So word had been forwarded to me that the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, which is based I think in Detroit, was going to be online and free. So I decided to sign up for this, and for their eight online events over five days they kindly sent me one e-mail a day with links to the YouTube videos. The evening concerts, though only an hour long each, were imaginatively programmed and featured some performers I knew from Menlo. Obviously I couldn't attend the one live event, which featured a work by John Luther Adams performed by musicians spread out over three acres of the Cranbrook School grounds. I've been to one spread-out spatial outdoor concert like this, and didn't find anybody I wasn't standing near to be at all audible, so I doubt this worked very well.
More interesting to me were the morning string quartet interviews, especially because three of the four quartets I knew from Banff (or rather two-and-a-half, since only two of the Rolston's members are still the ones they had when they won top prize at Banff four years ago). The interviews, which were over typically stuttering teleconference software, were all conducted by Philip Setzer, who may be a great chamber music violinist, but he should retire from interviewing. His response to anything the interviewees said by telling some hoary and usually limp anecdote from his own long experience, and the demeaning joshing remarks he'd make to the performers, were fairly painful, and you could see them gritting their teeth to get through it, because they didn't want to be rude to the old guy who could still influence their careers.
But the pre-recorded performances they offered were good, and the best was the Viano Quartet in Mendelssohn's Op. 80. Despite the disconcerting effect of their masks making them look like pirates, they turned in a tight and sizzling performance that shows why they were a Banff competition winner last year. It's still online for a little while: here, have a listen.
Then afterwards the festival sent me one of those useless little surveys, with a subject line on the e-mail reading, "Let us know you're experience with the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival." Oh, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, shame on you.
Kalimac's corner: a journal by DB
Monday, August 31, 2020
Sunday, August 30, 2020
some books read
The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir by John Bolton (Simon & Schuster). One book I would only get from the library; I wouldn't give Bolton any money. Painstakingly detailed account of the author's time as National Security Advisor, that feels like it's taking you through the story at the same pace that he lived it. This does have the advantage of giving a concrete feeling of what it was like to exist inside the Trump administration, but after a while the eyes water, interest in the details of negotiations with Russia, North Korea, and Venezuela (which gets an unexpectly large amount of space here) falters, and you begin skimming through looking for the juicy bits which were already mined by journalists anyway. For a truly disconcerting and vertiginous experience, read this book in between watching old episodes of The West Wing.
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum (Doubleday). Sweeping account, focused on Poland, East Germany, and Hungary, of how the Russians came in and rogered these countries. Large-scale chapters on various topics explore how the invaders and their patsies were slowly able to put the weight on and force acquiescence from the citizenry. Of course the fundamental reason, the fist inside the glove, that the Communists could do this was the threat of the Red Army. The book makes compelling reading, despite the dryness of the presentation, because of the clarity and meaningfulness of the facts. A few places give a hint of some limitations in the source material: Applebaum has clearly read the memoirs of Andrzej Panufnik, but the absence of virtually any other references to classical music, in a book with a heavy emphasis on cultural themes, is noticeable.
The Bible Doesn't Say That by Dr. Joel M. Hoffman (St Martin's). The title suggests a journalistic debunking, but it's nothing of the sort, and specifically in no way an attack on the Bible, but an attempt to cleanse it of misinterpretations. The author is a Biblical scholar and writes like one, straining towards a general-reader's approach as he fussily explains the difference in nuance or in rhetorical import between some Hebrew word and its usual English translation, littering the text with extraordinarily inept parallels. He disconcerts the reader by brushing aside various controversies, like the question of whether Isaiah says "a virgin" or a "young woman", as insignificant issues of fuzzy translation. Even when he ought to be tearing into red meat, as with "no, there's no such thing as the Rapture," he's fussy.
Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages by Gaston Dorren (Atlantic Monthly). Brief but concrete essayettes on various aspects of language - internal things like vocabulary and, yes, grammar; external ones like place in national and ethnic culture - each illustrated by one or more European languages, which turn out to have distinct style markers even from their related neighbors. Much of what's in this book I already vaguely knew, but it's nice to have it confirmed (like the inter-intelligibility of the Scandinavian languages, or the story of the resurrection of Celtic ones), and yes, what it always seems like is true: Spanish really is spoken faster than other languages.
