On Friday August 20 the Clelia II anchored at Hebron, Labrador. It is the site of an abandoned Moravian mission. The history of the settlement is not a happy one. Founded in 1831 the mission disbanded in 1959. The health and living conditions of the native occupants were not good. In a lose lose situation they were forced to relocate without being asked of the preference or allowed to have a say in their fate. They were very unhappy in their new surroundings. If they had stayed they would continue to be afflicted with whooping cough, influenza and smallpox. In 2005 the provincial prime minister apologized for their treatment. In 2009 a monument was placed formally apologizing in English, French, and the local Inuit language.

The area is supervised by a husband and wife and their son. They each carry a rifle to guard against polar bears. I don’t know if an ursine threat is real or if the weapons were there to titillate the tourists. They were very friendly despite being government employees. They said ours was the sixth ship of the season; it was also the fifth as the Clelia II had stopped at Hebron on the way up. They expected  a couple more over the next few weeks before they left Hebron for the Winter.

We were told to stick together so the bears couldn’t pick off stragglers. We more or less did, though homo sapiens was the only mammal seen. The place is one more example the desire to do good resulting in the reverse; it’s only a bit more remote than most of the others.

The author observing nature. Photo by Oleg Kochuyev.

That afternoon the ship showed the 1922 film Nanook of the North. The 1922 film was the first feature length documentary. While not at the artistic level of Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner, it fitted into the cold theme of this trip. The next stop was Hopedale, also in Labrador.

Hopedale was originally an Inuit village. Moravian missionaries first visited in 1782. The Mission House is the oldest wooden building east of Quebec City. There is a small Moravian Museum next door to the church. A program of Inuit games, Inuktitut Moravian Hymns and handicrafts was presented at the village school. Cape Harrison was the next stop.

Webeck Island was out landfall. We were offered the option of a two hour hike to nowhere. I passed. I also declined a shorter hike. But I did go ashore. As you can see on the picture above, the islands strong suits are rocks and tundra. Paraphrasing Winston Churchill -  I came, I saw, I capitulated. After a quick look, I went back to ship and had lunch.

There were two stops the next day – Battle Harbor and Red Bay. Disembarkation for the morning landing at Battle Harbor was at 0800. This trip overlapped breakfast; so naturally I missed it. All who went said it was very nice. There were crab snacks, trails, old grave sites, and interpretive exhibits. It was late afternoon when we arrived in Red Bay. As this visit did not coincide with any food opportunity, I went ashore. The place was once a Basque whaling center. That’s right Basques. Why they went so far from home when Barcelona is so much closer is a mystery, but we were assured that they came here centuries ago and returned for centuries after that.

There are three museums in Red Bay. Two devoted to whaling and one to local life. We were also offered a chance to visit Saddle Island where where there is an archaeological site and the cemetery where 140 Basque whalers were buried. I passed again. Perhaps I should have petitioned for a partial refund of the voyage’s tariff considering how many excursions I skipped, but I probably ate more than my share so things probably balanced out.

Red Bay was the last northern port. We traveled up the St Lawrence estuary into the river of the same name. Along the way we saw many whales. But unless the whale is almost on top of you the sight, while interesting, is not terribly impressive.

We spent a day in Montreal, then sailed through the 1000 Islands to Toronto where the trip ended.these Islands are quite scenic, but we were definitely back in the developed world. The numerous vacation castles built by rich American capitalists about a century ago were worth a few pictures. These guys apparently were desperate to find ways to spend their money. They probably kept a lot of people working. I don’t know who owns them now.

In the last part of this report I’ll discuss the lectures, the ship, the food, and the crew. Then I’ll sum up my overall opinion of the whole experience and try to estimate its value.

To be concluded

Part 1
Part 2

The writer Joseph Epstein has written a short essay on why he has canceled his subscription to the New York Times. I’m surprised it took him this long. Maybe it’s because he’s from Chicago and didn’t grow up reading the paper. I’m from Brooklyn and can remember when the paper was at the acme of journalism, cost a nickel, and was dignified and dull. I stopped reading it years ago because it had become witless.

