Credit: Wikipedia, “Flat Peach”
DAY ONE: I am not ripe.
DAY TWO: I am not ripe.
DAY THREE: Despite my high hopes, I am still not ripe.
DAY FOUR, at 4:23am ET: Oh my God! It has happened! I am fulfilled, because I am now, at least, fully and perfectly ripe! Oh joy! Let there be dancing in the streets, for I am at long last ripe!
DAY FOUR, at 4:28am ET: Alas, though I loved being ripe for five minutes, no one has consumed me, so I must now instantly, completely, and utterly rot. Goodbye, world.
In honor of his eighty-seventh birthday today, here is conductor Seiji Ozawa leading the Vienna Philharmonic in Strauss’s overture to Die Fledermaus.
Happy birthday, Maestro Ozawa!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dp73Jzypw8
Imagine you’re in charge of piloting a tug boat, pulling a barge, from Erie, PA to Buffalo, NY. At 4:30am or so you finally make port in Buffalo, pleasantly cheered by the good time you’ve made on a breezy night on Lake Erie.
That’s when you realize that you don’t have your barge anymore.
Luckily, it’s easily found, as it washed up on the shore near Dunkirk, about halfway from Erie to Buffalo.
Well, maybe “luckily” doesn’t apply. I’m sure there’s a tugboat crew that’s going to be seeing some unfortunate entries on their next performance reviews.
“Uh, Bob?” “Yes, Cap’n?” “I have a question….”
There’s something particularly fascinating about the composers who labored in the Soviet Union in the 20th century. These artists had to walk a very fine line between personal expression and the creation of art that would earn the approval of the State’s apparatus, and many composers found themselves drifting into and out of favor. (Shostakovich in particular had to deal with this.)
Dmitry Kabalevsky was one such composer, and he managed to pretty much avoid internal controversy, perhaps by being more conservative and less adventurous than some of his musical colleagues. Nevertheless, you listen to his music and you can’t place it anywhere other than 20th century Russia.
Kabalevsky’s suite The Comedians is one of his most popular works. A ten-movement musical depiction of clowns, the piece abounds with invigorating rhythms and with plaintive melodies. The second movement, the Galop, gave me pause when I listened to the work this weekend. I’m certain that I actually got to perform it at some point, but digging a little deeper, I’m not sure if that’s the case or if it’s just the fact that the Galop is itself one of Kabalevsky’s most popular compositions. Sometime I’ll have to dig out all my old orchestral programs and see if I did in fact play this piece.
Meantime, here is The Comedians by Dmitry Kabalevsky.
Had things gone according to plan, today would have seen the launch of Artemis I, the first rocket in a series of missions intended to return humans to the Moon. Sadly, Artemis did not launch. This is not a bad thing. There is a reason why we say something is not difficult via the pithy metaphor, “Hey, this ain’t rocket science.”
So, no launch…but there is still something amazing and beautiful about a rocket being readied for its flight.
Best of luck next time, Artemis!
Images via NASA HQ’s Flickr page.
I had a lovely writing session outside yesterday, but here Carla appears to be laughing at my work. Hmmmm.
In other news, my newest newsletter issue is available! You should sign up, because it’s fun getting things in e-mail. Link is in the sidebar! And hey, if you don’t feel like going to the sidebar, there’s a link right here!
My friend Jason Bennion, who really should be a writer (and whose edits always make my books better), offered this on Facebook the other day. (He lives in Salt Lake City, so his experience of summer is quite different from mine.)
It always takes me by surprise.
One-hundred-degree days for weeks at a stretch and nights that aren’t much cooler. And then a cluster of rain storms and suddenly something has changed. The days are still hot but they’ve softened somehow, like a campfire you’ve stopped adding fuel to. And the nighttime… well, it’s just different now. And somewhere deep in the back of my head, there’s an ancient nudge trying to tell me it’s time to break out the leather jacket and long pants, time to get back to school, even though I’ve been done with that routine for 30 years.
Fall is coming, and one more of my allotted summers has slipped away..
Not one of Jason’s evening skies in late summer, but I think I can feel what he’s getting at….
In another world, not too far from this one, we’re celebrating our son’s 18th birthday.
In this world, we can only remember and wonder.
Here’s a sad song about a relationship coming to an end. Gordon Lightfoot wrote “If You Could Read My Mind” about his own divorce, and the lyrics are shot through with the bitterness of a man who realizes that the woman he married is now almost a complete stranger:
I never thought I could act this wayAnd I’ve got to say that I just don’t get itI don’t know where we went wrongBut the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back
Confessional songs always have a tough path to walk: they have to convey the emotions and the heartache, but they always run the risk of going too far, either into “too much information” territory, or they somehow don’t go far enough, relying on clichés and too much easy language to make the point. Lightfoot’s lyrics for this song are interestingly complex: “If you could read my mind” itself, the way the song begins, conveys his desire for his wife to understand him, even though he later acknowledges that he can’t find his way back to how he used to feel.
What I love most about this song is the way the melody interplays with the lyrics. Lightfoot’s words make clear that there’s no way, the love is gone, it’s gone forever–but there’s something in the melody, the way it occasionally yearns upward, that feels like maybe Lightfoot doesn’t quite believe that the love is gone yet, even though he’s heartbroken that “he just can’t get it back”. The melody here deepens the lyrics and exposes them. That’s what a good song can do.
Here is Gordon Lightfoot with “If You Could Read My Mind”.
As my personal fashion style continues to develop, I continue to find appreciate not just for new styles of garments, but new fabrics as well. Denim, obviously…and more recently, flannel. But I’ve also been finding linen to my liking.
I thrifted these two shirts a few years ago. Both are made of linen, and I like both enormously:
More recently, I’ve purchased a couple new linen shirts from Etsy dealers. One is still in transit (there were some shipping snafus and errors, of which I am being forgiving since the seller is from Ukraine!), but I got the other a few weeks back. It’s the shirt I wore to the County Fair week before last, and I loved it. (I honestly thought I’d see more people in overalls that day, but alas! Just one or two. Though I did overhear a woman behind me saying to her date, “I used to have a train engineer hat just like that guy’s overalls!” I’m perfectly happy to provoke your nostalgia, y’all.)
Anyway, back to the linen shirt, which I (obviously) paired with a pair of vintage Lee hickory-striped overalls, which I chose because besides looking cool, hickory-striped denim tends to be lighter in weight than regular blue denim.
This material is super comfortable. I just loved this shirt! I stayed cool the entire day–the material is light and of an open-enough weave to allow good airflow through it. I found wearing this shirt on a nice summer day (albeit a cool and low-humidity one) very comfortable. I suspect I was more comfortable in my loose, air-flow encouraging outfit of long-sleeved linen shirt under a pair of overalls than a lot of other guys were in belted shorts and t-shirts. I know that we want to avoid cultural appropriation and all of that, but surely we could listen to what other cultures have to tell us–such as the idea that hot weather doesn’t mean tight cotton clothes and bare skin. (Here’s more on linen as a summer fabric.)
Anyway….
(Same pic as immediately above, detail)
(No idea what that facial expression is about)
I like how “lived-in” linen looks. A nice crisp cotton shirt is lovely, but so is soft and worn-in linen.
(Detail and enhancement of last photo above.)
To sum up: Wear more linen, folks! You’ll be happy you did. Here endeth the lesson!
