Friday Photo

Ruins of Battle Abbey

Battle (near Hastings)

May, 2014

Get Out and Vote

 So, we're living in a time when the President admits that he wants to de-fund the Post Office to limit how many people can vote by mail and his Postmaster General (who owns stock in a USPS competitor) orders the destruction of mail sorting machines.  It's important to know how voting is being managed in your state this year, whether and on what grounds you can request an absentee ballot, where your in-person polling place is, and so on.

Here are some places you can consult:

• The web site of your state's highest election official. This is often the secretary of state. For example, here's the Alabama secretary of state's web site. Remember that most of these folks want elections to run well and smoothly, regardless of the party they belong to. The web search to use is something like this:
  
  state of [your_state_name ] voting 
  
  Or:
  
  [your_state_name] secretary of state voting
  
  
• The represent.us web site has a page that tells you everything you need to know about voting by mail on a state-by-state basis.
• The vote.org web site has even more election information.

I'm going to note that the USPS (Post Office) was established in the U.S.Constitution; millions of people, especially in rural areas, depend on it for mail, packages, and medication delivery; and 91% of Americans approve of the Postal Service. The USPS provides jobs to hundreds of thousands of people and provides a vital service. The Republican Party has been trying to sabotage it for decades; the USPS is required to fund pensions 75 years in advance and health care for 50 years in advance, unlike every other organization or business in the country. If you want your mail delivered, support the candidates who support the USPS.

Museum Monday

Art glass

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

November, 2013

Where to Donate to Senate Races (If You're Supporting Democratic Candidates)

My friend Andy Lazarus created a spreadsheet about where to get the most bang for your Democratic buck in competitive Senate races. You can see it here, at Indivisible Elmwood.

The short version includes don't donate to McGrath (KY, vs. McConnell), Gideon (Maine, vs. Collins), or Kelly (AZ, vs. McSally) because they are all rolling in cash and don’t need more. Yeah, even if you hate Moscow Mitch and Susan ("Concerned") Collins. That’s why those three races are in the - (minus) and -- (double minus) area. The + and ++ races are where your money, in whatever amount, will do the most good.

Friday Photo

Flowers on a wall

Town of Battle

May, 2014

Museum Mondays

Greek statuary

Musée du Louvre

Paris, October, 2018

Friday Photo

Westminster Abbey

London, 2014

Recordings of Note: Shapero and Smyth

I've gotten notices about a couple of important new recordings.

1. Today, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) releases a CD of orchestral music by Harold Shapero:

Works: Sinfonia in C Minor (1948), Credo for Orchestra (1955), Partita in C for Piano and Small Orchestra (1960), On Green Mountain for Jazz Ensemble (1957), Serenade in D for String Orchestra (1945)

Performers: Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Vivian Choi (piano), led by Gil Rose (conductor)

2. Chandos is releasing Dame Ethel Smyth's The Prison on August 7; James Blachly conducts the Experiential Orchestra and Chorus, with soprano Sarah Brailey and bass-baritone Dashon Burton. This is the world premiere recording. 

Press releases for both are after the jump.

Museum Mondays

Greek statuary: feet, dolphin

Musée du Louvre

October, 2018

Paris, France

Variola Major

Over on Twitter the other day, I saw someone who should have known better call Larry Brilliant "the man who cured smallpox." 

This is wrong on multiple counts.

• There's no cure for smallpox. If you were exposed to it, being vaccinated within a couple of days of the exposure had a good chance of preventing smallpox. But the treatments for smallpox were supportive, not curative. You would keep the patient hydrated and comfortable, apply whatever cream would provide relief for the sores, and the like. It was 2018 before there was an FDA-approved anti-viral that might be effective in treating smallpox.
• Larry Brilliant was involved from 1973 to 1976 in the effort to eradicate smallpox through an enormous, worldwide vaccination effort. That effort started in 1959, when Brilliant was 15 years old, and lasted until 1979. The last naturally occurring case of the illness was in 1977, and in 1980 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the disease effectively extinct. (Small stocks remain at the CDC and somewhere in Russia, I believe.) You can read about the WHO effort at the CDC web site. (Which should have mentioned that there was inoculation in China long before Edward Jenner, sigh, probably starting in the 16th c.)

So, Brilliant was active for several years only of a concerted 20-year effort to finally stamp out smallpox. Americans really want to have a hero to look up to, but in this case, it's a mistake. All credit to Brilliant for his years of service, but eradicating smallpox was a group effort that thousands of people participated in. From the CDC web site, a note about the last case of smallpox in the wild:

[Photo caption] Three-year-old Rahima Banu, who is the last known person to have had naturally acquired smallpox, or variola major, in the world, with her mother in Bangladesh. Her case was reported to the local Smallpox Eradication Program team by an 8-year-old girl named Bilkisunnessa, who was paid 250 Taka reward for her diligence.

That exemplifies what went into the eradication of smallpox. Local teams and ordinary people and epidemiologists all played their part. No single individual should get more credit than they deserve.

