Michael Greenebaum's Blog

Budget Format for Town Meeting

2010-05-07T12:21:00.004-04:00

Town Meeting is going very smoothly, thanks to the override success. In a way, it is going too smoothly through the budget functional areas. Like almost all representatives, I have voted in favor of the budget for each functional area. Like most members, I haven't the foggiest notion what I have voted for, but not many members seem to realize this. The presentation of the budget in the Finance Committee booklet hides as much as it shows. Town Meeting practices of dealing with the functional areas separately as though they have relatively impermeable boundaries obscures the fact that many town employees serve multiple roles. The inability of Town Meeting to make any substantial changes to municipal budgets means that the body willingly immobilizes itself from a significant role in shaping those budgets. By law it cannot interfere with the school budgets (other than to raise or lower them), but it is only by habit that it cannot intervene in municipal budgets.

In many ways, this is understandable, since the information available to Town Meeting in the Finance Committee booklet doesn't allow for much probing. The Town is to be commended for putting the Town Manager's budget on line where it can be studied by town meeting members (and anyone else), but in a sense this is a virtuous cop-out, since the town can be sure that very few will do so.

The problem is exacerbated when listed the revenue sources and the proposed budget are as far out of whack as they are this year. In the Conservation and Development area,for example, Town Meeting voted "to raise and appropriate" $745,073. Revenue sources total $934, 667, of which $395,402 comes from taxation. So when I vote to raise and appropriate a figure in between these two I really don't know what I am voting. This is true of other areas as well. I think this is a problem in presentation, but it may also be a problem with how we think about the budget. I tried to address this the other night, but did not make myself clear.

Perhaps we need less, but more real, information. We may have outgrown the notion of "functional areas" since their boundaries are both arbitrary and fictional. Perhaps Town Meeting should be presented with the consolidated municipal budget, proposed changes, consolidations and expansions, and the anticipated revenues, which should coincide in toto with the consolidated budget. I'm sure there are other proposals to consider and I appreciate the Finance Committee's openness to consider them.

Biographers of Thornton Wilder

2010-02-10T22:09:00.002-05:00

There are (so far) two biographies of Thornton Wilder, although a third is promised for 2011. That expected one is sorely needed, since the two currently available exemplify the worst of biographical sins. It is sad because both authors so clearly admired Wilder and wanted to share their admiration with a wider audience. But essentially, neither new their subject well enough to write about him

Richard Goldstone called his "An Intimate Portrait," and one can already hear Wilder's teeth grinding. Wilder used friendship -- at which he was so good -- as a guard against intimacy. He was buttoned up as figuratively as he was literally. He loved talking about his craft, about the theater, music and -- in a guarded and protected way -- his life experiences. His letters are full of joy and gossip as well as care and wisdom. But if Wilder ever experienced intimacy he did not want to share that experience. This, of course, opened the floodgates to innuendo and speculation, both of which fuel Goldstone's book, which was published while Wildere was still living (and included a postscript in which Wilder tells him to burn the manuscript). Wilder did not want any biographies while he was living, and he resented having his many friends and family importuned by a biographer in whom he had little confidence. That did not stop Goldstone. Without recourse to the people who knew Wilder best, he relied on accounts by those who knew him barely or badly. There is an index but no notes or citations to explain the basis of his jejeune psychologizing. All told, a bad piece of work.

Gilbert Harrison, the publisher of The New Republic, entitled his biography The Enthusiast, an apt description of both subject and writer. Harrison had more integrity than Goldstone, but sadly he was a sloppy writer as well as a sloppy researcher. Like Goldstone, Harrison has none of the scholarly citations needed to ground his writing, and while he does not engage in wink-wink nudge-nudge suggestions he does deal with matters like Wilder's sexuality more directly and more discretely. Still, The Enthusiast is more an extended character sketch than a useful biography.

Luckily, we have a wonderful new Selected Letters, the selection of Wilder's journals edited by Donald Gallup and now two splendid volumes in the Library of America series, one devoted to plays and writing about the theater, and one devoted to the early novels. That will be plenty to keep us busy until the eagerly anticipated biography by Penelope Niven next year. And I do hope that others will join me in this busyness.

Biographers Who Love Their Subjects

2009-08-18T16:34:00.003-04:00

I am having a real problem with Elizabeth Hawes's ¨Camus: A Romance¨. (I am midway in Chapter 4). Part of the problem may be that I remain under the spell of Richard Holmes, the romantic biographer par excellence. Holmes is clear about his feelings for his subjects, but he stays out of their way. It may be that I am so impressed because I knew so little about his subjects: Banks, the Herschels and Davy. Now I know them well. Of course, any biographer can and should do that. I watch them grow old, as I do with any biographical subject. But -- and it is a big but -- I know that they are exemplars, that they are astonishing, that they are -- to use a word that Holmes delights in -- thrilling.

This should be offputting. Tell me about the person, let me see him or her acting, thinking, feeling. Let me decide whether or not to be thrilled. This is what Holmes does. He never tells us that he is thrilled with anybody (unless perhaps it is Carl Hubble who figures only in footnotes). We see Londoners and Tahitians and others being thrilled. We read contemporary reports about being thrilled. We understand that not only Holmes's scientists but also their contemporaries understood that they were on the cusp of something huge, something thrilling.

I have been enamored of Camus for longer than Hawes, so perhaps there is a wee sense of her poaching on my territory. That of course is ridiculous and unworthy. But I have read two long biographies based upon written words and spoken first-hand testimony. I felt that I knew (and know) Camus quite well and I surely know how I feel about him. So at the moment, all that Hawes seems to be adding to this is a long account of how she feels about him. I have just finished her chapter about World War II, and it is clear, if a bit summary, about his activities. It is shallow though. There is no sense of Camus's anguish around the issue of executing traitors. There is a bit too much of herself withouot much indication why I should care how much she loves Camus. I shall plug on for a while thoough, and if it seems a hopeless project I shall shift to Janet Malcolm on Chekhov.

Anger? Disappointment? Resignation?

2009-08-17T14:12:00.002-04:00

Two moves from the Obama administration this weekend and one is greeted with a cacophany of antagonistic voices, the other with mostly shrugs. But they are equally distressing, though both are utterly predictable. In the first case, the administration is moving away from a single-payer health insurance system. In the second, the administration is pushing states towards teacher evaluation based upon student test performance. It is a race to see which one of these bad ideas will undermine the country first. And both illustrate the consequences of the Democrats' move to the political center fifteen years ago. The Left, which elected Obama, is left to weep.

The two moves are different in this respect. Obama's preference is for a single-payer system - he has said as much. So it is purely a political calculation that has persuaded him to abandon it and to give the country's baser instincts and cheerleaders a cheap victory. And he is probably right; fear is a powerful weapon and reason doesn't stand a chance against it. The remarkable thing is how inept the Democrats have been in campaigning for real health reform, how easily they have conceded the field to lies, dirty tricks and blatant self-interest. But we shall never know whether a principled, reasoned, clear and forceful advocacy of a single-payer system might have carried the day. And it is possible that by conceding on this issue, a substantive reform agenda may yet succeed. But I am sad that my hero couldn't do a better job of fighting the yahoos.

On the education issue, though, he is a yahoo. The takeover of education by testing is a deliberate policy of this administration, as it has been for every administration since Clinton's. It is based on a simple one-dimensional black box understanding of the relationship between teaching and learning. Teaching in, learning out. This is wrong and it is dangerous, and I have spent twenty years of writing op ed commentaries explaining why. Those newly in control of the Amherst schools have equally simple-minded understanding of the process of learning. Perhaps this is to be expected. After all, they too were schooled, and if there is one thing schooling discourages it is deep thinking about learning.

So on the health care issue, Obama is fighting against his better judgment. On the education issue, his judgment is deficient and he is encouraging a diminished likelihood that schools will be places where learning takes place.

Excellence

2009-08-10T09:08:00.002-04:00

I have long maintained, half seriously, that excellent people don't talk about excellence because they don't have to; they just get on with it. Along comes Humphry Davy, one of the heroes of Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder, who in 1812 wrote in ardor to the woman who would become his wife, "If this be romantic, it is romantic to pursue one's object in science; to attach the feelings strongly to any ideas; it is romantic to love the good, to admire the wise, to quit low and mean things and seek excellence."

That Davy was excellent is beyond question, and mostly he just got on with it. And this was a sort of love letter and he can no doubt be excused for some hyperbole. But what a splendid statement! Excellence, like Truth, is a great romantic idea; indeed, it may be said to encapsulate the sense of striving and seeking that is at the essence of Romanticism.

Perhaps the Amherst Excellencers might agree with me about this. Why, then, do they rub me so vigorously the wrong way? What makes Davy inspirational and Sanderson leaden? Is it merely the difference in their prose? Or do they mean something entirely different by the word? I am annoyed by bad writing, but I have spent too long in academia training people to write badly to blame academics for their cliches, jargon and flatulence. No, the difference is emblematic of the profound malaise infecting schooling in Amherst and the United States. For the Excellencers, excellence is institutional. Excellence is achievable. Excellence is reduced to achievement.

For Davy and the other scientists so inspiringly presented by Holmes excellence is aspirational. If their achievements are awe-inspiring it is because their imaginations were restless, their interests wide-ranging, their hearts and minds engaged together. Davy described his scientific method as observation, experimentation, and analogy. To which we might add ambition and competition, since these played a significant part in his achievements, as they have for so many scientists since. We may legitimately use these Romantic scientists as touchstones and reflect that it was love that elicted so splendid a statement from so splendid a man.

Sky and Water -- and Noise

2009-08-03T13:56:00.002-04:00

Last night offered an amazing few minutes. I had walked the Coast Guard dock; the Relemar was tied up at the end just like it had been in the old days when Jackie O was the companion of Maurice Tempelsman. This year was another dark-haired beauty whom I vaguely recognized -- but that is not the subject of this post. Last night the sky was gray, and as I stood by the Relemar hoping perhaps to get another glimpse -- no, that is not the subject of this post -- the rain began to pelt out of a leaden sky. Of course, there was not the slightest chance of a sunset.

I walked home and settled on the porch to enjoy a good Vineyard rain. Suddenly, about a half an hour later, there was a sudden change - a huge wind not only blowing the rain against the windows but pushing the cloud cover speeding to the north and suddenly it was clear in the west. The sun had long set but the afterglow was spectacular watching the black clouds speed across the red, green, orange sky. Quite remarkably and unexpectedly this was the most spectacular sunset of the summer.

But that's not what this post is about. For the past several mornings I have been awakened by the sound of piledrivers and who-knows-what-else in the Home Port parking lot. I am not a late sleeper, but for three mornings the noise has awakened me. I realize that noise is a constant in Menemsha. That's what this post is about.

No Good News

2009-07-30T10:17:00.000-04:00

There is not much good news coming out of the Amherst School Department these days. It is not good news that Superintendent Rodriguez hired Irving Hamer, a veteran in-fighter in New York City school politics, as a consultant to help him shape an agenda for the school system. It is not good news that Dr. Hamer spent ten days (ten days!) in July (July!) talking with a few people (who?) and going over records (which records?) to produce a report breathtaking in its superficiality and inadequacy. It is not good news that school committee member Sanderson called the report "inspirational." It is not good news that the superintendent endorsed this report, as did the cheering anonyms (and a few people willing to take responsibility for their own views) in the blogosphere.

How to explain this astonishing report? It is tempting to assume that Dr. Hamer asked the first questions that most consultants ask: who's paying me and what do they want. The coincident tone of the school committee comments over the past year and the Hamer Report cannot be a coincidence. The school committee has clearly intended to exercise greater control over the schools and to centralize curriculum and assessment, so it can be no surprise that this is the direction Hamer urges the system to take.

In the debate over Mark's Meadow, the school committee insisted that our elementary schools were (or should be) all alike, so it didn't matter which school a child attended. The Hamer Report chastises the elementary schools for being different from one another, and the superintendent promises greater "articulation" (a magical -- and meaningless -- word).

So in addition to greater centralization, the superintendent desires greater uniformity. If you like bureaucracy, you'll love the Amherst schools in the coming years.

But the bad news doesn't stop with the report. It continues with comments that Superintendent Rodriguez is reported to have made in July shortly after arriving in Amherst.

"You need to sell (students) on the fact that they need to learn what you're teaching them."
Mr. Rodriguez apparently wants to replace the metaphor of teacher-as-manager with teacher-as-salesman. I wish he really believed this. Salesmen, after all, understand that consumers have choices among products or can choose not to purchase a product at all. The commercial metaphor is regrettable and unapt; in the marketplace it is consumer demand that largely determines which products succeed and which products fail. Would that this were so in schools, but I think that this is not what the superintendent and school committee want.

"Amherst teachers care deeply about students, but [Rodriguez] wants to 'change the conversation.' " Perhaps it is unfair to hold a person accountable for a newspaper interpretation of his words, but this is either alarming or vacuous. Are teachers to care less for students? Is he looking for a new Wackford Squeers to run the middle school? What does the superintendent think the conversation in Amherst's schools has been about and how does he want to change it? Or perhaps this is just another cliche.

"I know we do things well, but that won't inform my work. I wasn't hired to be a maintenance man but a change agent." Oh dear.