At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson (Doubleday). Another one of Bryson's bursting-with-facts entertaining reads, like A Short History of Nearly Everything (so long as "everything" is defined as "earth sciences and biology"), One Summer (the event-filled American year of 1927), and Made in America (its language), like them it is packed with varyingly-relevant digressions. Organized by the rooms of a 19C English house, it discusses its design, construction, and what went on there, from treatment of servants to disease to forestry (houses need to be built, after all) to nutrition to the acquisition and use of whale oil to the advent of the telephone, going as far afield as to explain how (and why) the Eiffel Tower, no house and not English, was built. An irrelevant footnote regarding Parliamentary elections on p. 24 completely confuses pocket boroughs and rotten boroughs, leading me to wonder what else Bryson gets wrong with utter confidence in what he's saying.
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum (Doubleday). Sweeping account, focused on Poland, East Germany, and Hungary, of how the Russians came in and rogered these countries. Large-scale chapters on various topics explore how the invaders and their patsies were slowly able to put the weight on and force acquiescence from the citizenry. Of course the fundamental reason, the fist inside the glove, that the Communists could do this was the threat of the Red Army. The book makes compelling reading, despite the dryness of the presentation, because of the clarity and meaningfulness of the facts. A few places give a hint of some limitations in the source material: Applebaum has clearly read the memoirs of Andrzej Panufnik, but the absence of virtually any other references to classical music, in a book with a heavy emphasis on cultural themes, is noticeable.
The Bible Doesn't Say That by Dr. Joel M. Hoffman (St Martin's). The title suggests a journalistic debunking, but it's nothing of the sort, and specifically in no way an attack on the Bible, but an attempt to cleanse it of misinterpretations. The author is a Biblical scholar and writes like one, straining towards a general-reader's approach as he fussily explains the difference in nuance or in rhetorical import between some Hebrew word and its usual English translation, littering the text with extraordinarily inept parallels. He disconcerts the reader by brushing aside various controversies, like the question of whether Isaiah says "a virgin" or a "young woman", as insignificant issues of fuzzy translation. Even when he ought to be tearing into red meat, as with "no, there's no such thing as the Rapture," he's fussy.
Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages by Gaston Dorren (Atlantic Monthly). Brief but concrete essayettes on various aspects of language - internal things like vocabulary and, yes, grammar; external ones like place in national and ethnic culture - each illustrated by one or more European languages, which turn out to have distinct style markers even from their related neighbors. Much of what's in this book I already vaguely knew, but it's nice to have it confirmed (like the inter-intelligibility of the Scandinavian languages, or the story of the resurrection of Celtic ones), and yes, what it always seems like is true: Spanish really is spoken faster than other languages.
At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson (Doubleday). Another one of Bryson's bursting-with-facts entertaining reads, like A Short History of Nearly Everything (so long as "everything" is defined as "earth sciences and biology"), One Summer (the event-filled American year of 1927), and Made in America (its language), like them it is packed with varyingly-relevant digressions. Organized by the rooms of a 19C English house, it discusses its design, construction, and what went on there, from treatment of servants to disease to forestry (houses need to be built, after all) to nutrition to the acquisition and use of whale oil to the advent of the telephone, going as far afield as to explain how (and why) the Eiffel Tower, no house and not English, was built. An irrelevant footnote regarding Parliamentary elections on p. 24 completely confuses pocket boroughs and rotten boroughs, leading me to wonder what else Bryson gets wrong with utter confidence in what he's saying.
Saturday, August 29, 2020
... I wasn't one
So Annette Bening and Bill Nighy are starring in a new movie about a long-married couple who break up. And although they didn't write the script, they have a lot to say about women, men, and relationships.
But of all they say, the part that most struck me was this:
Eventually I grew comfortable with just being me, and knowing that other men felt the same. Perhaps Nighy did too; notice he speaks in the past tense. There is hope.
