I haven’t edited this photo yet, seeing as how I jut took it yesterday morning, and I’m a couple weeks behind on my photo edits. But I wanted to share this one now because I really love this vantage point. This was taken on Fuhrman Boulevard on Buffalo’s Outer Harbor, down by Wilkeson Pointe (which is supposed to be open this year and sure doesn’t look close to being open, but that’s another thing for another time). I love how the Skyway dominates, but as it falls away, the city rises beyond. Unfortunately this vantage point is slightly marred by the presence of a chain link fence (I’m just now realizing that I should have taken my lens hood off and got closer…but in all honesty, I actually rather like the effect the chain link gives. It lends a bit of perspective, a suggested framing, to the image.)
Today begins Pride Month, so let’s listen to some Tchaikovsky.
It is not actually conclusively known if Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was gay or not, but most biographers and historians have concluded, from the nature and the durations of the various relationships in his life, that he was. Sadly, late 19th-century Imperial Russia was not a good time for being homosexual, and it’s certainly known that Tchaikovsky, for all his artistic success, struggled for all of his 53 years through a life full of melancholy, loneliness, and outright depression. He married once, and it was a calamity that was annulled within just a few months. Most of the important relationships in his life were with men, though the nature of those relationships can only be guessed at from the contents of letters and contemporary accounts, many of which were suppressed by various Russian and later Soviet governments. Even in death, Tchaikovsky has been forced into a closeted existence.
Tchaikovsky’s death itself may, or may not, have arisen from his tortured melancholia. The facts seem to be that, in the midst of a cholera epidemic, Tchaikovsky went out with some friends and at some point drank unboiled water. He was dead of cholera just days later…at least, as far as the official accounting of his passing goes. Some wonder if he drank the unboiled water intentionally, or if he actually purposely poisoned himself in an act of suicide. The truth of this will never be known, either. It does seem to be the case that Tchaikovsky’s sad life is an artifact of a time when queerness was held in contempt and disdain. Have we made progress? Yes. Have we made enough? Oh, most certainly not.
But at least Tchaikovsky’s music remains! Here is his Symphony No. 5, my favorite of his six symphonies, with its stormy first movement, its stunningly meditative and heartbreaking second, its graceful third, and its epic finale that in the end feels like sun breaking through clouds. This performance isn’t the best sonically, but the quality of the playing (by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in 1974) and the interpretation (by conductor Leonard Bernstein) is simply amazing. Of course, Bernstein himself was a figure whose sexuality has been the subject of much speculation…but that’s another post.
NORTH ELBA, N.Y. — Two hikers in New York’s Adirondack Mountains called 911 to report a third member of their party had died, but it turned out they had taken hallucinogenic mushrooms and were mistaken, officials said Wednesday.
A state forest ranger responded to a call Saturday about a hiker who had reportedly died on Cascade Mountain, a popular summit in the Adirondack High Peaks, the Department of Environmental Conservation said in a news release.
Whoops! Or should I say, Whoooaaa, Duuuuuude!
At least this gives me an excuse to share a favorite movie quote of mine:
In amongst my various reading activities, I have a couple of longer reading projects going on. One is a complete re-read of Guy Gavriel Kay’s books, and the other is a partial re-read, coupled with first-time reads, of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books. I call the Fleming a partial re-read because going into this project, I had only actually read about half of his Bond material, up to (and including) Dr. No. Now I am onto books I haven’t read, and the one I’m reading now is For Your Eyes Only, which is not a novel at all but a collection of short stories, including two that form the backbone material for the eventual film of the same name.
Which, by the way, happens to contain one of my favorite Bond songs ever. And here it is!
Today, a concerto: specifically, a trumpet concerto. This one was written by the great film composer John Williams, who has somehow over his incredibly busy years of scoring many films and maintaining a hectic conducting schedule managed to find time to compose concert works as well. The man is amazing. He just is!
This concerto is a strikingly dramatic work in a modernistic vein, and as is often the case with Williams’s concert works, the piece doesn’t have the ear-catching melodies that are almost always present in his film scores. This is not a criticism. In his concert music, Williams tends to let melody be more of an emergent thing than an obvious one; there is usually an improvisatory air to his concert music, which may spring from his days as a jazz pianist and a session musician before he fully transitioned to the life of a composer.
Williams’s Trumpet Concerto was written in 1996 for The Cleveland Orchestra and its principal trumpet, Michael Sachs. The work was premiered by Sachs and The Cleveland Orchestra on September 26, 1996, under the direction of then-Music Director Christoph von Dohnanyi. The debut of this significant addition to the trumpet repertoire garnered praise from the local press, with Donald Rosenberg of the Cleveland Plain Dealer noting the concerto’s “dignified personality, soloistic variety and orchestral color.”
