why did I go to Berkeley?

The latest issue of the UC Berkeley alumni magazine has an interview with the new chancellor, Rich Lyons, the first campus head to be an alumnus himself in over 60 years. I see he was three years behind me, and he came from the same town I did. It's right by Stanford, so they asked him, in that case "why did you come to Cal?" (Cal is what sports fans call it. Nerds call it Berkeley.)

He said, "An older brother came here, so it was familiar. And I got to come to football games when I was 12 and 13. That was a big part of it."

Neither of those apply to me. I had no older siblings, and my interest in sports is zero. I'd gone through Berkeley on family outings, but had never been on campus until after I applied. Further, I had a personal connection with Stanford: my father had a post as adjunct professor at the medical school, so in high school I had a faculty family library card, which I made use of in writing term papers for history.

Reasons I went to Berkeley instead:

1. It was further away. Stanford was so close I'd feel obliged to come home every weekend. Berkeley, 50 miles away, was close enough that I could but wouldn't feel I had to.
2. It was urban. I'd spent my life out in the suburbs, and thought a period in a congested urban environment would be good for my emotional and practical education. It was, too.
3. It was larger and had a reputation as being more diverse. This meant I was more likely to find a social niche where I could fit in. That worked, too.
4. It had a reputation as being the most intellectually bristling public university in the country. Maybe in faculty, but outside of my niche I found the students to be the same unintellectual clods I'd detested in high school. That was a disappointment.
5. And speaking of being a public university, in those days that meant the tuition was much lower than Stanford's. I liked the idea of giving my parents their money's worth. The more so as I was a little nervous about going to a high-powered place. My high school teachers had warned us of how much more challenging university would be. I did not find it so; classes were never more than I could absorb.

Civil War reading

It's quieting down from Christmas. This morning I turned on the classical station and found the Brandenburg 3, instead of the nonstop Christmas carols we had yesterday. In the 45 minutes it took to drive to our nephew's house, they played "Riu, riu, chiu" twice. I can think of a lot of worse things to play twice, but you still need to keep track of your playlist.

This is the book on the US Civil War that I picked up a while back and have been poking through reading at mealtimes:

Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South by Elizabeth R. Varon (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

As the subtitle suggests, concentrates on the postwar period. Runs through his pre-war life (he was career Army) very briefly - apparently there's not much to be said; all of Longstreet's personal papers were destroyed in a postwar fire - is not too clogged on his wartime service, but really gets going on his varied postwar career, focused on his not quite unique attitude of accepting that since the South lost, they didn't get to have things their own way any more. The result of this is that Longstreet became a Republican. Huge detail on his decade plunged into the maelstrom of postwar Louisiana politics, culminating in his leading Black police troops in a street battle against a white supremacist mob. Things like this made him vastly popular among other ex-Confederates, you can be sure.

The book jump-cuts - because that's what his life was like - into Longstreet's periods doing other things like being a federal marshal in Georgia and, most bizarrely, his brief stint as the US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. You'd think this job in 1880 would be mostly focused on trade issues, and indeed the US had previously secured treaty rights for free passage of their trade ships through the Bosporus, something which the Russians also wanted and fought several wars with the Turks over, but it turns out his main concern was with American Protestant missionaries wandering around the back forties of the Empire. They'd annoy the natives, get into trouble, and the US Ambassador would have to bail them out.

But of course the main topic is Longstreet's reputation. He spent a lot of time defending himself against people who decided he'd been a bad general during the war because they disliked his activities after the war. Varon is diligent about summarizing the charges, Longstreet's writings, the crusading defenses by his second wife (a much younger journalist he married in his last, widowed years), and the opinions of previous biographers. Concludes with a discussion of Longstreet and the statues issue. There is exactly one statue of Longstreet. It's at Gettysburg, it's in an obscure corner, it was erected recently by a group which emphasized they were only honoring his generalship and not his postwar life, and it's small and makes him look like a dork (there's a photo). This book really gives a new view on the recent (and not so recent) controversies over the legacy of that still-contentious war.