But of all they say, the part that most struck me was this:
“I don’t like the look of hardly any versions of being male, frankly,” says Nighy. “I never found those expressions of masculinity attractive. When I was younger I’d keep quiet in the company of men because I always felt that I wasn’t one.”That I wasn't one. That really speaks to me: or did, when I too was younger. Teens, twenties. I didn't feel comfortable classing myself as a boy or man. That implied things I felt I was not. But I never thought I was a woman in the wrong body either. I didn't know what I was.
Eventually I grew comfortable with just being me, and knowing that other men felt the same. Perhaps Nighy did too; notice he speaks in the past tense. There is hope.
Thursday, August 27, 2020
faint little object
Never mind why this came up, but I was wondering why it took over 60 years after the discovery of Pluto to find any of the other, now known to be numerous, trans-neptunian objects in our solar system. It wasn't because they weren't being looked for. Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto by chance, but it was in the course of a search for additional planets, which he kept up for another dozen years without finding anything else out in that zone. (Please note also that these things are damned hard to notice. Pluto was first photographed over 20 years before being discovered, but nobody noticed it wasn't just a faint star until Tombaugh used his blink comparator.)
The obvious answers are 1) because he was looking in the ecliptic, and Pluto has the least eccentric orbit of the bunch, or so I have read it does; and 2) though very faint, it's by far the brightest such object. But how much brighter is it? A search for a list of the apparent magnitudes of these objects didn't produce anything, though perhaps you can find one. What I did find was a list of the absolute magnitudes, which is not the same thing, and doesn't tell us how visible they are from Earth. I can get the apparent magnitude from Wikipedia articles for at least some of the objects (not all of them have Wikipedia pages), but I don't want to have to look them all up.
The two brightest in absolute terms are Pluto and Eris, which are both between -0.7 and -1.2, depending on which sources you consult. Pluto's apparent magnitude varies from 13.65 to 16.3, depending on where it is in relation to us. Eris has a much more eccentric orbit, but is mostly much further out, and its apparent magnitude is given as 18.7, though that's got to vary. At any rate it's certainly a lot harder to see, though I note it was first photographed fifty years before it was discovered. (The term for this is "precovery.")
(The best precovery story I've found is this: when Galileo was studying the moons of Jupiter, he noticed a star behind Jupiter which seemed to move, but he ignored it. It was Neptune. Which wouldn't be officially discovered for well over another 200 years.)
Anyway, I'm disinclined to look up a bunch more objects, but that's enough to give me a guess as to what I'd find.
The obvious answers are 1) because he was looking in the ecliptic, and Pluto has the least eccentric orbit of the bunch, or so I have read it does; and 2) though very faint, it's by far the brightest such object. But how much brighter is it? A search for a list of the apparent magnitudes of these objects didn't produce anything, though perhaps you can find one. What I did find was a list of the absolute magnitudes, which is not the same thing, and doesn't tell us how visible they are from Earth. I can get the apparent magnitude from Wikipedia articles for at least some of the objects (not all of them have Wikipedia pages), but I don't want to have to look them all up.
The two brightest in absolute terms are Pluto and Eris, which are both between -0.7 and -1.2, depending on which sources you consult. Pluto's apparent magnitude varies from 13.65 to 16.3, depending on where it is in relation to us. Eris has a much more eccentric orbit, but is mostly much further out, and its apparent magnitude is given as 18.7, though that's got to vary. At any rate it's certainly a lot harder to see, though I note it was first photographed fifty years before it was discovered. (The term for this is "precovery.")
(The best precovery story I've found is this: when Galileo was studying the moons of Jupiter, he noticed a star behind Jupiter which seemed to move, but he ignored it. It was Neptune. Which wouldn't be officially discovered for well over another 200 years.)
Anyway, I'm disinclined to look up a bunch more objects, but that's enough to give me a guess as to what I'd find.
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
sleep according to cat
Now that B. is retired, we want to sleep in, and that means without manic cats bouncing against the walls in our bedroom, hoping that we'll get up. Of course one of us will get up to feed them at 5 am (usually B, unless I'm still up from my frequent middle-of-the-night awake spells), but then we want to go back to sleep again.
Often times we toss the cats out of the bedroom and latch the door. Sometimes it doesn't stay latched. Even if it does ... this morning I was up, in my office, when the cats started prowling in around 4, hoping for food. I fed them at 5 and then went back to bed, latching the door on the cats. But that didn't satisfy Tybalt, who started pawing and scratching at the door.
