Ravings of the Occasionally Opinionated

Back in the 1970's, I bought a ticket to see Procol Harum. I knew about 3 hit songs of theirs, and had never heard any of their albums, so I made an effort to have absolutely no expectations of what most of their songs would really be like. The band came out and just blew me away! They were visually stunning, had incredible vocal harmonies, and the songs were fabulous. I clapped and clapped at the end of the very short concert and couldn't figure out why no one around me was demanding an encore or anything. I couldn't have been more enthusiastic.

They weren't Procol Harum. They were only the warm-up act. Boy, did I feel like an idiot. I should have noticed that they didn't play Whiter Shade of Pale. There was nothing on the signs or tickets indicating that there was a warm-up act, much less who. I asked everyone around me if they knew the name of the band. Someone nearby thought they might be named "Silver Queen" or something like that, but he wasn't very sure. Being young and stupid, and maybe not in a condition to confront authorities, I didn't go to the box office as I should have to find out who they were.

Procol Harum sucked. As soon as they began to play, I recognized their sound -- just like the hits I was familiar with. They weren't a tenth as good as the opening act. Their lead singer couldn't compare at all. I was particularly unimpressed with the piano solo "improvisation" in the middle of one of their songs that was Bach's C Major prelude from Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier. The crowd loved it, but I thought it was a cheap shot playing on a rock audience's ignorance. What do you expect from a band whose signature song is based on Bach's Air on the G String?

I always regretted not finding out who the opening act was. They were so visually unique that I would describe them to people, hoping they would know who they were. The lead singer and guitarist had long, light, curly air that literally glowed in the spotlight. The bass player wore high boots and a bowler hat and stomped around the stage in an odd way whenever he got really cooking. My niece, on hearing this, recognized them as Cheap Trick. I bought Live at Budokan. Not them at all. I sometimes wondered if it was Queen, prior to them dropping "Silver" from their name and having a different sound. I rather doubted it.

In the age of Google, a few times I have searched for "Procol Harum Orpheum Boston" and the like, and could find that yes, they played the Orpheum in 1973 (too early, I thought) but no luck. Recently I decided to try again, and Google just turned up the same-old same-old, though I eventually wound up on Procol Harum's official web site, and browsing deeper into it, found their complete concert list put together by their stage manager. It even listed opening acts for some of them. I started looking from 1977 backwards, and found a concert in 1974, but it was at the Music Hall with King Crimson, so that one was out. They played Boston in 1973 at the Aquarius (*but see ticket image) with opening act Tranquility. The ticket image shows they played at the Orpheum, where I saw them.

Using Google for "Tranquility band" turns up not a whole lot, just a few enthusiasts wondering why they never made it big, and a CD on Amazon. When I saw their picture, I knew I hit the jackpot. The person in front had light, long, curly hair. There were six members, which should have disqualified Cheap Trick without buying an album. One of the members has a hat in one picture, but not a bowler. Maybe I was too far away to see well or maybe he has a hat collection.

Reviews of their first album on Amazon all wonder why the record company doesn't release the much-superior second album, Silver, on CD. That must be where my fellow concert goer got at least part of the wrong name from.

Tranquility is great. I bought their inferior self-titled first album. Only some of the songs have the sound that is characteristic of the songs on Silver and which remind me of the live concert. It is nonetheless pretty good and I like it a lot. You cannot buy Silver as it doesn't exist on CD. Because it doesn't exist for purchase, I suppose the RIAA cannot call it stealing to download the album from here. If it is released on CD, let me know, because I'll buy it in a second. (Several reviewers of Tranquility on Amazon said the same thing.) Silver is fantastic! Their sound reminds me a little of early Yes, with some 10cc mixed in. I cannot honestly say I remember the songs from the concert, but most of the songs on Silver and one or two on Tranquility sound somehow familiar.

I hope you give it a listen or three and find it as enjoyable as I do, as I imagine the singer with the glowing hair and glitter makeup, the snappily-dressed band (not a jeans and T-shirt slob-band) and stomping bowler-hatted bass player.

My theory on why they never made it big was that they never told anyone who they were.

The Boston Globe said Israel had bombed a school and killed children. My immediate thought was, how could Palestinians have so little love for their children that they would launch rockets from a school? Better to get good anti-Israeli press and have the children be martyrs than protect the population by not firing missiles from schools and mosques. It is a pathologically sick society.

The following article from the Wall Street Journal is reprinted without permission. I hope I don't get slapped with a lawsuit. It very eloquently states what I've been thinking the past few weeks.

· OPINION

· JANUARY 8, 2009

The Jews Face a Double Standard

Why doesn't Israel have the same right to self-defense as other nations?

By Marvin Hier

The world-wide protests against Israel's ground incursion into Gaza are so full of hatred that they leave me with the terrible feeling that these protests have little to do with the so-called disproportionality of the Israeli response to Hamas rockets, or the resulting civilian casualties.

My fear is that the rage we see in the protesters marching in the streets is far more profound and dangerous than we would like to believe. There are a great many people in the world who, even after Auschwitz, just can't bear the Jewish state having the same rights they so readily grant to other nations. These voices insist Israel must take risks they would never dare ask of any other nation-state -- risks that threaten its very survival -- because they don't believe Israel should exist in the first place.

Just look at the spate of attacks this week on Jews and Jewish institutions around the world: a car ramming into a synagogue in France; a Chabad menorah and Jewish-owned shops sprayed with swastikas in Belgium; a banner at an Australian rally demanding "clean the earth from dirty Zionists!"; demonstrators in the Netherlands chanting "Gas the Jews"; and in Florida, protestors demanding Jews "Go back to the ovens!"

How else can we explain the double-standard that is applied to the Gaza conflict, if not for a more insidious bias against the Jewish state?

At the U.N., no surprise, this double-standard is in full force. In response to Israel's attack on Hamas, the Security Council immediately pulled an all-night emergency meeting to consider yet another resolution condemning Israel. Have there been any all-night Security Council sessions held during the seven months when Hamas fired 3,000 rockets at half a million innocent civilians in southern Israel? You can be certain that during those seven months, no midnight oil was burning at the U.N. headquarters over resolutions condemning terrorist organizations like Hamas. But put condemnation of Israel on the agenda and, rain or shine, it's sure to be a full house.

Red Cross officials are all over the Gaza crisis, describing it as a full-blown humanitarian nightmare. Where were they during the seven months when tens of thousands of Israeli families could not sleep for fear of a rocket attack? Where were their trauma experts to decry that humanitarian crisis?

There have been hundreds of articles and reports written from the Erez border crossing falsely accusing Israel of blocking humanitarian supplies from reaching beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza. (In fact, over 520 truck loads of humanitarian aid have been delivered through Israeli crossings since the beginning of the Israeli counterattack.) But how many news articles, NGO reports and special U.N. commissions have investigated Hamas's policy of deliberately placing rocket launchers near schools, mosques and homes in order to use innocent Palestinians as human shields?

