When a political party is in deep trouble in the popularity stakes as an election looms, switching their leader to a new and shiny model rarely works. If you look at the list of Canadian prime ministers, you'll see a couple from the 1980s and 90s who served derisorily short terms. That was the reason.
It worked this time, though. And, weirdly, the person responsible for that was Donald Trump. Old PM Justin Trudeau from the Liberal Party had already announced his impending retirement when DT pulled his "be a bully to Canada" routine, and it got everybody's back up. You'd think a guy who wrote The Art of the Deal would know better than to antagonize people he's negotiating with, but then Trump didn't really write his own book, did he? Anyway, Trudeau denounced all of this in his quiet Canadian way; his successor Mark Carney denounced it even further in his even quieter Canadian way, and just about everybody in the country agreed with them. (As do I, though I'm not Canadian.)
Even Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the opposition, chimed in, rather awkwardly both because "me too" isn't a fervent campaigning posture and because Poilievre's personal style is rather Trumpian. He's also even more alarmingly right-wing than Stephen Harper, the noxious previous Conservative PM. Canada dodged a bullet by not electing him. Voters decided that Carney, a sober banker who's led major financial institutions out of crises before, was a better bet to stand up to Trump.
But this didn't mostly happen because of Conservatives changing their minds. It seems to have been mostly supporters of the third major party, the New Democrats - a social democratic group rather similar to what Bernie Sanders and AOC want to lead here in the States - who decided they couldn't risk letting Poilievre into office and turned over en masse to the Liberals. They weren't willing to do this before, but they were with Trudeau out and Trump looming. As a result, the NDP - which 14 years ago actually outpolled the Liberals at their pre-Trudeau nadir - won the fewest seats ever in its history. But that's what happens to third parties in a first-past-the-post system.
Kalimac's corner: a journal by DB
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
concert review: Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra
I was less than excited to be sent to review a concert with Schoenberg and Mahler in it. But the Schoenberg was Verklärte Nacht which is tonal and was not played too goopily; and the Mahler was a brief cycle of very early songs, and hence as unobjectionable as Mahler can get. And to go with this, Beethoven's Seventh, an old favorite played with the tires squealing as it rocketed down the street.
This was not just the concert. The performers were here for a week to work with students, so I enriched my experience by going to the public events on Wednesday. This included a long concert of mostly very dull music by Mahler and the Second Viennese School; a talk with Verbier Festival administrators, who explained how and why the festival works and what this touring orchestra has to do with it; and, in the morning, a master class with the orchestra's conductor and some of the groups that would play that evening.
The conductor's accent was almost impenetrable (yes, this was the same guy who read the Verklärte Nacht poem aloud before the performance, with results as you might expect), but I tried my best to follow him. When the high school string quartet played the Webern Bagatelles, he told them they were very good (which they certainly were) but that they were too intellectual; their performance needed more emotion. He said that composers encode the emotions they want to express in the score, and that performers need to bring those out and convey them to the audience - gesturing to those of us gathered to listen to the session. He took the leader's violin and showed what he meant. Essentially it amounted to adding more variation in dynamics and tone color to the playing.
And I thought: what good is it to 'add emotion' to music when there's no emotion to be had? This is Webern! The driest, most dessicated and cryptic composer in the western repertoire. Maybe a few connoisseurs will appreciate it, but there is no emotion in Webern that can be conveyed to a general classical audience. No matter what you do, it doesn't come across as emotion. It's eloquence in an alien language. Try this on something that actually has some emotional content.
Anyway, I didn't hear any effective difference in the performance afterwards, although I hear master classes entirely reworking students' playing styles all the time.
This was not just the concert. The performers were here for a week to work with students, so I enriched my experience by going to the public events on Wednesday. This included a long concert of mostly very dull music by Mahler and the Second Viennese School; a talk with Verbier Festival administrators, who explained how and why the festival works and what this touring orchestra has to do with it; and, in the morning, a master class with the orchestra's conductor and some of the groups that would play that evening.
The conductor's accent was almost impenetrable (yes, this was the same guy who read the Verklärte Nacht poem aloud before the performance, with results as you might expect), but I tried my best to follow him. When the high school string quartet played the Webern Bagatelles, he told them they were very good (which they certainly were) but that they were too intellectual; their performance needed more emotion. He said that composers encode the emotions they want to express in the score, and that performers need to bring those out and convey them to the audience - gesturing to those of us gathered to listen to the session. He took the leader's violin and showed what he meant. Essentially it amounted to adding more variation in dynamics and tone color to the playing.
And I thought: what good is it to 'add emotion' to music when there's no emotion to be had? This is Webern! The driest, most dessicated and cryptic composer in the western repertoire. Maybe a few connoisseurs will appreciate it, but there is no emotion in Webern that can be conveyed to a general classical audience. No matter what you do, it doesn't come across as emotion. It's eloquence in an alien language. Try this on something that actually has some emotional content.
Anyway, I didn't hear any effective difference in the performance afterwards, although I hear master classes entirely reworking students' playing styles all the time.
Monday, April 28, 2025
dramatic review
Here There Are Blueberries, conceived, directed, and co-written by Moises Kaufman (Berkeley Rep)
This is a documentary play. By which I mean it records historical events in plausibly accurate language, with genuine historical material inserted. Here that material is projections of photographs.
The play is mostly set in the US Holocaust Museum. They've recently acquired a donation, a photo album that a US intelligence officer found in a ruined house in Germany just after the war and has kept ever since. There's no name, but some of the captions say they were taken at Auschwitz.
They're not of prisoners. They're of SS officers and clerical staff, enjoying themselves at after-work parties and such. Oh, look, there's Dr Mengele, laughing it up among his comrades. One set of photos shows the SS officer who's clearly the man who compiled the album - later identified by the museum staff as the adjutant to Auschwitz's commander - serving food to the young women of the office staff. "Here there are blueberries," says the caption in German.
The Holocaust Museum staff ask, do we want this album? Our focus is on the victims, it shouldn't be on the perpetrators. But they decide there's value in knowing more about how the Holocaust happened, and emphasizing that it was people who did this, not alien monsters.
The innocent-looking young women on the staff, for instance. What did they do? They ran the message office. What messages did it send? The museum tracked down an interview of one of them, after the war.
Witness: Every time a train came in, we'd send a message off to Berlin. So many men to work camp, so many women to work camp, so many men S.B., so many women S.B., so many children S.B.
Query: What did S.B. mean?
Witness: Sonderbehandlung. Special treatment.
Query: What did 'special treatment' mean?
Witness: Gassing.
They knew.
So did the officers, including the one whose album it had been (nothing is said of how he lost it), who claimed they knew nothing, nothing of what was really going on there. But the photos show them touring the extermination centers.
And then, at the end of the play, after we're assured that we have almost no photos of the prisoners, some do show up. It's another album, photos taken the day the train arrived that held the very prisoner who found the album in an abandoned SS barracks after the camp was liberated. She sees herself in the photos. She sees her family, the ones she never met again after she was sent to work camp and they were all marked for S.B.
I was not just stunned, I was thrown for a loop. Why does this only show up now? The whole play should have been about this album, instead.
This was powerfully done - the small cast played varied parts. The creators are the same people behind The Laramie Project. But the switch at the end ... I dunno why they presented it this way.
This is a documentary play. By which I mean it records historical events in plausibly accurate language, with genuine historical material inserted. Here that material is projections of photographs.
The play is mostly set in the US Holocaust Museum. They've recently acquired a donation, a photo album that a US intelligence officer found in a ruined house in Germany just after the war and has kept ever since. There's no name, but some of the captions say they were taken at Auschwitz.
They're not of prisoners. They're of SS officers and clerical staff, enjoying themselves at after-work parties and such. Oh, look, there's Dr Mengele, laughing it up among his comrades. One set of photos shows the SS officer who's clearly the man who compiled the album - later identified by the museum staff as the adjutant to Auschwitz's commander - serving food to the young women of the office staff. "Here there are blueberries," says the caption in German.