You can read for yourself the reasons Mr Epstein has offered for his rejection of the paper. What he didn’t provide was a reason for the Time’s decline to irrelevance. I touched on this peripherally a while back. But I didn’t really give the exact reason. The explanation is simple; it’s nepotism and inbreeding. The New York Times achieved its reputation, now squandered, under the leadership of Adolph Ochs (March 12, 1858–April 8, 1935). He passed direction of the paper to his son-in-law Arthur Hays Sulzberger (September 12, 1891 – December 11, 1968). Orvil Eugene Dryfoos (November 8, 1912 – May 25, 1963), Sulzberger’s son-in-law, was publisher for two years. He was succeeded by Sulzberger’s son and Och’s grandson Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Sr (born February 5, 1926). The current publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. (born September 22, 1951) is Och’s great grandson. The blood has gotten pretty thin and tired by now.

Can anyone believe that Sulzberger the Youngest would have been appointed publisher of the Lubbock Avalanche Journal on the basis of merit, much less the New York Times? Prince Charles, well known as a world class booby, would likely run the paper better than junior. If hereditary succession is your preference pick a prince. It’s hard to keep a business going for four generations. If it’s a newspaper business, it’s almost impossible. If you keep a newspaper in the family, it is impossible. Thus it’s Adios, Gray Lady in more than one way.

On Monday, August 16, the Clelia II was in the ice fjord near Ilulissat – aka Disko Bay. Fog is very common here at this time of year; but we were lucky. The sky was clear, the wind calm, and the temperature around 50. In other words, the weather was as good as it ever gets at this spot. The floating islands of ice are a photographers dream and easily explain why people who venture to Greenland all head for this locale.

The picture to the left shows the effect of isostatic rebound. When dense ice covers the land it compresses it. When the ice melts, as has been happening for the last 14,000 years, the land rises. When the mountain of ice in the picture was still on land the sea once reached a level that was higher than that which prevailed just before the ice broke off and fell into the water. The shelf like elevation just above the water line shows the old water line. The height of this shelf is the distance that the land on which the ice once rested has risen before the berg calved. The temperature was so warm, considering the way we were dressed, that no one seemed cold even after about two hours among the icebergs.

The exceptionally favorable conditions allowed us to get very close to the ice. The vista’s were unique. The only wildlife we saw in this region were numerous birds. The picture taken very close to the ice contains small images of numerous birds who seem to find the ice and water perfect for their needs. The amount of ice below the water line varies considerably, but it can approach 90% of its total volume. Thus the size of these floating ice cubes is gigantic  as most of each piece is not visible.

The afternoon was devoted to a tour of Ilulissat Greenland’s third largest community, which sprawls over a large and hilly area. The town tour included the fish plant, Mt. Zion Church, the Turf House and the Knud Rasmussen house, the birthplace of Greenland’s favorite son. I skipped organized tour; but I did walk around for a half hour or so. There wasn’t a whole lot to see. The works of man here pale beside those of nature.

The next day and a half was spent crossing the Davis Strait to Baffin Island. This was the only part of the trip during which we experienced rough weather. The Clelia II is not a large vessel, 4,000 tons, and in rough seas it bounces about a bit. There were a lot of seasick passengers and crew during this segment. As I lack sufficient imagination to suffer from motion sickness, I used this respite from relentless touring to get extra food as there were unused portions readily available. One of the lecturers was struck by this malady, but gamely made it to the end of his talk which was appropriately disorganized and featured 70 You knows. He bolted to a relief station before he could take any questions.That evening when asked what she wanted for dessert my wife understandably replied, “Nothing.” That’s what she got.

Our next landfall was at Auyuittuq National Park. At first glance the place appears desolate, lifeless, forbidding. But when you walk a bit it feels like you’re on a giant sponge. Close inspection of the tundra shows that it is thick with life, but life that grows horizontally. This is a survival strategy that allows plants to get through the ferocious winters. There are countless pine trees, cones and all, that are only an inch or so long.