Many people ask why there are so few Israeli casualties in comparison with the Palestinian death toll. It's because Israel's first priority is the safety of its citizens, which is why there are shelters and warning systems in Israeli towns. If Hamas can dig tunnels, it can certainly build shelters. Instead, it prefers to use women and children as human shields while its leaders rush into hiding.

And then there are the clarion calls for a cease-fire. These words, which come so easily, have proven to be a recipe for disaster. Hamas uses the cease-fire as a time-out to rearm and smuggle even more deadly weapons so the next time, instead of hitting Sderot and Ashkelon, they can target Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The pattern is always the same. Following a cease-fire brought on by international pressure, there will be a call for a massive infusion of funds to help Palestinians recover from the devastation of the Israeli attack. The world will respond eagerly, handing over hundreds of millions of dollars. To whom does this money go? To Hamas, the same terrorist group that brought disaster to the Palestinians in the first place.

The world seems to have forgotten that at the end of World War II, President Harry Truman initiated the Marshall Plan, investing vast sums to rebuild Germany. But he did so only with the clear understanding that the money would build a new kind of Germany -- not a Fourth Reich that would continue the policies of Adolf Hitler. Yet that is precisely what the world will be doing if we once again entrust funds to Hamas terrorists and their Iranian puppet masters.

In less than two weeks, Barack Obama will be sworn in as president of the United States. But there is no "change we can believe in" in the Middle East -- not where Israel is concerned. The double-standard continuously applied to the Jewish state proves that, for much of the world, the real lessons of World War II have yet to be learned.

Mr. Hier, a rabbi, is the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance.

Click here to read this article on the Wall Street Journal website...

Inflation

Inflation is the result of inflating something. Commonly used to refer to rising prices, inflation only relates to rising prices where what is being inflated is the paper-money supply. The government, ever borrowing to fund its deficits, has a great incentive to print more money, or inflate the money supply. More money chasing the same amount of goods results in higher prices for those goods. I.e. the amount of goods produced by a society requires a certain value of the total money supply, so more money means less value per unit of money. Rising prices caused by increased demand or decreasing supply isn't inflation. That is supply and demand economics in action.

Somehow I got to thinking of the price of gold and oil at about the same time as I was thinking about my first job in a hamburger stand, paying a whopping 90 cents per hour. Minimum wage at the time was $1.60, but the owner of the Burger Chef was too cheap to pay that. So looking up the price of oil in 1968, a steady $3.07 for the entire year for a barrel of West Texas crude, and the price of gold, fixed by the government at $35/ounce, I see that it would have taken me a bit over 40 hours to earn enough, pretax, to buy an ounce of gold and a barrel of oil. At minimum wage, it would take 23.8 hours.

So what does the minimum wage need to be today to be able to purchase a barrel of oil ($134) and an ounce of gold ($901) after 23.8 hours? Almost $43.50 an hour, that's what! That cheap owner of the Burger Chef is probably only paying $26.75 an hour to start.

When the government decoupled the value of the dollar from hard commodities, i.e. gold and silver, and went into the business of inflating the paper money supply, it enabled inflation to eat into the value of those dollars, making it cheaper to pay off its debt. The price of everything must go up as the money supply is inflated. Regardless of any downward fluctuations, real estate has gone up so much over the decades because it is a real commodity. Plus, financing it with debt when there is money-supply inflation is a smart move, so speculation can drive it too high over the short term.

Why is oil $134 a barrel? Aside from inflation of the money supply, it is because global oil supply is unable to keep up with increased global demand. We are already approaching, or at, peak oil, and neither our president nor any of the candidates has an energy policy that addresses the tremendous upheaval of our economy as global demand for oil exceeds supply. (Unless you count occupying Iraq as addressing oil supply.) Oops. Wrong rant.

Retraction from an Unhappy Customer

Don't you hate it when you publicly rant one of your occasional opinions and then find out you are completely full of hot air? That happened below and I'll fess up. It seems that the regular blood tests they were giving me were to monitor the amount of blood thinner in my blood, and that the inadvertent wake-up was them turning off the IV because I had too much and it had to be turned off for an hour. My only valid complaint was that they don't coordinate the people taking blood with the people taking vital signs, having them go together (and wasting precious human capital resources as a result.)

I had the opposite experience post-surgery. The nurses decided that I was sleeping like a baby, and didn't wake up when they spoke to me, so they skipped giving me my pain medication. Waking up an hour and a half later in pain had me really PO'd that they'd not woken me up. The best part about being at home is knowing I can wake up in a stupor from a sound sleep from the alarm I set myself, and take my pain killers.

Let's face it. A hospital has unhappy customers just about by definition, and an unhappy customer complains no matter which way it goes.

American Interventionist Medicine

Call me weird or old fashioned, but I firmly believe that healthy people need a good amount of sleep. Go too long getting inadequate rest and you'll eventually get good and sick. Based on my experience in life, I know this to be true. (Or, if I'm wrong, I mistakenly believe it to be true to the core of my being.)

Call me weird or old fashioned, but I believe this continues to hold true for sick people, and even more so. So what is it about hospitals in the United States that makes them attempt the very opposite?

I am in the hospital, hoping to stay alive and healthy until surgery tomorrow. But what do they do? I'll tell you exactly what they do. (Of course I will. It's a blog.)

I went to bed a little before 11pm, after deciding the Red Sox game was too stressful for my heart. (It was tied 6-6 when I retired.) I had trouble falling asleep, and probably fell asleep around 11:30. One hour later, at 12:30am, I was woken to take my vital signs: temperature, blood oxygen level, and blood pressure. I fell back to sleep pretty quickly and was awoken at 2am to draw blood. I had major problem falling back to sleep, so I was still awake at 3:30am when they came to take my vitals again. Somewhere in between someone came in to play with my IV monitor. This was probably not intended to wake me, but 10 seconds after they left, the monitor began beeping loudly, and I had to summon them back. (I'll only count those two entires as one interruption.) At 4:10, someone came back to punch buttons on the monitor again.

Let's count this up. Between 12:30am and 4:10am, a period many people might well consider the middle of the night and prime-time for the old sleep routine, a space of 3 hours and 40 minutes, I was intentionally awoken 3 times, unintentionally awoken once, and once was risked being woken but probably wouldn't have been had I been asleep. Three intentional plus one unintentional wake-up calls in under four hours! One hour of sleep, a wake-up call, another one and a half hours of sleep, and then they poke a hole in my arm, after which I never fall back to sleep, though if I had, it would have been for, at most, one hour. That's 2 1/2 hours sleep, or if having a hole poked in my arm hadn't thoroughly made it impossible to fall back to sleep, another hour before the monitor alarm, and another 40 minutes before intentional wake-up call number 3.

What is the point of the heart monitor I'm wearing? I know that they know that my heart is beating, at what rate, and what my respiration rate is. So how is it possible that they think that knowing my blood pressure and temperature, and whatever-t-f they need blood for is more important than the most basic human need to effing sleep through the night??!!? Maybe the heart monitor is a placebo. I'll disconnect it tomorrow and feign death and time how long between the disconnect and someone entering my room. It better be under 30 seconds or I'll have another beef.