The Holocaust Museum staff ask, do we want this album? Our focus is on the victims, it shouldn't be on the perpetrators. But they decide there's value in knowing more about how the Holocaust happened, and emphasizing that it was people who did this, not alien monsters.
The innocent-looking young women on the staff, for instance. What did they do? They ran the message office. What messages did it send? The museum tracked down an interview of one of them, after the war.
Witness: Every time a train came in, we'd send a message off to Berlin. So many men to work camp, so many women to work camp, so many men S.B., so many women S.B., so many children S.B.
Query: What did S.B. mean?
Witness: Sonderbehandlung. Special treatment.
Query: What did 'special treatment' mean?
Witness: Gassing.
They knew.
So did the officers, including the one whose album it had been (nothing is said of how he lost it), who claimed they knew nothing, nothing of what was really going on there. But the photos show them touring the extermination centers.
And then, at the end of the play, after we're assured that we have almost no photos of the prisoners, some do show up. It's another album, photos taken the day the train arrived that held the very prisoner who found the album in an abandoned SS barracks after the camp was liberated. She sees herself in the photos. She sees her family, the ones she never met again after she was sent to work camp and they were all marked for S.B.
I was not just stunned, I was thrown for a loop. Why does this only show up now? The whole play should have been about this album, instead.
This was powerfully done - the small cast played varied parts. The creators are the same people behind The Laramie Project. But the switch at the end ... I dunno why they presented it this way.
Sunday, April 27, 2025
concert review: Chamber Musicians of the San Francisco Symphony
The particular reason I like chamber music concerts sponsored by symphony orchestras is the opportunity it allows for performing works for unusual combos. Where, for instance, but at a symphony orchestra would you be likely to be able to assemble a nonet (one each of all the standard string and wind instruments)? Or - this was really stunning - four men* on bass? (If you thought three was the maximum, that's baseball.)
The Nonet was by Bohuslav Martinů, and was a substantial piece in his lively, angular post-neoclassical style. Lots of group exchanges back and forth between the strings and the winds.
The piece for four basses was by 19C Italian bassist Giovanni Bottesini. Melodic in a bel canto style, it was so high-pitched (a preference of Bottesini's) that it sounded more like cellos under some weird straining stress than it did anything distinctively bassish. At least it was consistently in tune, which I don't expect to hear in exposed bass music by players from anywhere less distinguished than SFS.
The concert also had two more conventionally instrumented works.
Café Music by Paul Schoenfield, which is a piano trio disguised as a romp through early 20C popular music, was played with what I'd expect of orchestral musicians tackling it: well up to the technical demands but lacking that last deposit of wild abandon needed to make this piece really go. The elegant ballad in the slow movement came out well, though.
Shostakovich's Third String Quartet - one of his most often played, and one of his best - started as a cool and objective reading, but gradually the emotion that Shostakovich keeps locked up came out, especially in the desolate finale.
All around, a really interesting afternoon out.
*and they were men
The Nonet was by Bohuslav Martinů, and was a substantial piece in his lively, angular post-neoclassical style. Lots of group exchanges back and forth between the strings and the winds.
The piece for four basses was by 19C Italian bassist Giovanni Bottesini. Melodic in a bel canto style, it was so high-pitched (a preference of Bottesini's) that it sounded more like cellos under some weird straining stress than it did anything distinctively bassish. At least it was consistently in tune, which I don't expect to hear in exposed bass music by players from anywhere less distinguished than SFS.
The concert also had two more conventionally instrumented works.
Café Music by Paul Schoenfield, which is a piano trio disguised as a romp through early 20C popular music, was played with what I'd expect of orchestral musicians tackling it: well up to the technical demands but lacking that last deposit of wild abandon needed to make this piece really go. The elegant ballad in the slow movement came out well, though.
Shostakovich's Third String Quartet - one of his most often played, and one of his best - started as a cool and objective reading, but gradually the emotion that Shostakovich keeps locked up came out, especially in the desolate finale.
All around, a really interesting afternoon out.
*and they were men
Saturday, April 26, 2025
folk music between covers
An Evolving Tradition: The Child Ballads in Modern Folk and Rock Music, by Dave Thompson (Backbeat Books, 2023)
This is some 500 pages absolutely packed with information. Its topic is the performing and recording history of the Child Ballads (click on the link if you don't know what that means: there's always someone), so mostly British, American, Canadian. And other British folk songs get a mention here and there.
And it's thorough, thorough. Occasionally it's a little difficult to follow what Thompson is saying, but mostly the info is densely packed and, as far as I can tell, pretty reliable. Near the beginning are accounts of composers who wrote accompaniments to the tunes (Haydn and Beethoven: yes they did), lots about folk song collectors in the field from Cecil Sharp on down, eventually getting to early recordings ("Phil Tanner, the first folk-singing superstar"), more composers (Benj. Britten, Ruth Crawford), gradually into folk singers you've heard of (Jean Ritchie, Judy Collins), a chapter on folk songs that influenced Angela Carter, then through Dylan and Baez to the folkies I listened to in my youth, going through Martin Carthy, the Incredible String Band (yes, they did Child ballads), Pentangle, etc., and finally arriving at Fairport Convention in chapter 37. Steeleye Span gets two chapters, chapter 40 which has a brief overview of their early work, and chapter 41, a fuller discussion of their Golden Age. Thompson says that Steeleye's real innovation was the almost brutally heavy rock arrangements on the likes of "King Henry" and "Alison Gross", at last giving these songs music that was as menacing and vicious as the lyrics. The "haunted and eerie" arrangement of "Long Lankin" also falls in that category. There are a few more references to Steeleye later on, suggesting that "The Prickly Bush" and "Lord Randall" are their two best later songs, ignoring their amazing "Tam Lin".
As the later chapters (there's 48) drift off into newer performers I don't know but who sound tempting from Thompson's descriptions, I looked some of them up but none wound up appealing to me at all. I'm a child of my time, I guess. But I enjoyed reading about the performers I knew and the earlier ones I didn't.
However, the best thing, the very best thing, in this book is the dedication, which reads like this:
This is some 500 pages absolutely packed with information. Its topic is the performing and recording history of the Child Ballads (click on the link if you don't know what that means: there's always someone), so mostly British, American, Canadian. And other British folk songs get a mention here and there.
And it's thorough, thorough. Occasionally it's a little difficult to follow what Thompson is saying, but mostly the info is densely packed and, as far as I can tell, pretty reliable. Near the beginning are accounts of composers who wrote accompaniments to the tunes (Haydn and Beethoven: yes they did), lots about folk song collectors in the field from Cecil Sharp on down, eventually getting to early recordings ("Phil Tanner, the first folk-singing superstar"), more composers (Benj. Britten, Ruth Crawford), gradually into folk singers you've heard of (Jean Ritchie, Judy Collins), a chapter on folk songs that influenced Angela Carter, then through Dylan and Baez to the folkies I listened to in my youth, going through Martin Carthy, the Incredible String Band (yes, they did Child ballads), Pentangle, etc., and finally arriving at Fairport Convention in chapter 37. Steeleye Span gets two chapters, chapter 40 which has a brief overview of their early work, and chapter 41, a fuller discussion of their Golden Age. Thompson says that Steeleye's real innovation was the almost brutally heavy rock arrangements on the likes of "King Henry" and "Alison Gross", at last giving these songs music that was as menacing and vicious as the lyrics. The "haunted and eerie" arrangement of "Long Lankin" also falls in that category. There are a few more references to Steeleye later on, suggesting that "The Prickly Bush" and "Lord Randall" are their two best later songs, ignoring their amazing "Tam Lin".
As the later chapters (there's 48) drift off into newer performers I don't know but who sound tempting from Thompson's descriptions, I looked some of them up but none wound up appealing to me at all. I'm a child of my time, I guess. But I enjoyed reading about the performers I knew and the earlier ones I didn't.
However, the best thing, the very best thing, in this book is the dedication, which reads like this:
To my beloved cousin Jane Thompson Dua, 1971-2022. As a child, she heard me playing "The Wee Wee Man" (Child 38) one day, and completely misunderstood what the song was about. Her interpretation still comes to mind when I hear that ballad.