I am a little curious why the Canadian government felt it necessary to make the whole region into a national park. There doesn’t seem to be much likelihood that swarms of real estate developers along with oceans of concrete will invade the place. Perhaps their aim was to create jobs for the local Inuits. We were given a “mandatory” briefing by a park ranger as we sailed up the Pangnirtung Fjord. He seemed like a very nice chap, though I can’t recall anything he said. That tells more about me than the quality of his talk.

The afternoon was spent in the town of Pangnirtung. The visit was described in the ship’s program thus: On shore we are met by local guides for a town tour that passes the old whaling area, the St. Luke’s mission hospital and church.  We make a stop at the Uqqurmiut Center for Arts & Crafts, a locally owned business selling woven tapestries and prints.  Guests may also independently visit the Angmarlik Interpretive Center – a community museum with display on traditional Inuit life run by Parks Canada.  A time will be set to meet at the community center for a small cultural show demonstrating Inuit games and perhaps throat singing. I fell asleep after lunch and missed the whole thing.

The next day’s outdoor activities were canceled by fog. We were in the vicinity of the Lady Franklin Island group, located about 20 nautical miles off Cape Haven, Hall Peninsula, southern Baffin Island. This is where the polar bears were said to roam. The fog prevented seeing anything and made an approach to any of the islands impossible. There was only one thing to do – watch a movie. The small screen played Zacharias Kanuk’s Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner (161 minutes). That’s two hours and forty one minutes! In Inuktitut!! The first time ever in that language!!! And it was great.

The story is taken from an old Inuit legend about a curse placed by an evil and mysterious shaman over a small group of people living in the far north at a remote time before the impact of Europe was felt. The details of life at the edge of survival are brilliantly displayed, but what grabs the viewer’s attention is the basic commonness of human emotions irrespective how exotic the setting. If you want to fully understand the details of the myth that supports the story you’ll have to watch the film more than once. It’s good enough to deserve, in fact it virtually demands, a reviewing. You may have trouble getting everyone’s names down and find the time break that happens without transition about 20 minutes into the story disconcerting, but stay with the movie and everything will soon fit. The scene where the protagonist runs naked across the ice, his feet bleeding from its jagged edges as he tries to escape his brother’s murders who wish the same fate for him is a cinematic highpoint. It may sound funny, but you won’t laugh when you see it.

Kanuk’s technique had been criticized by some as crude. I found it very sophisticated and entirely apposite to its content. The movie has won many awards. Again some critics have blamed unharnessed political correctness. I found all the praise deserved. The 161 minutes went by without a bathroom break.

The next stop was the first of several in Labrador.

To be continued

Part 1 here
Part 3 here

[All photos in this and subsequent posts about this trip were taken by me unless otherwise indicated.]

For some reason that has fled like vigor I decided to go to Greenland. I stumbled across a listing for the small ship, the Clelia II, that offered at trip from Toronto to Greenland and one in the reverse direction. Faster than you can say credit card I had booked a room on the return voyage. About 80 sojourners assembled in a Montreal hotel. Two buses got us to the airport where we boarded a chartered  737 jet operated by First Air. This company, new to me, calls itself The Airline of the North. That’s the direction we went. North until we reached Iqaluit where we refueled. The plane then went northeast to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. This town is just a few miles west of the icepack which covers most of the world’s largest island. Australia, I’m informed by geographers, is too big to be classified as an island though it sure looks like one on a map.