From my life experience, I know that if I wake in the middle of the night too much and don't fall back to sleep within an hour, I'm pretty much awake until 5am, after which I'll sleep fitfully with weird dreams (mostly about trying to stay asleep.) So, I got out my computer around 4:45am and spewed out this tirade against the unthinking incompetence of the interventionist system, upon whose surgery a long life ahead depends, but for which they want to ensure I am as tired and stressed as possible.

Oh Lordy, it's 5:20am, and I'm tired enough to fall asleep, but I'm sure there is a six o'clock wake-up call.

Another Evening at Symphony

I've been musically traumatized ever since the forced listening to the Schoenberg violin concerto (see below) at Symphony Hall. My disgust that we still perform that crap so many years later had a powerful effect on me. I've paid careful attention to all kinds of music trying to find some that sucks almost as much as Schoenberg. I've had no success at finding anything as remotely awful. I mean, I think Pink Floyd really sucks, but they can't hold a candle to Schoenberg.

The final concert of our season subscription to the Boston Symphony was conducted by Andre Previn, and began with Mozart's lovely and famous Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. This always reminds me of the scene at the beginning of Amadeus, where the priest talking to Salieri recognizes its opening melody and enthusiastically sings a bit of it and says how much he loves that piece and didn't realize Salieri had written it. He didn't; it was Mozart. Ha! Ha! How embarrassing.

Anne Sophie Mutter then played the first Mozart violin concerto. She sure has a fabulous bow technique. It's great being a really terrible violinist (as opposed to not playing it at all) because now I know where the difficulties lie and can appreciate good playing. She's able to get her fingers in the right spot and play in tune, too. She wore a stunning sexy gown and sure does look stern while performing.

At intermission, most overheard talk was not about the music performance, but rather about the beautiful Ms. Mutter's gown or her being married to the elderly Maestro Previn. I wondered aloud how I can get such a babe in my late 70's. Alice pointed out she can play the violin really well, too! Alice kept wondering what there is about Andre Previn - first Mia Farrow, and now this.

After intermission was the world premier (actually, the fourth performance, being the Tuesday concert) of Andre Previn's Double Concerto for violin, double bass, and orchestra. As noted above, I pay particularly close attention to all modern compositions, searching for any suckiness remotely comparable to Schoenberg, but again failed to find it in this piece. I can say that a double-bass is a pretty bizarre-sounding instrument when playing solo in its upper registers. After getting used to the sound, the piece made a pretty favorable impression, especially the interlude between 1st and 2nd movements, which is a pretty extended little chamber piece for violin and double bass where they blend quite well. All-in-all, hard to assimilate in one hearing, but quite enjoyable. (Quite a noticeable contrast to Schoenberg, which can never be assimilated and never be enjoyed, and will forever suck.)

The concert concluded with the complete Mother Goose, by Ravel, yet another contemporary of Schoenberg whose music does not suck. I've heard the suite, but never the complete ballet. It was odd how unfamiliar it was, and then there'd be the very familiar sections included in the suite.

The Best Pie I Ever Made

I was reading the hi monkey site again, and nearly fell out my chair reading how to make a grilled cheese using an iron. The various grilled cheese recipes looked good, but as usual, I drifted over to see the pies. Mmmm, the lemon sour cream pie sure looks delectable and not too terribly difficult to make. It put me quite in the mood for a cool slice of pie. Too bad it is only pictures. But this reminds me of something I've been meaning to tell everyone about.

There is a company which makes all-natural frozen pies ready to bake. They were giving away samples at the supermarket, apple and blueberry-apple, and they were quite good. They are made by (careful of this link, it contains sound. I hate web sites that surprise you with sound.) Vermont Mystic Pie Company. I went with the blueberry-apple pie of course, as I just love berry pies. I've made several of these blueberry pies, and they are really good. My only complaint is that when I'm on my 2nd or 3rd slice, I notice that there is a bit too much cinnamon, or some spice, that begins to stand out. It would be better with less of that.

For a change, last week I tried the apple pie. I was stunned. I can say in all honesty that it was unequivocally the best apple pie I have ever eaten, bar none. Fortunately, Garrett had a slice or two, so when Alice asked if I'd eaten the entire pie by myself, I was able to honestly say no, Garrett had helped.

While it may lack the pizazz and mess of making a pie from scratch, I'd pit that apple pie against any other. Like any truly great pie, it is a health disaster, with butter dripping from the hot crust, and apple juice drippings that are like apple candy heaven. If you see them in your supermarket, try them. Did I mention that their blueberry pies are quite good, too?

I just noticed on their web site that they make pie shells. I've seen them in the supermarket but ignored them. I bet they'd be a delicious easy way out for monkey's lemon sour cream pie. Maybe I'll make one of those next summer, after a few more apple and blueberry pies.

I forgot to mention...
I never reported back about that ant farm I had. Let me tell you something about carpenter ants. They have no interest in being in an ant farm, and never move a grain of sand. They just wander around trying to figure out where they are and how to get out. They are really boring. Patio ants, on the other hand, are incredibly tiny and can escape which can get you yelled at by your spouse. Of course, I have no idea what the effect of being in a different colony's tunnel maze had on their behavior.

i'm a regular reader of the
himonkey web site, and turn to
it for monkey's delicious recipes
and snappy delivery style.
monkey cooks up a storm,
and i am as impressed with
how clean the terrycloth remains
as i am with the sumptuous
results of the cooking.

this morning, after perusing the
truffle recipe (chocolate, not fungus),
i made my way to the fruitcake ritual.
at the end is a link to the
"original story" about making fruitcake,
and while reading it... shock!
there are photos of monkey being
held by a human! uncropped photos
showing monkey to be a stuffed doll!
monkey's recipes and delivery, not to
mention photo cropping, are so good,
it had seemed a living being.
i was stunned into a sudden haiku:

cute little monkey
i had thought you were alive.
disillusionment!

after some deep sighing, also called
diaphragmatic breathing, and further
reflection in a hot shower,
i achieved a zen-like state of
understanding and wrote a
haiku of acceptance.

made of terrycloth,
what the heck did i expect?
stuffed dolls must be held.

acceptance is now mixing with sorrow
over the loss of innocent belief as
i write this, and i feel yet
another haiku coming on.

so disillusioned
after finding out the truth,
life sadly goes on.

mmmm, i wonder if monkey can
teach me how to make a pie.
yes!

Art
Listening to the ending of a particular piece of music, I wondered, "Was that good? Did that work?" I momentarily got the feeling that music is playing with sounds, and arranging them so that it seems pleasing. That's the same as my feelings about visual arts. But then I realized that music, being much more familiar to me than visual arts, doesn't usually seem like an experimental arrangement of sounds, hoping it works OK, but rather something that is known to be pleasing, or not.

With visual arts, I am groping in the dark -- is this good? How about this over here? Leave a little space or it will look too cluttered which will be no good. Hmmmm, how's that? Try a dab of this over there.

I suppose some people are more comfortable with visual art, and when painting, know quite well what to put where to present something pleasing, the same way a musician knows what sounds create the desired effect. Some people may be good at both, or neither.

