : anti-, before (from Latin ante-; see ante- ) + pasto, food (from Latin pstus, past participle of pscere, to feed; see p- in Indo-European roots)

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Another Mircea

* Eurozine is a good source on European culture. A current issue has a feature on a Romanian photographer, Mircea Stanescu. Here's a link to the page and a few photos.

The feature:
Hans Rainer Sepp
In the heart of Romania

Mircea Stanescu's photo series "Airbag"

The photographs of Mircea Stanescu featured in the Eurozine gallery were taken in the artist's hometown of Sibiu, Romania. In an accompanying essay, phenomenologist Hans Rainer Sepp describes how the images occlude and allude in equal measure: the signs, symbols, and graffiti speak volumes about this society, but are ultimately unintelligible.
Here's a link to the photo gallery page

Some thumbnail photos (you have to go to the gallery to see larger versions):

Thursday, October 27, 2005

courage to make a martyr

Pip Wilson has this quote in his Book of Days. I can't find independent confirmation of it, so maybe it's apocryphal. It's nonetheless something that Erasmus might well have said. See the Wikipedia paragraph about him, Erasmus, and Luther below. I'm blogging the quote now because it resonates with the poem of Yevgeny Yevtushenko in a post of mine earlier this week. The quote:
Even if Luther had spoken everything in the most unobjectionable manner, I had no inclination to die for the sake of truth. Every man has not the courage to make a martyr; and I am afraid, if I were put to the trial, I should imitate St Peter.
Erasmus of Rotterdam, born on October 27, 1466 (?)


About Erasmus and Luther, Wikipedia says:
Martin Luther's movement began in the year following the publication of [his new Latin translation of] the New Testament, and tested Erasmus's character. The issue between European society and the Roman Church had become so clear that few could escape the summons to join the debate. Erasmus, at the height of his literary fame, was inevitably called upon to take sides, but partisanship was foreign to his nature and his habits. In all his criticism of clerical follies and abuses he had always protested that he was not attacking church institutions themselves and had no enmity toward churchmen. The world had laughed at his satire, but few had interfered with his activities. He believed that his work so far had commended itself to the best minds and also to the dominant powers in the religious world.

Wilson's entry for today (Oct 27) also has this nice map showing the voyages of Captain Cook, who was born on this day. It was John Montagu,Fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792) who sponsored Cook. I've written about him before; most interesting gent. Cook named the islands we now call Hawaii after him (maybe I should say 'named' since most would say they weren't his to name).

s'i'odo il vero

Go to Nick's blog, GobberGo, and read his post, Prufrock Line. You'll be glad you did.

For the insatiably curious (birthday calculator)

Put a birth date into birthday calculator and you'll find out a whole bunch of things about that day, including:
  • what day of week that was
  • your astrological sign
  • The golden number for year of birth
  • Your age in years, months, weeks, day, hours.... ( and dog years )
  • The number of days til next birthday
It also gives your birthdate according to the old Julian calendar and an epact number (the difference between the Gregorian calendar -- the one we now use -- and the lunar calendar). [See bottom of this post for an aside on adoption of the Gregorian calendar.]

And of course your birth stone and birth tree (birth tree?)

I'd never heard of birth tree. According to the Gardening Eden site, those of us born between April 11 and 20 are assigned to the maple tree. It says I have independence of mind and am no ordinary person, full of imagination and originality, shy and reserved, ambitious, proud, self-confident, hunger for new experiences, sometimes nervous, have many complexities, good memory, learn easily, complicated love life, want to impress. This site also lists birthday trees, with same text.


=================

The Wikipedia article on the Gregorian calendar gives the history of its adoption around the world. Although the old Julian calendar put the commencement of the seasons off by 10 days (and, more crucially, put Easter at the wrong time as well), many countries would not implement the new calendar because it was promulgated by (and named after) the Pope. Take, for example, England. As the Wikipedia article explains:
Very few countries implemented the new calendar on [the official start date of] 15 October 1582 — only Italy, Poland, Spain and Portugal. Non-Catholic countries objected to adopting a Catholic invention. England, Scotland and thereby the rest of the British Empire (including part of what is now the United States) did not adopt it until 1752, by which time it was necessary to correct by eleven days (2 September 1752 being followed by 14 September 1752) to account for 29 February 1700 (Julian). Britain legislated special provisions to make sure that monthly or yearly payments would not become due until the dates that they originally would have in the Julian calendar, and to this day the tax year in the United Kingdom start on April 6 which is the "old style" new year of 25 March. "Old Style" (OS) and "New Style" (NS) are sometimes added to dates to identify which system is used in the British Empire and other countries that did not immediately change.
You can imagine the difficulties. Puts the refusal of the U.S. to adopt the Metric System in perspective, I think.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

For Allen - Canada Rocks

Nice web page from Canada's national library about geology and geologists.
Life of a Rock Star
In 1841 the Province of Canada (what is now Ontario and Quebec) decided to create its first "rock band."