I also started to read The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson (Crown, 2024) but gave up on it rather quickly. The period between Lincoln's election and the outbreak of war is searingly suspenseful, but Larson lets all the air out of it by chopping the story up into tiny vignettes, concentrating on personal walnettos instead of describing the issues, and insuring that no two consecutive vignettes have any connection, making the story even choppier. I know Larson is a wildly popular author, but I found this as boring as it was frustrating.

an ecumenical Christmas

B.'s family gathered for Christmas dinner at our (her) nephew's house. Meeting time was 2 pm, dinner (featuring prime rib and grilled chicken; I brought the steamed broccoli) was served about 3:30. We'd surely still be there at 5 pm. 5 pm was sunset, and the beginning of the first night of Hanukkah, a rare concatenation. I thought, why not bring along my Hanukkah menorah and light the candles there? As the only Jew in a household of Christians (mostly Catholics), I could offer them a glimpse at a religious ceremony that most of them had probably never seen before.

And so, by pre-agreement with the hosts (nephew and his wife), that's what I did. In between the family gift exchange and the 'white elephant' game, I called everybody back from the den into the dining room, where I'd set the menorah up near the end of the table. This was my first time doing this before an audience of more than 2 or 3 people, and not being used to it as I am with giving conference papers, I was a little nervous. I'd brought along the wrong box of matches, the one whose striking surfaces have been worn smooth; the candles kept flickering out after being lit; and I stumbled a bit over the blessings. But it got done.

Being familiar with the customs of Catholics after 30 years of being married to one, I did caution them that Hanukkah candles are not to be blown out, that they must be allowed to burn all the way down. They're small; it'll take less than an hour. Grand-nephew who'd been off in a corner during the ceremony was puzzled coming by later and seeing the candles still burning.

I got several thanks and compliments for this fascinating and new-to-them little ceremony, and nephew's brother-in-law asked me what was the Hebrew for 'Happy Hanukkah.' I didn't actually know that, so I said, "What my people usually say is 'Happy holiday' in Yiddish, which is 'Gut yontif.'" So he wished me "Gut yontif." That was very polite.

I count this a satisfactory Christmas. Now on to the rest of Hanukkah.

concert reviews: best of the year

San Francisco Classical Voice, for which I write reviews, has just published their Best of 2024 roundup. As explained in the introduction, they asked five of their reviewers to pick the three best concerts they attended in the Bay Area this year, and I was among the five.

Like others, I go to a lot more concerts than I review for SFCV. Looking over my reviews for the year and my blog posts on other concerts, I decided that, though I'd enjoyed just about everything I reviewed, only one of those concerts really met the highest level. Fortunately Lisa Hirsch, also one of the five, had reviewed both the others I picked, and she agreed that they were excellent.

They were SFS in January (Dvorak and Beethoven), the Ustvolskaya piano recital in October, and the Redwood Symphony in November (Shostakovich and Mozart), the last being the one I reviewed. If I'd had five choices, I'd have added the Esme Quartet in October, and the California Symphony in Beethoven's Ninth in September, neither of which SFCV reviewed at all.

We toted up our picks in a shared document, so as to avoid overlap, and then turned in our writeups. For the two I didn't review, I just boiled my blog posts on them down to the requested word length, and for the other, I took my review and looked for synonyms.

Since two of my three were major hefty symphony performances, and two of my three were Soviet-era music, I'm glad that others had different tastes, so that we got a variety. I attended two of the other reviewers' choices: the April SFS concert chosen by Rebecca Wishnia, though I preferred its Prokofiev Third to the Walton Viola Concerto that she emphasized; and Kaija Saariaho's opera Innocence at SFO in June, chosen by Steven Winn, and I agree with him that it was a stunning and awesome event.

folk festival

The annual tour of the grizzled folkie singer-songwriter luminaries came to the Freight yesterday. Last year I went because my beloved Christine Lavin was among their number. She wasn't there this year, but the other three were the same, and I had enjoyed them too, and the fourth was an equal luminary. Very popular show, biggest crowd I've seen at the Freight in quite a while. (Also the only time in quite a while that I've run into somebody I knew at a folk concert there.)

So: Patty Larkin, Lucy Kaplansky, John Gorka, Cliff Eberhardt. They performed some of the same songs they did last year - same format: a few solos from each, then all in a row they took turns, backing up each other on vocals or guitar - but as I don't have any of their albums I wasn't familiar with the other songs they did. But I enjoyed it all.