It is only an encounter with unfamiliar art or music that causes us to grope for familiarity and wonder, "Is that any good? Does it work?"

Ben Franklin, Take That!
Many kids are, or at least all of my parents' kids were, tortured with some of the sayings of Benjamin Franklin. "A penny saved is a penny earned." Or, the one I hated the most, "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." Why my parents wanted me to go to bed so early is understandable now that I have children, but why they wanted to torture me by getting me up early remains a mystery. I very un-cleverly made up the saying, "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man weak, poor, and dumb." Even as a kid, I knew it was completely lacking in decent poetic meter. I'd miserably repeat this to myself when being sent to bed by my parents quoting good old Ben. I still think it when getting up at the crack of dawn to get my children off to school.

What I didn't know back then was the rules of logic! If A implies B, then the only other thing you know is that not B implies not A. It is incorrect to infer that B implies A, or that not A implies not B. If going to bed and arising early makes you healthy, wealthy, and wise, it does not logically follow that staying up late or sleeping in will prevent you from being healthy, wealthy, or wise. Nor does it follow that failing to be healthy, wealthy, or wise is caused by not going to bed early enough or sleeping in a bit too late. In fact, the only thing you can deduce from Ben's truism (note flagrant assumption there) is that if you are not healthy, wealthy, and wise, then you are not one who is early to bed and early to rise, which is not to imply that the latter caused the former.

So kids, remember your logic the next time your parents pull out the old Ben Franklin quotes. A penny spent can be either earned or unearned, so they have nothing to do with each other. An earned penny is not necessarily saved, but can be either saved or spent. However, an unearned penny cannot be saved, which sounds so stupid that we can conclude that Ben Franklin was mistaken on at least this one point.

I would also question the wisdom of anyone who regularly gets up too early while they are still sleepy. That can be unhealthy.

"Study: Alligators Dangerous No Matter How Drunk You Are"

That's the title of an article from The Onion that someone has hanging on the wall where I work. I stop to read it occasionally. The gist of the study is that some people think that after drinking a lot, they can take on an alligator, but that, in fact, the alligator seems unaffected by the person's alcohol consumption. But hey, you should follow that link and read it for yourself. An alligator is no pussycat, like say, a black bear. The Onion finds great, irrefutable research for their reported studies. I wish I could think of stuff like that and write for The Onion. How about this one? "Stingrays Dangerous No Matter How Good an Outdoorsman You Are." Oh, that wouldn't be funny, would it?

An Open Letter to James Levine

I am sending the following letter to James Levine, the conductor and music director of the BSO. It is simply a more formal, unhumorous rehash of my posting immediately below. Why have I taken action for the first time after some God-awful production and actually written a letter? Because the reputation of music itself is at stake! There are a series of Beethoven/Schoenberg programs this season.

November 9, 2006

Mr. James Levine
Music Directory
Boston Symphony Orchestra

Dear Mr. Levine:

I would like to whole-heartedly applaud more 20^th (and 21^st!) century music performed by the BSO. I have always felt that BSO programs reflected overly stodgy and conservative musical tastes. However, I must take issue with programming the compositions of Arnold Schoenberg. While I have occasionally considered writing a letter to the director of a bad play, never before have I actually taken action and written after attending an event. I must do so now because Schoenberg single-handedly did more damage to the reputation of 20^th century music than all other bad composers and music that pushed the limits of convention combined. It is a marvel to me that many people don’t like “modern” music which was written before they were born or when they were children! Schoenberg is to blame.

Too many people say they “don’t like 20^th century music.” What they really mean is that they don’t like Schoenberg, whose compositions have been inflicted upon us as great “music” of the 20^th century. Exclude Schoenberg from any consideration of 20th century music and you are left with the likes of Adams, Barber, Bartok, Carter, Elgar, Gershwin, Ginastera, Glass, Holst, Ligeti, Orff, Penderecki, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Scriabin, Shostakovich, Tan Dun, Varese, Vaughn Williams, and Villa-Lobos. Great music. Beautiful, or at least interesting. Beloved by most. Present this list to people and you find that some don’t even lump much of this great music in with “20^th century music.” Why? Because Schoenberg represents 20^th century music and they hate it. Even Berg, Schoenberg’s pupil, wrote 12-tone music with recognizable melodies and thematic development. This is proof that it is not the “modern style” that the public doesn’t get, but it is Schoenberg specifically who wrote unrecognizable junk from start to finish.

It is way past time to call a spade a spade. Schoenberg’s “music” was crap when he wrote it, crap fifty years later, it is still crap now, and will continue to be crap in the future. I cannot and will not forgive him for giving 20th century music a bad name. His violin concerto was the last straw for me, and I will no longer forgive people who program it on public concerts, wanting to appear musically astute and display their wide variety of taste. They prove they are duped by crap. After many decades of listening to every variety of music, including way too much Schoenberg, I am no longer able to believe that his violin concerto moves you emotionally, or that you could sing back to me any significant section of it. It is many decades past the time to acknowledge that the public is neither going to “come to understand” nor “learn to like” this complete junk. As an American, I recognize his right to have written it, and our obligation to allow it to exist, but we have no obligation to perform it. There is a vast repertoire of music which is completely ignored or under-performed, so please, stop foisting Schoenberg upon us as if it had any value.

Please, continue to mix Beethoven’s wonderful music which packs the house with wonderful contemporary music, as well as the early-to-mid 20^th century music which is somehow still considered “modern.” But don’t ever expect anyone to confuse the compositions of Schoenberg with real music and to enjoy them. You continue the irreparable damage to the reputation of modern music with the Schoenberg programs.

Respectfully,

signed by non-anonymous me

An Evening at Symphony

Alice and I just got back from the Boston Symphony. There was a violinist I'd never heard of, Christian Tetzlaff (Gee, I wonder if he's Jewish), who played the Beethoven violin concerto. He was fabulous beyond belief. He got a huge applause after the first movement. For those who don't frequent the BSO, there is almost never applause between movements, which shows how blown away everyone was. I was glad there was applause, because I was blown away, and wanted to applaud. He was so much better than I am it's just ridiculous to compare us (but I couldn't resist.) At the end, we gave him a huge standing ovation and I threw in many bravos and whoops and whatnot.

After intermission, he played the Schoenberg violin concerto. I once heard a Schoenberg chamber music piece I liked. I think it had lots of woodwinds piping rhythmically and randomly in a nice way that appealed to my youthful liking of weird music. This one wasn't nearly so good (why am I mincing words? It was effing horrible), though it occasionally had nice weird woodwind sounds that I rather like. Each movement starts with 3 to 5 seconds of what sounds like music (if, as I do, you like 20th century music and concentrate real hard), and then it is like Dada (the art form, not the excellent rock band) where it dissipates into something else unrelated at every opportunity. Schoenberg is good at finding such opportunities after every few notes. (If you think of the cost of the ticket in terms of the number of notes, we really got our money's worth on that program.) The final 2 seconds of each movement sounds like music also, such as having a nice fading dynamic and lyric quality that echoed the beginning. This is apparently an effort to make it seem like you've been listening to music. There were also 4 or 5 snippets of music, some up to 5 seconds long, in the middle of the movements, but again, nothing is connected to anything else, not even to the beginning or end. It is time to call a spade a spade. It was crap when he wrote it, it was crap 50 years later, it's still crap now and it will continue to be crap in the future. What is with people who keep wanting to appear broad-minded and putting this junk on programs? I have plenty of musical training, and no amount of concentration reveals form or substance. Schoenberg is a laughable joke, except that it isn't funny and we keep inflicting it upon ourselves.