The next year, in 1842, it recruited its first and most famous "rock star," William E. Logan. His most important job was to search for coal. As Canada expanded to include new lands, the band he led, known as the Geological Survey of Canada (the GSC for short), also grew.

The GSC band members were not musicians, but geologists who were fascinated with the rocks that make up Canada. The instruments they carried did not play music; they measured distance and direction. These men were sent out to explore Canada's wilderness so that they could find and record the riches that the land had to offer. Was there coal, gold and oil? Could their findings make Canada rich?

Their stories are fascinating; some are amusing and many just plain odd. Read on to find out more.



Members of the Geological Survey at Sudbury, Ontario



Surveying using a disk pole,Lake Mistassini, Quebec, 1884

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

On speaking out

This showed up in a contribution to a library tech discussion list: Web4Lib. Why? Don't know. Worth passing along? I think so.
"Talk"

You're a brave man they tell me.
          I'm not.
Courage has never been my quality.
Only I thought it disproportionate
so to degrade myself as others did.
No foundations trembled. My voice
no more than laughed at pompous falsity;
I did no more than write, never denounced,
I left out nothing I had thought about,
defended who deserved it, put a brand
on the untalented, the ersatz writers
(doing what anyhow had to be done).
And now they press to tell me that I'm brave.
How sharply our children will be ashamed
taking at last their vengeance for these horrors
remembering how in so strange a time
common integrity could look like courage.

      -- Yevgeny Yevtushenko
      Translated by Robin Milner-Galland and Peter Levi.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Some women

Julia is doing very well in her first women's studies class. I thought of this fact on seeing a link to the review in Mother Jones noted below. The review highlights the lives of the revolutionary Americans who fought for elementary constitutional rights throughout the 19th century. They were most various and distinctly individual, disciplined in their commitment but not conformist.

The book's author, Jean Baker, got her undergraduate degree at Goucher and now has an endowed chair in its history department. She's also author of Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography and The Stevensons of Illinois: A Biography of an American Family.

I found the two images I reproduce below on the LC web site. Both from 1919, the first is a piece of anti-suffrage propaganda: sheet music for a song connecting patriotism with the traditional homemaking role of wives. I wonder whether the Bagaduce music library, where Ernie volunteers, has this item.

The second image, another kind of propaganda, shows Alice Paul marking progress in passage of the right-to-vote amendment. I like the informality of this photo and the way it captures the individuality of the women pictured. I've quoted some information about Alice Paul from the Mother Jones review, below.


"Wifey is a Real Suffragette", Chicago: Delmar Music Company, 1919




National Woman's Party activists watch Alice Paul sew a star onto the NWP Ratification Flag, representing another state's ratification of the 19th Amendment - also 1919


Here is a link to the Mother Jones review and some extracts:

When Sisterhood Was Powerful, a review of
Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists By Jean H. Baker. Hill and Wang. $25
Diane E. Dees
October 12 , 2005

extracts:

Reading Jean H. Baker's Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists, makes the reader wonder how any of the five profiled women, working independently and together from the mid-1840s to 1920, managed to go on from year to year.

Baker successfully weaves the suffragists' colorful personal lives with their often harrowing political experiences.

Alice Paul of New Jersey, author of the Equal Rights Amendment and founder of the National Woman's Party, who—born in 1885—emerged as a leader after the other four had died. Baker's task of revealing the suffragists' personal lives becomes somewhat difficult in this case, for Paul apparently had no personal relationships of any kind, but was totally dedicated to scholarship and feminism. Inspired by the Pankhursts in England, Paul was thrown repeatedly into a fetid prison and brutally force-fed because she publicly defied President Woodrow Wilson's refusal to support suffrage. To make matters worse, she also actively exposed Wilson's hypocrisy: He told the nation that he worked for a "new organization of society," yet he turned his back on the suffrage movement. He told the suffragists that he had to follow the Democratic Party platform, yet he repeatedly reversed it when he wanted to. Paul and her followers stood outside the White House on several occasions and heckled the president, whom Paul nicknamed "Kaiser Wilson." Paul was shunned by the NAWSA because of her public feud with Wilson, yet there is no doubt that, without her continuous protests, the Nineteenth Amendment would not have been ratified in 1920.

Lucy Stone, in her typically frank manner, said: "I care less and less which triumphs—freedom or slavery. In either case all the women of the land are yet subjects ruled over by the white male population."