Right Answers II

2009-07-24T16:09:00.005-04:00

I am reading The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes, and my heart is beating faster. The book is a series of intertwined biographies of 18th and early 19th century scientists whose quest for right answers was imbued with the spirit of the romantic age. They were all, perhaps, in terra incognita perhaps an unapt metaphor since it was so often the heavens that engendered their awe, but in Holmes's inspired telling they used all of the tools associated with normal science (Thomas Kuhn's term) but were particularly well endowed with the one facility that seems to get lost in talk about schooling: imagination. The point is important. Like all scientists, they seek truth or, as I prefer to identify it, right answers, but their search is motivated by imaginative curiosity or, as Holmes puts it, wonder.

One approach to a critique of public education in this age of testing is to say that right answers in our schools are not sought but are received. The right answers sought by test makers are not answers to questions that test takers have asked. This is not necessarily objectionable; the world is full of right answers that we must learn. We must learn the multiplication tables regardless of our curiosity about how numbers work. But it is certainly true that engendering curiosity about how numbers work is a more central task of schooling than presenting it to children for memorization.

Nonsense, say testmakers and school critics. That curiosity is all well and good, but it can just as effectively follow as precede the memorization. Not everyone need be curious about the multiplication tables but everyone needs to know them. This curiosity business (they say to me) is pure romantic posturing. Worse, it is highfalutin' middle-class arrogance, condemning children who come to school hungry, ill-nurtured, neglected or abused to ignorance because their teachers, who can be made competent to teach the multiplication tables cannot be expected to inculcate curiosity or imagination or appreciation. Time is of the essence.

Further, my critics continue, abstract ideas and concepts need to be grounded in knowledge and evidence. Right answers may not be all we've got, but there are a powerful lot of them, and progress in science and, yes, the arts depend upon them. As the cliche has it, knowledge is power.

To my critics I say yes, yes and yes. But ultimately three yesses make a no. The important thing about right answers is not that they are right but that they are yours, or mine. That they are answers to questions we ask, solutions to problems that puzzle us. Abstract ideas are surely grounded in right answers, but just as surely right answers must be grounded in a conceptual foundation or thehy flit away at the end of exams. There is no one way path between the realm of right answers and the country of curiosity; the commerce is, and must be, two-way. But there can be no doubt that education must start in the country of curiosity -- and return there often.

Development and Pre-disposition

2009-07-21T10:24:00.002-04:00

I did not intend to publish the last post but since I did, by accident, and it was long enough, I will continue my discussion in this new one.

Development - the clock and the calender are two great enemies of learning. One might add report cards and tests, which are tied to clock and calendar and not to development. We know enough about developmental rates and developmental styles to realize that tailoring the curriculum to the school year is a procrustean endeavor. If children could learn at their own rate, in their own time and their own style, more children could learn what society deems important.

More, but perhaps not all. There is the matter of predisposition, which is real and determinative in a way that "intelligence" is not. We may not have a sense of our own intelligence, but we all have a solid sense of our own predispositions - the lum, certain and activities we prefer and and are interested in. My own ability to read symphonic scores and my own inability to throw a ball with any confidence, speed or distance are both rooted in predispositions that accompanied me out of the womb. My introversion and preferences, my INFP profile mean that certain areas of the curriculum, certain teaching styles, and certain school activities will appeal to me more than others and I will thrive in circumstances that will frustrate others (and of course I will be frustrated in areas in which others thrive). This strikes me as commonplace, but then I look at schools and read comments about "excellence" and rigor" and I realize that it is not commonplace at all. Indeed, schools proceed as if they were not important considerations at all.

The current craze for testing and ranking pays no attention to either development or predispold go furthersition. All children take the same tests at the same moment; the school year -- and with it -- the curriculum for that year ends in mid-June. And because of that children's test results come to fall into the standard bell-shaped curve (and if they do not, the procrustean testors stretch and squeeze the test results until they do).

All of this is in explanation of the prior post's asssertion that schools are not supportive of learning. I could go further and assert that schooling as normally conducted is destructive of learning by stressing the uniformities and ignoring the distinctive and determinative differences among schoolchildren. Indeed, the huge and costly empire of Special Education is itself based upon this destructiveness; learning differences too quickly become transformed into learning difficulties. But that is a subject for another post, and not the next one.

In my next post, I will return to the principal theme of "right answers" promised in my last post.

Right Answers

2009-07-18T15:20:00.004-04:00

How would I go about persuading all those "members" of the Amherst Committee on Excellence that excellence isn't all that it's cracked up to be. There is a pervasive set of assumptions about schooling, education and learning -- hardly interchangeable ideas -- that are papered over by general terms like "excellence" and "rigor". In many past commentaries, mostly in the Amherst Bulletin, I have pointed out what is dangerous about such assumptions. While I got many favorable comments about these commentaries -- and was often teased by the superintendent for my outrageous views (although he was very happy with the success of my school), the Amherst Schools, like all schools in Massachusetts and the nation moved inexorably in the direction supported by those assumptions. Now we have almost universal standardized "high stakes" testing, curricula built around standards and benchmarks, and schools governed by clock and calendar.

So without trying yet again to attack those assumptions, I will try to lay out the assumptions about schooling, education and learning that underly my thoughts about education and my practices as a school person.

1. Of these three non-interchangeable terms, learning is far and away the most important and the most mysterious. I wrote a few days ago about watching my young grandsons learn without benefit of schooling or formal teaching. They listen and watch and ask questions. Learning is natural and organic when it occurs as a result of predispositions in the child (or adult, for that matter). It requires neither tests nor benchmarks nor deadlines. Many years ago, the British cybernetician Gordon Pask wrote a book called "Man as a System that Needs to Learn," and that pretty much covers it.

The problem, of course, is that individuals do not always want to learn what society thinks they should learn, or at least they do not learn it at the point in their lives when society says they should. There are two reasons for this: development and predisposition.

Evaluation

2009-07-16T11:48:00.004-04:00

My favorite kamikazes, Catherine Sanderson and Steve Rivkin, have a commentary in last week's Bulletin entitled "Evaluate, Evaluate, Evaluate." Put aside the self-serving schoolmarmish character of their writing (and the childish character of their thinking), their essential message goes back to Voltaire - "eliminate the infamy." Bad teachers? Get rid of them. Bad administrators? Off with their heads. Bad parts of town? Close their school. I admit to an unhealthy obsession with Sanderson (Rivkin seems to be Tonto to her Lone Ranger) since she has stopped short only of mounting a soapbox on the Common, but she has a following and considerable power and thus may be a force to be reckoned with. I may have to be the reckoner.

Actually, their commentary isn't objectionable, since it is devoid of content and its thrust is an ancient one. But the commentators on Sanderson's blog -- mostly anonymous so one cannot tell how many there are -- are scary. The first one asks, who could object to their Commentary, as though it was a self-evident truth. Another commenter applauded S & R for demanding more rigorous evaluation of on-the-job teachers, since he/she knows of incompetent teachers in the Amherst schools. Everybody seems to know of incompetent teachers -- and incompetent unnecessary administrators -- but no-one knows if they agree on who the incompetents are.

For S & R, evaluation is more or less synonymous with testing, since testing provides a common metric for comparing teachers (and students). The problem with this (with both teachers and students) is that such testing tends to ignore the particular uniquenesses that count and overstress the common achievements that are both trivial and shortlived and which are easy to assess without standardized tests. Tests treat teachers (and students) identically - that's the only way testing can work. But I remember two Mark's Meadow teachers who were brilliant teachers but who would not have succeeded on the kinds of teacher-tests increasingly in use. They are the great teachers who make all the difference to young students, the teachers who do what they do without being able to explain what they do. They are, in other words, naturally creative teachers, and tests cannot deal with creativity.

So I fear S & R, and see them as agents of regression and reductiveness. They may be successful in further making the Amehrst schools into schools for drudges -- like themselves.

Learning

2009-07-15T17:02:00.002-04:00

Nico, age 2 1/2, has mastered the complexity of language and is beginning to experiment with the guile and craft it stimulates. Where did this understanding come from? Six months ago he had a decent vocabulary but no syntax. He understood much more than he could say. This morning, at the Menemsha Cafe, he said "Grandpa, cut your scone in half so we can share." How amazing! Think of the deep structure that he has mastered to say that. Think of the understanding of tense, imperatives, pronoun, and mathematics that underlies that sentence. Think if the manipulation he has learned how to employ, how that beginning "Grandpa" was all I needed to do his bidding.

I regret, of course, not having started a day by day journal to mark the development of his language and the skill with which he employs it. I wonder when he started understanding and using possessive pronouns, subordinate clauses, synonyms, similes. What part does his rich imagination play in facilitating this untaught learning? What is the real significance of the developmental gap between understood language and spoken language?

His brother, Mateo, age 5 1/2, wants to understand baseball. Last night, as we watched a bit of the all-star game, he clearly understood enough to ask intelligent and probing questions. What is the difference between the American League and the National League. Are the Red Sox (his team) part of a league? Why does one side wear gray uniforms. How exactly does a player make an out. What is a strike, a ball, a hit? These are fundamental questions, but the astonishing thing is what he must understand in order to ask them. There must be some kind of vague sense of a game, a bit like the first glimpse of a landmass from the deck of a ship as it approaches. Is it land or a cloud formation? (And that presupposes kenning the difference between land and cloud.) Then as the ship draws closer, land forms begin to take shape, and then instances of habitation. Mr. Gradgrind would shortcut all this gradual illumination and understanding by starting with definitions of land and cloud. MCAS and testers in general are only interested in the final specifics of what can be seen from the deck once the ship has docked. Mr. Gradgrind would teach Mateo about baseball by giving him the official rule book and then quizzing him about it.

But for millions of children for a century or more, learning baseball has been more like seeing the particulars of the land take shape from the landmass as the ship draws in to the dock. Mateo knows now about uniforms balls strikes hits and leagues. He is now ready to learn about double plays, bunts, and earned run averages. The ship is drawing closer.

Mark's Meadow and Me

2009-07-06T09:33:00.002-04:00

The School Committee has decided to close Mark's Meadow. Their reasoning shows the danger of having too many social scientists trapped in a room. That is to say, it is not reasoning; it is adoration of numbers, treating numbers as though they were real things. My reaction is, of course, a bit sentimental, although since schools have no institutional memory the Mark's Meadow I am proud of is long gone, replaced by a Mark's Meadow that others are (rightfully) proud of.

What I am saddened by is the degradation of education in the name of excellence and rigor. Others have given up on public education long ago, but I held on tenuously, though over the years supporting home schooling and charter schools, movements that I would have at one time opposed. But now I see "research" overwhelming thoughtfulness in the governance of the Amherst schools.

The irony is that Mark's Meadow in its golden years took research seriously - more seriously than the School of Education, where I was complicit in turning out graduates trained in mindlessness. MM was not mindless, but it was restless. It took its designated role as a lab school seriously. It asked both "why?" and "what if?" endlessly. It subjected itself to the most serious kind of self-scrutiny, and then, after one full generation of Mark's Meadow students had been educated under the Mark's Meadow Plan, it asked the school committee for funds to permit it to be evaluated according to the NCAA protocol for evaluating high schools and colleges, external visitors and all. I'm sure the two volumes of the 1983 evaluation are languishing somewhere (in my basement for sure). So if the School Committee is really interested in excellence and rigor, and needs models for evaluating elementary schools, they know where to look.

In Print

2009-05-29T10:31:00.003-04:00

The commentary I posted below did appear in the Amherst Bulletin today, and has already garnered some response on Catherine Sanderson's blog. Blogs, of course, are intended to be self-interested and even self-serving, so it is no surprise that she enacts the suffering savior while at the same time seeing herself as nosy, noisy and disruptive, stances that help an organization grow. What if two school board members adopted that stance while desiring to move the schools in different directions?

I understand though that she must get a kick out of the adrenalin rush that controversy affords; it turns out that I do too.

Submission

2009-05-16T19:19:00.006-04:00

Pretty sexy title, eh? Sorry to disappoint. I got roiled up by a commentary in the Amherst Bulletin last week,  so I wrote a rejoinder and submitted it. I have no idea whether the editor will publish it, but in any event, here it is:
Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
                   Or quizzes upon World-Affairs
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science.
Rivkin and Sanderson have committed a social science. As a former sinner myself I both recognize and sympathize with the desire to apply scientific strategies to social issues. There is something palpable and satisfying about numbers, something almost sensual about manipulating data. The temptation to measure can become an addiction. And yet, we should heed as well the advice of Aristotle, who cautioned us to seek only such precision as the subject matter allows. I commend this advice to Rivkin and Sanderson, both as writers and as policy makers.

Rivkin and Sanderson have positioned themselves as champions of excellence and rigorous evaluation. Excellence and rigor can easily become buzzwords and rallying cries. I would be happy to rally to them if I knew what they meant. I know that Ms Sanderson believes that there are such things as objective data. I doubt it. Data are answers to questions we ask and the ways we ask them; they have no objective or independent existence. Science may depend upon data, but good science depends upon viewing data skeptically. I have no doubt that Rivkin and Sanderson can find data to support their desire for more elementary school homework and more required math and science in high school -- the subjects of their commentary. But so can those who believe in more free time for young children and more electives in high school. There is a danger in polemical discussions of confusing standards and forms. Having more homework and more electives may be good or bad, depending upon the quality of the homework and the alternatives suppressed by requirements. Three years of math may be a very good thing, but so would three years of music, or art, or shop. I don't know any way in the abstract of deciding, but individual students and their families can certainly decide in individual cases.