Here's studio recordings of two of the songs I heard:

concert review: San Francisco Girls Chorus

Last Friday I went to hear Brocelïande, Saturday the Palo Alto Philharmonic, and on Sunday, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, which I reviewed, and which has today been published. I wrote "nor do they" in the first sentence, but my editors changed "nor" to "or." I guess that's one of their newspaper editorial preferences, like avoiding Oxford commas.

Normally I don't review Christmas holiday concerts, partly because I'm not that enthused by the genre, though I don't dislike it, but more because it's difficult to review a lot of short pieces, which a carol recital will be. But this time seemed special. It was being held at Kohl Mansion, usually a venue for fairly austere instrumental chamber music of 2-4 players, rarely anything vocal, and one which takes no notice of the holidays. But this year they did, so I decided to play along.

B. didn't want to come along, since she's not a fan of children's choirs. She might have liked this one, though, as these girls were all of high-school age, and most of the time they sounded like adult women, albeit a bit lighter and fresher. But when they reverted to something younger, it was painful enough that B. was better off staying away. Two dozen teenage girls screeching in a small and highly reveberant room is not a sound you want to travel to hear.

But most of it was excellent. I wrote in the review of arrangements that were "quite complex with melodic and harmonic lines weaving in all directions." That's the summary of lots of notes I took about some of the remarkable things going on, all of it memorized, all of it clear as crystal, and as sparkling too.

Without B., then, I asked L., who is also a choral singer and was sure to appreciate it. We both figured to dress up a little for the spirit of the occasion. She was in red and fuzzy, and I figured my color scheme this way: I have a green shirt, I should match it with a red tie. But I don't have a red tie, so I chose the closest thing I do have: maroon background with little blue shapes of US states scattered over it. And we had a pleasant time of the concert.

a thought for your Christmas bird

Turkeys, the bird, are not from Turkey, the country, but they're named for it from a mistaken association* similar to the one by which American Indians, who are not from India, are nevertheless named as if they were.

Now the country's government wants English-speakers and others to call it Türkiye, which is the spelling in its own language, to reclaim a little unavian dignity. But since they had the name first, they really ought to ask us to change the name of the bird instead.

*Guinea fowl, which aren't from Turkey either, they're from Africa, were imported via Turkey, so they became known as turkey-cocks, and the American birds reminded people of them so they took the same name.

oh Miss Bennet, the fan fiction is calling

Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley by Lauren Gunderson & Margot Melcon, Theatre Works Silicon Valley

This play is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, and its spirit is pure fan fiction, the open wish-fulfillment of finding an appropriate mate for the neglected Bennet sister, Mary (who has succeeded to the formal title of "Miss Bennet" now that both her elder sisters are married).

Her obvious mate is one Arthur de Bourgh, a cousin of Darcy and of Anne de Bourgh previously unknown to history. A major part of this play, and in truth the best part, is the attempt by two nerdish Asperger's types to try to fit in to the social customs of the Jane Austen era.

None of the existing characters really matched up closely with the book or with well-known adaptations, but some were better than others. Mary could best be described as being polished up. She's more accomplished at her art (mostly playing Beethoven at the piano, including pieces that probably hadn't been written yet) and less quite so awkward. But her sisters remark on how she's matured, and considering her supposed age that's reasonable.

But Lizzy didn't remind us (B. went with me to this one) of any previous incarnation of Lizzy, being giddy, more like Lydia. Anne has somehow grown up to be like her mother, a real shock because she wasn't like that in the book at all, and this time a comment from another character wasn't enough to cover it. Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley also lack some of the flavor associated with them, and spend most of the play serving as advisors to the lovelorn, trying futilely to relate their experiences of falling in love to Arthur's.

The three-level set - including a library room which immediately attracts both Mary and Arthur - was stunning, and the portrait of Austen on the wall was noted with pleasure. But the acting was mixed. The leads were good, especially in the tall Arthur's way of cringing when he's embarrassed, which he is frequently, but the Lydia didn't really fit the flighty character well, and both Lizzy and Anne talked too fast and didn't enunciate clearly enough.