Thursday, April 24, 2025
civics education
A few days ago, one whom I read was asking for childhood experiences in being educated in US civics. Generating a response caused memory to bring up some things I had half-forgotten:
I was educated in California, but that was all more than 50 years ago. I do not remember what kind of civics education we got in elementary school, but I do remember the lineup of specific classes after that. We had a dedicated civics class in 8th grade, I was taught it by one of the school's best teachers, and it went into a lot of detail, with a lot of informal argument on civics principles led by the teacher. One specific nugget I remember from this class was students doing a table reading of a skit from the textbook depicting Gen. Scott offering Col. Lee command of the Union Army. So this got into some pretty esoteric historical detail. I also remember a polemic in the textbook describing a pure libertarian government and asking, is this really want you'd want? (And this was a decade before the heyday of the Libertarian Party.)
Which in turn reminds me that, the same year in English class, we read the play Inherit the Wind. Again a full table reading, with the entire class participating, and also much discussion of the content.
So we were well drilled in civics before high school. In high school itself, graduation requirements included 1) a full-year course in US history; 2) a half-year course in US civics. No specific grade level attached, though I think most took these in their last two years, if only because they were more mature and better able to handle them. (This was one of the few, if not the only, state graduation requirements. Most of my attention in this matter was focused on meeting requirements for eligibility for admission to the University of California, which were stricter.)
I did not take these classes; I took the 2-year AP US history course, which was deemed to cover both topics. This was 11th-12th grade. We had an excellent teacher, one of the two best I ever had, who rambled his way from the War of Independence down to about the Truman administration before we ran out of time (and remember this was during the Nixon administration). It covered all sorts of topics in political-economic history (rather less on social history). Highlights included an unrehearsed classroom debate between the teacher and the school principal over the merits of the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian principles of government, and a whole unit on immigration settlement of the Northern Plains.
There was no textbook; our reading was individually directed by the teacher. Most of mine went to the two major research papers I wrote in this class. These were college-level papers, and this is where I learned how to write one. We chose our own topics in consultation with the teacher, and one of mine was on a historical civics topic: the writing of California's first state constitution. I did most of the research for that one in the Stanford University library, which I had access to as family of an adjunct professor.
At the end of our second year, the teacher selected three of his best students and entered us in the AP US History exam. We all got 5, the best grade.
I felt really well equipped by high school to handle the work of reading history at a major university, UC Berkeley. Rather to my surprise, because I'd been warned repeatedly how tough college would be, especially at that level, I found my courses fun and rather easy.
I was educated in California, but that was all more than 50 years ago. I do not remember what kind of civics education we got in elementary school, but I do remember the lineup of specific classes after that. We had a dedicated civics class in 8th grade, I was taught it by one of the school's best teachers, and it went into a lot of detail, with a lot of informal argument on civics principles led by the teacher. One specific nugget I remember from this class was students doing a table reading of a skit from the textbook depicting Gen. Scott offering Col. Lee command of the Union Army. So this got into some pretty esoteric historical detail. I also remember a polemic in the textbook describing a pure libertarian government and asking, is this really want you'd want? (And this was a decade before the heyday of the Libertarian Party.)
Which in turn reminds me that, the same year in English class, we read the play Inherit the Wind. Again a full table reading, with the entire class participating, and also much discussion of the content.
So we were well drilled in civics before high school. In high school itself, graduation requirements included 1) a full-year course in US history; 2) a half-year course in US civics. No specific grade level attached, though I think most took these in their last two years, if only because they were more mature and better able to handle them. (This was one of the few, if not the only, state graduation requirements. Most of my attention in this matter was focused on meeting requirements for eligibility for admission to the University of California, which were stricter.)
I did not take these classes; I took the 2-year AP US history course, which was deemed to cover both topics. This was 11th-12th grade. We had an excellent teacher, one of the two best I ever had, who rambled his way from the War of Independence down to about the Truman administration before we ran out of time (and remember this was during the Nixon administration). It covered all sorts of topics in political-economic history (rather less on social history). Highlights included an unrehearsed classroom debate between the teacher and the school principal over the merits of the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian principles of government, and a whole unit on immigration settlement of the Northern Plains.
There was no textbook; our reading was individually directed by the teacher. Most of mine went to the two major research papers I wrote in this class. These were college-level papers, and this is where I learned how to write one. We chose our own topics in consultation with the teacher, and one of mine was on a historical civics topic: the writing of California's first state constitution. I did most of the research for that one in the Stanford University library, which I had access to as family of an adjunct professor.
At the end of our second year, the teacher selected three of his best students and entered us in the AP US History exam. We all got 5, the best grade.
I felt really well equipped by high school to handle the work of reading history at a major university, UC Berkeley. Rather to my surprise, because I'd been warned repeatedly how tough college would be, especially at that level, I found my courses fun and rather easy.
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
concert review: Geneva Lewis, violin
Violin and piano recital at Herbst.
Geneva Lewis has a violin tone that's light and soft, but with a strong bite to it. It gives the effect of a small bird chirping, if the bird could chirp classical music. The sound was highly appropriate for the delicate, fragmentary Post Scriptum Sonata by Valentin Silvestrov, and impressively effective in the Romances by both Robert and Clara Schumann, and Mozart's K. 301 sonata.
Evren Ozel on piano matched her with lightness of touch. He has the softest and most pillowy of rolled chords.
You wouldn't think that the Franck Sonata would work well with this approach, but listen again: most of the first and third movements, and even part of the fourth, work well as light, delicate, and quiet. But both Lewis and Ozel could ramp up to strong and loud dynamics, just not exaggeratedly so, when Franck calls for it.
While I'm on music, a note on the recent death of Joel Krosnick, long-time cellist of the Julliard Quartet. They were among the groups whose records first taught me the string quartet repertoire. Already retired from there, he was at the Banff String Quartet Competition to teach student masterclasses in 2016, the first time I attended. I met him when he sat next to me for one of the competition concerts.
Geneva Lewis has a violin tone that's light and soft, but with a strong bite to it. It gives the effect of a small bird chirping, if the bird could chirp classical music. The sound was highly appropriate for the delicate, fragmentary Post Scriptum Sonata by Valentin Silvestrov, and impressively effective in the Romances by both Robert and Clara Schumann, and Mozart's K. 301 sonata.
Evren Ozel on piano matched her with lightness of touch. He has the softest and most pillowy of rolled chords.
You wouldn't think that the Franck Sonata would work well with this approach, but listen again: most of the first and third movements, and even part of the fourth, work well as light, delicate, and quiet. But both Lewis and Ozel could ramp up to strong and loud dynamics, just not exaggeratedly so, when Franck calls for it.
While I'm on music, a note on the recent death of Joel Krosnick, long-time cellist of the Julliard Quartet. They were among the groups whose records first taught me the string quartet repertoire. Already retired from there, he was at the Banff String Quartet Competition to teach student masterclasses in 2016, the first time I attended. I met him when he sat next to me for one of the competition concerts.
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
I won the lottery
Oh, relax, it was only $50; but nothing like this has ever happened to me before, and I've never seen a description of what actually happens when you do, so I'm writing about it here.
At Easter, our niece passed out scratch-off lottery cards as a kind of party favor. I got two of them. One of them I couldn't figure out the instructions for, so after scratching off most of its surface in a futile attempt to understand it, I threw it out. The other made sense, though. It had two 4x4 squares showing various occultish tokens - The Rooster, The Mermaid, The Hand, The Cello, etc - and another section which you'd scratch off to reveal a list of 14 more tokens. Match those up with the ones in the squares, which you could scratch off to keep track, and if you got four in a row on a square you win the amount printed at the end of the row.
According to the lottery's website, 1 in 44 tickets in this game win $50, so it isn't that rare. The instructions say take a small-win ticket to any lottery agent to redeem. So Monday morning I went to a local 7-11 that sells lottery tickets.
What would they do? Would they painstakingly verify that the tokens I'd scratched off on the square matched the ones in the list? Would they demand to know where I'd bought the ticket? (I don't know where she bought them.) Would they make me fill out the name/address/phone/email form on the back of the card?
