BISQC, day 3

What? What happened to days 1 and 2? Well, I wasn't there. I'm not there now, either.

In another timeline, I'd be spending this week in Banff, Alberta, at the triennial Banff International String Quartet Competition, as I did in 2016 and 2019, having a wonderful time on both occasions. But a combination of issues, mostly covid, led me to decide to bow out, which means I'm at home and can attend Oxonmoot online as well as experience the blinding heat wave we're expecting this weekend.

And I can watch and listen to the BISQC concerts live online, and they also have the concerts that are over with stacked up for listening, though I haven't gotten to those yet and am unlikely to.

My attempts to watch days 1-2, in which each of the 9 participating groups (a tenth had to drop out due to an injury) played one Haydn quartet and one written since 2000, were sporadic. Such Haydn as I heard seemed rather 19th-century in style, and the new works varied between the painfully dull and the provocatively interesting. But I'm not even entirely sure what I was listening to, because I thought maybe the title cards on the videos got mixed up.

Today, 6 of the groups - the rest, Thursday morning - played in two concerts, each offering one quartet from the romantic/nationalist repertoire, approximately 1825-1920. Two of the groups played Mendelssohn's Op. 13, my favorite quartet that meets that description. Both performances were excellent, and I find the difficulty of making fine judgments when you're not there in person stymies me in ranking them. Maybe the Karski Quartet breathed a little more broadly and connected episodes a little more firmly than the Abeo Quartet, but they were both sizzling and dynamic. The fact that I just heard the Abeo in person play this work twice at the Menlo Festival a month ago didn't stop me in the slightest.

A group whose name is the Opus 13 Quartet did not play Op. 13. Instead, they gave Brahms's Op. 51 No. 1 a livelier, bouncier reading than the Balourdet Quartet did with Op. 51 No. 2. The Animato Kwartet (that's how they spell it) seemed to be enjoying Schumann's Op. 41 No. 1 immensely, while the Terra Quartet gave the most amazingly crisp reading of the scherzo of the Debussy Quartet. It sounded more as if it were by Ravel than by Debussy.

BISQC continues through Sunday. So does Oxonmoot, which starts tomorrow. Then there's the Watership Down half-centenary conference, which is also this weekend and which I've also signed up for. How much of any of these I'll get to - how much I'll be awake for - is a doubtful question, especially as much of Oxonmoot is in the middle of the night in this time zone, but then that's often when I'm awake. So we'll see.

a taste of the past

Much of the ice cream sold in the grocers I tend to avoid, but of those available in pints (a necessary qualification: I don't want a larger container), besides the ubiquitous Ben & Jerry's, there's a few I particularly like. One of these is McConnell's, which despite its unfortunate name is a very good ice cream. Because I can only find it in a few of the stores I frequent, and because it's of fairly local origin (Santa Barbara), I assumed it wasn't widely available, but according to their website they're found across the US, just spottily.

Usually I get their mint chip or coffee flavor, but I'm here to report to anyone who cares that McConnell's "Chocolate chocolate chocolate" flavor, which is a strong chocolate ice cream with equally strong chocolate frosting and chocolate chips mixed in, is the only taste I've found which can stand comparison with the late Jane Hawkins's classic chocolate decadence. If you miss that, you might like this.

the number

An article in The New Yorker said that Queen Elizabeth II has had ten prime ministers. "That must be wrong: it's got to be more than that," I thought, having not noticed that the article was a 20-year-old reprint. Once the glacial - that's no longer a very good metaphor, is it? - process of choosing Boris's replacement is finished, that person will be no. 15.

QE2 has been monarch for over 70 years now. Victoria had 63 1/2 years, with ten p.m.s, but much of her reign was occupied with Gladstone alternating with Disraeli and then Salisbury; there were 20 administrations in total. Hanging around waiting for another term is quite obsolete these days: QE2 has had only one recidivist (two if you count Churchill, whose first term was before her time), and that was nearly half a century past.