But you don't go to this for any of that other stuff. You go to watch Mary Bennet fall in love. That's something of a wish-fulfillment for me, because I'm convinced she would have been the Bennet girl for me. Lydia and Kitty, they are not for me, and Jane and Lizzy, I am not for them. But Mary, even in her hamhanded book incarnation, would be someone I could imagine being with, and Arthur is a far more perfect mate for her than that.

This is a play for the warm fuzzies and only the warm fuzzies.

sweet dish served cold

I attended an online session in which half a dozen Tolkien scholars gave brief presentations discussing aspects of the second season of Rings of Power. I had figured - correctly, by the combination of the experience and the thrust of the talks - that this would be not only a quicker but a more entertaining way of finding out what happened in it than by actually watching the thing.

My heart was warmed by the sight of all this ragging on the show in the same way that I was ragging on Peter Jackson twenty-odd years ago. And I told them that.

concert review: Palo Alto Philharmonic

I've been to this local community orchestra before, and I might have gone to this concert anyway, but I had a special reason: our niece E. has joined it. She plays double bass. In fact all three of the double bass players in this orchestra are women, and if you're reminded of the Netflix documentary The Only Girl in the Orchestra about the first woman, a double bass player, to join the New York Philharmonic, so am I. (I also know someone who used to be a cellist in this orchestra, but he left some time ago.)

A few other family members, including our nephew L., E.'s husband, showed up to cheer along. B., however, had been at a music-making session earlier and had had enough for one day. L. was attempting to concoct a baseball joke about third bass, but I warned him it's been done.

The program featured a flute concerto by the Japanese composer Yuko Uebayashi, with Ráyo Furuta as soloist. I've heard Uebayashi's flute chamber music before, under Furata's curation, and I liked it a lot. I was not so excited by the concerto, which was more of the Debussyean impressionist part and less of the bouncy, exciting part. E. confessed that she wasn't always sure what key the music was in, which likely was a result of the Debussy influence; and listening to the orchestra, I'm not sure they always knew what key they were in either. Furuta, though, as usual was a dazzling soloist.

Followed by Beethoven's Fifth, a dramatic and urgent, and pretty well together, performance, nicely led by music director Lara Webber.

That was Saturday. On Friday, B. and I did go out together, for a concert by Brocelïande, our favorite Renaissance/folk band. Half of it was the Christmas seasonal music they do so well; the other half was their music for other seasons to honor the publication of their first songbook, which covers that part of their repertoire. They were a little tired and out of sorts this time, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

quiz: why is the Pentagon in the shape of a pentagon?

1. Because it would be silly to call a building "The Pentagon" if it wasn't shaped like a pentagon.
2. To signify the five branches of the military: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard.
3. To evoke the shape of 15th-century fortifications.
4. To confuse any potential assailants, like the ones on 9/11, as to which face of the building to attack.
5. To best fit in the space they decided to build it in.
6. To fit in the space they were originally going to build it in, but they moved the site and decided to leave it as a pentagon because it looked cool.

what we have come to

This review of the new War of the Rohirrim movie, which like other reviews I've seen describes as dull and forgettable this attempt to fill out Tolkien's brief backstory of Helm's Deep, gets one important thing critically right. The author writes, "Game of Thrones ... and others have assumed that fantasy will only appeal to modern audiences if it's people using violence to jockey for position. This is a far cry from The Lord of the Rings the world fell in love with, where power is a corruptive force and inflicting violence, while necessary in war, is not necessarily what makes a hero." (I've moved a comma to improve the grammatical sense.)

This is one of the strongest of the important points that distinguish Tolkien's work from the hack-and-slash fantasies so often incongruously associated with his. I once wrote, "Those mighty-thewed warriors would consider even Aragorn a rather sniveling fellow, and would not grasp the concept of the non-violent Frodo as a hero at all." So many people don't get this difference; this writer does; so far so good.

The problem is that context shows that what the writer means by "The Lord of the Rings the world fell in love with" is the Jackson movies. We have reached a state of degradation where Jackson's atrocious distortion of Tolkien's themes looks like a beacon of faithfulness to the original in comparison with the even worse atrocities - including Jackson's Hobbit - that have come since.