So I got out of bed. I went to the door and knelt on the floor, so my face would be at cat-level. I cracked open the door, stuck my face in the crack, and hissed. This is by far the clearest way to express disapproval to a cat. Tybalt was so startled he leapt backwards. Then I shut the door again. Pawing and scratching did not resume. O blessed sleep.
Often times we toss the cats out of the bedroom and latch the door. Sometimes it doesn't stay latched. Even if it does ... this morning I was up, in my office, when the cats started prowling in around 4, hoping for food. I fed them at 5 and then went back to bed, latching the door on the cats. But that didn't satisfy Tybalt, who started pawing and scratching at the door.
So I got out of bed. I went to the door and knelt on the floor, so my face would be at cat-level. I cracked open the door, stuck my face in the crack, and hissed. This is by far the clearest way to express disapproval to a cat. Tybalt was so startled he leapt backwards. Then I shut the door again. Pawing and scratching did not resume. O blessed sleep.
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
trips in waiting
When I was working, often long hours with little vacation, I would muse on the things I'd like to do and trips I'd like to take if only I had the time to do them. But when I was between jobs and had the time, I'd forget what I'd been thinking of. Eventually I decided to keep a list and just consult that the next time I had the opportunity to travel. This worked splendidly.
So now I think I will start a list of the trips I want to take once the virus is no longer a danger. This doesn't include a pair of 2020 conferences I already signed up for which have hopefully (a word I'm using in the traditional sense) rescheduled themselves for 2021.
1 and top priority: to visit my brother in Pittsburgh. I haven't been there since before he moved house (though I've seen him when he came out here), for lack of an urgent reason to go. But he was recently ill for a while, and I couldn't go and help out (not least because Pennsylvania has quarantine). So as soon as I can go, I will.
2: to visit our nephew and his family, and some friends, in Seattle. This one is for B. and me together. We're going to drive up, which we never have done together further than Portland. But hey: she's retired, so we have the time. We were going to do that after going to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in October, but that's out, so it'll have to be next year.
3: Pinnacles National Park. Day trip, since it's only 80 miles from here. I've been to all the National Parks in California at one time or another, but I haven't been to Pinnacles since before it was a national park. I was thinking of going in February, when I still had an annual pass I got without asking when we went to Cabrillo NM in San Diego last summer, but I didn't get around to it, and after that it was too late.
4: The Mother Lode gold country in the California Sierras. This is a road trip I started working out last year. I've been here before, several times, but never comprehensively or in the amount of detail I'd like. As I worked it out, I could do this satisfactorily in three full days plus time to travel there and back. And it's smaller-scale than, for instance, my week in Montana a couple years back.
So now I think I will start a list of the trips I want to take once the virus is no longer a danger. This doesn't include a pair of 2020 conferences I already signed up for which have hopefully (a word I'm using in the traditional sense) rescheduled themselves for 2021.
1 and top priority: to visit my brother in Pittsburgh. I haven't been there since before he moved house (though I've seen him when he came out here), for lack of an urgent reason to go. But he was recently ill for a while, and I couldn't go and help out (not least because Pennsylvania has quarantine). So as soon as I can go, I will.
2: to visit our nephew and his family, and some friends, in Seattle. This one is for B. and me together. We're going to drive up, which we never have done together further than Portland. But hey: she's retired, so we have the time. We were going to do that after going to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in October, but that's out, so it'll have to be next year.
3: Pinnacles National Park. Day trip, since it's only 80 miles from here. I've been to all the National Parks in California at one time or another, but I haven't been to Pinnacles since before it was a national park. I was thinking of going in February, when I still had an annual pass I got without asking when we went to Cabrillo NM in San Diego last summer, but I didn't get around to it, and after that it was too late.
4: The Mother Lode gold country in the California Sierras. This is a road trip I started working out last year. I've been here before, several times, but never comprehensively or in the amount of detail I'd like. As I worked it out, I could do this satisfactorily in three full days plus time to travel there and back. And it's smaller-scale than, for instance, my week in Montana a couple years back.