Friday Photo

Tree

Oakland Dimond District

March, 2020

Rolling My Eyes

So, there's a fawning Maureen Dowd article about Renée Fleming posted at The NY Times web site this morning. When I read it this morning, having seen the link elsewhere on the internet, I saw this:

Leaving aside the gushing - I don't find Fleming either wholesome or sensual - there's that "fellow soprano Susan Graham." Graham...is a mezzo-soprano.

I sent in a correction notice! I might not have been the only person to do this, and the Times has updated the article, to this:

That...isn't any more correct than their first take. I have sent another correction, this time with suggested wording, since they're incapable of getting this correct. I don't know if it's Dowd or someone deep in editorial who seems unwilling to get this right, but jeez it is annoying.

UPDATE: It's finally correct.

Museum Mondays

Classical Statuary

Museé du Louvre, Paris

October, 2018

Friday Photo

London Rainy Day

May, 2014

The First Cancellation of 2021

Cruise Ship Seen from the Bay Bridge

April, 2019

(Not the real JoCo Cruise ship, but the closest I could come in my personal photo collection.)

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

It's not even a performance. It's the annual JoCo cruise, which puts about 2,000 science fiction writers and fans on a Caribbean cruise for music, food, and other sorts of fun. The company web page describes it as a "nerdy summer camp at sea", "a writer's workshop", "a music and comedy fest" and so on.

Anyway, the JoCo Cruise for 2021 has now been postponed to 2022. 

Warlikowski on a Certain Type of Fan

Found in the extremely interesting NY Times profile of director Krzysztof Warlikowski:

In the interview, Mr. Warlikowski focused his ire more on a certain subset of star-struck audience members. “The worst public in the opera are these obsessed gays,” he said. “All these rich guys with nothing to do in their life, just following Anna Netrebko or Jonas Kaufmann on all continents. This is not a real audience for me.” 

Very Belated Museum Monday

Musée National du Moyen Age

(Musée de Cluny)

From the exhibit "The Birth of Gothic Sculpture"

Paris, October, 2018

Don't Do This: LOL Version

A small technical writing conference whose mailing list I'm on because I attended it a couple of years back is holding this year's conference virtually, as you might expect. I received an email from them today that left me laughing. I sent them the following reply, which I think is self-explanatory:

LOL you put out an email about a conference without including the dates!

They mention that it's about a month away, but...no dates.

There is a link in the email Announcing Full Schedule, and it links to the conference's web site. I clicked through and sent another email:

The page you click through to for the schedule doesn't include either the schedule or the [conference] dates!!

This is hilariously poor communication for a technical writing conference, I must say.

'Nuff said. The person or people who wrote and proofread the email should be professionally ashamed.

Opera America Commissions

Some excellent news about works in development that have received support from Opera America:

• Beth Morrison Projects (Brooklyn, NY) for In Our Daughter’s Eyes by Du Yun 

• Boston Lyric Opera (Boston, MA) for The Desert Inn (working title) by Ellen Reid 

• Guerilla Opera (Haverhill, MA) for HER:alive/un/dead: a media opera by Emily Koh 

• HERE (New York, NY) for A Practical Breviary: Terce by Heather Christian 

• Houston Grand Opera (Houston, TX) for Turn and Burn, a Rodeo Opera by Nell Shaw Cohen 

• Opera on Tap (Brooklyn, NY) for Joan of the City by Kamala Sankaram 

• Opera Orlando (Orlando, FL) for The Secret River by Stella C. Y. Sung 

• Opera Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) for The Listeners by Missy Mazzoli 

• The American Opera Project (Brooklyn, NY) for Precipice by Rima Fand 

The rest of the press release is after the cut. I'll just say that I'd love to see every one of these.

Belated Friday Photo

Tomatoes and Sunflowers Attempting to Escape Over a Fence (not mine)

Oakland, CA

July, 2020

Museum Mondays

Portrait of Marcel Proust

Jacques-Émil Blanche

Musée d'Orsay, Paris

October, 2018

Friday Photo

Black Lives Matter

Fruitvale Triptych

July, 2020

(Click to enlarge; the column width is too narrow to display the three photos side-by-side, alas)

Museum Mondays

Fountain and Mural

Marciano Foundation Museum, Los Angeles

(sadly closed)

June, 2019

This is Quite a Tell.

The Philadelphia Orchestra announced a new appointment last month, and hoo boy, the self-tell:

(Philadelphia, June 16, 2020)—The Philadelphia Orchestra is pleased to announce the appointment of Nicole Jordan as principal librarian beginning in the 2020–21 season. The position will bring her back to Philadelphia, where she was raised and began her career as The Philadelphia Orchestra’s library fellow from 2008 to 2011. Jordan will be the first African-American woman to join the Orchestra as a full-time member.

Uhhhhh and the situation isn't so different elsewhere. I would be interested to know when each US professional orchestra hired its first full-time Black member, man or woman. When did Philly hire the first African-American man, for example? 

 

Friday Photo

Clock near the Conciergie, Paris

February, 2019