I survived only one episode of Rings of Power and found myself wondering why anyone who loves Tolkien's work would even want to watch this. The amoral whinging - so similar to the description of War of the Rohirrim in these reviews - is so totally unlike Tolkien as to leave nothing in common but a few of the character names. Surely that's not enough to account for its appeal. You might like this kind of hack fiction also, but only as an entirely separate thing: to affiliate it with Tolkien's suggests you weren't paying attention when you read the original.

Such a problem infects another review of War of the Rohirrim I've seen which takes a similar tack to the first one. This author claims that the sheer length of Jackson's movies is "part of why [they're] so beloved," explaining that "Jackson's films mimicked the feeling of reading Tolkien's novels, more focused on spinning a yarn than structuring a story for the necessary constraints of television."

Well, that Jackson didn't care about constraints for structuring his story is true. Jackson told the story the way he wanted to, ignoring the "rules" of moviemaking whenever he wanted to (which is why I refuse to accept the necessities of the rules of moviemaking as a defense for his atrocities on the source material). He didn't tell it the way that conventional moviemakers would have wanted, or the way that Tolkien would have wanted.

But if that's what makes his movies beloved, then his Hobbit - even longer (relatively) and less structured than his LR - should be even more beloved. But it isn't, so that's hogwash. And even more hogwashable is the claim that LR "mimicked the feeling of reading Tolkien's novels." My god, did you see the movies? Did you read the book? Despite the movies' length, the rush-rush-rush of the action, the pitching directly from one catastrophe into the next (not 100% accurate, but it feels that way next to the book), with pauses either entirely omitted (where's the days-long creeping through Moria, for instance? It could have been depicted in a brief shot of a few seconds without adding anything to the run time) or treated ineptly (Rivendell, beautiful but perfunctory and hamhanded, and Lorien, not even beautiful) is so far from mimicking the book as to be one of the atrocities.

I won't be watching War of the Rohirrim. I have no interest in a hack-and-slash adventure, even if it's supposedly set in Tolkien's world and has his invented names on some of the characters. And I don't get why other Tolkien fans would bother to watch it.

two little concerts

Sunday I went to a Harmonia California concert. As with the previous time, I was impressed with the strong and heavy sound of this tiny (17-person) string orchestra, perfect for Baroque-period works in the minor (a Handel concerto grosso and an oboe concerto variously attributed to one or the other of the Marcello brothers - soloist Laura Griffiths was skilled far beyond the community orchestra level) and Tchaikovsky's Serenade.
Also on the program, a new five-minute piece by the orchestra's manager, Alan Hebert, who's taken up composition in his retirement from his day job. It's inspired by his favorite composer, Gerald Finzi. Finzi? That's an unusual choice for ... it sounded at least as much like Delius to me.

Tuesday a student group at Stanford was playing two Brahms chamber works with piano: the Quintet Op. 34 and the Quartet Op. 25, both favorites of mine. As often, especially with Brahms, I wished my mother were alive to go with me. The result was rather tepid in the offering, but earnest enough and competently played. The students, a group of mostly juniors who've been playing together since they were frosh, include 3 computer science majors, one in biomedical computation, and one in symbolic systems, whatever that may be. As B. points out, you don't go to Stanford to major in music. You play it on the side, and that's what they do here.

Getting there was a little exciting. The vet had been running busy, and I didn't get the cats out until 6. From there it's 15 minutes home without the commuter traffic which was heavy; the Stanford concert was at 7:30 and it takes 20 minutes to get there. In between which I wanted to make and eat dinner (that's myself and B). So I pan-fried up the frozen quesadillas I'd bought at Lunardi's last week. Being frozen they actually took longer to cook than the ones I make myself, but at least I didn't have to assemble the ingredients. Result, mixed quality.

cats in bondage

Every time one of our cats wanted to snuggle in the last couple of weeks - and they've wanted a lot of it - I felt guilty, knowing that today we would betray their trust and take them to the vet. Maia did her damndest to avoid being locked up in the cat carrier, while Tybalt sort of gave up. He's a very bright and personable pussycat, and I think he's figured out from past experience that resistance is futile.

That didn't prevent him from yowling loudly from the carrier, at least whenever he could see that I was around. But unlike Maia, who darted for cover the instant we opened the carrier on returning home, Tybalt just sort of sauntered out and was soon looking for love and petting again. Maia reappeared as soon as there was Food.