During the 3rd movement, a thought occurred to me. I'd rather listen to Alvin and the Chipmunks! I heaved quietly in my chair trying to laugh discreetly. And then, while thinking that hell would be endlessly listening to the complete works of Schoenberg, or maybe even worse, just this violin concerto, I realized that it wasn't a hypothetical torture, I was experiencing a short version of hell right then and there. More grinning and laughter. Then just listening to it made me laugh. High-minded people all stuck there listening to complete nonsense. Would the torture never end? At a momentary pause in the music, I hopefully thought it was over and considered applauding, except that I didn't intend to applaud. I wish I had, because then I could have audibly said, "Aw, shit!" when he started up again. A few people seemed to like it and applauded quite a bit at the end, probably wanting to appear musically astute or open minded. I seriously doubt they actually felt any emotional impact or melodic understanding of the "music." I gave two soft claps to show my appreciation for my parole and left.

So many people say they "don't like 20th century music." What a crock. They don't like Schoenberg, which has been inflicted upon us as great "music" of the 20th century. Exclude Schoenberg from any consideration of 20th century music and you are left with the likes of Adams, Barber, Bartok, Elgar, Gershwin, Ginastera, Glass, Holst (The Planets), Ligeti, Orff (as in Carmina Burana!), Penderecki, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Scriabin, Shostakovich, Tan Dun, Varese, Vaughn Williams, and Villa-Lobos. Great music. Beautiful, or at least interesting. Beloved by most. Even Berg, a 12-tone serialist pupil of Schoenberg, wrote 12-tone music with recognizable melodies and thematic development. Not Schoenberg. It is unrecognizable junk from start to finish. I cannot and will not forgive him for giving 20th century music a bad name. This violin concerto was the last straw for me, and I will no longer forgive people who program it on public concerts, wanting to appear musically astute. They prove they are duped by crap. Tetzlaff is sufficiently excellent that he can waste his time learning it (which he had to sight-read, I should point out, since memorizing random notes isn't something that excellent musicality helps with.) I, however, will no longer waste my time torturing myself with forced listenings.

All in all, the first concert of our series subscription was an odd mix of part finest program I've ever heard as well as one of the most tortuous I've ever unwittingly found myself sitting through. Hey, at least it provoked one of my occasional opinions. I'd listen to the Chipmunks right now, but it is no longer necessary, since it's thankfully over.

Garrett Is Home

Safe and sound, very tired and somewhat grumpy.

Garrett Is Coming Home

News on television this morning was nowhere near good, and it was no surprise when we heard today that Garrett's group is being brought back to the United States. As the news keeps getting worse and worse, I'm glad, but sad for him. It was fun while it lasted, but too bad it had to get cut short. All the American youth tour groups are coming back. Of course, a group of 70 kids, one of many, presents a bit of a problem when they all suddenly decide to start booking last minute flights. They will try to bring them back in small groups, hopefully few enough to have chaperones. If not, the tour agency will be sending chaperones with them.

Not Quite Lost Without Kids

You would think we did nothing but tell Eliana she would be homesick, because her first letter said, "I'm not homesick, even though it is the first day. Ha Ha. I was write and you were rong." Her last leter said, "I don't miss you one bit." That was a while ago, and there hasn't been one since. Katie is fine and having fun. She writes a bit more and admits to missing us, at least in her first few letters. She can't sleep at night because two girls in her bunk scream all night. I wish she would supply a little more detail.

Israel is under attack (i.e. a bit more than usual.) Garrett's major travel plans always seem to be affected by wars. His Spanish class did not go to Costa Rica the year he was supposed to go because Bush had just attacked some country. (That would be either Afghanistan or Iraq.) He was supposed to go to Haifa the day after it was bombed, and the tour group wisely is staying in the south until something resembling peace breaks out. (Fat chance, but that is another blog entry.) He called us once. It was 125 degrees on the hike up Masada. Garrett said he was OK, but some of the other kids were having a hard time with the heat. The war is keeping them in the hot south.

Speaking of heat, we don't have to worry about the girls being cold any more, because it is in the 90s and supposed to be 100 next week. Now Alice is worried their bunk is too hot.

I'm worried that it will be time for them to come home too soon, though it will be a relief to have Garrett back in the good ol' USA where we are blissfully unaware that people are planning to blow us up. (Oops, wrong blog entry again.)

Empty Nest Syndrome

As of yesterday evening, my wife and I are empty-nesters. I drove Garrett to the airport, where he left for Warsaw for 5 days, and thence to Israel. Meanwhile, Alice drove the twins to sleepaway camp. While packing Wednesday, we decided we would have dinner together that night. I had always imagined being overjoyed at being "on our own" again, and hadn't really understood the empty-nest syndrome, but thinking about our special last supper as a family made me sad and actually brought a tear to my eye. There must be a special parent gene triggered by children leaving home. It wasn't to be a happy vacation after all. I was actually sad. I'd miss my kids.

Reality check: Dinner (at the Taquería México) was the usual affair of listening to Eliana tell endless unfunny jokes and riddles (an intelligible form of yabbering), Katie and Ellie squabbling, both girls trying to climb into their mother's lap while she was eating, and finally Katie, from that lap, leaning over and putting her head against Garrett in an attempt to show and receive affection, while Garrett suggested he might be more affectionate if she didn't head-butt him. The memory of the delicious nachos con todo w/chorizo, and my excellent Fiesta plate, which has a chicken enchilada w/ green sauce, a barbeque flauta, and a quesadilla, overwhelms me as I write this. Yum! Ellie didn't want to go because she doesn't like the food there, but I suggested she get Mexican rice and a plain carnitas taco, and when I asked her how she like the taco, she gave me a big thumbs up! She didn't even blather endlessly about it because her mouth was full. Katie became too full to eat any of her quesadilla or finish her chorizo taco, because she has learned to like nachos. The food was better than the nostalgic emotional expectations of our last supper together. I didn't shed any tears during the meal.

Now I have time to make blog posts, and worry incessently about whether I packed warm enough clothes for the girls to survive the bitterly cold summer we are having. Alice misses the girls so much she regrets sending them. I don't regret sending them, but I sure hope it warms up, because I'm worried nonstop. I'd rather be worrying about them schvitzing to death.

Ellie didn't seem to worry about going, only said goodbye once, and was off to camp for a certain fun time. Katie suffers from anxiety and worried about going and waved all the way out the driveway after multiple goodbyes. She will probably hate it for the first week. I'm not worried about Garrett. He's having a blast, I'm sure.