Kangerlussuaq is up to date, at least its bureaucracy is. When we reached the bottom of the stairs of our airplane two Greenland customs agents eagerly stamped our passports. The intent was to ease our passage into the country, but as is the scourge of modernity the opposite happened. We we directed into a small room where we waited. Our group of adventurers docilely stood around giving no indication that were bothered by inactivity no matter how protracted.. After a half an hour I decided to seize the initiative. I approached a young man standing by the room’s exit. He seemed to be an official. I asked what we were waiting for. He throw a few circumlocutions at me that I interpreted as signifying that we were waiting for the customs and immigrations people to stamp our passports. I tried to explain that our passports had already been validated, but my Greenlandic is rusty. Resorting to sign language I began gesticulating like a semaphore operator. The obstructing bureaucrat looked at me as if I were an Amazon parrot. Then he said in a Maine accent that I should calm myself and wait for the two customs agents who were by now on their second beers at the Kangerlussuaq Arms. Desperate to be nearer to an iceberg I opened my passport and showed him the stamp that had been affixed to it about an hour earlier. He looked at for at least 15 seconds whereupon the scales were lifted from his eyes.

“Everybody can go,” he said in his nasal twang.

We went – into a slightly larger room where we were instructed by a member of the expedition staff to wait for our bus. He said we’d leave in five minutes. In this only slightly larger room were the passengers who had been on the northbound voyage and were about to return on the plane that had brought us. As they had certainly come on the same buses that we were instructed to wait for I was both peeved and mystified. I asked one of the departing travelers how he had enjoyed the cruise.

“The elevator didn’t work,” was all I could get out of him.

After 30 minutes more of standing around we got into one of two buses that had been waiting in front of the small airport for over an hour. I was later told that time warps as you get nearer to the pole. This effect has something to do with magnetism and ice. I could be wrong about the latter. The buses took us over what was supposed to be the only paved road this side of the ice pack. Paved proved to be an elastic term. Unfortunately, my back was not. Twenty minutes of verifying Newton’s third law of motion moved my kidneys to my thorax. At the end of the paved road was a small pier about which floated three Zodiacs. These rubber boats took us to the Clelia II.

After being helped into and then out of the Zodiac I went to the elevator as our cabin was on the 6th floor – the ship’s top deck. The elevator didn’t work. Since the average age of the passengers on this voyage was super senior the lack of an elevator presented a greater challenge than getting in and out of a Zodiac. The elderly of today appear to be more adventurous than their forebearers in that they allow neither infirmity nor years to stop them from going where they are likely to encounter serious difficulty. The elevator returned to life the next day, died again the following day, and rose for good the day after that. On the days that it was down a number of passenger elected to eat in their rooms. The dining room was on the second deck.

After everyone had successfully dealt with the initial Zodiac experience, we sailed out of the Kangerlussuaq Fjord and then headed north to Sisimiut. Sisimiut is Greenland’s second largest town with a population around 5,000. It’s a pretty austere place. Dogs are chained to their houses and are found just about everywhere. They seemed more like wolves than dogs. They are allowed to breed indiscriminately. The puppies, a little more approachable than their parents, are allowed to go untethered. The adults not having much to do in Summer mostly lay around occasionally rousing themselves to snarl a few times after which they relapse to sleep.

Photo by Marco Favero

After seeing the sights we convened at the Hotel Sisimiut for what was describes as A Taste of Greenland. The menu featured different kinds of fish, musk ox, reindeer, crab, shrimp, caribou, and my favorite dried whale skin. The last has a consistency between that of mahogany and ebony with a taste similarly in between. The caribou was very tasty – a sort of Arctic pot roast. If Sam’s Club starts  carrying it I’d definitely buy some.

All excursions on this trip were included in the tariff. The only exception was a helicopter ride scheduled for the afternoon in Sisimiut. A number of guests had signed up for the ride. I was not one of them. A helicopter ride over the world’s largest highball did not have allure. Apparently the pilot felt the same way as he was in another city visiting his girlfriend. All attempts to reschedule the helicopter ride failed. Things cannot always go your way I unctuously told the disappointed tourists.

Kayaks used to be an essential part of Inuit life. Today the Inuits use them in competition. I watched in awe as a local kayaker did 360 degree turns in freezing water. The breadth of human accomplishment is astonishing.

At 1715 the ship sailed for Ilulissat and its adjacent ice fjord. At 1730 Ron Smith a climatologist in the Department of Geology at Yale gave a lecture on Living in High Latitudes. Smith was one of a number of lecturers aboard who gave talks throughout the journey. I’ll briefly touch on the lectures in a latter post.

