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A Little Morning Music

Yesterday we went to an 11:30am National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) concert at the Kennedy Center. Daytime concerts are especially convenient during winter weather, especially given the winding, tricky streets that lead to the KC. Also, daytime concerts are good for the ego since we are usually among the youngest members of the audience. The outfit I wore was exceptionally slimming, so I took a rare selfie in one of the mirrored walls in the foyer:

The program:

Carlos Miguel Prieto, conductor
Jorge Federico Osorio, piano

Gabriela Ortiz: Téenek – Invenciones de Territorio
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances

Jorge Federico Osorio, hailed as “an imaginative interpreter with a powerful technique” (New York Times), takes on Beethoven’s intensely energetic Piano Concerto No. 3.

Maestro Carlos Miguel Prieto, who returns to the NSO following his “high-octane” 2018 debut (Washington Classical Review), conducts Rachmaninoff’s lush and lively Symphonic Dances. Prieto, a champion of Latin American music, opens the program with Téenek – Invenciones de Territorio, Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz’s uplifting ode to a future without borders.

The percussion section gears up for Rachmaninoff:

Weather Update...

Data from the Mighty Hamster Weather Satellite Network (eat your heart out Elon!) indicates Sunday evening, 1 to 3 inches of snow. Monday high in the mid 20s. It’s going to be a lovely inauguration! I wonder if he’ll end up getting a bigger crowd than Biden did (recall, it was Covid and there was no crowd.)  As some of you might know, an inch of snow sends DC into a blind panic.  This could be quite amusing.

❅❆❄︎☃️❅❆❄︎☃️❅❆❄︎☃️❅❆❄︎☃️❅❆❄︎☃️❅❆❄︎☃️❅❆❄︎☃️❅❆❄︎☃️❅❆❄︎☃️❅❆❄︎

Weather (a Schadenfruede* post)

FYI, the high temp forecasted for DC on Inauguration Day is 24º.

Heh, heh, heh… 

 

 *pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune

Report

So... what to do today?  Yesterday I cleaned the carpet in my bedroom, a too-long postponed task. I bought a new, smaller, lightweight cleaning machine which works very well (the old one was a bit too big and clunky for the condo) except that when I went to use it a couple of days ago, I discovered the belt broke. Amazon came to the rescue and I was back at the task 2 days later. There are a couple of largish rugs that can also use a cleaning; that will be easier since there is less stuff to move around, but I should be careful not to overdo. They'll get done the next week or two. I could go to the Apple store and have them show me how the dang "Focus" feature works. I tried setting it up so that I don't get notification sounds from 11pm to 7am, but when I try to do that, the phone goes silent from 7am to 11 pm. Clearly I'm doing something wrong. I'd pair that with a bit of grocery shopping, but it's like 28º F. out there, which is chilly even for me.  I could go into the city and hit a museum, but at fear of repeating myself, it's like 28º F. out there. I have laundry to fold, and that I definitely will do. I don't like folding laundry (though strangely I kinda like ironing)--it's my own fault since I insist on folding laundry the "right" way, to the utter mystification of my dear hubby.  There a journal submission I was asked to referee, i.e., write up an evaluation of the article for the journal editor.  That sounds a bit ambitious for today. Of course, in my blessed retired state, I don't HAVE to do anything. By the time I sort this out and complete my morning rituals, it'll be time for lunch. Sometimes, it just ain't easy being me...

Because...

 we can all use a Wonder Woman twirl from time to time...

Just a Touch of Sarcasm

Chilly Penguins

 ...because why not

-- from pingmyping in Instagram

Occasional Photos of Alexandria from my Files

More on Thuc

A bit more on my beloved Thucydides (c. 460 – after 400 BCE). He is known as the father of "scientific history," i.e., using analysis of events in their context to determine their significance, as opposed to storytelling. But he actually goes further than that. His aim is to discern patterns in historical events and to discover the "laws" (a bit too strong a word but I can't think of a better one) for human and societal behavior. That is to say, certain kinds of persons and states of certain polities will behave the same way in the same circumstances and situations. One chilling conclusion therefore is that democracies under stress will always turn to demagogues

In effect, Thuc was also the first social scientist, using the events of history as his empirical data. The intellectual ambition of such an undertaking is astounding; it would be today, all the more in the 5th century. One of the hallmarks of his history is his insertion of speeches at critical points. The speeches are made-up; he could not have witnessed them and virtually none of them would have a written record. But these are not flights of fancy. Rather he composes the speeches to show what he thinks must have been in the minds of individuals or the governments of states to account for their actions. He deduces motivations, attitudes, and beliefs from actions. The speeches are, in fact, how he presents the conclusions of his analysis. He wrote that his work was intended to be "a possession forever" for humanity. In that he succeeded.  What a guy!

Korean Instant Coffee

A few days before Christmas, I went to get a haircut at my local Korean owned and staffed barber shop. They do basically traditional men's haircuts, buy they do a good job and the atmosphere is friendly and jovial (did I mention it was also inexpensive?) As I paid my bill, my barber handed my several packets of Korean instant coffee tied with a bow, with the instructions "just add a little water, not too much"  My guess is it is a Korean custom for businesses to give little presents to their customers at Christmas. I thanked them, of course, but thought to myself "how odd". A couple days later, out of curiosity, I made some--using hot water to fill about half of my usual mug. Well, what a surprise. The little packet made a respectable café au lait, full bodied and flavorful. There was some sort of creamer already mixed in the packet, but no sweetener. Nice. So if you ever see some Korean instant coffee packets at your local Asian grocery, pick some up and try it.  Who knew??? 

Jollities

 

The Ancient Enemy

One course I particularly enjoyed putting together and teaching was a course on ancient Greek democracy. By happy chance, the first semester I taught it Trump was running for the Republican nomination in 2016. When we got to the historian Thucydides' account of the fall of the Athenian democracy,* it hit like a ton of bricks. Thuc (as we in the biz call him) one of the smartest guys in all of western civilization IMHO, said the decline of Athens began with the rise of the demagogue Cleon, a thoroughly unpleasant chap with a forceful and bullying style of oratory, anti-intellectual and anti-elitist, who curried favor with the masses by telling them what they wanted to hear.  He took an aggressive "Athens first" stance which involved heavily taxing Athens' allies to the benefit of the Athenian underclass--and his own power--a move which eventually led to their revolt and the fall of the Athenian Empire in the Peloponnesian War with Sparta. Cleon was adamantly against any peace deal with Sparta since, as Thuc writes, "if peace were restored, his crimes would be more open to detection and his slanders less credited" (Hist. of the Pelopon. War, book 5, chap. 16).

Likewise Aristophanes, the comic genius who also loathed Cleon, writes of him and his partisans: "You are like those who fish for eels; they catch nothing in still waters, but if they vigorously stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way it's only in troubled times that you can line your pockets" (Knights 864-867).

All of this was 2,400 years ago. My point here is less the parallel with our current political climate than to point out that from the very beginning, demagoguery has been the bane of democracy, and has raised its ugly head time and time again in the history of democracies, and certainly in our own history as a nation. It is the old and recurrent enemy; it is nothing new. Yet time and again, democracies fail to be on guard against it.

* History of the Peloponnesian War, books III, IV,& V.

BTW...

 ... it snowed last night.