In general, fewer requirements lead to more opportunities to follow one's interests and develop new ones. For me to decide priorities among those interests for others is tantamount to urging them to be more like me, or, perhaps, more like I would like to be. In general, our interests and predispositions lead us to the data that support them. How could it be otherwise? The world is not a laboratory.

Not so long ago there was a chancellor at UMass who was determined to have a data-driven administration. Faculty filled out forms that transformed their academic lives into numbers that could be fed into the dark satanic mills in Whitmore. The enterprise, of course, was a disaster, and the chancellor didn't last long. This was too bad; data are important adjuncts to decision-making; we need to become more knowledgeable consumers of data. But the way to doing that is to acknowledge that they are human artifacts; to get better data, we must ask better questions. The best teachers are those who can imagine not knowing what they know. Perhaps the same is true of School Committee members.

Beauty, or Saved from Scruton

2009-03-14T15:48:00.002-04:00

When I saw that Roger Scruton has a new book out titled, simply, Beauty, I immediately tried to find it in a reader's copy, since it will not be published over here until mid-May. And find it I did, on a jobber's website. I ordered it promptly and regretted it promptly. First, the British review in Prospect was hardly a rave. Second, I have been reading and regretting Roger Scruton for many years. He and I have the same interests and diametrically opposed tastes and inclinations. He is grumpy and conservative; I am grumpy and progressive. His major work on The Aesthetics of Music is full of trees that don't work together to produce a forest. I had it for a long time, read much of it, and sold it back to the bookshop with relief. So, too, with Scruton's more admireable generalist introduction to philosophy. The entries are short, the opinions are curmudgeonly, and the attitude distressingly elite.

So when I heard from the jobber that they didn't have the book after all it felt like a narrow escape. What is there to say about beauty, after all, that wasn't said better by John Keats? Well, perhaps a thing or two. Why, in the Platonic triad of the true, the good, and the beautiful, does beauty seem like a poor relationship? Why does aesthetics seem trivial when mentioned in the same breath as ontology and ethics? And why, most of all, the more I think about it, does beauty come to assume a thundering significance, a foundational relationship to the true and the good? Stay tuned.

Forever and ever. . .and ever

2009-03-12T15:07:00.003-04:00

Blogs, I guess, are like plastic bottles in landfills - they never decompose or biodegrade or disappear. There is no one to say "Michael, hasn't paid any attention to his blog for over a month -- delete!!!" So mine is still here.

Mostly laziness, but also some disenchantment with the blogosphere. On the one hand, there are the oh-so-clever know-everythings under thirty, whose wit and winks create a pretty closed world. On the other hand, there are the ubiquitous anonymii whose puerile invective and slimy insults are wearying, especially when spewed locally at folks who are just trying to do their best.

I think I will try to use this vehicle to try out some ideas about beauty, imagination and appreciation - all of which seem relevant to my Learning in Retirement seminar as well as the budget discussions currently occurring in the Amherst schools. Yes, I will do that -- but not today.

Facebook

2009-01-26T12:11:00.002-05:00

I have neglected this blog, or rather I have been abducted by another online phenomenon. I have joined Facebook with only a bit of embarrassment about being the oldest "friend" ever. It is fun to keep up with people in a casual way and not be expected to write reams of gossip in messages. The nicest for me, was when I received an "I remember you" note from a woman who had been at Mark's Meadow in the 70s. This is by far the easiest way to have friends.

Tess (Women and Men - part 2)

2009-01-12T15:31:00.002-05:00

I read Tess of the d'Urbervilles many years ago and it has stuck with me, as I assume it must for anyone who reads it with empathy. But the just concluded Masterpiece Theatre presentation hit me hard in the stomach, unexpectedly since I knew what was going to happen at every moment. Still, one knows such things with Shakespeare as well and they seem to be irrelevant to the aesthetic impact of great works.

What struck me here was the combination of the vileness of all the men, save possibly the dairyman Crick, with Hardy's masterful depiction of them as caught up in their own webs of deceit and emasculation and humiliation, just as Tess was. He is the great tragedian of modern times. His passionate commitment to this fictional woman, whom he had to destroy, was both weird and wonderful.

But what are we to say about the grotesque gender stereotypes? All the women are good, warmhearted and shrewd, although done in by their virtues and sacrificed to --- to what? When Tess lies on the stone alter at Stonehenge, waiting to be apprehended by the police, are we to understand that she has been sacrificed to the cupidity and awfulness of men, or to the tragic sense of life. All of her misery can be traced to her honesty -- which her mother had warned her against -- in confessing to her husband that which was less damning than his confession to her, and her generosity in giving the money to her mother that she was to have used to support herself. But he is a man and she is a woman. The universality of this tragedy feels undermined by the gener-specificness loathsomeness of the men.

It was a brave book for Hardy to write, and he suffered for it too.

Israel

2009-01-07T15:16:00.002-05:00

My friends in Scotland are busily demonstrating and writing letters on behalf of the Palestinians in Gaza. I share their outrage at Israel's behavior, although not for the same reasons. They are outraged because they think Israel is and always has been a rogue nation and should be punished, even undone. I am outraged because Israel's awful behavior is threatening its existence as a Jewish state. I support this existence even though I have no personal interest in it. I should think that anyone with sensitivity to the warp and woof of history would understand why Israel has always determined to be responsible for its own destiny, to not depend upon or even seek the goodwill or approbation of others. Israel understands that anti-Semitism did not start in 1948 or even 1933. While it is wrong to equate opposition to Israel's actions and policies with anti-Semitism, there is a point to identifying the opposition to Israel's existence as a Jewish state to the long trail of anti-Semitism stretching back to the diaspora.

The story of the middle east depends wholly on how one punctuates the familiar events that everyone can agree on. What is cause for one side is consequence for the other. There is no unbroken moment in the unending cycle of cause-and-effect, and yet each side -- Palestine and its supporters and Israel and its supporters -- chooses to enter the cycle at a particular point and say "this is where and how it started. This is the cause." Is it Hitler? Is it Balfour? Is it the fence? Is it the rockets? In the manner of a ghastly Mad Lib, each side would fill in the blanks of the story precisely differently.

At one time I thought I would live to see the end of enmity between Israelis and Palestinians, but I no longer expect that. What I can still hope for, and perhaps especially with the new Obama administration expect, is a real beginning to a process that would lead to the conditions of a settlement. Such a settlement cannot depend upon the two sides liking or trusting each other and it will require the engagement of the United States for years to come to monitor and enforce the settlement agreed upon. But what must be understood is that it is not possible to be pro-Israeli without being pro-Palestinian and it is not possible to be pro-Palestinian without being pro-Israeli. Those who take sides are part of the problem.

Women and Men

2009-01-05T14:22:00.002-05:00

Surely that title will provoke comment!

I mentioned in an earlier post the fine novel by William Maxwell, Time Will Darken It. I have just finished reading the equally fine In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor. They share important similarities - their quietness, their keenly observed and felt households, their ordinary and engaging characters. Maxwell writes of a good man sensuously tempted by a young woman at a time of some stress in his marriage. Taylor writes of a good wife in a troubled marriage sensuously drawn to an old friend, recently a widower. In both cases temptation is resisted, and in that sense nothing happens in either novel.

However, nothing happens differently in each. Maxwell gets inside his husband both more subtlely, expansively and indirectly than Taylor does for her wife. He takes his time; his novel is well over three hundred pages. While there is an interior drama going on, we infer it largely from what the characters do and rarely from explicit descriptions of their inner thoughts or feelings. Taylor's novel, like all her novels, is a masterpiece of ironic concision. Barely two hundred pages long, it allows itself the fun of set pieces which have little to do with the main story. (Like Proust, these set pieces are set at meals.) So a little writing -- an offhand bit of dialog, a quick description, an ironic aside -- do portentous work in setting up the situation clearly. Maxwell allows himself narrative license to pontificate; Taylor, who has been described as a sane Virginia Woolf, stays close to her characters. She is interested in the ordinariness of complications; he is interested in the complications of ordinariness. I never want Maxwell's novels to end; I am always prepared for Taylor's novels to end.

I wonder if women readers react similarly? How many readers, I wonder, still read either of these wonderful writers?

Children and Grandchildren

2009-01-04T14:25:00.002-05:00

I have just returned from three days in Williamsburg with two of my children and four of my grandchildren. Suddenly the grandchildren are tall, adolescent, immobilized by their gadgets. (What if I had had such things at their age? They are the perfect defense against conversation and sociability. Wonderful!) But they are also charmers and sweet. Nora is ravishingly beautiful with a ravishingly analytical mind. She can figure out the logic behind the iPhone puzzles, leaving me in the dust. Jake has finally begun his growth spurt, is unfailingly engaging and his father's son. Alice, almost-10-year-old Alice (fish in a tree - how can that be?) is the aesthete and engaging game-player. And Sam is huge, leaving Sally in the dust height-wise. He is the joke teller.

They are terrific and fun. But my greatest thrill, my consummate joy, is being with my children. Grandparenting is everything it is cracked up to be, but no one ever prepared me for the sublimity of being with one's adult children, feeling the warmth of how wonderful they are, how talented and sensitive and accomplished. It is trite, I know, but nothing has ever matched the happiness of being with my children.

Two Films

2008-12-26T18:20:00.002-05:00

On successive nights I watched two films. I spent Christmas Eve with A Christmas Tale, which I loved. A long, complicated neurotic family drama, it manages a tightrope feat of being about the story it is telling and also about the particular ways in which movies tell stories. The superb performances included two ghosts - a silhouette of a dead child at the opening of the film and the uncanny visage of Marcello Mastroianni, whose daughter, Chiara, looks just like him and who plays in this film the daughter-in-law of her real-life mother, Catharine Deneuve. Both of these ghosts are central to the film. The complex reactions include sadness, joy and a peculiar sense of the ambiguities of daily life.

On Christmas day, it was The Reader, which I disliked a great deal. I had also disliked the book, so I may have been too prepared to dislike this manipulative disagreeable film full of sensuous sex and unending angst passing as ambiguity. My buddy, Nico Muhly, wrote the music, which has more integrity and sincerity than a single frame of the film. When was the last time we saw Germans speaking inflected English?

Young Susan Sontag

2008-12-19T11:51:00.002-05:00

Susan Sontag and I were born in the same year. That would make her a candidate for my "Being Our Age" project, except that she is a woman and she is four years dead. The first volume of her journals has just been published, edited by her son. I have been reading with amazement and a host of other feelings those from the 40s, when she and I were in our teens. We were both aesthetes, but she lived in her passions while I was afraid of mine. We shared many feelings, loved many of the same books (Gide and Mann) but were banal in such different ways, perhaps because I had discovered in music a way to deal with feelings without having to talk about them. My talk was trivial; my conversation had virtually no small talk I steered clear of danger zones with almost everyone. (That "almost" carries great weight - there was Ray and there was Arthur and there was Anne Elmendorf.)

She reveled in her enthusiasms and egotism. She talked and talked -- about herself. It was not the books she read - it was herself reading them. It was Art (good) and Intelligence (bad but seductive). And she reveled in her sexuality and rejoiced in discovering her lesbianism and in having lovers. She was sixteen. And that was the year that, if I had been clearer about it, I discovered and repressed my sexuality. Nothing in her journals refers to the world, very little alludes to her formal education at either Berkeley or Chicago. Her body and her mind - these were her world as a teenager. Wow!

Choking Man and Time Will Darken It

2008-12-17T14:09:00.003-05:00

The book, which I loved for its faults almost as much as for its virtues, is Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell. Written in the 1940s, it takes place in 1912. Maxwell is telling a story in which nothing and everything happens. Moreover he is showing us how he is telling the story; he does not hesitate to generalize from the exquisite details of his characters' lives and he engages in a variety of extravagances and pathetic fallacies which would seem quite out of keeping with the dailyness of the story if they didn't seem so right and if they weren't presented with such acute elegance. Maxwell understands everything, and because he does he can hint at things and be absolutely clear. This is a glorious novel.

The film is called "Choking Man" and it too is a small marvel. Its aesthetic is the opposite of Maxwell's but it too calls attention to how it is telling the story. It is an utterly visual film full of the structural elements of the city -- in this case the Jamaica section of Queens -- steel girders, train tracks, chainlink fences, and structural elements of its characters, intense close-ups of faces (often half-hidden) facial features and even pores. To represent the feelings and thoughts of its intensely introverted protagonist (and it is real agon) the film use touching animation. At important moments the beautiful score by Nico Muhly not only underscores the story-telling but enriches it. The title is deliberately ambiguous, since choking can be both a transitive and intransitive verb. Both senses are pertinent and fraught with overtones of sexuality and love. Jorge is tormented by his imaginary handsome and mocking choker, but manages heroically to banish him as the movie ends. This is unlikely to show up in theaters, but is worth renting and watching.

Nico is 2

2008-12-13T22:27:00.003-05:00

Today is Nico's birthday, and we celebrated with a small family gathering. Nico was Batman, as he has been steadily for the past week, so naturally his favorite present was a big -- and slightly scary Batmobile. He found a smaller Batcycle inside, and that was his vehicle of choice. Gradually, over the course of the afternoon, we could observe a new concept forming in his mind. Very exciting, except that the concept was "MINE!" Most impressive was Mateo's willingness to let Nico have the limelight and the presents; he was a brave and good older brother.