[It was] Lucy Stone, who, at the age of sixty-two, having fought for the right to vote in local elections, gave up that right in an election in Massachusetts because the commissioners illegally insisted she use the name of her husband.

Frances Willard, who as the head of Evanston Ladies College of Northwestern, was America's first female college president, became famous as the president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1873 and still in existence. Willard was also a feminist, and campaigned for suffrage because of women's lack of "home protection" from abusive men. Though her narrow concerns did not appeal to more radical feminists like Cady Stanton, she was nevertheless able to recruit three hundred thousand women to her cause, and her labor drew the admiration of Susan B. Anthony.

Willard's personal life was especially interesting. She had the heartbreaking experience of falling love with a woman who instead chose to marry Willard's brother. Willard later became deeply involved with another woman, and later, another, and spent the rest of her life living with both of them, making even this seemingly more conventional feminist a sexual iconoclast.

Anthony, for her part, never married, and held her marrying sisters in disdain, not only because caring for a husband and children took away time and energy she thought should be devoted to the suffrage movement, but because, according to the law, wives were quite explicitly the property of their husbands.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

chef costumière et chef habilleuse

Julia was costume and wardrobe mistress for a play we attended this weekend.

The play was Salmon Pursuits, an original play, written and directed by a fellow student Adam Nicolai. He was very pleased with her work. And much of it there was.

There were close to a hundred items on the costume list for 18 characters. The play is fast-paced, a long one-act with a dozen or more short scenes and near instant transitions.

The theatre was an outdoor pavilion. Backstage was the back of the audience space. Not easy for the costume designer to accommodate.

B. helped. Trips to second-hand stores and a costume rental place. Lots of decisions.

Julia's boyfriend, Ben, did the sets and they too were excellent, particularly an elevator which reversed into the front door of a house. Set design was difficult. Everything had to be broken down and removed after each rehearsal.

The play is marvelous. So fully developed and with such dramatic impact that, not knowing it for a fact, one wouldn't dream believe Adam to be an undergraduate still learning the ropes.

The production was a benefit for the YMCA where it was performed. The cast and production crew were a mix of Goucher students and members of the local community.

A Goucher press release gives more information about the production, but does not indicate the play's interesting nuances -- particularly its ambivalent approach to the dominant theme of realizing one's true nature and refusing to make compromises in order to just get along. The two main characters who each possess this romantic ideal do not conform to the usual dramatic clichés -- particularly in that their dreams are ludicrously impractical.

I almost forgot. Friday's performance was an amazing feat. The weather was pretty foul: 50 degrees with light rain and a little north breeze. The pavilion is a large space, open on all four sides. It had tarps hung only at the "stage" end. The audience and actors (who were also production crew) were sorely challenged by the cold and the wet, but they had other challenges as well mostly having to do with performing off-campus in a non-theatrical environment. Adam is quoted on this in the Goucher press release: “Originally, I wanted to put the show up at Goucher, but that wasn’t possible. My dad told me that he has a special place in his heart for traveling players, and that he could die happy if I and a group of my own could carry on the tradition and put on a production that captured that spirit. He went on and on about Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland—that whole ‘let’s-put-on-a-show,’ ‘pull-yourself-up- by-your-own-bootstraps’ mentality. And that just really hit home.”

It all came off very well despite the difficulties the company faced and discomforts we all endured opening night.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

cool illusion

It's not for lack of material that I've not posted for the past few days, but lack of time. B and I spent the past couple of evenings working to get online air travel services to yield up flight information so we can get Nick home for the family reunion, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. With info from Nick on dates & times, and on airport shuttle [corrected from "shutter", thanks Nick] service between Ft. Collins and DEN airport, we finally got it all together and now have reserved and paid for all the flights. We were amazed and somewhat unsettled to find that in the few days over which we did the research, the holiday flight situation didn't get less favorable, but in one case anyway, more favorable (the Thanksgiving flights were better/cheaper last night than the previous one). We used Mobissimo and Kayak for scheduling and price availability and contacted airlines directly (or in one case a packager -- onetrave).

So, no [formerly "not" thanks again] recent posts here. Still, as you know, I check blogdex, trendalicious, and oishi each morning to see what people are buzzing about. Today Oishi showed a very interesting optical illusion that I'd like to pass along. I recommend to take a few moments to check this out; it's neat. It's just a single illusion, but one of the best I've seen. Click on the link below to view it. I give the text that accompanies the illusion to give you an idea what's happening.

cool illusion

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink. If you stare at the black + in the center, the moving dot turns to green. Now, concentrate on the black + in the center of the picture. After a short period of time, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating if you're lucky! It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear. This should be proof enough, we don't always see what we think we see.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Nobel for Pinter


Lots of praise for Pinter's Nobel. But John Simons trashes the man and his work:

Ignoble Nobel: Let Us Pause

Nobel winner Harold Pinter has been hailed as Britain’s Beckett. But not by his old antagonist John Simon.

by John Simon

Harold Pinter has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature? I would have gladly accorded him the Nobel for Arrogance, the Nobel for Self-promotion, or the Nobel for Hypocrisy—spewing venom at the United States while basking in our dollars—if such Nobels existed. But the Nobel for Literature? I think not.