No, none of those. The guy scratched off an unmarked section of the card, which I guess confirmed it was a winner, and also revealed a barcode which he scanned, probably to let the state know he was on the hook for the money, and then he handed me $50 in cash from the register. That's it. No ceremony, no Bob Barker or anything like that. I gave some of my largess to the homeless guy on the stoop outside.
I've never bought a lottery ticket, but I'm willing to try one if it's given me. This is about the fourth time that's ever happened, and the first one that's come up a winner however petty. These tickets cost $10 each, and I'm sure our niece spent a lot more than $50 to acquire her stash. So that explains where all that lottery money comes from, and that's why I'm not buying any tickets.
At Easter, our niece passed out scratch-off lottery cards as a kind of party favor. I got two of them. One of them I couldn't figure out the instructions for, so after scratching off most of its surface in a futile attempt to understand it, I threw it out. The other made sense, though. It had two 4x4 squares showing various occultish tokens - The Rooster, The Mermaid, The Hand, The Cello, etc - and another section which you'd scratch off to reveal a list of 14 more tokens. Match those up with the ones in the squares, which you could scratch off to keep track, and if you got four in a row on a square you win the amount printed at the end of the row.
According to the lottery's website, 1 in 44 tickets in this game win $50, so it isn't that rare. The instructions say take a small-win ticket to any lottery agent to redeem. So Monday morning I went to a local 7-11 that sells lottery tickets.
What would they do? Would they painstakingly verify that the tokens I'd scratched off on the square matched the ones in the list? Would they demand to know where I'd bought the ticket? (I don't know where she bought them.) Would they make me fill out the name/address/phone/email form on the back of the card?
No, none of those. The guy scratched off an unmarked section of the card, which I guess confirmed it was a winner, and also revealed a barcode which he scanned, probably to let the state know he was on the hook for the money, and then he handed me $50 in cash from the register. That's it. No ceremony, no Bob Barker or anything like that. I gave some of my largess to the homeless guy on the stoop outside.
I've never bought a lottery ticket, but I'm willing to try one if it's given me. This is about the fourth time that's ever happened, and the first one that's come up a winner however petty. These tickets cost $10 each, and I'm sure our niece spent a lot more than $50 to acquire her stash. So that explains where all that lottery money comes from, and that's why I'm not buying any tickets.
Monday, April 21, 2025
traveling broccoli chef
Most weekends that my days are both busy are because of concerts. Not this last weekend. No concerts. But Saturday was the last night of Pesach, and my friends who invite a bunch of their friends to their family Seder did that on this date this year. Sunday was Easter, and B. and I always spend that with her family. So I get two holidays for the price of one.
Pesach and a family Easter are both food-oriented celebrations, and my contribution to both is usually to bring along my trademark and favorite veggie, broccoli. The question is how to cook it. At home for a dinner side dish I usually just steam it, and I've done that for holidays. But usually I look for something fancier. Most of my specialty broccoli dishes are roasted, and have rather complicated recipes. So when I do those I usually make them in advance and bring them along to be heated by microwave just before serving. The problem is that reheated roasted broccoli is a rather sad thing compared to the fresh stuff.
This year, however, browsing through my recipe collection I found one which uses steamed broccoli and also cashews, which both B. and I like a lot. And the recipe was not complicated to prepare. So I made it twice, putting all the sauce ingredients together at home and packing everything up, altering the procedure for circumstances.
At the Seder, the hosting couple split duties this way: the wife organizes the invites and the table seating, while the husband and one of the sons do all the cooking. They're really well organized and prepare lots of dishes, so (with prearrangement) I figured they could add this in. When I arrived, I gave them the instructions:
This is a four-step recipe.
One, steam the broccoli. [Holds up large storage bag full of cut-up broccoli pieces.]
Two, melt 1/3 cup of margarine or butter or whatever you have in a small saucepan.
Three, stir this in - it's mostly soy sauce and garlic - and bring the mixture to a boil. [Holds up small sealed container of the sauce ingredients I'd mixed at home.]
Four, remove from the heat, stir in the cashews, and pour it over the broccoli. [Holds up small bag of cashew pieces.]
And I left them to it. They did a splendid job, and the dish got raves around the table despite being served following three other excellent veggie dishes that others had brought.
For Easter, where prep is more relaxed and there's much more room in the kitchen, it seemed best to steam the broccoli beforehand and bring it in a serving dish - steamed broccoli reheats in a microwave better than roasted broccoli does - and asked our niece who hosts for a small saucepan, cooking spoon, a free burner on the range, and the butter, and did the cooking myself. Also a successful dish.
Plans to repeat this next year are definitely on.
Pesach and a family Easter are both food-oriented celebrations, and my contribution to both is usually to bring along my trademark and favorite veggie, broccoli. The question is how to cook it. At home for a dinner side dish I usually just steam it, and I've done that for holidays. But usually I look for something fancier. Most of my specialty broccoli dishes are roasted, and have rather complicated recipes. So when I do those I usually make them in advance and bring them along to be heated by microwave just before serving. The problem is that reheated roasted broccoli is a rather sad thing compared to the fresh stuff.
This year, however, browsing through my recipe collection I found one which uses steamed broccoli and also cashews, which both B. and I like a lot. And the recipe was not complicated to prepare. So I made it twice, putting all the sauce ingredients together at home and packing everything up, altering the procedure for circumstances.
At the Seder, the hosting couple split duties this way: the wife organizes the invites and the table seating, while the husband and one of the sons do all the cooking. They're really well organized and prepare lots of dishes, so (with prearrangement) I figured they could add this in. When I arrived, I gave them the instructions:
This is a four-step recipe.
One, steam the broccoli. [Holds up large storage bag full of cut-up broccoli pieces.]
Two, melt 1/3 cup of margarine or butter or whatever you have in a small saucepan.
Three, stir this in - it's mostly soy sauce and garlic - and bring the mixture to a boil. [Holds up small sealed container of the sauce ingredients I'd mixed at home.]
Four, remove from the heat, stir in the cashews, and pour it over the broccoli. [Holds up small bag of cashew pieces.]
And I left them to it. They did a splendid job, and the dish got raves around the table despite being served following three other excellent veggie dishes that others had brought.
For Easter, where prep is more relaxed and there's much more room in the kitchen, it seemed best to steam the broccoli beforehand and bring it in a serving dish - steamed broccoli reheats in a microwave better than roasted broccoli does - and asked our niece who hosts for a small saucepan, cooking spoon, a free burner on the range, and the butter, and did the cooking myself. Also a successful dish.
Plans to repeat this next year are definitely on.
Sunday, April 20, 2025
concert review: Ariel Quartet
I crammed a lot of detail into my review of this concert, enough to make me feel disappointed in the roughness and lack of sophistication in the writing. For me, the hardest part of concert reviewing can be finding the right words to describe the strong experience of reacting to the specific performers' styles and abilities.
I wasn't sure if my editors would let pass my rather cheeky comparison of this concert's repertoire with that of the previous Ariel concert I reviewed, but it got through. However, though I provided one, the published article has no link to that earlier review.
The big difference between those two concerts was something off-topic enough for this one that I didn't mention it this time. The previous concert had been held to show off the Violins of Hope, instruments rescued and restored from the Nazi Holocaust. As I mentioned in that review, being played by such excellent performers pushed against the limitations of the Violins of Hope's limited qualities as musical instruments.
After this week's concert, I got a chance to talk about this a little with the group's cellist. She said it was so much easier to play this time on their own instruments, whose natures and capacities they know well. And the extreme aptitude of the performance confirmed that.
Another thing there was no room to mention was the pre-concert masterclass, something I don't always have time to attend. At Kohl, the guest artists usually hold a masterclass with local high-school students. This time the ensemble was a string quintet rather than quartet, playing the scherzo from Schubert's work for that ensemble. The most interesting part of the teaching was the request that the students sing passages from the music, to help them appreciate matters of balance and flow.
I wasn't sure if my editors would let pass my rather cheeky comparison of this concert's repertoire with that of the previous Ariel concert I reviewed, but it got through. However, though I provided one, the published article has no link to that earlier review.