To be continued

Part 2 here
Part 3 here

New York Times columnist and Nobel prize winner in economics Paul Krugman is famous for his dedication to fiscal stimulus as an escape from our current economic woes. No matter how much money the government pumps into the economy he wants more if the result is not what is desired. Thus he is indulging in a species of tautology. His reasoning can never be proven wrong; it includes all possibilities. Only one possibility actually, a stimulus always works if large enough. If you’ve spent all the money in world without result it’s because you still haven’t spent enough. Spend more and things will get better. If they don’t, continue spending until the end of time. There’s no science here because Krugman can never be proven wrong.

What does this have to do with health insurance? Well, people who think deep thoughts about medical care and work at centers that have Ethics, Humanities, and/or Policy in their names are often guilty of the same unipolar vision exhibited by stimulus addicts. There’s a perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine that is a perfect exemplar of the failure of analytical thinking by people whose sole reason for being is analysis. Truth and Consequences — Insurance-Premium Rate Regulation and the ACA examines the subject of increasing health insurance premiums. The piece states that the largest insurance companies have seen a disproportionate increase in profits over the past 10 years and that these profits are ten times the rate of inflation. Mills, et al don’t identify which companies are making these “disproportionate” profits.

In response to these profits the US Congress has passed a new law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Affordable Care Act, or ACA). ACA requires the secretary of HHS in conjunction with the states to establish a process for the annual review of “unreasonable” increases in health insurance premiums. To help defray the cost of monitoring premium increases ACA will award the states $250 million over 5 years to stimulate their review of premium increases. Of course the feds expect something in return for this money. What’s expected of the states is that they will report trends in premium increases and that when an insurance company requests an “unjustified” or “excessive rate increase the states will be asked (required sounds more apt) to recommend whether the offending company should be excluded from participation in the state exchanges established under the ACA which start in 2014.

Since an “unreasonable” rate increase lacks precise definition all this information flowing from the states to Washington will somehow help the federal bureaucrats come up with such a definition. Mills, et al comment (unhappily) that since regulation of insurance companies is a state responsibility that it’s uncertain how all this new information will stop “unreasonable” rate increases. Accordingly Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has introduced a bill “the Health Insurance Rate Authority Act of 2010 (S. 3078), which would establish a national health insurance rate authority to set limits on premiums. Without such federal action, states would most likely continue to use different and often lax criteria for identifying unreasonable premium hikes.” Quotation from Mills, et al.

The authors of this Perspective are cognizant that blocking “unreasonable” rate increases may result in hassles to both physicians and patients similar to what happened during the HMO craze of the 90s. They conclude on an upbeat: “This potential for disruption of patient care makes it all the more important that the quality-based improvements in the health care delivery system that are outlined in the ACA be realized. According to the Commonwealth Fund, reforms such as the establishment of team-based approaches to patient care, the wide dissemination and use of electronic medical records, and the creation of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute have the potential to save the health care system more than $700 billion over 10 years. If successful, these reforms could help to reduce the tension among government regulators who are demanding lower increases in insurance premiums, health insurers who are placing limits on medical care to achieve savings, and providers who are pushing back against what they perceive as private-industry regulation of medical practice. Without a comprehensive approach to bending the cost curve of health care while improving the quality and safety of patient care, neither the promise of stabilization of premium rates nor the broader promises of the ACA as a whole will be realized.” There’s no mention that the savings posited above, which are sure to be illusory, are only 3% of our annual medical bill. Furthermore, no one has yet devised a plan which improves quality and safety and simultaneously lowers cost.

There is no industry more tightly regulated than the health insurance business. Yet they still seem able to make “disproportionate” profits secondary to “unreasonable” premium increases. There’s no reason to suspect that the people who run the health insurance industry are any more greedy or prone to malfeasance than any other executives. They must be acting the way they do because their circumstances allow or encourage them to operate the way they do.