Tybalt has a heart condition, and part of his vet appointment was an echocardiogram, which he hadn't had before. I was afraid that being forced to lie prone for ten minutes while the sensor rummaged around his chest might traumatize him, but he seems OK. The vet said the cats were well-behaved, which is not how they sounded as the stereo yowling accompanied me as I carried the two hi-fi speakers into the vet's office.

another online conference

This weekend's was co-sponsored by the Tolkien Society (UK-based, though very international) and the Tolkien Society of Serbia, and Saturday's papers were to be in Serbian. I was busy anyway, so I skipped that, and listened to as much as I could - not much, as it turned out - of Sunday's in English.

The best one I heard was a presentation by Erik Jampa Andersson on the historical framing of the legendarium. He talked lucidly and with command of the material about the purported fictional translations, and about the real-world historical setting, postulating that Tolkien pulled back from the initial idea of a mythological English origin story to something set further and further back in history,* to the point - Andersson said - that the legends could be depicted as the origins not just of English or even broadly European myths, but more generally - so as to authorize anybody to write Tolkien fanfic or create media adaptations? I wasn't quite clear what the argumentative point was here.

Andersson then segued into discussion of media adaptations in general, and here I lost more of his thread. Noting Tolkien's belief that drama was naturally hostile to fantasy, producing mechanical tricks which strain to generate secondary belief, Andersson simultaneously argued that viewers of fiction films can't be totally immersed into the experience because they can't forget that they're watching actors and not the 'real' people, but also that a movie, because it is visual and auditory, not just textual, 'cements' that version of the story in viewers' minds, making them think that's the 'correct' version.

This ties in with my argument about media colonization - that you can't just ignore an effective movie and take the book down from the shelf, because the movie will be in the head - but Andersson was more interested in contrasting this 'cementing' with Tolkien's preference for unreliable narration.

Here I thought he went a little far. It's true that Tolkien experimented with writing stories that were factually unreliable within the fictive universe, but I think you can tell which ones those are, and while there are small points in The Lord of the Rings which are unknown or unanswered, the oft-used trope of claiming Sauron as the hero and depicting the book as a giant libel on him does not, I think, fall into that category. I mean, you can write that, but don't claim Tolkien's imprimatur on it.

*Andersson said what I've also noted, which that it is often difficult to explain to people that Tolkien's legendarium is set - as Andersson very nicely put it - not in an imaginary place, but in a real place in an imaginary time.

reading and eating

Today was our book discussion group's annual 'reading and eating' meeting, where we gather for food and to read short selections of our choice aloud to each other. And it was our second year in the back room of an Irish pub. Seven people again, almost all the same folks as last year. And we had lunch, most taking food typical of an Irish or British pub, only I had a caesar salad, and then did our reading.

As B. and I came by car, it wasn't difficult for me to lug along all three newly-published volumes of Tolkien's Collected Poetry to show them off and to read from. My first selection I introduced by saying "You all know the song which ends 'That's what Bilbo Baggins hates! / So carefully! carefully with the plates!' But what did J.R.R. Tolkien hate? Motorcycles!" And I read the previously unpublished poem expostulating almost incoherently against motorcycles in alliterative verse.

Other readings included more Tolkien, William Morris, Charles Dickens, Connie Willis, The Bloggess, and Yangsze Choo if I've spelled that correctly.

On the drive up I had the radio on, and Saturday morning is the weekly opera broadcast, into which we were dumped in the middle. We tried to figure out whose music it was. The sung language was German, so that limited the possibilities. The orchestra was wildly emotive enough to be Wagner, but the tone colors didn't have a distinctively Wagnerian air. B. thought maybe Weber, who certainly could be weird enough, but I thought the harmonic language beyond him. Then came a passage to which my comment was, "Now it sounds like Richard Strauss." It was. The act ended just before we arrived. It was Die Frau ohne Schatten.

the text police

I realize there are far more important things going on in this article, but what caught my eye in this story of dating gone wrong was the description of this as suspicious in the man's behavior: "Over the four weeks that they chatted virtually, though, he was 'hot and cold'—sometimes going silent for eight hours."