The other long-reigning monarch of the modern era was George III with over 59 years, including the Regency. He had 14 p.m.s of whom 3 also had repeats. He also had two father-son pairs, of whom the fathers were brothers-in-law and the sons first cousins. British politics is still pretty closely-knit, but not quite that close.

t.p. verso

B. went to the children's bookstore today to get presents for our grand-nieces, aged 8 and 7, whom we'll be seeing soon. One's interested in horses, the other in sharks (ok, sharks), their parents tell us, so we got a book of fables involving horses and one loaded with facts about sharks.

I looked through these prior to their being wrapped up, so that I'd know what would be in the presents with my name on them, and as a library cataloger I noted that all the publication and copyright info which would normally be on the back of the title page (t.p. verso in book lingo) is now at the end of the book, a placement common in early publications and then called the colophon; I've no idea if it still is.

I've seen this pattern in children's books before, but not systematically. I suppose it's to keep kids from being frightened off by all the small print when they open the book up, and it reminds me that one of the purposes of giving physical books to small children is to teach them how a book is customarily put together: the title, the name of the author, the sequence of pages, and all.

This isn't necessarily easy. I was trying to catalog a children's book in Yiddish once, but I don't really know the language and I asked someone who did to transliterate the author's name. They came back with the information that the author's surname was Verlag, at which point I had to give up. Verlag is German for "publisher."

In other technical news, I've finally figured out what's causing my computer to slow down and become sluggish. It's nothing to do with CPU. It's the memory. Firefox, my principal browser, slowly creeps up in memory hoggage. When I turn it on, total memory usage on the computer is usually about 65%. When it gets above 85%, the functions start to slow. But I don't have to restart the computer. Close Firefox, wait for it to shut down entirely which takes several minutes, and then restart it: good as new, for a day or two.

new car law

California is proposing a law that new gasoline-powered cars will cease to be sold in about 13 years. This is in the tradition of laws (state or federal) that mandated seat belts in new cars, or that required new cars to run on unleaded instead of leaded gas. The car manufacturers whined over those, but they got them done.

What will really enforce this law will be the gradual disappearance, in subsequent years, of gas stations. Once it becomes too difficult to fuel your car, you'll switch. This happened with leaded gas. For many years stations sold both leaded and unleaded, but gradually the leaded disappeared, and if you still had an old car you were out of luck.

We need two things to make an all-electric car environment work. One is fueling infrastructure. We're building that, rapidly. Good. The other is to get the price of electric cars down. Right now they cost about 4 or 5 times as much as a gas car. That's too great a difference. Tax credits will not help the people who need help the most. Technological advances that make them less expensive to build would be ideal. The substitute would be rebates, built into the purchase price so you don't have to fork over the money and apply for the rebate afterwards. In urban areas we're already developing a system where it's easy not to own a car and just rent one when you need it, and that's good, but that won't work elsewhere without a massive rebuilding of the entire environment.

But what I want to know is: what about hydrogen fuel-cell cars? I test-drove one of those, and if they're technically perfected, become available at a reasonable price, and acquire a reasonable fueling infrastructure, I'd much prefer one. They fuel with a physical substance, so it's easier to figure out how much range you have left than psyching out electric charge; and I believe they're less harmful to the environment, without those giant honking batteries and huge electric charges zapping around: hydrogen is very easy to get. And as for hydrogen being explosive, so is gasoline and we manage that.

Letters of C.S. Lewis

Whenever I need to consult the original 1966 edition of Letters of C.S. Lewis - usually to quote from W.H. Lewis's memoir of his brother which prefixes the letters - I look through the letters themselves and note the ones whose addressees are anonymized, usually as "A Lady." And then I remember the 3-volume supposedly complete Collected Letters, which eschews such coyness. This time, while I had the 1966 book out of the library, I decided to collate the anonymized letters against the Collected Letters - which I own; it'd hardly be possible to do my research without it - and find the answers.