Pinter’s plays—the best known being Betrayal, The Homecoming, and The Caretaker—are labyrinths without issues, leading from the tediously strained to the preposterous. What accounts for this triumph of sham? The reasons are many, but two are obvious. One is poor education, which begets a public of dupes and charlatans; another, general loss of self-confidence, despite Hans Christian Andersen’s cautionary tale about the dubious fashion statement of a certain emperor. Instead of having the guts to say there is nothing to this “drama,” some try to score points by discovering virtues where none exist, or dumbly believe what the other dupes—sorry, Crrrritics!, as Beckett might have said—have trumpeted at him. ....


Some blog coverage:

The essence of Pinter’s drama is adolescent Samuel Beckett - it’s warmed-over and second-hand. ... Moonbat Central - http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress

Harold Pinter's work brings disturbing insight into human behaviour in the political environment. ... The Skies are Weeping - http://weepingskies.blogspot.com

German newspapers react (not very well) to Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize for Literature: ... Why not Harold Pinter?' even if he is no longer in vogue as a playwright ... For all their mysteriousness, Harold Pinter's early plays have the ... To the point - http://thekupfers.typepad.com/tothepoint/

Now Pinter's vilification of his own prime minister and the US president is broadly mainstream newspaper opinion, with only the Times consistently dissenting ... Liberal England - http://liberalengland.blogspot.com

Some of the coverage

Says Arts & Letters Daily:Harold Pinter, whose plays force “entry into oppression’s closed rooms,” has won the Nobel Prize for Literature... Nobel ...
AP ...
Chronicle of Higher Ed ...
Guardian ...
London Times ...
NY Times ...
Telegraph
Weekly Standard ...
London Times ...
Telegraph ...
Washington Post ...
LA Times ...
Boston Globe ...
Guardian ...
in his own words


checheeleea

Today's Guardian has an interview with Cecilia Bartoli to plug her new album. The author makes a point about her fondness for 18th century composers and tries to get her to acknowledge she's afraid of the 19th-century opera repertoire and to answer critics who say she'll never be a true diva until she goes mainstream. She'll have none of it. She loves the baroque and observes that her audiences come to her, and bountifully so, to hear what she wants them to appreciate and learn to love. The article is The last diva by Stephen Moss. The lead in reads: "Cecilia Bartoli is feted as operatic royalty. But why does she insist on such an obscure repertoire?" The new CD is Opera Proibita (Forbidden Opera), a collection of arias by Handel, Alessandro Scarlatti and Antonio Caldara from the first decade of the 18th century, "when," as Moss says, "the Catholic church in Rome clamped down on opera and composers cleverly circumvented the restrictions by stretching the boundaries of oratorio instead."

more extracts from the article:
"I love the baroque period," she says. "It's not just the music; I like baroque painting, baroque architecture. I like the structure of baroque music - it gives you a lot of freedom of interpretation. It's very rhythmic and you have this contrast between rhythm and simple melodies. Two years ago, I did [Handel's] Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno with Marc Minkowski in Zurich, and I was fascinated and overwhelmed by its beauty." Working with her pet musicologist (and former boyfriend) Claudio Osele, she found out more about the period in which the oratorio was written and the tensions of early 18th-century Rome. Forbidden Opera is the result of their labours.

Bartoli likes to initiate her own projects, but how do Decca feel about her more unusual choices? "When I suggested a Vivaldi disc [in the late 90s], it was difficult to convince them to do it. But it was enormously successful and I proved that there was an audience ready to discover it. I like to present a project which has both a commercial and a cultural element. I try to combine them.... I have to bring people to this baroque project. This is the goal. "




I listen to quite a bit of 18th century music. Among vocalists, I like the countertenors, David Daniels, Andreas Scholl, and Paul Esswood. I lose track of the sopranos & mezzos. I think my favorites are Bartoli, Elly Ameling, and Edith Baker. I've lately discovered the alto/contralto Sara Mingardo:

Arias, madrigals, & cantatas by Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Handel, Carissimi, Cavalli, Legrenzi, Merula, & Salvatore; Sara Mingardo (alto); Monica Bacelli (mezzo-soprano, in "Vorrei baciarti"); Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini; Naïve- OP 30395(CD) reviewed here.