Monday, August 24, 2020
adjacent to the hellfires
So how are we doing surrounded by the blazes that are pummeling the California mountains? We're not suffering as the victims are, we're just feeling vaguely miserable. The air has been full of smoke and a fetid miasma for about six days now, and while the heat has backed off a little bit - it's high 80s instead of 90s - we were trying to keep the house closed up for a while despite the resulting lack of chances to cool it off. But eventually the smell got in the house anyway, so we gave up.
I'm trying to keep track of the exact geographic locations of the fires, but it's not easy. Newspaper articles sometimes give links to official fire maps, so I bookmark those, but they're not always updated, and since there's nothing intuitive about the URLs, I can't hunt for a more recent one that way, and search engines are no help at all. The state fire site evacuation zone list is less up to date than the newspapers, and has no useful maps. Nor are the newspaper articles always a help: a photo of a house burning in Boulder Creek gave its location as the intersection of two streets which are at the far opposite sides of town, so I don't know where it is.
There appears to be slow progress in containing the fires, aided in the coastside case by slightly foggier weather, but another tropical storm passing through yesterday and today may bring more lightning, which is what set off the fires in the first place a week ago. However, at least last week's powerful thunderstorm was not replicated last night. But the real fire season in California is October and November (Paradise burned on November 8), and I wonder what will happen then.
Meanwhile, I feel even more cooped up than I had previously during the pandemic, despite actually getting out. A minor but urgent medical situation got me into the Kaiser facility for the first time since before the shutdown. It was fairly empty and a little spooky, including my first elevator ride in at least six months. (Signs said, limit of 2 people in an elevator.) Another thing I experienced here is that the difficulty of hearing through masks can put real difficulties in communication. I have more visits ahead of me, and my doctor wants this finished before October, which is also when flu season starts.
Somewhat earlier, I decided to take another virus test. The county has decided to eliminate the walkups that make you stand in line for three hours, as I did the last time, and moved to an online appointment system. Stations are open for 3 days and appointments are taken for a couple days before that. I found one open for the next three days, and while all the slots for the first day had been taken, there were still plenty for the other days. It was a drive-through located in the parking lot of the county fairgrounds. You pull up, lower your window, they scan your appointment barcode, then you lower your mask and they swab your nose (swirling around the lower nostril again - I still haven't experienced the way-up-the-nose version that I'd earlier read was obligatory) while you sit in the car. The e-mail assuring me I was OK came so heavily encrypted I almost couldn't open it.
Flu shots this year are going to be drive-through too, my doctor says.
I'm trying to keep track of the exact geographic locations of the fires, but it's not easy. Newspaper articles sometimes give links to official fire maps, so I bookmark those, but they're not always updated, and since there's nothing intuitive about the URLs, I can't hunt for a more recent one that way, and search engines are no help at all. The state fire site evacuation zone list is less up to date than the newspapers, and has no useful maps. Nor are the newspaper articles always a help: a photo of a house burning in Boulder Creek gave its location as the intersection of two streets which are at the far opposite sides of town, so I don't know where it is.
There appears to be slow progress in containing the fires, aided in the coastside case by slightly foggier weather, but another tropical storm passing through yesterday and today may bring more lightning, which is what set off the fires in the first place a week ago. However, at least last week's powerful thunderstorm was not replicated last night. But the real fire season in California is October and November (Paradise burned on November 8), and I wonder what will happen then.
Meanwhile, I feel even more cooped up than I had previously during the pandemic, despite actually getting out. A minor but urgent medical situation got me into the Kaiser facility for the first time since before the shutdown. It was fairly empty and a little spooky, including my first elevator ride in at least six months. (Signs said, limit of 2 people in an elevator.) Another thing I experienced here is that the difficulty of hearing through masks can put real difficulties in communication. I have more visits ahead of me, and my doctor wants this finished before October, which is also when flu season starts.
Somewhat earlier, I decided to take another virus test. The county has decided to eliminate the walkups that make you stand in line for three hours, as I did the last time, and moved to an online appointment system. Stations are open for 3 days and appointments are taken for a couple days before that. I found one open for the next three days, and while all the slots for the first day had been taken, there were still plenty for the other days. It was a drive-through located in the parking lot of the county fairgrounds. You pull up, lower your window, they scan your appointment barcode, then you lower your mask and they swab your nose (swirling around the lower nostril again - I still haven't experienced the way-up-the-nose version that I'd earlier read was obligatory) while you sit in the car. The e-mail assuring me I was OK came so heavily encrypted I almost couldn't open it.