Elliott Carter

2008-12-11T11:42:00.002-05:00

Elliott Carter is 100 today. Centenarians are no longer remarkable per se; what is remarkable about Carter is that he is more active than ever, is composing vigorously and, to my ears, more beautifully than ever before. I have always admired his music, but now I admire and love it. Pretty amazing!

Blagojevich

2008-12-10T09:59:00.003-05:00

The thing about this scandal -- disregarding how it might affect the President-Elect -- is how boring it is. I watched (and am ashamed of myself for watching) the first episodes of House of Sadaam last weekend, and while I watched I realized I had seen it all before on HBO. Both The Sopranos and Rome tell the same story of greed, hubris and lust for power turning into suspicion and murder. With Blagojevich we have basically the same story, except that we substitute money for power and we add breathtaking stupidity into the mix. And of the four protagonists -- Caesar, Tony, Sadaam, and Blagojevich -- thegovernor of Illinois commits the greatest sin of being boring. Sorry, Rod; no mini-series in your future, just prison.

Billy Budd

2008-12-04T22:30:00.003-05:00

I blogged a while ago about the BBC's Peter Grimes newly released on dvd although the program is 40 years old. Now I have finally watched the companion dvd of Billy Budd, which was actually the first of the two to be produced, in 1966. Britten was skeptical, watching the awkward two studio production with the orchestra and conductor in one place and the singers and set in another. And yet, this production is, if anything, better than the Grimes; it is a genuinely great production of a genuinely great opera.

Many things make it work so triumphantly, not the least the fantastic black and white filming of the unbelievable set. Much has rightfully been made of John Dexter's astonishing set for the Met's Billy Budd with its rising and falling levels, but this set, so particular in its historical veracity, was designed for television cameras in an opera which has many orchestral interludes in which we can watch life at sea, convincingly portrayed. (The greatest orchestra interlude, of course, when Vere tells Billy of the death by hanging verdict is appropriately focused on the door of the inner chamber where that meeting took place.) I was caught up in the life on the Indomitable. Never once did I feel that it was contrived, or that corners were cut or that I was being asked to suspend belief in the reality of the ship and its crews.

The cast is pretty much the same one with which Britten recorded the opera a year later. They acted and sang superbly. Peter Glossop did not naturally look like one's notional Billy, but he made a believeer out of me very quickly. Michael Langdon's Claggart benefited especially from the close-ups that the cameras provided. All the warped malevolence was there, but he was always an English sailor and not a Verdian villain. As for Peter Pears, I have to write through my tears, so magnificent he was. These two videos explain in a way that audio cds cannot, what Britten saw in him as a singing actor.

The production was conducted by Charles Mackerras because Britten was so opposed to the manner of production. Mackerras was brilliant -- he has been brilliant throughout his long career and is brilliant today -- and Britten found his own doubts brushed away -- so much so that he himself conducted the Grimes two years later.

I think that if I wanted to introduce someone to opera this is the production I would use. I cannot imagine that it would not be gripping and involving for newcomers as well as seasoned opera lovers.

Still Sick

2008-12-01T17:35:00.002-05:00

Nasty malingering bugger. But at least I can read now. Susie was here over the weekend, took a look at my chairside table and said that no-one would believe my reading. Gosh.

On that table are Richard Reeve's wonderful biography of John Stuart Mill. A biography worthy of its subject, one of my great heroes. Also, Alison Bechdel's Essential Dykes to Watch Out For. Ever since Fun Home, I have recognized Bechdel as a rare satrical artist with a mind as sharp as it is tender. Her dykes are clearly sketched and sympathetic individuals; her drawing is technically assured, her aesthetic decisions always interesting and never obvious. Thornton Wilder's Selected Letters totally undo the received wisdom of him as a folksy, somewhat shallow writer. I am proud to have once known his sister and to have shared with her our joy in Rockports! Benjamin Britten's letters are the excuse for long and extensive notes which serve as a documentary biography. The collection of English 18th and 19th century essayists is my great joy. Bolanos' 2666 sits and dares me to open it and begin. Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips's slim collaboration is boring; I have to learn that Phillips is going through an extended boring period. Soon to be removed from the table is the volume of Noel Coward's Selected Letters. Twee. Is that the word? Of course, this is my chairside table. Perhaps another time I will review my bedside table. That is, if my public demands.

Sick

2008-11-22T18:47:00.002-05:00

I'm sick. Really sick. This hasn't happened for quite a while. I have to remember that when I think a sneezing attack is allergies I should treat it like an incipient cold and down industrial strength contact right from the start. Sadly, I had to cancel my trip to Nashville and the chance to hear Nora's orchestra and dance with Alice. Pooh. But there is something desirable in being so miserable and not having any obligations to undertake in my misery. It is bed to chair to bed.

Rain and the Mays

2008-11-15T14:25:00.003-05:00

Three days of steady rain for the Mays' visit. Too bad, although not really interfering with their primary objective: Nico. He clearly understandings his responsibility to be cute and is fulfilling it grandly. Alice is staying with him and helps Debby by playing with him in the early am. Nora and Jake are with me and are splendid guests. So far the house, the computer and the fridge have survived intact. Jake is charming and clean - two showers today. Nora has discovered Trace on my iPhone. And in a couple of hours Susie arrives for a one-night visit. Katie has been at Linda's but we all use Debby's as the gathering point. I seem to have my post-production cold, of course. Tonight is the cast party, and I suppose I will receive a framed poster and a bottle of wine from a grateful cast.

The Void

2008-11-10T13:43:00.002-05:00

Princess Ida is over. The election is over. The Red Sox are over. All were successes so I guess I can live on the fumes of good memories for a while, but then I will have to find something else to do to avoid cleaning my house. Oh yes, I have an aesthetics course to prepare for the spring. Phew.

New Voices

2008-11-06T10:06:00.002-05:00

It is clear that the Congressional Black Caucus is full of young, eloquent and exciting members. Add to that the many other African-Americans who have been appearing on news and interview shows who are new -- to me, at least -- and we are in for a fantastic national renaissance. Black voices have always been strong and searing but mostly unknown to white Americans. I think it is the large number of of these new political voices -- added to the literary voices that have always been with us -- that will over time -- and maybe a short time -- signal the emergence of a post-race America.

Awe

2008-11-05T12:07:00.002-05:00

Eloquence seems trivial this morning. The grandeur of the election, the enormity of the change that we have just experienced, the audacity of hope, to steal a stolen phrase, all seem to require a moment of silence. Ordinarily change that one lives through doesn't seem so much like change as it does like novelty - a new gadget, a new book, a new president. What are the equivalent moments that I have lived through? The first that I can remember feeling that I had lived through a change was Hiroshima. Another was the moonwalk. And now the election of Barack Obama. In each case, we could not, cannot, return to a status quo ante. We can never not live in an atomic age. We can never not live in a space age. And now we can never not live in an America that has permanently turned a thrilling corner.

Trumpets

2008-11-01T15:42:00.002-04:00

Will there be one, two or three tonight at the opening of Princess Ida? Whoo can tell? Whoo can tell? The mystery of the vanished first trumpet leads to worrying conjectures, since he is usually reliable and emailed me Thursday morning to be assured that the dress rehearsal was that night. I so assured him, but he was a no-show, Repeated emails and phone messages later, there is still no indication of whether he will show up tonight. I think we are ok this weekend, but I may have to write some substitute clarinet parts for next weekend if the mystery is not solved.

Otherwise, I am in my typical pre-show funk, ready to take my shower, change my clothes and go to the high school, sit in my "green room" and review in my mind all the cues, musical and non-musical, that I must give tonight. A conductor's lot is not a happy one. No, that's next year.

Machine Dependency

2008-10-26T14:02:00.002-04:00

A rain and wind storm last night knocked out the power for five and a quarter hours last night, from 11 pm until 4:15 am. Amazingly, this was the first time in six years that I couldn't go to sleep with my CPAP (Continuous Pulse Air Pressure) machine, and I was miserable. I couldn't fall asleep (about an hour before my usual bedtime) and I had to lie there with my mouth open. (When I use the machine I keep my mouth closed to preserve the pressure through the nose.) I slept fitfully, off and on, with weird dreams of a potentially nightmarish quality although I kept waking up just before the horror hit. But when at 4:15 the sound of the TV downstairs woke me and I staggered down to turn it off, I had a sore throat and a headcold feeling, just what I need before my big rehearsal with cast and orchestra this evening. It was such a relief to put on the mask and sleep regularly again.

I would put my CPAP at the top of the list of the machines I depend on, even above my car and my computer and my tv. Which means, of course, that I am utterly dependent on the electricity that powers it. I wonder about an emergency generator?

Maggie

2008-10-24T15:54:00.003-04:00

Maggie is a pug - one of those dogs so ugly she's adorable. I meet her from time to time on my walk, and it is always the high point of my day because I am apparently the high point of hers. I have seen her pass by other walkers without paying them attention, but when she sees me at a distance she goes wild, pulls on her leash and when we are together goes round and round in a frenzy of utter joy. I know it is because when she was being trained not to jump on people, every time she refrained from jumping on me she received a doggie treat. From me. Michael = doggie treat. Such happiness!

Doctor

2008-10-22T09:45:00.002-04:00

The last post, of course, should have been labelled as "Doctor Atomic" - the full spelling out of doctor referencing and resonating with Doctor Faustus, Thomas Mann's massive novel about a Schoenberg-like character. And now John Adams claims that he is being blacklisted and harrassed by the United States government and ascribes that to his even-handed treatment of Jews and Paletinians in Klinghoffer. I don't know that opera but I do remember the fuss it raised. Adams is outspoken in his new autobiography about the Israel lobby and the suffering of the Palestinians. I don't know about the Israel lobby, but he is certainly right about the Palestinians. It remains the case that to be pro-Israeli -- as I am -- means to be pro-Palestinian. Any other stance is part of the problem, not the solution. Adams is absolutely even-handed in his book. He is brave, he is right. Whether he is wise is another question.

Dr. Atomic

2008-10-15T19:46:00.002-04:00

This tremendous, awe-full work will be presented by the Met in simulcast transmission on Saturday, November 8 and again the following Wednesday evening. Should anyone actually see this post, you will want to do everything possible to see this work.

This will be a new production -- not bad for an opera only three years old -- because Peter Gelb did not like the Peter Sellars production premiered in San Fancisco and then performed in Amsterdam -- whence a dvd. I myself am predisposed not to like Peter Sellars' work except when he is doing a John Adams piece; John is there to collaborate in a way that Mozart and Handel are not. Moreover, John and Peter have grown so used to each other's tricks and tropes that it is a very comfortable and companionable partnership. For Dr. Atomic, Sellers crafted a libretto from classified documents, letters and poetry that Oppenheimer and his wife loved. I have lived with the Amsterdam dvd and now feel so attached to this opera that I cannot imagine life before I knew it. Both Adams and Sellars seem to have been humbled by this idea -- moreso certainly than by Nixon and Klinghoffer and perhaps even El Nino. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that they have been matured by this work -- Sellars freed from the overreliance upon a ritual and gestural approach to the stage, and Adams freed from the doctrinaire aspects of minimalism. In any event, anyone cautious about seeing Dr Atomic because of anxieties about the composer and director should put those anxieties aside. This is the first great opera of the 21st century. If anyone should want an example of "terrible beauty," to use Yeats's phrase, this is it.

John Adams and the Bach Society

2008-10-13T15:52:00.002-04:00

Reading John Adams autobiography (how can someone so much younger than me be writing an autobiography?) I was delighted to learn that he got lambasted by the Harvard Crimson for a concert he conducted with the Bach Society Orchestra. He was brave enough to include the whole review in his book. Since I, too, was lambasted for my first concert -- at least for the baroque half of the concert -- I am encouraged to think that I too may have a successful career in music.

Atobiography

2008-10-05T14:46:00.002-04:00

At the Learning in Retirement 20th anniversary banquet last night, it was mentioned that only one seminar has been offered every term since the group's inception: Writing Autobiography. Everyone seems to do it. I do it too, and I understand that I am writing primarily to understand myself. Or to understand myself as I would like to be understood.

But there are people who think that their lives will be of interest to others and who go to great lengths (and expense) to publish their memoirs. They are almost always disappointed; others are too busy being fascinated by themselves to pay attention to someone else.

My mother, who lived until her 98th year, wanted her greatgrandchildren to realize how different her childhood was from theirs. She was fascinated by that; they weren't. I am fascinated by my life as I view it retrospectively but, of course, I must be careful not to trust this view. Chances are that I overemphasize the pathology - isn't that what makes the story interesting, after all?

4th movements

2008-10-04T13:12:00.002-04:00

I have been thinking about endings - how often in literature (and in life, in fact) they disappoint. The same is true in music. Too often, fourth movements fail to sustain the creative energies and organic coherence of what came before. Frequently this is by design; composers want lighter, less demanding endings - almost lollipops, to use Beecham's term for light music.

The greatest 4th movement that doesn't work for me is Beethoven's 9th. In scale it is gigantic, as are the three preceding movements. But its material is banal and works against the heroic and life-affirming sentiments the composer intended. On my walks, I frequently compose the Grosse Fugue fourth movement for this symphony - the one that cannot be heard because it is too tremendous.