The big difference between those two concerts was something off-topic enough for this one that I didn't mention it this time. The previous concert had been held to show off the Violins of Hope, instruments rescued and restored from the Nazi Holocaust. As I mentioned in that review, being played by such excellent performers pushed against the limitations of the Violins of Hope's limited qualities as musical instruments.
After this week's concert, I got a chance to talk about this a little with the group's cellist. She said it was so much easier to play this time on their own instruments, whose natures and capacities they know well. And the extreme aptitude of the performance confirmed that.
Another thing there was no room to mention was the pre-concert masterclass, something I don't always have time to attend. At Kohl, the guest artists usually hold a masterclass with local high-school students. This time the ensemble was a string quintet rather than quartet, playing the scherzo from Schubert's work for that ensemble. The most interesting part of the teaching was the request that the students sing passages from the music, to help them appreciate matters of balance and flow.
Saturday, April 19, 2025
to see the giant woman
As long as I was going in to the City for the Isidore String Quartet concert on Wednesday, I decided to add a little extra time so that I could see the piece of public art that's currently roiling the place in controversy, "R-Evolution" by Marco Cochrane, a 45-foot-tall statue of a giant (did I say that?) naked woman planted in the plaza in front of the Ferry Building. Photos I've seen of it there don't seem to capture it very well, but it looks sort of like this:
Apparently it's supposed to "transcend outdated perceptions of the female body and celebrate it as a symbol of strength, beauty and empowerment" or something like that, but perhaps it could convey that message a bit more clearly if it had a few appropriate clothes on. And was not quite so gigantic.
This is not (fortunately) a permanent thing. It's going to be there for six months. Apparently it's been going around on a world tour for about ten years now. Here's a bunch more photos in various locales.
The giant naked woman is made of a steel inner structure with a wire mesh framing to give her a female shape. That makes her fairly translucent. She has short hair. She has very long fingers. She has toenails, which I mention because you can get close enough to see that. She has no sign of any genitals whatever, which is relieving but a little dishonest.
There are a number of rude comments online - "dumb" "disgusting" "inappropriate" etc - but she's there and I didn't regret the little extra time it took to see her.
Apparently it's supposed to "transcend outdated perceptions of the female body and celebrate it as a symbol of strength, beauty and empowerment" or something like that, but perhaps it could convey that message a bit more clearly if it had a few appropriate clothes on. And was not quite so gigantic.
This is not (fortunately) a permanent thing. It's going to be there for six months. Apparently it's been going around on a world tour for about ten years now. Here's a bunch more photos in various locales.
The giant naked woman is made of a steel inner structure with a wire mesh framing to give her a female shape. That makes her fairly translucent. She has short hair. She has very long fingers. She has toenails, which I mention because you can get close enough to see that. She has no sign of any genitals whatever, which is relieving but a little dishonest.
There are a number of rude comments online - "dumb" "disgusting" "inappropriate" etc - but she's there and I didn't regret the little extra time it took to see her.
Friday, April 18, 2025
concert review: Isidore String Quartet
This is the group that won the latest Banff String Quartet Competition, three years ago. I only saw videos of that, which is not at all like being there in person, so I was eager to hear this group live and up close.
A very light, bright, and chipper sound, I thought. Normally we think of Beethoven as the big brusque composer while Mozart is smooth and graceful. This was almost the other way around. Beethoven's Op. 127 was delicate, even hesitant at times, while Mozart's K. 465 was more robust - if only by contrast, for it was certainly also graceful, and there was no attempt to make anything horribly modernist out of the work's infamous 'dissonant' introduction - which is unlike anything else in the piece.
There was one small bit outside of the classics, a brief recent quartet by Billy Childs, one of a contingent of jazz players who also dabble in classical. Nothing jazz-like about this piece which was largely of the 'four voices wandering around' school of composition. Isidore played a different quartet by this composer at Banff and I didn't find it very interesting either.
A very light, bright, and chipper sound, I thought. Normally we think of Beethoven as the big brusque composer while Mozart is smooth and graceful. This was almost the other way around. Beethoven's Op. 127 was delicate, even hesitant at times, while Mozart's K. 465 was more robust - if only by contrast, for it was certainly also graceful, and there was no attempt to make anything horribly modernist out of the work's infamous 'dissonant' introduction - which is unlike anything else in the piece.
There was one small bit outside of the classics, a brief recent quartet by Billy Childs, one of a contingent of jazz players who also dabble in classical. Nothing jazz-like about this piece which was largely of the 'four voices wandering around' school of composition. Isidore played a different quartet by this composer at Banff and I didn't find it very interesting either.
Tolkien Society awards
The Tolkien Society (the UK-based fan organization of which I've been a member for many years) has announced the final ballots for its annual awards. Any member of the Society is eligible to vote; the deadline is April 25.
This year the Society has introduced a new method of picking the finalists out of the long list of initial nominees: panels of 5-6 expert jurors, one for each award. And I, perforce, was on the panel for Best Book, the books being full-length scholarly monographs or collections of articles.
The eligibility winnowing process (a complex matter in itself) had left ten candidates to be considered. The 5 of us on this panel were sent links to PDF copies of all the nominees (arrangements having been made for this with the publishers), and to a Google Docs spreadsheet to cast our votes on. We were given about a month to read them all and make our choices, by putting checkmarks in cells under our names on the spreadsheet.
I'd already seriously browsed through 3 of the 10 books in hard copy, but I had a lot of reading ahead of me. I loaded the files onto both my desktop computer and my tablet, and did a lot of the reading on the tablet while taking transit to and from concerts. Still, I pushed the deadline pretty close, but at least I had strong clear reactions, positive or otherwise, to all the nominees.
The panelists were asked to cast between 3 and 5 votes for the worthiest books. In the end, all of us picked 4. Our choices were not all identical, but there was a general consensus. There were 6 books which received 2 or more votes, and those became the finalists. I'm pretty pleased with the list: everything I picked is on it, and even the ones I didn't pick I thought were decent and worthwhile books.
And that's what we're presenting for the members to vote on.
This year the Society has introduced a new method of picking the finalists out of the long list of initial nominees: panels of 5-6 expert jurors, one for each award. And I, perforce, was on the panel for Best Book, the books being full-length scholarly monographs or collections of articles.
The eligibility winnowing process (a complex matter in itself) had left ten candidates to be considered. The 5 of us on this panel were sent links to PDF copies of all the nominees (arrangements having been made for this with the publishers), and to a Google Docs spreadsheet to cast our votes on. We were given about a month to read them all and make our choices, by putting checkmarks in cells under our names on the spreadsheet.
I'd already seriously browsed through 3 of the 10 books in hard copy, but I had a lot of reading ahead of me. I loaded the files onto both my desktop computer and my tablet, and did a lot of the reading on the tablet while taking transit to and from concerts. Still, I pushed the deadline pretty close, but at least I had strong clear reactions, positive or otherwise, to all the nominees.
The panelists were asked to cast between 3 and 5 votes for the worthiest books. In the end, all of us picked 4. Our choices were not all identical, but there was a general consensus. There were 6 books which received 2 or more votes, and those became the finalists. I'm pretty pleased with the list: everything I picked is on it, and even the ones I didn't pick I thought were decent and worthwhile books.
And that's what we're presenting for the members to vote on.
Thursday, April 17, 2025
crisis averted
We signed our tax forms - prepared by our accountant - electronically on Monday. There was a notation that the money we owed the IRS would be withdrawn by it on Tuesday from B's checking account - which we've used for that purpose and for refunds for many years.
But it wasn't withdrawn on Tuesday.
At this point I got slightly worried. Maybe the IRS was just running slow, but also: B's bank had been eaten by another bank (a common thing with banks) and the routing number was changed. They'd told her that the old number would still be valid, but what if something had gone wrong?
I tried contacting the accountant on Wednesday, without success - maybe he was still recuperating from tax season - and was going to do so again Thursday morning, when B. checked again and the withdrawal had been made. It was just the IRS being slow.
At any rate I've put a note in the folder where I'm keeping documents going into next year's taxes, to inform the accountant of the routing number and have him change his records.