Flu shots this year are going to be drive-through too, my doctor says.
Sunday, August 23, 2020
Democrats, day 4
I didn't see all of this, for various reasons. I didn't see the 13-year-old stutterer, who is said to have been inspiring. I didn't see the opening, which resulted in my walking in to the tv room in the middle of one of Julia Louis-Dreyfus's monologues and not recognizing her, because I hadn't seen her since Seinfeld went off the air. I didn't think too highly of her lame jokes, like attempting to mispronounce "Mike Pence," not in the context of all the inspiring stuff elsewhere in the show.
Stuff like: Lots of ex-rivals telling us what's good about Biden, most effectively and believably from Bernie Sanders. Lots of stories about Biden phoning people out of the blue, or taking half an hour to talk to some random citizen he just met. (If he does things like this all the time, as implied, he wouldn't have time to get anything else done.) So many tributes to Beau Biden and John Lewis, it was as if they were the stars of the show. The award for worst failed attempt to be inspiring goes to the young couple who quizzed their little girls about current events for an agonizingly extended period of time. Sometimes, "mouth of babes" is not a guarantor of wisdom.
Biden's speech was the usual aspirational stuff about how he wants to be president of all the people. Does that ever work? At the end, the mockup of the big cheering crowds at other conventions took the form of Joe and Kamala and spouses waving in the usual fashion at a video wall. Then they walked out into a drive-in theater full of cars that were honking; I'd hate to be a neighbor to that theater, especially as it must have been 11 pm where they were.
Stuff like: Lots of ex-rivals telling us what's good about Biden, most effectively and believably from Bernie Sanders. Lots of stories about Biden phoning people out of the blue, or taking half an hour to talk to some random citizen he just met. (If he does things like this all the time, as implied, he wouldn't have time to get anything else done.) So many tributes to Beau Biden and John Lewis, it was as if they were the stars of the show. The award for worst failed attempt to be inspiring goes to the young couple who quizzed their little girls about current events for an agonizingly extended period of time. Sometimes, "mouth of babes" is not a guarantor of wisdom.
Biden's speech was the usual aspirational stuff about how he wants to be president of all the people. Does that ever work? At the end, the mockup of the big cheering crowds at other conventions took the form of Joe and Kamala and spouses waving in the usual fashion at a video wall. Then they walked out into a drive-in theater full of cars that were honking; I'd hate to be a neighbor to that theater, especially as it must have been 11 pm where they were.
Thursday, August 20, 2020
fires
The brush fires I previously mentioned, ignited over last weekend by lightning strikes, have turned into massive mountain-fire conflagrations. The town of Boulder Creek, which I visited on Sunday, was put under mandatory evacuation on Tuesday, and while at last report the town hadn't burned yet, the buildings at the redwoods state park just up the road from it had. Evacuations have now extended to nearly half the county, albeit the more wooded and less heavily settled half.
Over here in the valley on the other side of the mountains, the air has been smoky and murky for the last couple of days. The fire hasn't crossed the mountain crest, but it's completely uncontrolled due to the hot dry weather and the overextension of firefighting needs in lots of other similar fires elsewhere in the area. We're closer to the near edge of the fire than the far edge on the other side is.
If the fire does go over the mountain, could it then extend down into the urban flatlands which we're about 2 miles from the foothills edge of? That's happened a few times - it happened in the big Santa Rosa fire a couple years ago - and the magnitude here is unprecedented. And if an evacuation order is issued, how will people get out of this dense urban area, and where will they go? Still, when I go out in a bit for a little necessary grocery shopping prior to our regular pickup order, I think I'll fill up my car's fuel tank.
Over here in the valley on the other side of the mountains, the air has been smoky and murky for the last couple of days. The fire hasn't crossed the mountain crest, but it's completely uncontrolled due to the hot dry weather and the overextension of firefighting needs in lots of other similar fires elsewhere in the area. We're closer to the near edge of the fire than the far edge on the other side is.