So "A Lady" refers to various persons; before 1945 it's usually Mary Neylan; afterwards it's most often Mary Van Deusen, sometimes Genia Goelz; for a stretch in 1952-6 it's usually a Mrs Johnson of whom nothing else is known. "A Godchild" in 1949 is Sarah Neylan, who reappears as "A Child" in 1950; "A Child in America" in 1956-7 is Joan Lancaster. I should look some of these people up.

"A Friend, who was troubled about a younger woman's unsuitable devotion" in 1946 turns out to be Owen Barfield. That I really ought to search out in Barfield's biography.

I'm writing about this now because the 1966 book needs to go back to the library.

Most surprising, however, is the presence in this book of 5 letters which, as far as I can find, are not in the Collected Letters at all. Not all the letters are dated, and sometimes finding them in the Collected Letters requires recourse to that work's index, but it's a very complete index, so when I say that somehow these got missed, I can be pretty sure of it. A couple more letters aren't in their proper chronological place in the Collected Letters but were added to the appendix, which suggest that nobody consistently combed the 1966 book when compiling the Collected Letters.

One of the missing letters, of December 1962, has some interesting material on Lewis's intent while writing the Narnian books, and another, of April 1959, is the letter to Peter Bide (unnamed here) in response to Bide's request for prayers for his sick wife, a letter Lewis refers to having written in several other letters of the time, as I found while looking unsuccessfully for it in the Collected Letters.

The Sandman

So I finally watched The Sandman ... or part of it. I skipped the episodes covering Preludes and Nocturnes, because I found that book disturbing to read in a way the subsequent ones weren't. I started with the bonus episode, "Dream of a Thousand Cats/Calliope," then went back to "The Sound of Her Wings/Men of Good Fortune" and on to the four episodes that cover The Doll's House.

I guess I don't understand why people are so eager to see their favorite literature filmed. It can't possibly match the one in my head. No human actor could possibly speak in the dark tones I imagine for Morpheus, though Tom Sturridge at least gestures in the right direction. So all I can do is cherish the moments when the adaptation gets it better than I imagined. Such a moment came at the very end of "Dream of a Thousand Cats" which did in motion what the book could only do in words, and with a more subtle back-reference. "Calliope" was pretty well done, and Derek Jacobi bit off the nasty Erasmus Fry as he ought to have been bitten off. And Ric's descent into evil was admirably rewritten to be more subtle and less abrupt than in the book. But Calliope, unlike the picture in the book, didn't look remotely like someone who'd suffered what she'd suffered.

The "Sound of Her Wings" episode felt a little stiff and lifeless compared to the extraordinarily compelling book versions of those stories. Maybe they were trying to be too faithful in the adaptation.

Doll's House was better when it dared to be a little bit original, and worse when it tried too hard. It seems to me the adaptation made three basic changes in the story.
1. To eliminate the old DC character references. I can't say anything about that because I don't know anything about the old DC characters.
2. To cut down the role of coincidence in the story. Unfortunately that was done by increasing the sense of conspiracy. Thus, Jed doesn't hitch a ride with the Corinthian by coincidence: the Corinthian is already looking for him; thus, the conspiracy is after you. Even if Jed had gotten his note to the social worker out, it wouldn't have done any good, because the Corinthian immediately kills her. Way to go.
3. To give Rose more agency. This works well in some parts, such as her first confrontation with Morpheus: entirely original to the adaptation and brilliantly done. But it goes way overboard in the final episode, and it creates other problems as well. Thus, an enabled Rose can't be helpless in the face of the muggers but successfully defends herself to an extent improbable in someone with no training. And worse, it leaves Gilbert with nothing to do in his capacity as her champion and knight-errant. He feels superfluous, and his later reappearance becomes awkward and illogical. And Rose swiping name badges from the reg desk? That ought to have gotten her in deep trouble at any convention, however innocuous.