Here is the Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra by John Williams. No Haydn concerto this, with a calm classical intro! The soloist is the first thing you hear, in starkly dramatic fashion.
Remembering this day those who lost their lives fighting in wars under the American flag. I make no attempt this day to adjudicate the justness of any of those wars; there are other days for that.
Every year on this date I listen to this song. It’s been done by many artists, so here it is by the Dropkick Murphys. This song is one of the best artistic meditations on the awful futility of war that I know, because those last words are so absolutely true: “It all happened again, and again, and again….” I don’t find a great deal of solace or even solemnity in Memorial Day, just a sadness that we keep coming back to this and that there will never, ever, be a Memorial Day when we can say, “Interesting, there are no new names to remember this time around.”
I’m also reminded of Lee Blessing’s play A Walk in the Woods, which dramatizes an event in the 1980s when two arms negotiators, one American and one Soviet, got frustrated with the lack of progress and wandered off to put together their own proposal, which was soundly rejected by both sides for being too realistic, I suppose. In that play, Blessing puts these words in the mouth of his Soviet negotiator:
“If mankind hated war, there would be millions of us, and only two soldiers.”
I fnd it hard to disagree with that sentiment.
Here are the Dropkick Murphys.
oh how do you do, young willy mcbride do you mind if i sit here down by your graveside and rest for a while in the warm summer sun i’ve been walking all day, and im nearly done and i see by your gravestone you were only nineteen when you joined the great fallen in 1916 well i hope you died quick and i hope you died clean oh willy mcbride, was is it slow and obscene
did they beat the drums slowly did the play the fife lowly did they sound the death march as they lowered you down did the band play the last post and chorus did the pipes play the flowers of the forest
and did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind in some loyal heart is your memory enshrined and though you died back in 1916 to that loyal heart you’re forever nineteen or are you a stranger without even a name forever enshrined behind some old glass pane in an old photograph torn, tattered, and stained and faded to yellow in a brown leather frame
did they beat the drums slowly did the play the fife lowly did they sound the death march as they lowered you down did the band play the last post and chorus did the pipes play the flowers of the forest
the sun shining down on these green fields of france the warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance the trenches have vanished long under the plow no gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing down but here in this graveyard that’s still no mans land the countless white crosses in mute witness stand till’ man’s blind indifference to his fellow man and a whole generation were butchered and damned
did they beat the drums slowly did the play the fife lowly did they sound the death march as they lowered you down did the band play the last post and chorus did the pipes play the flowers of the forest
and i can’t help but wonder oh willy mcbride do all those who lie here know why they died did you really believe them when they told you the cause did you really believe that this war would end wars well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame the killing and dying it was all done in vain oh willy mcbride it all happened again and again, and again, and again, and again
did they beat the drums slowly did the play the fife lowly did they sound the death march as they lowered you down did the band play the last post and chorus did the pipes play the flowers of the forest
I first heard this song when I first watched The Big Lebowski a number of years ago. I remember looking the song up and being surprised to learn that it was a Kenny Rogers song. It was recorded first by Jerry Lee Lewis, but later Rogers and his band the First Edition recorded it, in 1967. It’s barely recognizable as Kenny Rogers, actually: I’ve listened to this song a lot and I’ve found no hint of the guy who would later become a solo country act and sing about “The Gambler” and “Lucille”. It’s amazing how things can change, isn’t it?
2025: The Fallen
Remembering this day those who lost their lives fighting in wars under the American flag. I make no attempt this day to adjudicate the justness of any of those wars; there are other days for that.
(image credit)
Every year on this date I listen to this song. It’s been done by many artists, so here it is by the Dropkick Murphys. This song is one of the best artistic meditations on the awful futility of war that I know, because those last words are so absolutely true: “It all happened again, and again, and again….” I don’t find a great deal of solace or even solemnity in Memorial Day, just a sadness that we keep coming back to this and that there will never, ever, be a Memorial Day when we can say, “Interesting, there are no new names to remember this time around.”
I’m also reminded of Lee Blessing’s play A Walk in the Woods, which dramatizes an event in the 1980s when two arms negotiators, one American and one Soviet, got frustrated with the lack of progress and wandered off to put together their own proposal, which was soundly rejected by both sides for being too realistic, I suppose. In that play, Blessing puts these words in the mouth of his Soviet negotiator:
I fnd it hard to disagree with that sentiment.
Here are the Dropkick Murphys.