Lost in Kids: My Dinner with Raphael

Our family were dinner guests at someone's house last week. I was sitting in the middle, with the adults on my right, and the kids across from me and on my left. Kids can be pretty loud, so I was having trouble following the adult conversation. The young child on my left, who I had somehow managed to not yet meet, was blathering endlessly. "Blah blah styrofoam bones blah blah." I turned to listen and he was looking at me and continued, "Hep wop hammer and blah blah blah. It was fun."

"Are you talking to me?" I asked.

"Yeah. We all did it. Blah blah blah and then blah the bones came out. It was fun."

"Are you speaking in English?" I asked. (This is a favorite question of mine to kids I can't understand.)

"Yes. Hitting the blah blah and all the dirt rarch dun blah blah was fun."

I have a daughter who can pratter on nonstop (and I do mean the entire day) and I have developed the ability to just turn off the ears. Or rather, I don't have the ability to keep my ears on after a while. I've watched others attempt to understand her and asked afterwards if it made sense, and usually they say it did not, so I haven't felt it necessary to train myself to listen to endless streams of incomprehensible nonsense. However, I thought this was an opportunity to be lost in kids, so instead I paid attention and asked, "Are you making any sense?"

"Yeah. The best part was pulling out the styrofoam bones."

"Styrofoam bones?" I asked incredulously.

"No, dinosaur bones. We hit 'em with a hammer to get the dirt off."

"You hit dinosaur bones with a hammer? Do you mean you were digging them out of dirt?"

"Yeah. We dug out an entire stegosaurus. Well, not an actual stegosaurus, but the bones like you see in a musem. They dig those out of the ground just like we did. It was fun."

"You dug up an entire whole stegosaurus out of the ground?"

"Yup. We dug it out by hitting the dirt with a hammer. Well, not hitting hard because you can hurt the bones. It wasn't actually a hammer. It was one of those pointy things for digging."

"You mean a pick?"

"No. One of those things you use like a hammer but has a point on it."

"Yeah. That's called a 'pick'."

"Oh, OK. Anyway, we'd hit the dirt with the hammer and knock it all apart and then pull out the dinosaur bones and carefully wipe off the dirt. The whole class did it together. It was fun. Well, not everyone. The teacher didn't do it."

"You mean at school everyone dug dinosaur bones out of the ground? Were these real dinosaur bones?"

"No. They were made of plastic. We just were digging them out of the dirt. I don't think it was real dirt, either. And it wasn't in the ground. It was a big block of dirt with the stegosaurus inside. We'd hit it with the hammer and pull out the bones. It was fun."

"OK. I can believe this now. By the way, we haven't met. My name's Jack. What's yours?"

"Raphael."

"Hi Raphael. Do you spell that with a "PH" or an "F"?"

"With a 'PH'. 'PH' makes a sound just like an 'F'."

"Uh, yeah, I know. That's why I asked. Hey! That's just like that ninja turtle who uses the, uh, a tsai, or no," my memory of that nonsense from my older son is seriously fading, and Raphael didn't seem willing to help me out, "um, I don't remember. You know the ninja turtles?"

"No."

"Oh they don't have ninja turtles anymore?"

"Yeah. There's a turtle named Raphael, just like me."

Dead from Exhaustion

Our ants died. The instructions claim they only need a pinhead sized piece of food every eight days, but I'm wondering if they maybe meant for each ant. Or maybe they want us to buy more ants. They did finally cash the check for $4. What's the life span of an ant, anyway? A good part of theirs was used up waiting for the P.O. and shipping.

The mound being built to the escape hatch was promptly relocated over the farmhouse. I took this picture the next day after they had moved the mound over the barn.
Maybe most of them were crushed in collapsing tunnels as insufficient sand remained in the bottom to support the vast network. They have finally taken a long rest.

Next: Patio ants! Or maybe I'll gather a few carpenter ants before the exterminator gets here.

One Grain at a Time

Alice bought an ant farm a while ago. She decided to populate it with ants purchased through the mail from the ant farm company rather than with our local common patio ants. Months seemed to go by (and the $4 check is still uncashed) and then a small package marked "Perishable" arrived in the mail last week. Our "bearded ants" had finally arrived. We wasted no time watering the sand, refrigerating the ants (yes, it settles them down prior to transfer) and dumping them into the farm (not as easy as it sounds), only decapitating one or two in the process.

The ants wasted no time getting started on the sand. In only a few days, they have dug numerous tunnels and relocated large mounds of sand up above the "ground" and have piled it high above the plastic farmhouse, tree, and barn. It looks suspiciously like they are piling the sand up to get to the escape hatch on top. I get the sense that they will never reach the stage of saying, metaphorically, "We're done. We have all the tunnels and sleeping space we need."

What happens when the tunnel system becomes so elaborate that it collapses? I suppose at that point, they will relocate the sand above the ground down below. I suspect that eventually every grain of sand will have been relocated elsewhere, yet they will continue busily continuing to relocate them some more. It doesn't look like they are planning for early retirement soon.

I always really wanted an ant farm when I was a kid and it is as cool as I ever thought it would be. I'll keep you posted.

What's With This Species?

I once saved a Boston Globe editorial. Every once in a while I come across it, and decide to save it once again. I don't have my hands on it at the moment, but it was titled something like, "Cornered, Arafat Returns to Violence". It was written shortly after Yassar Arafat had stormed out of the mideast peace talks with Israel in Washington. The author took exception with the media who were writing that fighting had "broken out" in the middle east. Arafat, having been offered everything he had always claimed he wanted, including a capital in Jeruselem, could no longer continue to negotiate when what he really wanted was the complete destruction of Israel. Thus, he left the peace talks, and fighting "broke out" in the sense that a well-orchestrated war began, organized by the PLO and leading Muslim religious figures.

The recent Palestinian election victory of a terrorist organization devoted to the destruction of Israel, Hamas, caused great consternation. To me, it can possibly be viewed as a good thing. Oh, I am appalled and saddened that the majority of Palestinians would actually vote for those candidates. But as far as the actual government, a terrorist organization that denied being such has been replaced by one that freely admits it. That is progress for the world view. At least all the cards are now on the table.

A few years ago on Yom Kippur, the rabi at my congregation gave a moving sermon about her recent visit to Israel. Whereas Israelis debate and agonize over the ethics of every issue concerning their relationship with Palestinians, Palestinians can be seen celebrating in the streets after a successful suicide bombing. Mothers in the street dancing, celebrating the death of men, women, and children. (I cannot forget the same scenes on television on 9/11. ) And, since the message of Yom Kipppur is supposed to be one of hope, how difficult it is to hold on to any hope when faced with the dicotomy of the two cultures. I don't remember the small message of hope which she held out, but I remember the feeling of hopelessness that anything can be resolved.