Back to Professor Krugman. When spending rivers of money fails to cure the economy the only reasonable solution is to spend oceans of fiat currency. So when regulation of health insurance fails to control costs, indeed it seems to encourage greater expense, the solution is more regulation.

It seems odd to me, but obviously not to Mills and her colleagues, that they don’t ask why health insurance costs are escalating so rapidly. The only sector of American life that has a similar upwards cost slope is higher education. Needless to say, Mills, et al work for a university. The regulatory apparatus that operates in virtually every state has as its main effect the discouragement of competition. The realities of life, especially in a democracy where lobbying is a constitutional right, ensure that regulations and licensing exist almost for the sole benefit of those regulated and licensed.

A simple remedy, that if it won’t cure might palliate, is to let buyers purchase their health insurance across state lines. This of course would free carriers from the mandates for coverage that states impose on health insurance vendors. It is quite certain that these mandates, which are the fruit of regulation, drive up costs. But liberal government and much of academia do not want a solution that lessens government control as they are certain that only more regulation can improve our insurance dilemmas.

If Mills, et al were serious observers of our bloated health care apparatus, they would question the assumptions that drive their “analysis” and conclusions. It is possible that more regulation of our medical “system” might bend the cost curve (this “curve” has rapidly become a trite cliché – anyone who parrots it is suspicious) downwards. It is also possible that they’re 180 degrees off from the truth. They should consider that a major cause of of high healthcare premiums is over regulation.

The problem with the debate about how to better organize our medical system is that, at least in the medical press, it’s not a debate. When journals like the NEJM discuss the subject everything the editors learned about scientific method is forgotten. They become enthralled by social doctrine and present only one side of the argument. This is a “sin” they would never commit were the subject medical science. It might be better for the country if the NEJM and its like entirely forswore the subject – health insurance in particular and the economic organization of the profession in general. The inescapable conclusion is that medical journals are not the organs that can achieve a balanced discussion of this issue – a great disappointment.

And just for the record – there are no such things as “disproportionate” or “unreasonable” profits except in the eyes of politicians and the misinformed. There’s obviously a great overlap between the two. Businesses will make the profits their markets allow. If these markets are distorted for whatever reason these profits will be larger than those that would accrue in a free, open, and competitive market. If one accepts this postulate than the remedy for “excessive” profits is obvious.

Pianist Mariangela Vacatello gave the last of the three recitals of this years Ruidoso Chamber Music Festival on Saturday evening July 31. The audience for this performance was by far the largest of the series. The Spencer Theater was almost full. Ms Vacatello chose a formidable program. The first half was Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor. After the intermission she played Chopin’s Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brilliante, Op 22. She concluded the recital with Stravinsky’s Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka. Her encore was Schumann’s Liebeslied.

Modern technology intruded on the evening’s main event – the music. Everybody who’s been to piano recitals always wants to sit on the audience’s left side of the hall so they can see the performer’s hands as she plays. Obviously, this puts at least half the spectators at a disadvantage. So someone got the terrific idea of putting a camera above the keyboard which pointed straight down. The resulting image was projected on a screen above the stage. The problem was that the image was upside down. Shortly before the playing started a technician tried to fix the image, but only succeeded in making the upside down image an upside down mirror image. And that’s the way it remained until it was fixed during the intermission. Like so many good ideas theory is trumped by practice. The screen, even when the image was correctly aligned, was a distraction. I hope this idea doesn’t catch on.

Ms Vacatello possess a technique that is extraordinary even by today’s standard of widespread virtuosity. The Liszt sonata once was thought unplayable by anyone other than Liszt himself. Today everybody plays. Vacatello devoured the piece. She didn’t even break into a sweat. If this piece is not the most profound work for piano it may be the most bombastic. To bring it off you must instill some poetry into it. Anyone who heard the late Jorge Bolet play Liszt knows what I mean. Bolet made Liszt sound different than any other pianist. Ms Vacatello has all the technique needed for Liszt, it’s the soul of the music that she need to find. Her attack on the Steinway was so triumphant that the instrument had to be re-tuned during the interval.