I liked some of the acting. Stephen Fry, as ever when it's not a Peter Jackson Hobbit movie, was almost ideal: though one was reference to Chesterton was perfect, two was too many. Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne was excellent as was Mason Alexander Park as Desire - both caught the essence of their characters ideally. Kyo Ra as Rose carried a difficult part with complete adequacy. But the Corinthian wasn't quite creepy enough, and the guy playing Nimrod kept looking as if he was about to turn into Wallace Shawn, which was distracting.

and my street smells much of tar

Last week we got a notice, that the city would be laying a new surface of pavement down on our street. They said this was annual, but I think this was only the second time since we've lived here, and that's 15 years now.

Then the signboards went up on the sidewalks giving the date. No cars on the street. Not inherently a problem for us, because we don't live on the street but in a private cul-de-sac, but it did mean that if we left our cars at home we'd be stuck there all day. Well, most of the time that's what we do anyway, but just in case, I took my car out the previous afternoon and parked it on the next street over.

Turned out we didn't need the car, but at least the work got down, and the street reopened on time. So now it's inky-black in color and smells of tar, even from as far away as here.

historical movies

B. signed us up for Netflix so that we could watch The Sandman. She's watched most of The Sandman already; I haven't started yet, because I've spent all of what little time I have for that medium on two movies that were on my "watch these if I ever get Neflix or if they ever get off it" list. Time has been further extended by their being simultaneously interesting enough and wincingly bad enough that I keep turning them off and walking away, coming back and continuing a day or two later.

Both are of a genre of movie I have a weakness for: dramatizations of modern historical events. (I have my standards, though. For one thing I don't like anything in which the characters go around telling each other things they already know so that the audience can catch up, which is one of several reasons I stopped watching The Crown after half an episode.)

Operation Mincemeat. This one I know all about. I've read the books about it, including Montagu's; I've even seen the previous movie. That was partly why this movie wasn't saved by some good dramatizations of particular scenes and some excellent acting. (Colin Firth, now: he's made so many movies in which he plays a repressed man with a strong sense of duty that he's virtually typecast.) The imaginary subplots they added to the story, however, just ruined it. In real life the period after they sent Major Martin off to war consisted of a lot of suspenseful waiting with a slowly dunning sense that the plot worked, that they'd pulled it off. In the movie they run around in a panic over various glitches. It just gives a bad taste to the whole thing. And that's just one of the many, many awful things the adapters did to the story.

The Dig. This one I didn't know much about. I knew about the Sutton Hoo ship burial; I've seen both the treasure in the British Museum and the original site in Suffolk, on which sheep may now safely graze. But I didn't know whose land it had been, how the burial was discovered, or who dug it up. This movie was less inaccurate than the other, so I learned a lot, but it does tend to get fanciful in the same way as Op.M. towards the end. Acting was good: Ralph Fiennes should play more honest countrymen and fewer conniving ex-public school boys. Oh, and the official archaeologist who shows up halfway through? Notice the actor's unusually bulbous nose? So it shouldn't surprise you at all to learn that he played one of the dwarves in The Hobbit.

it's my Guest of Honor speech

The videorecording of my Scholar Guest of Honor speech at Mythcon, which was in Albuquerque on Saturday, July 30, is now online at the Mythopoeic Society archives, thanks to Society media maven Tim Lenz and official archivist Phillip Fitzsimmons.

The audio is a little choppy - I think it was taken directly from the feed of the portable microphone I was wearing, which is also why you can't hear much of the audience response - but if you hit the download button next to the video, you can get what looks like a transcript but in fact is my actual reading copy of the speech, modified by the cuts and a few small changes I made on the fly while delivering it. (I also corrected one tiny factual error.)

The speech, which is an hour long, is titled "Notes of an Inklings Scholar" and consists of five mini-talks:

1. The Expansion and Contraction of Tolkien’s Imagination
2. A Hobbit in the Legendarium
3. Cursed fate that gave thee to the Moore
4. But did he ever read the book?
5. The Problem of Éowyn

An edited version, somewhat clarified and including full bibliographical references and some additional material in footnotes, is scheduled to be published in the next issue of Mythlore, the Society's journal. In the meantime, for those who weren't there, technology brings us this.