I also once saw on television a show about a journalist, the daughter of a rabi who had been shot (but not killed) by a Palestinian. She had taken it upon herself to discover why the individuals involved had done such a thing. Without their ever knowing she was the daughter of the man who had been shot, she visited them, as a journalist, and got to know them. I remember her description of her reaction when the mother said something like, "My son is in jail for shooting someone. But it was only some Jew." She felt revulsion. The mother thought her son should be honored for shooting a Jew. She was in the mother's house, drinking tea the mother had made, and it made her feel unclean. She wanted to leave and wash. (But, in what is not relevant here, she stuck it out, and later argued for the release of the man who had shot her father.)

Yossi Alpher, writing in a recent edition of Forward, disagrees with the perception that Israelis have shown resilience in the face of the suicide bombing campaign and that attitudes have not changed. There has been a change from the early 1990's, when suicide bombers were considered a religious aberation, or troubled youth recruited and trained to not lose their nerve, to a Palestinian culture where normal, untroubled youth eagerly volunteer for suicide bombings and the public at large applauds their heroic acts. (My comment: the election victory of Hamas reflects that culture.)

Alpher continues, "The reaction was and remains revulsion and rejection. We pay lip service to a negotiated two-state solution and extend a hand toward cooperation on humanitarian issues because that is what civilized people should do. But in our hearts we are so appalled at Palestinian mothers who joyfully sacrifice their sons to kill Israeli mothers and children that we want to completely divorce ourselves from what appears to be a fatally sick people. In our gut we perceive the bombings as a quasi-existential, primordial threat, even as our statisticians tell us that more Israelis die in traffic accidents than in the suicide bombing campaign at its worst." And in speaking of the fence between Iraelis and Palestinians, which he correctly points out Palestinians fail to grasp was brought on them by the bombings, Alpher describes it as "a fault line between civilizations: one that celebrates life, the other death."

That's just some thoughts on Israel's little terrorist problem. As 9/11 demonstrated, we also have our own. And as has been demonstrated since, the rest of the world has the problem too. Less near, and less constant, but ever present. It could be worse. We could live in Darfur.

Seeing Reality

I had a checkup at the doctor's today. I brought my racing medical form for my competition license renewal. As part of being declared medically acceptable to operate a high speed competition automobile, and in generally fine shape, I was given a vision test. It's pretty fundamental that you need to be able to see to drive. Vision tests have always been pretty easy for me. I usualy have to ask the person to cut to the chase and let me read the bottom line. ("Are you seriously asking me to read that big 'E' on the top line?" I asked myself today.)

But now that I'm older and my vision is clearly failing miserably, I was concerned. What if I were required to wear glasses while racing? I don't think they fit under my helmet. I don't like wearing them driving except at night. My left eye turned out to be no problem. That's the one where I asked if I could just read the last line. She would have none of it. Perhaps I had that chart memorized. After all, it's the one with the big "E" on top which she had started with. My right eye was a different matter. Astigmatic and near-sighted, it's the one that still enables me to (barely) read without reading glasses. All the letters skew around in several directions from the astigmatism, and are blurry to boot. I only ventured the middle line, where I turned a "P" into an "F" and a few other similar blunders. She gave me several guesses on missed letters, so I got it. I got the next line, too, though the "either C, Q, or O - I'll go with O" gave me a little difficulty. Guessing the most common letter was a good strategy, though I had already wiggled my eye around until I had momentarily caused the right edge of the "C" to be filled in, in what I'll call a "stigmatic patch." Choosing between O and Q was easy, especially with a second guess coming.

A lady nearby gasped in amazement. "That's your bad eye? That's much better than I can do." It seems my disgusting, barely useful right eye has 20/20 vision. That's pretty darn scary to me. My left eye is still 20/13, which is what I was told I had as a child. Now that I remember it, I was pretty pissed at that tester because he didn't let me read the two lines below it. I bet I had 20/8 when I was a kid.

So here I am, facing the reality that what passes for me as barely able to see a thing is better than some people have ever seen in their entire life, and better than many people can see with their glasses!

And they're out there driving cars.

Back in the Saddle Again

In case you didn't know, I've been driving my truck a lot. I don't want to drive my truck again for a long time.

I went to a used car dealer determined to get Garrett a car. Get it over and done with. Upped my price range and went to buy a used Camry and came home with a deposit on an Accord. (No CD player.) One owner, who lived in Peabody. Did a CARFAX check, and well, it was in some sort of accident in 2001. I arranged to take it to my mechanic to check it out. After the CARFAX report, that was a given. Diagnosis was similar to the one on the much cheaper Dodge - it was due for plenty of work. Also, the accident repair was shoddy and wasn't going to last much longer before rusting. Once it was pointed out, it seemed so obvious. How could I ignore the trunk not fitting right? (Probably because I own a Chevy truck.) I got my deposit back and walked away. I've now spent a total of $186 on mechanic inspections to not buy two cars for Garrett.

The mechanic, sensing that I was in the market for a good cheap car, said he had a Volvo. What a POS it looked like. Needed a lot of work, but they were going to do it first. I don't have a favorable opinion on Volvos. My mechanic assures me that this was the last of the good years for Volvo, before, he hated to say it, Ford bought them and reliability took a dive. The price was right. Alice second-guessed the decision up until the moment we took delivery. (She probably still is, but hasn't mentioned it lately.) They installed new tires and new brakes and they fixed the non-working ABS. They even replaced the missing side molding. The driver's door handle sticks. He says it will get better now that it is lubed, but I doubt it, and they'll probably end up replacing it.

We surprised Garrett by picking him up from lacrosse practice in his 1997 Volvo 850 with 114K miles. It has a CD player and premium sound system. It has heated leather seats and a normally aspirated 20-valve 5-cylinder. (How Audi-like.) It has a hole from the trunk into the back seat through the arm rest (I suspect it is missing a ski sack there) for his lacrosse stick. It has adequate power to get out of its own way (lacking in a Volvo 240, which I briefly considered because it meets the standards of a parent of a teenager - safe and slow.) It will need a new timing belt in another 6,000 miles, which may be a year or two given the use Garrett will put it to.

I'm back in my Audi again. I'm driving it fast just because it feels secure and safe to do so. No need to slow down for that turn in this baby! (Oops. Well, maybe a little.) I'm listening to Incubis, or whatever weird crap Garrett left in the CD player. He's not one to clean up or ever retrieve it, so that CD is probably mine now. The truck can now sit (now that makes me happy!) until the next time I have to tow to the race track.

I used to wonder why people bought SUVs instead of cars, until I bought one for myself. Now I wonder even more. It feels good to be back in a car again.

Waiting to Fly

Walter wrote about our parents who forced us to eat food we detested. It's true. I remember having to finish my glass of milk after it had gotten too warm and I really didn't want it. I'd mentally prepare myself, pretending it was grape juice, my favorite at the time, and then attempt to chug it down. I nearly barfed at least once - probably many times, but they all blend together.

Only a few years ago, Walter told me how it came to be that he was thrown out of the house and moved in with our grandmother. It was because he wouldn't eat his slice of tomato. He was ordered to, and he refused. There was a huge blowup, and he was permanently thrown out of the house.

