reviews and events

I've been so immersed in other projects that switching mental gears to write a blog post has felt more difficult than worthy of accomplishment.

One thing that got done was some concert reviews last weekend. I converted my last post on the media event at Frost Amphitheater into an article for SFCV, largely by converting it from focusing on a backstage orientation to an audience orientation. Frankly, I've never been enthused by outdoor venues (my reaction to a concert at the famous and venerable Hollywood Bowl was "Now I don't ever have to go here again"), but we'll see if I get asked to cover the SFS here. It could be interesting: the day after I submitted the article, MTT announced he's cancelling all his summer events for health reasons, including the concert he was scheduled to lead at Frost, so the guest who's conducting the other program is taking over that one as well. My newshound colleague Janos, who wrote that last article, added an update in the comment section to mine as well.

Meanwhile, as I was about to leave for the SFS on Thursday, I get a call from the editor asking me to cover that program. So I did that too. What I didn't tell my editor was that this was an extra concert for me (I really like the Shostakovich Eighth), and I'd gotten a ticket for the terrace behind the orchestra, where I usually grab a seat right behind the spot between the trumpets and trombones, for that glorious brass sound in works that feature it. Listening to a violin concerto, the other work on the program, from behind can be a curious experience, but I think I handled that. The main thing I learned from watching this guest conductor from the front is that he conducts with his mouth open.

A third review, for the Daily Journal, hasn't come out yet. In the meantime I'm trying to finish up the actual writeup of my paper for the conference I attended in early March, I've been invited to speak on Tolkien to a local lecture series and have thrown a bunch of specific topics at them, and B. and I have plunged into the maelstrom of figuring out the logistics of her impending retirement. More on that later, but what I find really remarkable is that, even though we want to stay on Kaiser's health plan, there are three different ways of dealing with this before Medicare kicks in, and there is not a single person at Kaiser who knows anything about more than one of these four things, to help us make any kind of comparison or judgment as to which pathway to take. The thought that every single person in our position has to blaze the same trail through uncharted virgin jungle amazes me. We have hired a CFP (Certified Financial Planner) who specializes in retirement, whom I found by looking for retirement specialists on an official CFP website, who's been of help regarding the big picture. His explanation of how Medicare works was a tremendous help when I went to Kaiser's introductory session, because otherwise I would have been completely baffled by everything it said.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump has gone off to the UK, where even before landing he set out to win hearts and minds by tweeting that the Mayor of London was a "stone cold loser." Whenever someone succeeds at getting under his skin, the best response he can come up with is this pathetically juvenile insult, "loser." It's particularly feeble when applied to a man who won the runoff election for his current job with a vote of 56.8%, which is a lot more than a certain president managed.