Eight hours? That's how long an average human being goes silent every day because they're asleep. I've never been used to instantaneous back-and-forth message communication, not even on e-mail, and I certainly wouldn't tolerate it now. If anyone started sending me messages at a rate at which an eight-hour gap was considered 'going silent,' I'd have to ask them to stop. The idea of being tied down to my mobile phone like that is horrifying. (When would I have the time to charge it?)

All this was going on by text, of course, and the above even leaves aside the fact that I hate texting anyway. I'm a touch typist, and any form of typing which doesn't allow me to place eight fingers on the home keys is anathema to me, I just hate it. It's even annoying at the desktop computer when I have to use one hand to hold a cat which wants to sit on my chest; cat cuddling is compatible with reading or watching videos, not writing. I will only text to send a short message for business purposes, and even then only if my recipient clearly expects it that way. Fortunately I only deal with a couple of people who are like that.

I admit that in a noisy situation, texting eliminates the problem of not being able to hear a voice call. Though I've found that, when trying to send a text in a fast-moving situation - we're both in the same building and need to meet right away, that sort of thing - the situation is usually changed (e.g. the other person has actually found me) before I can finish writing the text.

This is rendered worse because I keep getting the backspace and delete buttons on my phone mixed up in my mind. I make a typo and want to change that one last character, and suddenly find I've erased the entire message and have to start over.

I hate texting, and I won't do casual chatting that way. Thank the Lord I'm married to a woman as quiet as I am and I'm permanently out of the dating market.

four concerts

The weekend before Thanksgiving I went to three concerts. I was reviewing two of them, but the publication of the reviews was very late. So I waited to write about them until now.

1. South Bay Philharmonic, Friday
This is the community orchestra that B. is a violist in. They gathered to play Vasily Kalinnikov's First Symphony, which I've been hearing practiced in my living room almost continuously for the past several months. You may not have heard of Vasily Kalinnikov or his First Symphony, but I had. It was written just after Tchaikovsky's death, and sounds more like a Tchaikovsky symphony than anything else that isn't a Tchaikovsky symphony. I like it a lot, and enjoyed what was I think only the second time I'd heard it live. Especially the Andante, which was haunting.

2. Redwood Symphony, Saturday
This gathering was to play Dmitri Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, which is the Very Difficult symphony I wrote on Nov. 22 that I was facing reviewing. My review says most of it, including why I was so looking forward to hearing this, which is that it's by far the most Mahlerian symphony Shostakovich ever wrote, and the Redwood Symphony does revelatory Mahler. I didn't find this performance revelatory in terms of casting insight as to how or why the composer wrote it as he did, but it was excellently done, just sizzling. I was particularly relieved that my study sessions had enabled me to internalize this "one damn thing randomly after another" piece enough to usually know what was coming next, because it really contributed to my appreciation of this first time I'd heard the piece live.

3. Peninsula Symphony and Stanford Symphonic Chorus, Sunday
Then I went to Bing to hear something by a favorite composer that I'd never heard at all, live or otherwise. Indeed, for years I hadn't even been aware that Howard Hanson had written a final, choral, seventh symphony. He called it "A Sea Symphony." So did Ralph Vaughan Williams title his choral symphony, 65 years earlier. Hanson set poems by Walt Whitman extolling the sea and shipping on the sea. So did Vaughan Williams. Hanson wrote four movements. So did Vaughan Williams. But Vaughan Williams's symphony is an hour long, Hanson's only 20. It also doesn't sound that much like Vaughan Williams, or like Hanson either, being a bit imitative but a bit watery. I'm glad I heard it, though, and I wrote a review.

Then this week, I went to hear

4. The Chamber Music Society of San Francisco, Monday
at the Freight - which does classical chamber music occasionally - in the form of a string quartet, playing Mozart's K. 575 and Beethoven's Op. 127. Good solid performances, just not as weighty as the works deserve. Large audience, mostly grey-haired.
Distressing discovery of the evening was that almost the entire block of Center Street with the good restaurants that are convenient to the BART station has been closed down for redevelopment, and will be shut off for the next two years. One of the restaurants I like has moved, but to too far away to be convenient for a pre-Freight dinner, alas.