The great 4th movements are, among others, Mozart's 40th, Beethoven's 7th, Brahms's 1st and 4th, and Sibelius's 4th. I mention these because they are so different from one another and yet follow organically and aesthetically from what has come before. There is of course much more to be said. Concertos tend to have greater last movements than symphonies. Operas usually end tragically, and this gives them an appropriate ending gravitas. Britten said of Puccini, whom he detested, that at least he knew how long it takes to cross a room. We might also say that he knows how to end an opera - which of course makes one wonder about Turandot.

The last quarter inch - II

2008-09-18T15:47:00.003-04:00

Yesterday's post considered aspects of finishing a book from the reader's perspective. What about the writer's or composer's or artist's perspective? How do they feel about approaching the end of their work? Or, better, what are their feelings, since it is unlikely that there will not be a mixture of feelings, perhaps often contradictory ones.

What makes this an especially interesting question is that frequently a creator's imaginative energy seems to decline as she approaches that last quarter inch. In detective fiction the solution is often a let-down after the cleverness of the build-up. W. S. Gilbert notoriously let his ingenious Savoy operas end feebly. Much modern fiction doesn't seem to end, it just stops leaving characters in ambiguous and unresolved situations, suggesting that this novel is just a slice of life, a segment of the ongoing drift of things. Some authors talk of relief that they are approaching the end of a novel or, in detective fiction, the end of their series protagonist. And some artists confound this question by creating the end first and then figuring out how to lead up to it.

My only analogous experience, since I am not an artist or creator, is as a college teacher creating a syllabus and then actually fulfilling it over the course of a semester. I do think this is creative, and I actually construct my courses so that they do culminate (or even climax) in a final resolution (or even revelation). If the semester has gone well, I feel a real regret at concluding the final class session. There is something evanescent about teaching, not unlike the transitory character of a musical performance, a dramatic enactment or any artistic experience that does not emanate in an art object. Of course, if the class hasn't gone well, or if I become dissatisfied with the syllabus I have created, it is a relief to finish the course.

The last quarter inch

2008-09-17T22:09:00.002-04:00

When I read - especially fiction - the last quarter-inch of the book has a special quality. If I have loved the book and felt engaged with it as intensely as I am now with The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano I am both reluctant to see it end while I am eager to see how it ends. If I am reading in bed (as is usually the case with fiction) and my eyes grow heavy during that quarter-inch I am tempted to barrel on while finding myself re-reading sentences, skipping paragraphs, misreading and generally having an out-of-mind experience which carries me through to an ending that seems like an easy segue into my dreams. The next day I will have a vague presentiment of what I read the night before but when I read it in a more alert state I will recall phrases, descriptions, and even episodes without really remembering what happened. It is an eerie feeling.

That is as good a test as I know for good literature - how do I feel about the last quarter-inch. Mostly it comes down to a sadness that I will have to say farewell to characters I have come to feel close to. Sometimes it is a fear that something bad or tragic will happen to them. I like well-written books about good people and sometimes I feel like riverrunning right from the end of such a book back to the beginning.

I think that is why I like to have the books on the shelf, why I keep so many that I will probably not read again. Seeing them raises the opportunity to rejoin the company of good people and cry again at their good fortune.

The leaves turn - perhaps they should weep

2008-09-13T14:47:00.002-04:00

The trees are turning. Is it early? It always seems early. I am fine with an early autumn and rather look forward to wearing sweaters and socks again.

I want the political season to end, too, although I am so fearful. There is a myth that Obama is a good speaker. He is a terrible speaker - boring, bumbling, general when he should be specific, trivial when he should look at the larger picture. I think he will be a fine president but he is an awful candidate and his campaign has been inept.

We do learn important things about the quality of the candidates from the quality of their campaigns. Obama is honorable and thoughtful and perhaps overtrusting of the intelligence of the electorate. McCain is dishonorable, superficial and cynical about the electorate. He is a liar, and his lies are blatant. He substitutes cliches for ideas. They seem to work. And if the country accepts Sarah Palin, clearly the McCain strategists read the voters better than the Obama strategists. What a sad thought!

Sentiment(ality)

2008-09-12T15:49:00.002-04:00

I cry at movies, usually when good things happen to deserving people. I am a sucker for sentimentality and am only slightly ashamed at that. Tears came at the right time when watching "Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont," the film version of the Elizabeth Taylor novel I recently read and loved. But the memory of the novel interfered with the film; the novel was incomparably the greater work of art precisely because it had not a drop of sentimentality. I enjoyed the movie, itself understated. I understood the need to improve the character of the young man, to create a new and lovely girl friend for him and even to impose an unnecessary elderly poof as a denizen of the Claremont. I cried but I was not really moved. I read the novel dry-eyed and was supremely moved.

Britten's Peter Grimes

2008-09-08T09:31:00.003-04:00

It is easy now to understand why Britten was so upset with Jon Vickers's extraordinary portrayal of Peter Grimes. That was the interpretation that made sense to me - Grimes as a powerful sociopathic villain, not a tragic hero. But the beautiful presentation that Britten masterminded in 1969 for the BBC made it clear that his Grimes -- and surely the Grimes delineated by the music -- is no villain. He is a shy, awkward, tender and even noble fisherman, repelled by the smallness of The Borough and its denizens. The deaths of his apprentices are truly accidents - we see evidence of affection and caring and none of the roughness we expect. During the beautiful interludes -- played with meticulous care by Britten and the LSO -- we see profiles of Grimes standing heroically against the sky. Of course it helps that the profile is that of Peter Pears, naturally majestic and aristocratic. Stills from the original 1945 production show a haunted and gaunt Grimes, and the audio cds do nothing to prevent us from imagining him as a haunted and doomed figure.

But now there is a dvd of the 1969 television production, a production overseen by Grimes to provide a foundational Grimes, his Grimes, not Jon Vickers's Grimes. It is a beautiful production in every way. Pears's voice is immaculate and lacks the nasal quality that I have come to associate with him. It is assured and subtle and utterly musical. When, in the final mad scene, he recapitulates earlier moments from the opera, the audience relives those moments as Grimes does, moments of overwhelming sadness and regret at opportunities lost. We can understand that Ellen, so marvelously played by Heather Harper, represents Peter's opportunity for respect and normality. Love may or may not enter into it -- Peter is a natural solitary. He is driven -- maybe driven mad -- by his need to get rich through his fishing and thus show The Borough that he can be both worthy and respectable.

The entire production puts the Met's current production to shame. First and foremost, the sea is always there -- as it must be. Second, the borough residents are costumed in ways that provide a mute commentary on the contrast between their pretensions and the hardness of life in a fishing village. The opening of Act III, which has always troubled me, made sense as we saw the well-dressed Swallow and Keene and Mrs. Sedley make fools of themselves just before they became a hunting party with Peter as the quarry.

Altogether a wonderful and definitive presentation of a wonderful and overwhelming tragedy.

The Other Nico

2008-09-06T11:35:00.002-04:00

Nico Muhly just turned 27. Of course I adore him, but I must stand in line. I should be annoyed with him -- and sometimes I am. I gave him a precious stack of Britten scores, which he barely acknowledged. But that's all right. He said he was putting together a thank you package and never did. But that's all right too.

If I were not smitten with him I probably would not have come across his music or his writing about music, since he poses happily as an indie musician. Don't ask me what that means, or what a random lady (Sarah Palin) is, or what adventurous programming might be. But I came across his music and succumbed to it immediately. The titles of his "projects" (not pieces, not compositions) are deliberately ambiguous - banalities of everyday speech that can (and surely do) have special meanings for the composer and therefore for this listener as well. The music itself may be true to its renaissance and minimalist roots but it is powerfully individual and poignant. Nico is a master of the long form and the small gesture.

Nico the blogger is happily outrageous. He prizes being young, which is worrisome since that will end. His ear for language -- at every level -- is intimidating and he has picked up some commentators who share it. His taste in food is deliberately gross - innards and outards and everything in between - and described in intimate and challenging detail.

In his current post he waxes rhapsodically about the locution "faggot-ass" as used by rappers and by Nico himself. He makes me aspire to become a faggot ass. Nico is gay in the same sense that Nico breathes. Of course, this is what made his commentary on Peter Grimes on the Met web site so deep and satisfying. And I hear it throughout his music, partly because I want to and partly because it is there. In this he seems different from the other youngish gay composer who seems to have the same kind of roots - Thomas Ades. Being gay is intrinsic to his life, but not to his music, at least to my ears.

So much has been written about Nico over the past year or so that he perhaps needs a little anonymity so that he can work on the opera the Met has commissioned as well as other commissions he has received. But no, Nico could not be Nico and anonymous both. His music could not create the world it does if he was not the person he is.

Mrs. Palfrey at The Claremont

2008-08-31T21:43:00.003-04:00

This is a novel by Elizabeth Taylor -- the other Elizabeth Taylor. Perhaps she was unlucky with her name, since the glamorous child star was wowing the world at the same time that the novelist was writing her gems. This is the third I've read. Like the other two, nothing really happens. An elderly widow takes a room at a residential hotel. Her companions are all elderly and mostly female. The great social event is the posting of the evening's menu by the lift. Mrs. Palfrey notices that the other ladies have family who, from time to time, visit them. She has a grandson who doesn't visit her. Circumstances allow her to cross paths with a young novelist, whom she passes off as her grandson. That's pretty much it. Except for the wit, the understated and so very English compassion that the novelist shows for her old people. Mrs. Taylor was not particularly old when she wrote this, but she was clearly prepared to be old. I wonder what her own old age was like? It is a beautiful book.

Sullivan's scores

2008-08-30T10:10:00.002-04:00

I don't know whether anyone has published a study of Sullivan's orchestral scores for the Savoy operas, and I certainly don't plan to do so, but it is interesting to see how inventive he became over time. While he never abandoned the boilerplate cliches of accompaniments, over time he increasingly used the orchestra as an expressive resource while never overwhelming the capacities of amateur musicians nor preventing Gilbert's words from coming through.

Princess Ida has wonderful scoring for the lower and inner strings, and, of course, The Mikado even moreso. When I conducted The Mikado last year, a violinist became snippy with me because I sat the violas in front of the seconds. I will do so again this year with Ida, so that the richness of the viola parts can be central to the sound.

All Thumbs - except when I have suave fingers

2008-08-22T15:49:00.002-04:00

I am such a living ganglion of irreconcilable technical capacities. Yesterday I got a new computer -- an Intel iMac (and it is such a pleasure to have a reasonably fast computer again) -- and managed the setup and transfer of settings, programs and files without a hitch. Well, almost without a hitch, since my printer settings got lost in the shuffle and my "architecture" seems not to support the latest upgrade of Adobe. But I even figured out how to work around those hitches. I am pretty good with computers. I used to say that the secret of my success was reading the manual, but since manuals now belong to the dark ages I can't say that anymore.

But give me a baby car seat to assemble and install and I am hopeless. VCRs defeated me and so did dvd players until I got a tv with a built-in player. I cannot assemble anything that comes knocked down. Who can explain it? Who can tell me why? Fools give me reasons; wise men never try. Oh, Ezio!

Blowing in the Wind

2008-08-18T22:13:00.002-04:00

I seem to be too much affected by world events. The vast incompetence of our administration and its role in the Georgian crisis by its assumption of ominpotence. Obama's thoughtful, insightful and inadequate performance at the Saddleback Forum on Saturday. The utter cynicism of the McCain campaign, following the cynicism of the Clinton campaign. The coarseness of civic discourse in Amherst.

I can tell how badly these things play with me when I get so pleased with Red Sox victories. And a glimpse of La Boheme on the telly yesterday. And the pleasure of reading William Maxwell. These are splendid privileges, but they are not in balance with the awfulness of American politics.

Beauty

2008-08-11T18:51:00.001-04:00

Beauty and Truth

Beauty and Goodness

Beauty and Tragedy

Beauty and the Realization of Mortality

Notes for my great work.

Sullivan's Jewels

2008-08-08T14:34:00.002-04:00

Sir Arthur Sullivan was ready to call it quits after Princess Ida, which enjoyed only a moderate success. He felt that he had exhausted the comic opera lode and was in great danger of repeating himself or descending into pastiche. (We know, of course, that this was not true, since The Mikado followed immediately after.)

Still, after restudying the score of Ida while preparing for the Valley Light Opera production this fall I can see Sullivan's point. Contemporary audiences believed that the series of five numbers opening Act II (Sullivan's Jewels, they were called) were his best work in this medium -- and there is a strong case to be made for that. But also the scoring of this opera, especially for the lower strings, has a richness and even contrapuntal subtlety that had never appeared before and that apparently opened up new musical avenues for Sir Arthur to travel on.

Because of its unwieldy structure and sometimes turgid and rigid blank-verse book this opera is not usually listed among the great ones. But it should be.

Bottomless Belly Button

2008-08-05T10:44:00.002-04:00

I have just finished this wonderfully weird graphic novel. (Yes, that is its name in the title.) I have had a thing about graphic novels for a while - even tried to teach a seminar for Learning in Retirement last year but too many senior citizens felt that the print was too small so I withdrew the syllabus. I am certainly not interested in all graphic novels; most bore me and many annoy me. But when things click - when the author/artist creates a work that needs this form, that exploits it beautifully, the melds good story-telling with well-drawn pictures and which, ideally, has a reflexive quality that uniquely fits this genre -- then I am thrilled.