Chopin, of course, is full of poetry interspersed through the technical challenges that cover his music. Here again Vacatello met every technical challenge without fully realizing the grace and delicacy that pervade Chopin.

Stravinsky was not particularly concerned with poetry. His arrangement of three numbers from Petrouchka written for Artur Rubinstein (who found the music too difficult to play as written) is about as technically daunting as anything in the piano literature. Vacatello played them with the ease a C Major scale. A tour de force. Her pianism is perfect for this work. If this young artist learns to sing there will be nothing closed to her.

Milton Friedman was born July 31, 1912. He died in 2006. This brief excerpt from a speech given decades ago is eerily apposite. It also is pure Hayek. There’s not a thought in this clip that isn’t almost word for word from Hayek.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu0hMiBTJPo

Ray Chen is a 20 year old violinist who was born in Taiwan, raised in Australia, and who moved to Philadelphia when he was 15 to study at the Curtis Institute. Somewhere along the way he picked up an American accent. He gave the second performance of this year’s Ruidoso Chamber Music Festival – 2 PM Saturday July 31. Not surprisingly, because of the time and day, he drew the smallest audience of the festival’s three concerts. Those lucky or wise enough to attend witnessed a performance of extraordinary virtuosity. Mr Chen won the Grand Prize of the 2009 Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition in Brussels. On the evidence of this performance it’s easy to understand why he won this coveted grand prize. His talent has been additionally recognized by the loan of not one, but two Stradivarius violins.

He started his recital with Fritz Kreisler’s arrangement of Giuseppe Tartini’s Devils Trill Sonata. He played the piece with a dark and rich tone. His intensity was such that like the previous day his bow was shedding hair at an alarming rate. I feared he might run out of bow strings before the intermission. His run through Kreisler’s cadenza was dazzling.

He followed the Tartini with César Franck’s A Major Sonata for violin and piano. His accompanist for this and the previous work was Noreen Polera. She was a powerful partner. Chen again displayed his burnished tone and fully realized the passion in the second movement allegro. There seems to be an epidemic of virtuosity that has overtaken many of the world’s young instrumentalists. But there is more to playing than technique.

The Bach Chaconne from the Partita in D minor opened the second half of the program. This music contains worlds. And it’s not possible to have visited all of them by 20. Chen’s interpretation of this cosmic music will doubtless grow as he matures. It was the most demanding piece on this recital because it requires much more than technique and virtuosity, which Chen has in excelsis. It needs depth perception. It needs experience.

Chen concluded his afternoon with three bonbons by Henryk Wieniawsky. Nothing can follow the Bach Chaconne, especially three display pieces. Mr Chen would have been better served if he had played the Bach just before the intermission thus allowing the audience to regroup before the next piece. As an encore he played Sarasate’s Introduction and Tarantella.

Chen is clearly a major talent. The world of the solo violin appears to be his for the taking. With just a bit of luck and sense he should be on all the schedules of the worlds great orchestras and stages before he is 30. If he comes your way don’t miss hearing him.

The Jasper String Quartet gave a brilliant performance of works by Haydn, Berg, and Schumann before a sparse but enthusiastic audience at the Spencer Theater Friday evening July 30. Their challenging program began with Haydn’s Op 77 #1 in G Major. This was one of the genre’s supreme master’s last works in this or any other form.

The young musicians played with vigor and precision. The writing for first violin is so virtuosic that one can easily understand why Mozart played second violin when he performed in a string quartet of Haydn’s while the older composer played the viola. Haydn’s viola parts are no walk in the park either.

The first movement was brisk and brilliant. The adagio was lovely. The third movement is a wild presto that the Jaspers played with appropriately wild abandon. The finale was another athletic presto.

Berg by Schoenberg

The Haydn was followed by Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite – written in 1926. It’s a six movement string quartet. The piece has a detailed program which wasn’t revealed until after the death of the composer’s widow a little more than 30 years ago. Berg left detailed notes in the score outlining the relationship of the music to the events surrounding Berg’s 10 year affair with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. All this and more was explained by the pre-concert lecturer Larry Wolz, professor of music at Hardin Simmons University.