But it wasn't withdrawn on Tuesday.
At this point I got slightly worried. Maybe the IRS was just running slow, but also: B's bank had been eaten by another bank (a common thing with banks) and the routing number was changed. They'd told her that the old number would still be valid, but what if something had gone wrong?
I tried contacting the accountant on Wednesday, without success - maybe he was still recuperating from tax season - and was going to do so again Thursday morning, when B. checked again and the withdrawal had been made. It was just the IRS being slow.
At any rate I've put a note in the folder where I'm keeping documents going into next year's taxes, to inform the accountant of the routing number and have him change his records.
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
on a rover
Our play-reading group having made its way through most of the Shakespeare we wanted to do, and a number of 18C plays both English and French (the latter in translation), I suggested we venture into Restoration comedy, English plays from when the theaters reopened after 1660. I don't know anything about Restoration comedies - they're not much done today, and I've never seen one - but I found a list of major works, noted that the principal female author was Aphra Behn, and that her most prominent play seemed to be The Rover, so I suggested we try that.
We've just finished it, and my word. It's my understanding that Behn did not create the plot for this one, but merely entirely rewrote (and the writing is very good) an older play. I would hope that's true. It features exiled English cavaliers during the Commonwealth, cavorting in Naples. I thought Shakespeare was full of bawdy, but this handily outdoes it. It gets worse. I found myself in one scene reading a character who spends the entire scene as a drunken rapist. I had to ask for a break after that. Later on, there's an attempted gang-bang. Apparently, the urgent question in these cases is whether the victim is a "woman of quality" or not. (The female characters spend a lot of time in disguise, so it can be hard to tell from their dress.) If she is a "woman of quality," it's not OK to rape her. If she isn't, it apparently is.
There is no way this play could be staged today. You couldn't even cut it: there would be nothing left.
We've just finished it, and my word. It's my understanding that Behn did not create the plot for this one, but merely entirely rewrote (and the writing is very good) an older play. I would hope that's true. It features exiled English cavaliers during the Commonwealth, cavorting in Naples. I thought Shakespeare was full of bawdy, but this handily outdoes it. It gets worse. I found myself in one scene reading a character who spends the entire scene as a drunken rapist. I had to ask for a break after that. Later on, there's an attempted gang-bang. Apparently, the urgent question in these cases is whether the victim is a "woman of quality" or not. (The female characters spend a lot of time in disguise, so it can be hard to tell from their dress.) If she is a "woman of quality," it's not OK to rape her. If she isn't, it apparently is.
There is no way this play could be staged today. You couldn't even cut it: there would be nothing left.
Sunday, April 13, 2025
memories
Having spent Friday evening at a concert recital of emotionally intense contemporary musical theater songs for female voice, and part of Saturday looking up other performances on YouTube, I shouldn't have been surprised when another such song floated into my mental ear. But I don't have a lot of such songs in my regular listening, so I was startled by having another showing up. At first I could just hear tiny fragments, and it wasn't for a while that they coalesced enough that I could identify the song. It was Mirabel's song from Encanto, "Waiting on a Miracle."
Walking through SF's Chinatown, where I've taken to having my pre-concert meals, I saw a sign for a restaurant which I suddenly realized must have been the one where my class had lunch on a school expedition to Chinatown when I was about ten. We visited a fortune cookie factory (not the one you'll see if you go to Chinatown today) and had a dim sum lunch, table-served on a lazy Susan. Perhaps my first experience with Chinese food, close to my first experience with chopsticks - I remember somebody showing me how to hold them, but I don't think that was the occasion - and my first experience drinking what I did not realize was tea. Years later in a conversation I said I'd never had tea, to which the reply was "You have it all the time in Chinese restaurants" and I said "That's tea?" I'd never known what it was.
How did I realize it must be the same restaurant? From the name. It's the Hang Ah Tea Room. I remember noting it at the time, and noting the name because it encodes how to get there: you go up Sacramento Street and then Hang Ah right.
From which I realize that my propensity for making puns predates my supposed introduction to the art form, by my high school science-fiction club, by about ten years.
Walking through SF's Chinatown, where I've taken to having my pre-concert meals, I saw a sign for a restaurant which I suddenly realized must have been the one where my class had lunch on a school expedition to Chinatown when I was about ten. We visited a fortune cookie factory (not the one you'll see if you go to Chinatown today) and had a dim sum lunch, table-served on a lazy Susan. Perhaps my first experience with Chinese food, close to my first experience with chopsticks - I remember somebody showing me how to hold them, but I don't think that was the occasion - and my first experience drinking what I did not realize was tea. Years later in a conversation I said I'd never had tea, to which the reply was "You have it all the time in Chinese restaurants" and I said "That's tea?" I'd never known what it was.
How did I realize it must be the same restaurant? From the name. It's the Hang Ah Tea Room. I remember noting it at the time, and noting the name because it encodes how to get there: you go up Sacramento Street and then Hang Ah right.
From which I realize that my propensity for making puns predates my supposed introduction to the art form, by my high school science-fiction club, by about ten years.
Saturday, April 12, 2025
a little stage music
I should have been doing something else, but never mind: a senior recital at Stanford by a soprano whose repertoire lay entirely in contemporary musical theater was an attractive enough idea that we both went, being as usual when we do something like this probably the only attendees who weren't personal friends of the singer.
She was talented but had a small voice and not much stage presence, so I could understand why she said she's pursuing a career in backstage work and management instead of performing, but she chose a good selection of songs I'd mostly never heard. Much better than the bleak and dull material that I've found from too much recent musical theater. A couple of the songs - from Next to Normal and Newsies respectively - stuck with me enough that I dug out recorded performances of them.
Now, if our student had brought the same crispness and rhythm that she gave to that second song to the Baker's Wife's song from Into the Woods, she would really have had something. One other thing the above performance has in common with the recital I heard last night: the piano was too loud.
She was talented but had a small voice and not much stage presence, so I could understand why she said she's pursuing a career in backstage work and management instead of performing, but she chose a good selection of songs I'd mostly never heard. Much better than the bleak and dull material that I've found from too much recent musical theater. A couple of the songs - from Next to Normal and Newsies respectively - stuck with me enough that I dug out recorded performances of them.
Now, if our student had brought the same crispness and rhythm that she gave to that second song to the Baker's Wife's song from Into the Woods, she would really have had something. One other thing the above performance has in common with the recital I heard last night: the piano was too loud.
Friday, April 11, 2025
concert review: San Francisco Symphony
Has Marin Alsop ever conducted SFS before? If so I can't recall it. She's one of the great conductors of our time and SFS is still one of the great orchestras, so the two major works on this program were both pretty sizzling.
Gabriela Montero played her own Piano Concerto No. 1, which is subtitled "Latin" as in Latin America - she's a Venezuelan expatriate - but this was just a hint of flavoring, nothing of the "tourist music" air to it. The piano part is very active and continuous without being florid; the sound was attractive but not goopy; and the work had real heft, enough to make it fascinating to listen to all the way through. At times, Montero's playing reminded me of Rachmaninoff, at other times of Bach, without actually sounding in the least like either of them.
Then Alsop led a dramatic and atmospheric performance of Samuel Barber's dense and compact Symphony No. 1. Really brought this work to vividness - same condition as the Montero - and emphasized the extent to which its one movement contains seeds of the standard four. In this performance it sounded more like an ancestor to the Korngold Symphony than anything else.
Also on the program, Antropolis by Gabriela Ortiz, and this was tourist music. Had the same jumpy nature and constant percussion battery of other Mexican dancehall-inspired pieces like El Salon Mexico and Danzon No. 2 and Huapango without being anywhere near as attractive or tuneful as any of them.
Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, just because, I suppose, followed immediately by Joan Tower's Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is nowhere near as memorable and was probably there just for its cheeky title.
Gabriela Montero played her own Piano Concerto No. 1, which is subtitled "Latin" as in Latin America - she's a Venezuelan expatriate - but this was just a hint of flavoring, nothing of the "tourist music" air to it. The piano part is very active and continuous without being florid; the sound was attractive but not goopy; and the work had real heft, enough to make it fascinating to listen to all the way through. At times, Montero's playing reminded me of Rachmaninoff, at other times of Bach, without actually sounding in the least like either of them.