As incredulous as I was over the story, what really later astonished me, especially regarding how long it took for me to even realize it, was that I must have been there. He is older than I, and I had to have been there at dinner. After a few hours or days, it gradually came back to me. I always sat at the end of the table opposite Dad. (The same general area where I remember nearly puking on warm milk, lima beans, and liver, too.) Walter sat across from Mom, next to Dad. There was arguing and shouting and I was just looking down hard at my plate, not looking up, thinking, "Eat the goddam slice of tomato! Just eat the goddam tomato." People standing at the table shouting over a slice of tomato. I totally repressed it from my memory until I spent a few hours trying to dredge it out. And thus, my brother was thrown out of the house, never to move back in.

He took a stand on how much he could be controlled, and the result was like a bird being pushed from the nest by its parents, with a wild and preposterous argument. Off he flew.

I never had the gumption to take a stand. I just bided my time until I was old enough, and then off I flew. My entire childhood was spent waiting to be old enough to fly.

"You Can't Get There From Heah"
(What We Need Are Glaciers That Ran Sideways)

Alice put me in charge of organizing a trip with Garrett to visit colleges at the beginning of his spring vacation before resumption of lacrosse practices. "Organize" and "me" don't go together very well, but I pulled it off. I figured out a nice order to visit the colleges Garrett was interested in. I made hotel reservations. I remembered to bring the notebook with the colleges we were visiting and directions to them. The only thing I forgot was a map, but that's OK because my Audi has a navigation system so the directions wouldn't really be necessary anyway.

We drove to Utica in the evening and stayed in a hotel, whence we would leave in the morning for Colgate, which is in Hamilton, NY. I programmed in "Hamilton" into the nav system, and it promptly told me it was 350 kilometers in a preposterous direction, and that I was off the map. When I bought my used Audi, a navigation system was a requirement, but I didn't know that there was NAV-C (the "old system") and NAV-D (the "new system"). Guess which one I have? Even if I had the new system, it still might have had the same problem, which is that it runs off CDs, and my car came with the mid-Atlantic CD (being a Pennsylvania car) and I have a north-Atlantic CD, and central and western New York turn out to be on the Ohio Valley CD. Good thing I had the notebook with directions, and good thing I allowed plenty of time. We got lost, and got to Colgate with a minute to spare before the information session. From Colgate, it was on to Hamilton College (which is not in Hamilton, but in Clinton) where Garrett's cousin Danielle is an official tour guide and gave us a private tour, complete with lots of information usually left off the real tours.

From there we went to Syracuse to visit Garrett's cousin Rachel, and her son Jared, my new great nephew. I now have two great nephews. Rachel's sister Dori was there, so Garrett saw three first cousins in one day.

We had a whirlwind tour the next day, Sunday, when all the admissions offices are closed, so I cleverly visited Union, where we got a private tour from our next door neighbor who attends, and then Williams, where we got a tour from yet a fourth first cousin, Adam, who attends there. It seems it was Easter, and finding a place to eat wasn't so easy. From Williams, we went up into Vermont to see Middlebury. I figured with a 12% acceptance rate and an admitted student grade average of A, Garrett doesn't have much chance of getting into Middlebury, so visiting it on Sunday when we couldn't get an official tour was as good a day as any. Why waste a Saturday or Monday tour?

Middlebury is at about the same longitude as our house at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire, so we headed there to spend the night. Google had suggested a particularly roundabout route which avoided any semblance of east/west direction, so when my nav system (we were back on the map in New England) suggested a different way, I took it. It directed me to turn onto a road with a sign:

I had no idea whether we intended to go through Warren (I have Nav-C, remember, which being primitive, tells you what to do but won't let you know where that might be taking you) but I had a sneaking suspicion that we probably were. That is, my nav system was directing me over a mountain road that is closed in the winter. After a short time on the side of the road, I figured that logging truck had to have come from really high up the mountain, and that pickup going up was probably going somewhere, and this being one of the least snowy winters in memory, there was no sign of snow on any mountain, any where. I proceeded as directed, hoping that if the road were closed, that it at least wouldn't be blocked off. Besides, the nav system indicated I'd be turning soon. (It turns out that you have to make a few turns to get to Warren.)

Eventually the pavement ended, at another sign suggesting I shouldn't try to get to Warren. Eventually, pavement reappeared, which seemed a good sign at first, but really was because the road became so steep that an unpaved one would probably promptly perish in the runoff. (How about that alliteration? Try whispering "Purple people please pious popes" in someone's ear some time. But I digress.) The usual switchbacks were present, but in fewer quantity than most roads, as this went straight up. Occasionally the nav system would decide we were not on a road, and just point in the general direction of Loon, and then figure out where we were and say, "Continue to follow the road." We reached the summit ("Yea!!!") only to discover the road was covered with snow! -- for only a few feet. There were patches of snow on that side of the mountain on the top 100 feet or so, and there was a car parked up there, probably a hiker (or someone who hadn't made it to Warren the month before.) Downhill seemed steeper, and first gear couldn't hold a safe speed, so I was on the brakes plenty. Garrett commented a couple of times that he was glad I was driving. We eventually came to a sign facing the other way, mostly blocking the road. I had to stop to let an oncoming vehicle pass the sign before I could go around the sign. Garrett says it said the road was closed.

Having crossed a mountain range, we were set for a great journey. We wound up on Route 100, and were directed to turn right on Main Street. As soon as I complied, it said, "When possible, make a U-turn." I went back to Route 100, and where it thought Main Street was, there wasn't. As soon as I passed where it thought it should be, it advised me once again to continue to follow the road, this time Route 100. Readers not from Vermont may not realize that Route 100 is a well-known road that travels north/south through the middle of the mountains, passing lots of ski areas. When I came to Smuggler's Notch, I knew I had been led astray. I've never been that far north on Route 100. Ooh, a map would have been nice. Eventually I wound up on I-89 north of Montpelier, heading back south. I was fuming. Stupid nav system. Montpelier! (In Quebec, they call it "Montpelier", which if you speak French, is obviously pronounced "Moan-pel-yay".) Those Google directions were beginning to look pretty good.

Having arrived at Loon (after dinner at the excellent Chinese restaurant in Lincoln, NH, which is always open on the major Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter), I checked Google to see where we'd gone, and where we should have gone. In retrospect, the nav system did a pretty good job, taking us no more off course than the Google southern route. Had it or I correctly identified Main Street (which on Google, was little lines making the bigger closed road seem a major highway) we would have saved quite a bit of distance and avoided (in French, please) Montpelier.

There just isn't an east/west route through the mountains. Either the natural geology, or the damn glaciers, carved everything north/south. Every road runs north/south, with an occasional exception at a slight diagonal. Additional exceptions that are more direct are closed in the winter.

The next morning with Garrett driving, I turned on the nav system to get us to UNH, in Durham. Garrett said, "I thought you were never going to use the nav system again."

"That was before I checked Google last night and decided it really wasn't so bad. You just can't get here from there."

After programming in "Durham", the nav system suggested that when possible, Garrett should make a U-turn and head the wrong way, presumably into Maine. I then programmed in "Durham, Town of" and verified it was telling us to go the correct way, checking my notebook directions.