Opus One Media

Pre-Ordained? What? More potentially bad news?

2025-07-15T16:01:00.000-04:00

Ever tempt fate? I mean, you know what I mean..that "well the worst of it is over..what more can happen?" type of stuff. I guess first you have to believe in fate or kismet or something or another but just browsing through what Yahoo puts out as news, I ran across the "Let's hope these 4 things don't happen" that came out of US News and World Report. Not so cheery.

I therefore envy my cat Pita. She thinks of mice and birds and an occasional can of human-tuna as she likes to call it. Fresh water, a clean litter box and she is good to go. She expects me to open cans of food for her and give her that water and heat the house and that is our quid pro quo for her not clawing me or the furniture. It's a nice arrangement...something like what our government does is or is supposed to do for us; let us have a place or some space to live in, make sure we have access to food and water, a little land to play around on, some heated shelter..just the basics and not cause us to worry about stuff that only they can control.

I don't want a government that concludes that we are in a horrible pickle and "we've tried A and B and C and nothing works so you guys are on your own". Well there is on your own if we didn't need a government to function and there is a similar "on your own" if you are the cat and all the food is in tin cans and there are no can openers.

Bay City Players meet Kismet

2025-07-15T15:52:00.000-04:00

Way back when - and I'm talking way back...I think I was about 14, the local theater group, The Bay City Players, put on a production of Kismet. I got my first paying job playing in the pit orchestra, 2nd trumpet, and was rewarded with $25 for 6 performances and hours of rehearsals. I think I netted about $0.20 an hour. I didn't care.

I got the gig completely by accident as I was in the Music Center on Main Street talking with the owner, Phil Herter when the guy from Saginaw came in who usually got the job and told Phil that his business took him out of town, yada yada, and Herter turned to me and said "you're hired". Kismet.

I don't know the philosopher's name but he was French and lived in the 1860s or so - cloudy memory - and he supposed that the air was full of somewhat magical powers in the form of little particles and who you turned out to be, your talents etc., were ordained when you took a breath and inhaled one of the bubbles. It was his way of describing the "road of chance" taken or not, determined or not, undertaken or not. He further believed that chance plays a huge role in life from being in the right place at the right time or being underneath a piano falling from a rooftop - all a matter of chance.

Kismet isn't chance though; it is fate and there is a subtle difference. Chance is "heads I turn right, tails I go left". Kismet is "no matter what, I was meant to go left" (flip of the coin or not).

When you think of it, kismet is a much more elegant explanation of things that happen; something of a pre-determination or pre-destination of the Calvinist belief set. Kismet has its origins in the middle east where it means "luck" - not chance. Luck and fate but as in it hasbeen my luck ... or it has been my fate...

Sitting in that pit orchestra and listening/playing that wonderful music - I can remember it on the page to this day, clear as a bell, black and white - well, almost.

Baubles, bangles,
Hear how they jing, jing-a-ling-a,
Baubles, bangles,
Bright, shiny beads.
Sparkles, spangles,
My heart will sing, sing-a-ling-a,
Wearing baubles, bangles and beads.
I'll glitter and gleam so,
Make somebody dream so,
That someday he may buy me,
A ring, ring-aling-a,
I've heard that's where it leads,
Wearing baubles and bangles and beads.

Tales of the Pacific

2025-07-14T08:15:00.000-04:00

Day sailing/powerboating off the coast of Korea

My dad was in the army in WWII. His brother was too. Ships were transportation to a foot soldier. Hence:

He told me one time about when he was being transported to Bougainville in the South Pacific. It was a 3 day cruise from where he was before, so he was "on deck" a lot on the transport and as an officer he liked the boat ride until the enemy planes started to appear thick as mosquitoes. It suddenly (so he says) struck him that they seemed like sitting ducks. When enemy ships started firing from what thought was the edge of the earth, he claimed his legs gave out.

He had made friends with a navy office as supposedly they were from the same home town in Michigan or something like that. So there is my dad, trying to dig a hole in the metal deck and his friend, standing by the rail in some sort of posture that reminded him of a good golfer after a fine round soaking up gin and tonics at the club bar.

The navy fella was talking about how lucky they were to have this big task force around them and

plenty of air support, not to worry, how's tricks? type of thing. Then he got real serious and told my father that what he (my dad) was gonna have to go do, well by golly, was the scariest thing he could imagine. He said something my dad never forgot: "Boats are like islands except when need be they could sail away while if you got stuck on an island - nothing good come of it".

Our task force built around the carrier Vincent is off Korea now and our hapless government isn't quite sure why and what they are going to do. Korea has nuclear weapons and a madman, just as we do, so where they might be a swarm of Zeros in my dad's day, they have been replaced more than adequately by a big bomb that the ships simply couldn't and can't out run.