BBB, a doorstop of a book at 720 pages, some very full and some quite empty, fulfills these criteria brilliantly. Dash Shaw is young -- 25 maybe -- but he understands about families, about relationships, about feelings of rejection and need, about being old, about the mysteries at the heart of daily life. I hope someone will read this so we can talk about it, talk about the story and the legerdemain with which he tells it.

BBB joins my pantheon of great graphic novels: Maus, Persepolis, Fun Home and Alic in Sunderland.

The Young Bloggers

2008-07-29T15:25:00.002-04:00

I don't read a lot of them - my heart couldn't take it. They are such brilliant writers, they and their commentators, such empassioned ranters, such brilliant show-offs, that I love them all even though I don't usually understand what they are talking about. I once thought that I knew something about music, but thank you very much I don't. Unlike the young bloggers, though, that will inhibit me from writing about it. A comment on one of the blogs today complimented the poster by claiming that the commenter got an intellectual boner from reading the post. Are there other kinds? Oh yes, I remember.

Authors and Editors

2008-07-27T16:02:00.002-04:00

Are there some authors of such exalted reputations that publishers are reluctant to sic editors on them? I have a general, if outrageous, rule of thumb: any non-fiction book of more than 300 pages needs an editor. As a case in point consider "A Secular Age" by Charles Taylor. (I can't get this program to underline or italicize.) Now Taylor is an extremely thoughtful and important thinker. When his collected papers came out some years ago I read them avidly and admired them greatly. Some thinkers should write only papers; when they attempt books they lose their compass. Taylor is one of those; in an exceedingly minor way, I am another.

Taylor is trying to make a case for faith; he is in fact a man of faith himself. His argument is flatulent and inconsequent. Not infrequently his prose degenerates into a kind of shorthand that suggests his notes were incorporated into his narrative. As a skeptic, I was particularly eager to discover what a thinker I admire had to say. And I discovered what he had to say. And say. And say. . . Shame on Harvard University Press.

Stanley Plumly's "Posthumous Keats" could have profited from an editor who could take papers written for different occasions and create a whole rather than a collection of unnecessarily repetitive speculations. Plumly wants us to know that Keats wrote under the shadow of his impending death. But we have to read this book under the same shadow, one that moves inexorably with the reader. An editor would have suggested ways of making the point and using it, instead of making it over and over again. Still, any book about Keats cannot be too long. I would say that if it isn't over 300 pages it needs some amplification.

Pinza

2008-07-19T16:07:00.002-04:00

It has been almost two months without music, but yesterday I inserted South Pacific into the car cd player and got goose bumps when Ezio Pinza sang "Some Enchanted Evening". It was a voice like no other - a unique almost Russian timbre, a range of pitch and intensity, blah blah blah. It was the voice I yearned to hear as a boy when I tuned in to the Saturday matinee from the Met. It was the voice of my first ever live opera - the Met on tour in Chicago in April, 1943 - The Marriage of Figaro. But I was in love with him before that date because I can remember the almost intolerable excitement as the overture ended and I knew I would see him and hear him in a matter of seconds. I don't think I'm an Opera Queen now, but perhaps I was when I was ten.

Home Girl

2008-07-17T10:03:00.004-04:00

If Nico Muhly can call Stanley Fish his Home Girl, maybe I can call Rachel Maddow mine. Except, of course, she is a girl and is really from home (Northampton) and that misses the point of gay parlance. She is gay, though, so it is probably ok. Anyway, she is the reason I watch MSNBC. I love (and envy) how fast her mind works and how perfectly the well-formed sentences come trippingly off her tongue. And, of course, the fact that she is always right helps. And I admire the relish with which she takes on the talking guys she is usually teamed with.

The New York Times has a great puff piece on her this morning. But I got there first. It's great having her as a hero.

My Friend John

2008-07-16T14:30:00.002-04:00

Reading Stanley Plumly's wonderful set of meditations on Keats, "Posthumous Keats" leads me to wonder how many great men I would actually want to spend time with. Having been on a Yeats kick for a couple of years, and having read so much of Yeats with such great astonishment and pleasure, it is disconcerting to realize that I wouldn't enjoy or be able to profit from his company. Geoffrey Hill and R B Kitaj, my two contemporaries to whom I am drawn almost against my will, would leave me tongue-tied. I know I would bore them.

But John Keats - I read him with pleasure but it is the pleasure of being in his company. It is the pleasure of the sadness one must feel not so much for his early death but for the months he spent knowing of its inevitability and soldiering on, creating great work and imagining even greater ones. Six hundred page biographies are common enough, but 600 pages on Keats's twenty-five years seem inadequate to capture the multiplicity of responses those years elicit. Had circumstances allowed, I would have been in the Keats circle - people who recognized what the public did not recognize in his lifetime -- the quality of his work and the quality of his life.

Just stupid

2008-07-14T16:03:00.002-04:00

Why could not The New Yorker understand that thousands of people who never read its articles do see its covers on the newsstand, that satire is as satire does - it is a wink wink nudge nudge sort of thing, obvious only to initiates, clever only to those who understand its mechanism. For every person who understands the satirical thrust of the cover there will be tens or hundreds who will believe that it confirms their deepest suspicions. If The New Yorker can be this stupid what hope is there for intelligence?

Official Faces

2008-07-12T16:33:00.002-04:00

The thought of Miguel, exhausted and befuddled, trying to deal with officialdom at the Atlanta Airport, reminds me of how easy it is for those of us comfortable in our familiar settings to intimidate those who are confused, uncomfortable with the language, tired and anxious. How many times have I been that off-putting official. How often has my face belied my true nature, which I believe, no doubt erroneously, to be gentle and generous? It used to be that when I walked down the street, people, instead of saying "Hi, Michael", would say "what's wrong, Michael?" My unguarded face is apparently dour and sullen. Smiling comes easily enough to me, and when I know I am being a public figure I can be engaging and encouraging. But its the private face, which is often publicly seen, that is scary.

Happy Ending

2008-07-11T17:45:00.002-04:00

After almost a day of misery and panic, Susie calmly waved her magic wand and my iPhone has suddenly been not only cured but updated. O frabjous day! So far I have downloaded Blip, Acid Solitaire, Scrabble, Enigmo, Monkey Ball and Mahjong. What happiness indeed!

The Curse of the Early Adapter

2008-07-11T12:41:00.002-04:00

8 a.m. and iphone upgrade 2.0 is available (in a beta version). Michael (and Susie) throw caution to the winds and hook up our iPhones to our Airs. At first, everything seems fine - in spite of a caution to sync with the original computer -- but the process got stuck, after having erased everything from the iPhone, including the capacity to restore the factory settings. So now we are stuck with nonfunctioning iPhones. And there seems to be nothing we can do about it on this island. Have you ever heard anything so sad?

Tsk, tsk

2008-07-08T10:46:00.003-04:00

I am in the "tsk, tsk, Senator" school when it comes to Obama's recent policy moves. Either he believes that it is ok to go back on pledges (campaign financing), fudge the 1st amendment (support faith-based initiatives), keep the death penalty, and make phone companies immune from prosecution for their role in illegal wiretaps, or he doesn't. So either he has undergone a conversion of principles or a convenience of principles. Either way, ugh.

The one thing I don not fault him on is his willingness to interject flexibility into his decisions about Iraq. I do believe that he will still bring the troops home - after all, they are starting to come home already. And his "end the war" position is in the starkest contrast to McCain's "win the war" position so I think he will hold on to it.

Would he have lost votes if he had stuck to his liberal guns? The question is, would he have lost votes that he otherwise would have gained? The pundits are minimizing his policy shifts. I am disappointed. Am I surprised? Maybe not. Let's see who the veep candidate will be.

The High Style of No Style

2008-07-07T09:01:00.002-04:00

While in the UK I was introduced to Patrick Hamilton, whose The Slaves of Solitude I enjoyed tremendously. I suppose there is a "movement" of mid-century English authors who deliberately limit their scope to the lives of ordinary people. But just as Larkin creates high art out of Mr Bleany, so does Hamilton help us understand the hopes and anticipations of middle-aged unmarried women, as well as the defense mechanisms they employ to mitigate against the dashing of those hopes. A boarding house, like a ship or an English country house, provides a setting that deliberately circumscribes the exterior action, so as to focus on the relationships and the interior actions.

Come to think of it, ordinary people are at the center of many 20th century novels; I suppose larger-than-life characters are inherently untrustworthy these days. And we are tired of them. Along with Patrick Hamilton I have also discovered Elizabeth Taylor. She is published as a "women's novelist" by a feminist press. So is Virginia Woolf a women's novelist.

Both Taylor and Hamilton choose a basically uninflected style; as I read more of them I will find out whether this is true of all their work. But with Hamilton there are occasional moments of almost heart-rending heightened prose as the protagonist, Miss Roach, finds herself overwhelmed by a surge of emotion, mostly resentment, that interrupts her placidity. It is all brilliantly done.

Democracy

2008-07-05T10:08:00.002-04:00

The UK celebrated the first anniversary of Gordon Brown's accession by counting the ways in which it was disappointed in him. Olmert is waiting to see if he will be indicted for scuzzy financial dealings. There are no words to describe Bush. McCain is feeble and every day Obama finds a way to sadden his most fervent supporters.

Amherst civic life has become nasty and brutish, but not short. Leaders behave badly and bloggers become obsessed with stupilliness.

And it rained on the 4th of July.

Mirror, mirror. . .

2008-07-04T08:30:00.002-04:00

Much of my trip was spent in hotels -- Holly Tree on Loch Linnhe, Excelsior in London, Saunton Sands and Broomhill in North Devon. Not to mention the QM2. The thing about hotels is that they are full of mirrors - in the bathroom, on the bedroom walls I am everywhere. Not a good thing. At home I can muddle through blissfully unaware of my real appearance, since the only mirrors reveal my face only. So the portly and ungainly gentleman I lived with in hotels was an unexpected and unwelcome doppelganger. Now I have two stalks of celery in the fridge, and no bread at all. Doppelganger, get thee hence.

Broomhill

2008-07-03T21:29:00.004-04:00

Sculpture gardens are common enough, but Broomhill is uncommon. The gardens sit on a terraced hillside amidst gardens carefully tended to look wild and untended. The artworks are prolix, they pop out around unexpected turns, can be seen from above and then disappear as one winds down the paths. Certain artist are represented by several pieces; all in all the feeling is of bounty, eclecticism and astonishment. The gardens are the creation of Rinus and Aniet van de Sande, who were taken with the beauty and opportunity afforded by North Devon, which had nothing like this before. The gardens reflect their taste in art, their love of the land, their commitment to green values. The hotel and gallery is of a piece with the gardens and the hosts - informal, funky, adventurous and generous.

After the formal and programmed elegance of the Saunton Sands Hotel it was grand to come to this unique place, where the signature welcome is a huge red woman's shoe and a grotesque monster peeking over the foliage from afar. The extended Kuh clan kicked off our shoes and did a lot of intensive schmoozing on the terrace. In the evening we went to the charming Muddiford Pub for a splendid dinner, at which my dates were Isis and Merissa, and our conversation centered on "Miss Mary Mac Mac Mac. . ." It is in keeping with the Broomhill ethos that breakfast is served at 9:30 -- too bad for early risers. Then more conversation and wandering through the gardens until intrepid walkers went to some cliffs for serious walking while I stayed at Broomhill for some serious -- well, never mind.

Where's My Breakfast?

2008-07-02T06:56:00.002-04:00

I've been sitting here for half an hour, and no one has brought coffee or cold toast in a rack, and there is no sideboard groaning with eggs, sausage, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans. What's going on? Oh yes, I'm home.

Sometime soon I will write about the magical time at Broomhill.

The World Will Be All Right

2008-07-02T06:52:00.002-04:00

Saturday night, as I was preparing to leave the loud happy party after the wedding, 5-year-old Finn, bon vivant, breakdancer, snowboarder, impossibly beautiful child, said to me out of the blue, "have a safe trip home."

Fine

2008-06-28T04:41:00.002-04:00

I was astonished to learn that "fine" has a Kuh family tradition. In the manner of "interesting" it closes off conversation with a non-commital metaphorical shrug. I explained that in the Greenebaum family tradition (or at least my personal tradition) "fine" is high praise - more like "fine wine" or "fine arts". A fine performance has the quality of richness and subtlety and attention to detail. The parts fit together into a coherent whole. And yet there is a certain desirable reticence as well. It does not aim to impress or to win praise. There is modesty in the excellence of a fine performance.

The generations of the Kuh family get better and better; in fact they are fine. Annie's children, Kathryn and Alex, are among my favorites. Kathryn is beautiful and accomplished and socially confident. She is a serious horse woman. She will attend McGill University and study neuropsychology. Alex will be a high school senior and is passionate about theater technology, especially sound technology. We had lots to talk about.

David Burt brought his new ladyfriend, Colleen. They are very serious and the adoration that Isis has for her already shows how likely it is to work. She is wonderful with the children; both Isis and Merissa vie for her attention. The next younger echelon is quite fantastic. (Is that better than fine?) Finn is a charmer and an imp. Owen is an eating and smiling machine.