If the fire does go over the mountain, could it then extend down into the urban flatlands which we're about 2 miles from the foothills edge of? That's happened a few times - it happened in the big Santa Rosa fire a couple years ago - and the magnitude here is unprecedented. And if an evacuation order is issued, how will people get out of this dense urban area, and where will they go? Still, when I go out in a bit for a little necessary grocery shopping prior to our regular pickup order, I think I'll fill up my car's fuel tank.
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
Democrats, day 3
To an extent this was the day of ordinary people battered by circumstances. There were victims of gun violence, headlined by Gabby Giffords. There were small businesspeople trying to make it through the virus shutdown. Most daringly, there were families being torn apart by deportation of their undocumented immigrant members. Although one article calls this the most gut-wrenching part of the evening, there are those who don't think adult undocumented immigrants deserve any sympathy at all, no matter what their circumstances, so I call this feature daring.
The chair declared Kamala Harris nominated for VP by default, because there were no other nominees. I'd wondered how they were going to handle that. Go through the whole roll call again? Surely Rhode Island wasn't going to cook up another plate of calamari.
After that, the nominee's speech was a well-crafted piece focused on the upbringing she owes to her mother, with a relative minimum of biting DT. More biting had come from Barack Obama earlier - normally ex-presidents aren't that hard on their immediate successors, but as Obama said, these aren't normal times - but he framed his speech largely aspirationally. This, I think, is necessary: if you're going to criticize the US for not meeting ideal standards, it's necessary, if one is to avoid complete cynicism, to observe that the Constitution points to those standards and provides a road for us to get closer there.
Plenty of other good speeches by great women of the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren ("There's nothing I love better than a good plan. And Joe Biden has lots of good plans"), and, sigh, Hillary Clinton, looking much older than she did four years ago, but not as much older as she'd look if she were President, that's for sure.
The meager applause and cheering after Harris's speech worked a little better than the nomination one last night.
The music was pretty good. I could have lived without Billie Eilish, whom as I wrote once before just makes me want to re-listen to Tori Amos instead, but it wasn't terrible. I liked the guy who sang "Stand by Me" bilingually. The jazz song at the end was quite good: the singer kept the foundations of the song and built ornaments on top instead of tearing the whole thing apart as jazz singers usually do; and I really liked the piano accompaniment. The introduction of Kamala Harris by her sister, niece, and stepdaughter was backed by what sounded incongruously like the love theme from Inception, and if you remember that movie you'll know why it'd be incongruous.
The chair declared Kamala Harris nominated for VP by default, because there were no other nominees. I'd wondered how they were going to handle that. Go through the whole roll call again? Surely Rhode Island wasn't going to cook up another plate of calamari.
After that, the nominee's speech was a well-crafted piece focused on the upbringing she owes to her mother, with a relative minimum of biting DT. More biting had come from Barack Obama earlier - normally ex-presidents aren't that hard on their immediate successors, but as Obama said, these aren't normal times - but he framed his speech largely aspirationally. This, I think, is necessary: if you're going to criticize the US for not meeting ideal standards, it's necessary, if one is to avoid complete cynicism, to observe that the Constitution points to those standards and provides a road for us to get closer there.
Plenty of other good speeches by great women of the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren ("There's nothing I love better than a good plan. And Joe Biden has lots of good plans"), and, sigh, Hillary Clinton, looking much older than she did four years ago, but not as much older as she'd look if she were President, that's for sure.
The meager applause and cheering after Harris's speech worked a little better than the nomination one last night.
The music was pretty good. I could have lived without Billie Eilish, whom as I wrote once before just makes me want to re-listen to Tori Amos instead, but it wasn't terrible. I liked the guy who sang "Stand by Me" bilingually. The jazz song at the end was quite good: the singer kept the foundations of the song and built ornaments on top instead of tearing the whole thing apart as jazz singers usually do; and I really liked the piano accompaniment. The introduction of Kamala Harris by her sister, niece, and stepdaughter was backed by what sounded incongruously like the love theme from Inception, and if you remember that movie you'll know why it'd be incongruous.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)