Then Alsop led a dramatic and atmospheric performance of Samuel Barber's dense and compact Symphony No. 1. Really brought this work to vividness - same condition as the Montero - and emphasized the extent to which its one movement contains seeds of the standard four. In this performance it sounded more like an ancestor to the Korngold Symphony than anything else.
Also on the program, Antropolis by Gabriela Ortiz, and this was tourist music. Had the same jumpy nature and constant percussion battery of other Mexican dancehall-inspired pieces like El Salon Mexico and Danzon No. 2 and Huapango without being anywhere near as attractive or tuneful as any of them.
Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, just because, I suppose, followed immediately by Joan Tower's Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is nowhere near as memorable and was probably there just for its cheeky title.
Monday, April 7, 2025
two more concerts
1. So I've occasionally mentioned before about TACO, the Terrible Adult Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble intended to let musicians not ready for prime time have fun playing where nobody has to listen to them. B., who is about as good a player as this group ever gets, belongs because it gives her a chance to play without the rigor or speed of even a nonprofessional community orchestra.
That being the situation, why did TACO's director commission (and pay for) a new composition by a respected local composer? But she did. Then the composer died just after delivering the piece, and then the pandemic happened, so it wasn't until now that TACO held one of its very rare public concerts and played the music. At the director's request I persuaded my editor at the Daily Journal to let me review it. He consented because he was sure I could make it entertaining to read about. If the DJ's website will let you access the review you can decide for yourself if you agree with him that I succeeded.
Amazingly, TACO gathered all its skirts together and did a pretty fair job for an amateur group at playing the new composition, so I didn't have to dissemble on that. They were less effective on the other orchestral composition, but that was a piano concerto carried almost entirely by the soloist, and he was a professional pianist so that was all right. The rest of the concert - the whole thing was a memorial to the same composer - was chamber music by professionals, except for one piece over which I decided to draw a curtain and just mention that they played it.
2. The Palo Alto Philharmonic is the, oh, third-tier (i.e. pretty good) nonprofessional group for which our niece E. plays double bass. So along with E's husband and his mother (E's parents don't live around here), we showed up. Surprisingly lusty performance of Copland's quiet and melancholy Our Town suite, and a successfully winning rendition of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Symphonic Variations on an African Air, more pleasing than when I've heard it before. But Dvorak's Symphony from the New World is too familiar a piece for this group to bring anything special to the table, and it was just a decent average run-through - with, I noted, no repeat of the first movement exposition.
That being the situation, why did TACO's director commission (and pay for) a new composition by a respected local composer? But she did. Then the composer died just after delivering the piece, and then the pandemic happened, so it wasn't until now that TACO held one of its very rare public concerts and played the music. At the director's request I persuaded my editor at the Daily Journal to let me review it. He consented because he was sure I could make it entertaining to read about. If the DJ's website will let you access the review you can decide for yourself if you agree with him that I succeeded.
Amazingly, TACO gathered all its skirts together and did a pretty fair job for an amateur group at playing the new composition, so I didn't have to dissemble on that. They were less effective on the other orchestral composition, but that was a piano concerto carried almost entirely by the soloist, and he was a professional pianist so that was all right. The rest of the concert - the whole thing was a memorial to the same composer - was chamber music by professionals, except for one piece over which I decided to draw a curtain and just mention that they played it.
2. The Palo Alto Philharmonic is the, oh, third-tier (i.e. pretty good) nonprofessional group for which our niece E. plays double bass. So along with E's husband and his mother (E's parents don't live around here), we showed up. Surprisingly lusty performance of Copland's quiet and melancholy Our Town suite, and a successfully winning rendition of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Symphonic Variations on an African Air, more pleasing than when I've heard it before. But Dvorak's Symphony from the New World is too familiar a piece for this group to bring anything special to the table, and it was just a decent average run-through - with, I noted, no repeat of the first movement exposition.
Sunday, April 6, 2025
what else
As long as I was going up to Berkeley on Friday to see a play, it was the ideal occasion to spend part of the afternoon doing something else.
The idea came to mind a couple weeks earlier, when I read an article in the AAA magazine on places to see wildflowers without crowds. One of them was nearby: the Jepson Prairie Preserve, a chunk of land trust in the ranching flatlands of the lower Sacramento Valley, east of Fairfield.
I could drive out there easily, and Friday was the perfect time to go: three days after the last rains ended, not yet too hot (the temp turned out to be 75F at 3 pm when I was there), the wildflowers should be well in bloom. There are docent tours on weekends, but I'm not up to that much walking, so I went on my own.
Near the end of the dirt road leading into the preserve, there was room to park on one side of the road and an enclosure with picnic tables, informative plaques, and a portapotty; and on the other side a gate leading to a nature trail which is the only part of the preserve open to visitors.
Off in the distance I could see sheets of yellow among the green fields, but none by this end of the nature trail. Feeling disappointed, I nevertheless walked in and found that I merely needed to look more closely. There were flowers everywhere, just not in giant sheet-like profusion. In just a short walk I saw at least seven different kinds of flowers, some yellow, some purple, also blue ones and white ones, mostly in colonies near others of their own kind. I found more after I drove over to the other end of the trail, a bit of a way down the road by the large vernal pool, as the plaques informed me this kind of lake is called. (Dry in the summer, it was full of water now up to its marshy shores.) Some of the flowers I saw are among the ones pictured on this page. The Goldfields and Yellow Carpet were the most common yellow ones. I'm not good at taking photos, and even if I had, I don't think they could have captured what it looked like to walk among the flowers only visible close by.
They're blooming now, and should still be until the lake dries up in May or so. If you're in the area and you like wildflowers, go now.
The idea came to mind a couple weeks earlier, when I read an article in the AAA magazine on places to see wildflowers without crowds. One of them was nearby: the Jepson Prairie Preserve, a chunk of land trust in the ranching flatlands of the lower Sacramento Valley, east of Fairfield.
I could drive out there easily, and Friday was the perfect time to go: three days after the last rains ended, not yet too hot (the temp turned out to be 75F at 3 pm when I was there), the wildflowers should be well in bloom. There are docent tours on weekends, but I'm not up to that much walking, so I went on my own.
Near the end of the dirt road leading into the preserve, there was room to park on one side of the road and an enclosure with picnic tables, informative plaques, and a portapotty; and on the other side a gate leading to a nature trail which is the only part of the preserve open to visitors.
Off in the distance I could see sheets of yellow among the green fields, but none by this end of the nature trail. Feeling disappointed, I nevertheless walked in and found that I merely needed to look more closely. There were flowers everywhere, just not in giant sheet-like profusion. In just a short walk I saw at least seven different kinds of flowers, some yellow, some purple, also blue ones and white ones, mostly in colonies near others of their own kind. I found more after I drove over to the other end of the trail, a bit of a way down the road by the large vernal pool, as the plaques informed me this kind of lake is called. (Dry in the summer, it was full of water now up to its marshy shores.) Some of the flowers I saw are among the ones pictured on this page. The Goldfields and Yellow Carpet were the most common yellow ones. I'm not good at taking photos, and even if I had, I don't think they could have captured what it looked like to walk among the flowers only visible close by.
They're blooming now, and should still be until the lake dries up in May or so. If you're in the area and you like wildflowers, go now.
Saturday, April 5, 2025
saw a play
"Art" by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton, directed by Emilie Whelan
I saw this play in London in 1998, a couple years into the run of the first English-language production (the original is in French). I thought it'd be worth seeing again, especially after Kosman gave it a good review (halfway down this page). This was by Shotgun Players, a Berkeley troupe whom I once saw in a production of Hamlet in which the actors pull slips of paper out of a hat (actually Yorick's skull) at the beginning of each performance to see who'll play which part.
Nothing so avant-garde this time. "Art" was well-performed, but I didn't like this production as well as I did the London one. This was mostly because the director took the emphasis away from one theme - what is art, what makes it valuable and how do we know what we like? - and on to another, the nature of male friendship, a depiction completely alien to anything in my experience of friendship, but whatever.