The Cox family tree is almost as complex as the Kuh/Greenebaum family tree. At first the Coxes wanted to know how I was related to Ellie, and I politely inquired how they were related to Ben. But it doesn't matter, and soon we all gave up and just enjoyed one another. Ellie looks beautiful, of course, and her bridesmaids are lovely as well. (Is lovely better than fine?) Ben has been banished to a beach chalet but in an hour will be allowed back into the hotel. Yesterday's fliers seem to be more or less over their jet lag. The wedding day has dawned warm and windy but the clouds give promise of allowing the sun through later today. Everything is fine.

Lillian's Revenge

2008-06-26T03:58:00.002-04:00

It is well-known that Lillian Hellman and Leonard Bernstein ended their friendship over a profound disagreement over Candide, for which she wrote the initial book. Her book turned out to be wordy and polemical - too obviously an attack on the House Unamerican Activities Committee and Senator Joe McCarthy and incompatible with Bernstein's stylish and elegant music. She would have been thrilled with last night's coarse and vulgar production at English National Opera, which took pleasure in bashing 1950s American as though this were still a clever and sophisticated thing to do. Nothing was left to imagination - the overture was accompanied by projections of complacent middle America and it was downhill from there. Westphalia became West Failure, and the baron and baroness were JFK and Jackie. It would be futile to list the infelicities of this production; however it is telling that the two best -- and best-received -- performances were Toby Spence's winning Candide, who remained sweet and unsullied even while killing three people, and Beverly Klein's Old Woman, who somehow the revisers couldn't work into their scheme - she belonged purely to Bernstein.

This production did nothing to solve the basic problem of Candide, which is the second act. But in most productions even this pastiche of an act is redeemed by the stirring finale. Ambiguous to be sure, yet the effect is of a philosophic problem solved and of a dramatic problem resolved. Not so at the Coliseum, this final exhortation "to let our garden grow" was accompanied by visual projections of a landscape laid waste and barren.

This production showed how fragile Bernstein's wonderful music is; it cannot really survive a bad production, let alone a vulgar one. Last night, besides Spence and Klein, Anna Christy portrayed a Cunegonda intended to mimic Marilyn Monroe. She was required to subvert her "Glitter and be Gay" coloratura with giggles and breathlessness in character and sad.

The book was abandoned and the score cruelly distorted. I cried.

Comeuppance

2008-06-24T03:36:00.002-04:00

It is "addio luxury and indolence" in London. A room so small there is not room for a chair and a shower like the ones on Amtrak where you sit on the toilet and let the water drip on you. No matter, the toilet works, the sheets are clean and if I stand my suitcase upright I can open the door.

I saw an extraordinary play last night - Black Watch at the Barbican performed by the Scottish National Theatre. It is based upon interviews with members of the Black Watch regiment returned from Iraq and is as powerful as any theater I have ever seen. I got the last seat available for the week by booking on the train. I will return to the Barbican on Thursday for the Concertgebouw playing Messiaen.

Falstaff

2008-06-21T17:54:00.002-04:00

The Scottish National Opera production of Verdi's Falstaff was a triumph of production values and inspired direction. The voices were good but not great, but the effect was glorious and joyful. Bringing the opera into Verdi's time instead of Shakespeare's was a reasonable decision and permitted a much more fluid staging without bustles and ruffles. The set was spare but that was ok too, since we witnessed real singing actors. Peter Sidhom was a splendid splenetic Falstaff -- not very likable, as indeed he should not be, not over-the-top, not a ham. He is an old fat man making the most of his pulchritude because he has no choice -- it is there.

I would have staged a few things differently. Pistol, escaping up the ladder and through the window, should really scramble but the singer must be cautious. The alternating men's and women's ensembles of Act I Scene 2, should have been staged so that they were on the stage at the same time but in separate groups, rather than having one set leave as the other set enters. Ford is a very difficult part to play -- is he a trickster or a serious cuckold? Both of course, but that requires a magical kind of skill that was missing here.

Verdi - what can one say? He began this astonishing work at age 77, and while he tips his hat to his old self, he really never looks back. He charts a new direction - an opera of seamless and intricate melody that hardly seems to take a breath, that has as much humor in the pit as on the stage, that never flags, that is inspired from start to finish. And this from the composer who until this work never entirely did without his oom-pah-pahs.

He wanted to write a comic opera, but his obsession with the father-daughter theme is still very much central to him. Again, this calls for a very complicated portrayal by Ford, who must be larger than the libretto really allows him to be. The music has to inflate his importance, and it does.

A word about the lighting of this production. It captured the browns and sepias of the best sketches of the period, the caricatures of Daumier and Cruikshank that were projected onto the curtains before they opened.

Boo-ee

2008-06-21T02:13:00.002-04:00

"See that boy out there," said Jeremy, pointing to the middle of Loch Linnhe. I saw no boy, nor any living creature, only a buoy bobbing on the surface. "The boy bobbing on the surface," Jeremy explained.

The drive back to Edinburgh took us through Glen Coe in the sunlight, which barely penetrated the dour pass. Jeremy found two lovely little lanes for meandering along plashy streams and then Loch Ern. The scenery changed as we left the highlands but I had a chance to enjoymore of Perthshire's rolling hills and fields. In Crieff, where I went looking for a cardigan, I bought instead a garment of pockets to wear over a shirt. Handy? We shall see.

Ardnamurchan

2008-06-19T13:15:00.003-04:00

One of the joys of the highlands is saying the place names. Of course, I can't get them quite right but I am thrilled to hear others say them with the right lilt and toll and softness. Kentallen, where we are staying is on the road between Oban in the south and Fort William in the north. Across Loch Linnhe (Linnie) is a quite wild and hoary peninsula, where the trees are misshapen and gnarled and the moss is inches deep on the stumps. To get to Ardnamurchan one either must go up to Fort William and down the other side, or take a five minute ferry ride across the Loch at Callan. We did that; it was indeed like a miniature Islander, although by the time one climbed to the upper deck, the ferry has arrived at the other side. We drove a splendid one-lane shore road with scruffy beach on one side and louering cliffs on the other. We eventually arrived at the little town of Strontian, a sweet little town where the element Strontium 90 was in fact discovered, or whatever it is you do with elements Filled rolls, Jeremy's with tuna mayo and mine with prawn mayo. There was annoying background music which the patron would not turn off, even though we were the only customers. Some others might come, he explained, and the music allows conversations to be more private. After lunch we went on a genuine woodland walk through mossy trees and stumps. The walk grows longer with each telling, but I do think that it was at least three miles - it felt like an accomplishment.

The woman at the tourist office begged us to stay the night at Strontian - tomorrow there will be a daylong festival when the children of the area perform; her son will be playing the accordion and singing gaelic songs. She was so proud.

Return to Oban

2008-06-18T11:54:00.002-04:00

I lied. I did bring my computer to this charming little hotel on Loch Linnhe. The rooms are spacious and well-fitted; the bathrooms are sparkling. The restaurant is notable for seafood presentations. Last night I had it all - a melange of mussels, oysters, langoustine, scallops and shrimp after a starter of encrusted hot brie and a dessert of brownie almost as good and as underdone as Linda's. Today it was a southwardly drive towards Oban, stopping at three garden centers on the way. At one there was an astonishing hothouse of cacti. In Oban I saluted the Columba Hotel, although it was smaller and less imposing than in my fantasy. I bought a green cardi and a rainhat, which came in handy when we returned to the hotel just now in a driving rain. Now the Loch is fogged in and the rain is beating against my window. Perfect.

My Town

2008-06-16T09:31:00.002-04:00

Edinburgh is so familiar, so companionable, so livable that even in the rain, it is the place I most like to walk. Perhaps because I have so many customary routes that haven't changed in fifteen years that I feel at home here more than any other city. The downtown streets are being dug up so as to install a tramline running from Edinburgh airport to the Port of Leith. It will be a grand thing when it is done -- projected for 2011 -- but a tremendous aggro before then.

Last night to the Film House to see Puccini live from La Scala. Two of the three operas were excellently done. Il Tabarro lacked the hints of jealousy and growing rage that were required to make the denouement effective. But Suor Angelica, plyaed on a monstrous effigy of the Virgin, was beautifully sung by Barbara Fritolli, and Gianni Schicchi was played broadly and effetively by Leo Nucci. The sets were minimalist - in stark contrast to the Met's realistic barge on the River Seine.

Tomorrow we are off to Kentallen, north of Oban, for three nights. In an act of tremendous panache, I am not taking my computer. So no blogs or emails or journals until Friday the 20th.

A Walk around 19 Eglinton Crescent

2008-06-15T11:57:00.002-04:00

I am urging the Js to take a leaf from Jack May and produce a catalog of the art on their walls. Jeremy's eye especially is excellent and I have learned a great deal from visiting galleries with him. This afternoon Janet and I visited the Modern Art Galleries, and I think the hangings at their house are a better collection than we saw there.

We've done a lot of chatting, ranging smoothly from family to politics and back again. Suddenly it was 12.15 last night, so I slept until 8.30 this morning. The Js do not get a Sunday paper on principle, so it was more chat. Jeremy seems to be in fine form. He has recovered completely from his operation and is now under treatment for the deep vein thrombosis in his leg -- for which the treatment is rat poison, literally. Janet is active in a variety of causes having to do with social justice, women's treatment and Palestinian rights. Tonight we are off to the Film House for a live feed from La Scala - Puccini's Trittico. All is well, indeed.

Here's Your Hat. . .

2008-06-14T13:39:00.002-04:00

I had forgotten how quickly and how dramatically the mood changes on debarkation day. All the staff who slavishly did your every bidding just wants you out of their way. The ship leaves at 5 pm for a Mediterranean cruise, so there is not a great deal of turnound time. The upside of that is that I was ashore by 7:30 am, on a train to Edinburgh at 8:15, and am now home chez Mitchell-Powney at 6:45 pm awaiting the dinner being prepared by Jeremy. He seems to be pretty much back to his old self after a pretty harrowing couple of months. I have not seen Janet yet since she spent the day in London and we shall pick her up at the airport tonight.

On my bed is Hella, a Norwegian Forest Cat and a beautiful creature. It brings out certain yearnings. . .

The train trip was splendid - up the west coast and then cutting across Yorkshire and up through Newcastle to Edinburgh, where I arrive six hours earlier than expected. All is well. I have been called to dinner, so more soon.

Calm Seas and Prosperous Voyage

2008-06-13T05:06:00.002-04:00

The last day, and it is almost turning nice. The sea is calm. The sky, while overcast, has a high ceiling. The wind is brisk but no longer gale force. I have really enjoyed the trip. It has been a bit much in one respect, since the retired reform rabbi adores me, and I am not accustomed to being the object of adoration. He is very nice, but a bit cloying and wants us to be together all the time. If I am a bit brusque, he grovels. I knew there was a downside to being sociable.

I found the food good, my cabin fine and well-maintained, and by necessity I walked my two miles every day, just getting from my cabin in the extreme bow to the public spaces. I spent a lot of time in the solarium on the top deck but I didn't go in the water..

My time on the internet is about to expire, so my next posting will be from Edinburgh. Thanks for the comments.

Schizophrenia

2008-06-11T09:05:00.002-04:00

QM2 needs a therapist. How do you reconcile the needs of a modern cruise ship with the desires of the old Cunard tradition? It is not an easy match. Elegance has been sacrificed to glitz, but the glitz is unnatural. Everything on the daily program (which is still programme) could be on any cruise ship. All the shops have the same sales. Muzak is ubiquitous. On the other hand, there is some classy entertainment. Members of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) gave an interesting if ineffective reduction of Richard III yesterday afternoon, and last night a touching recital of love poetry accompanied by a harpist. But there is the inevitable dancing team -- in this case, the "internationally experienced" Dmytro and Tetania. What do you do about performers who cant even spell their own stage names?

The Motion of the Ocean

2008-06-10T13:48:00.002-04:00

The morning was blustery with a splendid swell. I could feel the boat rock and hear it creak. My kind of day, and tomorrow will be better (or worse). Last night as I was typing my post in the elegant theatre (Royal Court Theatre) awaiting the entertainment, I noticed many eyes on me. It was like high school when I was popular because I had a car; here my Air made me the center of attention. I hastily ended my post and its reflections on the Friends of Dorothy and passed the machine around to much oohing and aahing. The show was a tribute to Judy Garland and was only intermittently effective. Trying to imitate Judy is setting the bar very high, and while these were talented and engaging young singers and dancers the effect was curiously insipid.

Before that at dinner, Colon and I moved swiftly to the level of comradely insults. David looked quite splendid in his tux with his hair combed, but he is still something of an enigma. Herby and Betty were no-shows.

I am enjoying this a great deal.

Friends of Dorothy

2008-06-09T19:19:00.002-04:00

Dorothy has lots of friends. Including the rprrr (rolypolyretiredreformrabbi) I am now sitting in the theater, awaiting the evening's show - an hommage to Judy Garlnad. It has been a grand day, walking, reading, chatting, and I am actually engaged in lots of social stuff. Slept beautifully last night. Awoke refreshed to discover that it was only 6 am, went on deck walked around a couple of times and found my favorite deck chair - slightly wet from an evening storm. It was never really warm - no hot tub yet. Excellent dinner, presentation is all. I am also going to send email entries, since I can write those off line. If you would like to receive them, let me know.