While all this information is interesting it doesn’t make the music better or worse. The simple truth is that of all the 20th century composers whose music is force fed to a resistant public by professional musicians who think they know better what the unwillingly public wants or needs, only Alban Berg is a genius. At his most dissonant or raucous he is still interesting and fascinating. Berg’s teacher Arnold Schoenberg would have made a better painter than a composer.

The Lyric Suite is a powerful masterpiece that the Jasper String Quartet is very committed to and into which they poured everything they had. Their bows were shedding hair like Marine recruits at boot camp. This is a piece that requires multiple hearings to be assimilated. It was played with passionate conviction. The audience responded in kind.

After the intermission, the program concluded with Schumann’s A major quartet, the third of the three dedicated to Mendelssohn that comprise Op 41. These quartets are not performed as often as their merit deserves. The Jaspers made a compelling case for the A Major quartet. Their playing was powerful and intense throughout the work. The third movement adagio was filled with emotion and was brilliantly played. The virtuosic finale showed an ensemble at top of its game.

The four young musicians who make up this group need just a bit of luck to reach the top of the string quartet pole. The audience at the Spencer Theater was mostly gray as is typical for this type of music. Despite the extraordinarily rich literature that exists for small groups of instruments chamber music, like the rest of classical music, will lose its audience unless composers of genius appear and write new works that the public wants to hear. Regardless of the future, Ruidoso’s three concert chamber music series got off to a great start. And this fine quartet can stand comparison with any of the country’s leading string ensembles.

Jasper String Quartet:
J. Freivogel, violin
Sae Niwa, violin
Sam Quintal, viola
Rachel Henderson-Freivogel, cello

Joseph Schumepter (1883 – 1950) is famous for his use of creative destruction. He showed how capitalism innovates to create new and better systems which destroy their older competition. But after time and the departure of the innovators who created these systems, newer innovators arise who create even better systems that destroy what a short while before was new and innovative. This rise and fall sequence seems inescapable. Let’s restrict our gaze to internet browsers.

The first graphical internet browser was Netscape. It was a huge success, but after a very short time it was replaced and driven out of business by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. After IE Firefox appeared. It was more innovative than IE and allowed greater customization and an army of plugins and add-ons which made many users switch to Firefox. But time is inexorable and Firefox is starting to show signs of age and rigidity.

It issues more updates than an auto company has recalls. And worse, it’s default is to automatically download and install these update. It seems to always want to install a new update when you’re in the middle of something important. This is bad enough, but it doesn’t seem to recognize that you’ve already got the latest update and  repeatedly try to install the same version. The first thing you should do if you use Firefox is disable automatic updates. Go to tools, then click on options, under advanced go to update and click the Ask me what I want to do option for when updates to Firefox are found. This shown in the picture below.

Click

You’ll now be able to decide yourself if you want the latest update. You can check to see if you already have it by looking under help on the tool bar. Click About Mozilla Firefox. The version you are running will be displayed. If the version offered for download is newer than what you’re running you might want to download it. But before you do create a restore point. Just put create into the Search programs and files box under Start and you’ll be able to create a restore point. You need to do this because Firefox sometimes screws up your settings when it installs an update. If this happens you can easily undo the damage by using the restore point you’ve just created. Also if you’re running Windows 64 bit and Firefox asks you to install or update Adobe Flash Player, be careful. Adobe still doesn’t have a 64 bit player available. While you can get the 32 bit player to run on a 64 bit system you can also make a mess of things trying to get it to work. Best to stay away from it if you can.

Finally, if you’ve decided to update Firefox don’t use the option it offers through you browser. This way of updating is buggier than locating the update through Google or similar search engine and downloading it directly from Mozilla’s website. All this is a lot of trouble to go through to do something that ought to be easy and seamless. It’s creative destruction at work. In 10 years, probably five, Firefox will have a much smaller market share than it now has. It may not even exist.