In this play, a moderately successful man drops a large load of money on buying a painting by a fashionable modern artist and shows it off to his two closest friends. The painting is pure white, supposedly with features and highlights that only the connoisseur can see. One of the friends is offended, less by what he sees as the artistic worthlessness of the painting than by what it says about his friend's taste. The other tries to be agreeable to both of them in turn.
The third, who is the youngest and least well-off, illustrates his haplessness with a long monologue about being caught in the middle of an argument between his fiancée and his mother over the wording of the wedding invitation. The London performer (I no longer remember who was in the show at the time I saw it, sorry) delivered this as an evenly-paced steadily rising hysteria. This one did it in rising and falling outbursts. He did, however, at one point deliver a golden piece of advice I didn't remember from the previous showing. He said, "'Calm down' is the worst thing you could say to somebody who's lost their calm." And this is true. It will anger them further because it shows you don't care what they're angry about, you just want to exert control over them.
Anyway, the art side of it interests me. Are there actually painters who produce blank monochromatic paintings that are considered great art? Yes there are. I've been to this display of fourteen featureless black paintings and sat there for a few minutes pretending to be moved by it. I have never felt more ripped off by an art museum, despite the fact that there is no admission charge.
And do their defenders actually make the desperate argument of pointing to minute variations in the texture as where the value of the art lies? Yes they do and my thoughts on the value of modernist art are there. It's also my answer to the question the painting's owner asks his critic: how can someone who doesn't claim any expertise in the subject judge the work? The answer is that if it has any value, any viewer should be able to pick that up. Crikes, why do people with no technical training in music whatever listen to symphonies? They must be getting something valuable out of the aesthetic experience or else there would be no point in performing for them.
I saw this play in London in 1998, a couple years into the run of the first English-language production (the original is in French). I thought it'd be worth seeing again, especially after Kosman gave it a good review (halfway down this page). This was by Shotgun Players, a Berkeley troupe whom I once saw in a production of Hamlet in which the actors pull slips of paper out of a hat (actually Yorick's skull) at the beginning of each performance to see who'll play which part.
Nothing so avant-garde this time. "Art" was well-performed, but I didn't like this production as well as I did the London one. This was mostly because the director took the emphasis away from one theme - what is art, what makes it valuable and how do we know what we like? - and on to another, the nature of male friendship, a depiction completely alien to anything in my experience of friendship, but whatever.
In this play, a moderately successful man drops a large load of money on buying a painting by a fashionable modern artist and shows it off to his two closest friends. The painting is pure white, supposedly with features and highlights that only the connoisseur can see. One of the friends is offended, less by what he sees as the artistic worthlessness of the painting than by what it says about his friend's taste. The other tries to be agreeable to both of them in turn.
The third, who is the youngest and least well-off, illustrates his haplessness with a long monologue about being caught in the middle of an argument between his fiancée and his mother over the wording of the wedding invitation. The London performer (I no longer remember who was in the show at the time I saw it, sorry) delivered this as an evenly-paced steadily rising hysteria. This one did it in rising and falling outbursts. He did, however, at one point deliver a golden piece of advice I didn't remember from the previous showing. He said, "'Calm down' is the worst thing you could say to somebody who's lost their calm." And this is true. It will anger them further because it shows you don't care what they're angry about, you just want to exert control over them.
Anyway, the art side of it interests me. Are there actually painters who produce blank monochromatic paintings that are considered great art? Yes there are. I've been to this display of fourteen featureless black paintings and sat there for a few minutes pretending to be moved by it. I have never felt more ripped off by an art museum, despite the fact that there is no admission charge.
And do their defenders actually make the desperate argument of pointing to minute variations in the texture as where the value of the art lies? Yes they do and my thoughts on the value of modernist art are there. It's also my answer to the question the painting's owner asks his critic: how can someone who doesn't claim any expertise in the subject judge the work? The answer is that if it has any value, any viewer should be able to pick that up. Crikes, why do people with no technical training in music whatever listen to symphonies? They must be getting something valuable out of the aesthetic experience or else there would be no point in performing for them.
Thursday, April 3, 2025
imported children's books
I got into a conversation about which British children's books beloved there also became American favorites and which didn't. This came through an experience I've had before, a reference by a Brit to some children's story or character that I'd barely or never heard of, but which context showed was universally known there. I'm making the assumption of what's known in the US from what's known to me, a leap I'd hardly take for current material, but children's lit from the early to mid 20C ... I'm pretty confident that if I hadn't heard of it, it wasn't widely known in the US.
So what's the score?
Winnie the Pooh made it in the US.
Peter Rabbit did.
The Hobbit and Narnia did, of course.
Just William didn't. The first I ever heard of that was reading that these books were favorites of John Lennon's in childhood.
Worzel Gummidge didn't. The first I'd ever heard of this character was years ago when somebody wrote that Michael Foot looked like him. "Do you not get scarecrows over there?" I was asked when I said this. Of course we do: and the nameless Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz is one of our most beloved characters. What we didn't get was Worzel Gummidge.
Enid Blyton didn't. The first I ever heard of her was a British critic making the comparison in a blithe dismissal of Tolkien's early chapters.
I'm sure there are others I just haven't seen references to, or have forgotten about.
Then there's the mixed cases:
The Wind in the Willows made it. I don't think it's as widely beloved in the US as it is in the UK, but it's certainly known.
Swallows and Amazons ... I think that became sort of a special interest. It didn't become well known, but is cherished by a measurable number of Americans in a way that other less well-known ones are not.
So what's the score?
Winnie the Pooh made it in the US.
Peter Rabbit did.
The Hobbit and Narnia did, of course.
Just William didn't. The first I ever heard of that was reading that these books were favorites of John Lennon's in childhood.
Worzel Gummidge didn't. The first I'd ever heard of this character was years ago when somebody wrote that Michael Foot looked like him. "Do you not get scarecrows over there?" I was asked when I said this. Of course we do: and the nameless Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz is one of our most beloved characters. What we didn't get was Worzel Gummidge.
Enid Blyton didn't. The first I ever heard of her was a British critic making the comparison in a blithe dismissal of Tolkien's early chapters.
I'm sure there are others I just haven't seen references to, or have forgotten about.
Then there's the mixed cases:
The Wind in the Willows made it. I don't think it's as widely beloved in the US as it is in the UK, but it's certainly known.
Swallows and Amazons ... I think that became sort of a special interest. It didn't become well known, but is cherished by a measurable number of Americans in a way that other less well-known ones are not.
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
can't buy me love. or elections either, apparently
Does anyone remember Al Checchi? I did, vaguely, but I had to paw through a series of Wikipedia articles on California gubernatorial elections to recall his name. He was the businessman who tried to buy the Democratic primary for governor in 1998. He shoveled out from his personal fortune nearly twice as much money as both of the other major candidates combined. But in the primary vote, he just barely squeaked into second place, far behind the winner. (Who was Gray Davis, five years later to be ousted in a recall, so hardly invulnerable.)
Then there was Michael Huffington, who similarly tried to buy a California Senate seat in 1994. Also didn't work.
These came to mind when I read of the results of Elon Musk's attempts to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Money can buy elections, but only if you spend it wisely. Apparently people resent it if the attempted purchase is too naked and too lavish. But I wouldn't expect Elon Musk, who thinks a chainsaw is a useful metaphor for trimming wasteful spending, and who 'trims' as if it is; and who sells a vehicle that looks like a cross between a DeLorean and the box that an Amazon package comes in, to grasp anything resembling a subtle point.
Then there was Michael Huffington, who similarly tried to buy a California Senate seat in 1994. Also didn't work.
These came to mind when I read of the results of Elon Musk's attempts to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Money can buy elections, but only if you spend it wisely. Apparently people resent it if the attempted purchase is too naked and too lavish. But I wouldn't expect Elon Musk, who thinks a chainsaw is a useful metaphor for trimming wasteful spending, and who 'trims' as if it is; and who sells a vehicle that looks like a cross between a DeLorean and the box that an Amazon package comes in, to grasp anything resembling a subtle point.
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