Survival Craft

2008-06-08T20:37:00.003-04:00

Survival craft used to be called lifeboats. Cabin attendants used to be sturdy British lads. Now my steward is Pavel and his English is limited tho his smile gleams. Still, the cabin (s0rry, stateroom) is spotless and the amenities splendid.

The internet costs 50 cents a minute so my blogs will be short and sweet. Easy trip to Brooklyn. Wonderful four hours with Susie - brunch in Red Hook, open house at many artist gallaries. Awful heat. The boarding process was painless. The ship is huge and the only thing that is British about it is the reticence of the senior staff. The ship faced the Statue of Liberty - I sat down next to an eldely American couple going to Scotland for the golf. Nest I catted up a single elderly roly poly man with a strong British accent. Turns out he is a reform rabbi from Detroit. Is friends with Bob Samuels.

My dinner companions - David, an inscrutable and unintelligible Scot. I could not really understand him but I think he flew into Newark today from Edinburgh in time to catch the QM2 going back. Colin and Carol - a gregarious couple from New Zealand, rich and loud and benignly racist. Herby and Betty, an Indian couple from South Africa, he a chemist but also a composer of church music and delighted to share his insights with me. I treated the table to a bottle of wine. Colin committed himself to tomorrow night's bottle. Food was excellent, service a bit slow.

I am in the library but about to go on deck. The ship is full, lots of Brits doing the round trip lots of other countries, 130 children. Well, that;s today's $10 worth of journal.

Nothing To Do

2008-06-07T10:02:00.002-04:00

It's 10 a.m. and I have just vacuumed the downstairs and wiped the kitchen counters with clorox wipes. Smells clean. Sly marketing ploy, since the dirt and germs are lurking in the crevices. My suitcase is on the table waiting for my dop kit tomorrow morning. Do I have too much? Of course, but I refuse to be intimidated by the Smiths who traveled with one 21" suitcase for the two of them (and must have bragged about it, or who would know?). And they speak German.

My To Do list had lots and lots of items, but I didn't realize that none of them took over two minutes to do. So what To Do when the To Do list is done?

Docker's Ghost

2008-06-05T11:18:00.002-04:00

I think I always hear the voice of my mother when I pack for a long trip, although that may be giving her a bum rap. The idea that every day should start with clean clothes -- over and under -- may be all mine, not hers. And the fear that it might rain and I need an extra pair of trousers - I'm sure that's mine. The weather is likely to range from warm to hot but - oh oh -- the nights may be cool. My somewhat-dressy black shoes must be saved for those formal occasions that require them. Thus I need a comfortable pair of walking shoes. Only one? There is that rain, again. And pajamas - long or short? Or both. Of course, Tony Soprano slept in his underwear. And those wonderful poplin longsleeve shirts have soft collars - not very formal. So should I bring one shirt with a hard collar? Only one?

Stay tuned to discover how I solved all these problems. Docker, as I now recall, always traveled with a single small suitcase and re-wore everything.

Obama

2008-06-04T11:34:00.002-04:00

My pride in Obama's victory is great; so is my apprehension. I think the next five months will be nervous ones, not because he cannot best McCain if it was just the two of them, but he must contend with the vicious Republican dirty-tricks machine and the vicious Clinton dirty-tricks machine at the same time. I do not know if the country is strong enough at the moment to withstand the anxieties and doubts they will sow and nourish.

Social Facts

2008-05-28T19:06:00.002-04:00

Years ago I read an intriguing book called "Social Facts" that examined the ways in which social groups could be considered entities. (This is also something I wrote about in considering classrooms, schools and school systems as entities.) It's an intriguing topic for me. Over the weekend I had occasion to wonder about the "entitiness" of family (as in Greenebaum/Kuh) and today there is the blare of publicity over Scott McClellan's new book which says - surprise! - that the Bush administration was and is deceitful. "The administration" is one of those collectives which, in use, discourages further reflection and analysis. So is "the media," apparently also judged severely by McClellan. And of course, "hardworking white voters".

We are so accustomed to treating collectivities as entities that it is useful to remind ourselves first, that they have a large fictive component, and, second, that it is a useful strategy for avoiding taking or assigning individual responsibility.

Maybe I will write again after all.

Not Caring Any More

2008-05-23T19:19:00.002-04:00

One of the alarming symptoms of advancing age is the realization that I no longer care, or care very much, about things that I used to care about deeply and often obsessively. I just gave three cartons of books to the bookstore to cover my debts, and it was easy to do. I am no longer a completist; I don't need to have everything about an author, an artist, a composer. (I wish I had stopped caring just before my Yeats craze of two years ago.)

I don't miss Amherst Town Meeting one bit. I haven't watched a single session on tv since deciding not to run for re-election. It is not that my life is so incredibly busy that I needed to free up time; I am not busy at all. I just don't care about local politics any more.

My ideas - well, I still think a lot about imagination and learning. I still believe that my approach to organizations is unique and worth writing about, although I have no delusion that it will lead to wiser management or more fulfilling organizational lives. I have a nifty little computer to take to coffee shops where everybody is working madly on their computers, but it is hard to get up a head of steam about the drafts on its hard drive.

I think I have been affected by Bush, Rumsfeld and Chaney. I am deeply pessimistic about Israel and Palestine. Globalism is as discouraging as it is inevitable. The 21st century bodes well to become even more awful than the 20th, and who could imagine that was possible?

I am taking a month's trip abroad in a couple of weeks. I hope that a change of scenery, a visit with old and good friends, the wedding of two beloved and beautiful young people may recharge the batteries. I care about not caring.

Reading

2008-05-17T19:19:00.002-04:00

Reading a review of John Updike's latest collection of critical pieces, I have two thoughts. One, why haven't I included him in my group of contemporaries whom I engage with in my ongoing project, "Being Our Age."? I probably should have; after all, I actually knew him slightly in college; stood in the food line at Kirkland House with him. And he used to lie, psoriasis and all, on the Menemsha beach a stone's throw from what is now being called "the Greenebaum house." That's probably it; we share too much. If only I shared his talents. His critical talents, I mean. While I'm sure he thinks of himself first and foremost as a novelist, I think of him mostly as a critic of art and literature. His range of curiosities is enormous, and he brings to all the objects of his interest all the other objects of his interests. He is a reader, and his reading issues forth in commentary.

But I'm a reader too. My reading issues forth in. . .more reading. That is a great pleasure for me but it accompanied by an intuition of wasted opportunity. Reading ought to issue forth in writing. At least that is the message I get not only from Updike but from all those who manage to write, as I once did for the Amherst Bulletin. To read for pleasure and imaginative stretch, but not to write or to teach, well, it's solitary, and we know about solitary pleasures.

Is reading selfish? Are we really preparing college students to become critics? Or is joining a book group sufficient to overcome the aloneness of reading. But I do not feel alone. I am reading the letters of Noel Coward and the magnificent "The Rest is Noise," by Alex Ross. I am reading the early novels of William Maxwell and the war reporting of A.J. Liebling. I am not alone. But what should I be doing with all this pleasure?

Children and Language

2008-05-15T17:47:00.003-04:00

In his current post on his site, Nico Muhly quotes Helen deWitt, author of the great The Last Samurai:

"The last thing a child wants to learn is a language that shows some prospect of being useful. Sheer impracticality is one of the strongest points in a language's favour for the young learner. The main reason my French is so much better than my Spanish or Portuguese is, naturally, that I grew up in countries where there was no use for it."

No doubt this is true for those who become artists, poets, novelists -- those for whom words have a palpable essence, as do their inscriptions, well beyond their range of reference. But she doesn't know my two local grandsons. Mateo, age 4, was a very early talker and loved the sounds as well as the senses of words. He remains very verbal and sophisticated in his use of language, but his language has come to focus on the useful at the expense of the artistic. The days of singing along with the piano with sounds that approximate the words of folksongs are over.

Nico (my grandson), age 17 months, is more reticent. He makes a wide variety of sounds and has a highly developed receptive language. But when Mateo has a tantrum, or becomes adamant and oppositional, Nico throws something at him. No verbal language at all and barely any expression on his face, he keeps throwing things until Mateo stops. How much more useful can language be?

Mortality

2008-05-14T11:09:00.005-04:00

When loved ones die at advanced ages or in distressed conditions we grieve for ourselves and the holes in our lives. When Docker died I had the familiar combination of sadness and relief that my cousins felt on the death of their parent, and also the strange and unexpected pangs that I feel every Sunday morning at 9:10 am, when the weekly phone call occurred. I missed her phone call on my birthday and I missed sending her flowers on Mother's Day. And in my front closet hang several of her dresses that no one will ever wear but which I could not quite throw out when I cleaned out her room.

But during the past few months I have faced mortality as a neighbor not as an alien. Since I know death will happen -- and now sooner rather than later -- it is comforting to acknowledge that and be able to plan sensibly for it. And if one's life has been full and fulfilling, it seems as though it can be a friendly neighbor. And as for contemplating the vastness of nothingness, well, it was there before I was born and didn't bother me a bit.

So I salute and honor Docker, Irv and Margaret by continuing to enjoy life but also by preparing myself to go gently into that good night.

Auditions

2008-05-11T21:06:00.002-04:00

I doubt that there is anything I like less than holding auditions, unless it is interviewing teaching candidates. In both cases, failure and disappointment are built in to the process and while in many cases judgments are pretty clear and easy, in others there are only shadings and hunches and those gut feelings that can be acknowledged but not explained in any satisfactory manner. I hate making judgments, as is typical of INFPs, but because I must I tend to make them crisply and without much emotion. Some will succeed but more will fail - such is the Hobbesian nature of auditions and interviews.

Words

2008-05-09T22:59:00.002-04:00

Here is John Locke on the abuse of words (as found in Denis Donoghue's wonderful Eloquence:

First: "Words without any or without clear ideas,"

Secondly: "Unsteady application of them."

Thirdly: "affected obscurity by wrong applications,"

Fourthly: "Taking them for things"

Fifthly: "setting them for what they cannot signify"

Sixthly: "A supposition that words have a certain and evident signification" and

Seventhly: "Figurative speech also an abuse of language."

One could use this as a guide to the abuses of language in, say, a presidential campaign (especially under the guise of plain talk) or as a taxonomy of poetry, both good and bad. The character of these abuses is built in to language; that is why I distrust it. That is why I cannot imagine life without its capacity to animate the imagination. But imagination is just as (or more) likely to be fascistic as democratic.

Commenting

2008-05-08T22:10:00.003-04:00

I notice that no one has commented on any of my posts, and possibly that is because no one knows how to do it. Or possibly it is because they are not worth commenting on. However, just in case, under each post you will find the word "comments". By clicking on that, you will get a box in which to write a comment which appears underneath the main post.

Being My Age

2008-05-05T22:42:00.002-04:00

I have just finished the collection of Leo Lerman's journals, letters and reminiscences called The Grand Surprise. It is a glorious and moving book. Lerman was a generation older than me; born in 1914 and dying in 1994. His life's work was to know everybody in the world of all the arts. He was Jewish, gay, gregarious, extravagant. And he wrote vivid metaphorical descriptions of the world I admired and perhaps secretly aspired to when I was young. He was intimate with everyone and threw fabulous parties for them. He loved women and they adored him. Long before it was commonplace even in artistic circles, he had an enduring marriage to Gray Foy.

Most of those he adored and wrote about are long gone, and his contemporaries are mostly dead as well. Those younger than I am will not have any great interest; the names he drops are part of an undifferentiated past: Proust, Virginia Woolf, Marlene Dietrich, Maria Callas, Truman Capote are all contemporaneous with one another to all but my generation.

But I, I was a young man in the post-war world. I read all the writers, saw all the movies, listened to all the opera singers, and in a few cases (John Cage, Julius Katchen and a few others) knew the boldface names he dropped. And when he gossiped about Toscanini's mistress or Goddard Lieberson's fling with a young man and countless other morsels about his thousand best friends, he must have known that it was my generation he was writing to.

The editor mentions that Leo knew that in future years most of the friends he loved and wrote about would be relegated to footnotes in cultural history, but for me the book is vividly alive and thrilling. His genius for the telling description, his innate generosity and kindness, and most of all his gift as a writer speak directly to me. And they speak not only to the vicarious experiences that meant so much to me but also to the inwardness and introversion than prevented me from experiencing life as fully and richly as he did. I suppose that is a regret, but I also feel inspired to return to one of the many pieces I have written - this one for the Beefeater Book that will probably never be published. It is called "Being Our Age," and it speaks to the singularity of the experiences of our age peers. Of course, everyone could write such a book, but perhaps most people are too busy being their age to write about it. I have no journals from years past except my travel journals, and my letters home are insipid and embarrassing because they focus on my daily life (first I did this and then I did that) rather than my interior life which was often fabulous. But perhaps the travel journals might make an interesting book. Leo has inspired me.

Trivia

2008-05-04T13:28:00.002-04:00

I know that my readers expect regular posts, and that bloggers must therefore cultivate the art of being trivial. Last Sunday on the plane back from Nashville the guy in the seat next to me spent the first hour reading and annotating Romeo and Juliet. During the second hour he watched a movie about logging in Oregon, with lots of sweaty unshaven guys.

Is that trivial enough?

I have been listening to Stravinsky, John Adams and Nico Muhly.