You see, things have changed a lot since my dad was scared on the deck of a troop transport and his friend was striking a Harvard Club pose. There is no longer any safe place, real or perceived, anywhere. I hope when these hapless dullards in Washington figure out what the real world is all about, so that the fellas on task force Vincent can keep their composure.

Dinner

2025-07-11T00:10:00.000-04:00

Crabcakes on the Griddle

Mojitos

Crabcakes.

Watermelon, mint, Feta Cheese and roasted corn salad with Pomegranate Vinaigrette.

Have a good evening.

Virpominen

2025-07-11T00:06:00.000-04:00

Lorenzetti - The Entrance into Jerusalem - 1320

It isn't Palm Sunday morning or just a cold Thanksgiving eve. It was, growing up, just a Sunday when I was usually engaged as a musician playing in some small orchestra with some church choir performing some obscure work or the Hallelujah Chorus. One thing about performing in church; one is often so caught up with the thrill and fear (nerves) and the let-down after performing that the sermon was pretty much missed. Palm Sunday was, as I caught obviously in bits and pieces, the entry into Jerusalem, and the greeting with Palm branches - the sign of peace. That rang true when I got a little more serious about theology and I left it at that.

I was in Finland about 40 years ago or so and on Palm Sunday so I figured I trek up the central hill to the big church you can see from the Helsinki harbor. After the service, I found a nice lunch in the center of town and spent the afternoon just gazing out the windows at what I felt to be a pretty fair representation of Finnish urban life. It was fun.

Long about dusk, a whole gaggle of kids appeared in over sized old coats and ill-fitting clothes, scarfs, brooms and little fake copper kettles. I thought it was a party or something. Anyway, when making my way back to the flat where I was staying a lot of the doors had newly hung tree branches stuck to them and I figured it to be some local custom - my Finnish was pretty awful and when I asked, the answer was always "Virpominen". I didn't know the Finnish for "What's that mean?" so I just shrugged and went home.

Not sure why this came to mind this morning other than a prompt from the music on the radio. I did a little looking up and found this terrific article on Virpominen here. The sticks on the doors made sense and the more stuff I've read about it, if you live in a country that doesn't have palm trees, well you make do with the local tree du jour.

On Palm Sunday, a chosen person would be greeted with the virpomavihta — the pussy window branch — and lightly touched with it. As this was being done, the child would say:

Virvon, varvon tuoreeks, terveeks,
Sinuelle vihta, minuelle lahja.

I touch you with my magic branch
That will refresh you and keep you well.
You get the branch, I get a reward.

On this something like Halloween week, the kids I saw that late afternoon, mid-summer, in Helsinki, thinking of those young sprites just dressing up as Easter witches....

"It was believed that on Maundy Thursday, witches (häxor) flew off for a rendezvous with the Devil himself. They feasted and danced to the singing of magpies, flying back just in time for church services on Sunday morning, where they might accidentally reveal their identities by saying their prayers backwards.
It was also believed that on the way back from the Brocken, the mountain that served as their destination, the Easter witches sometimes got caught in chimneys. In order to deter them, people fumigated their chimneys by burning nine types of deciduous trees. These fires were kept burning Maundy Thursday to Easter morning. People also painted crosses on the doors, and even on the noses of their livestock. They did not leave brooms or rakes standing outside, lest a witch use them to fly."

Of course the entire thing is a bit nebulous as are all good traditions that evolve from a mind trying to explain something spiritual in images it can understand. A life's lesson learned.

Sunday in the Park

2025-07-05T16:54:00.001-04:00

Sunday in the Park with George

Always a dangerous thing for me to think...but I was thinking about tableau vivants this morning for some reason. I wrote about them here a while back and then revisited the subject in my mind this morning. They go both aways. Let me explain.

A tableau vivant is a "living picture" where humans and the like substitute for the drawn characters. But that can be the reverse as well - where a scene with humans and animals for instance can then be "captured" by photo or painting or simply in your mind's eye. I think that is where this odd little thought sequence ended up. Remember this painting by Seurat? (It was in Ferris Buellar just in case you can't place it). It is of a Sunday afternoon in the park type of thing.

There was a musical titled "Sunday Afternoon in the Park with George" in the middle 1980s (Sondheim) and the show either opened or closed with a "freeze" of this painting or close thereof backlit behind a scrim and it was a perfect effect. No program notes explaining time and place and mood were needed. Everything was perfectly alive though frozen like a painting.

Papers Please

2025-07-04T12:48:00.000-04:00

I spent most the 1980s in the USSR. I would go to Moscow or Kiev or else- where on scientific missions and their scientists would travel to a central location for meetings. Just like here. Except.

The first time I saw this was during my first trip in. I was a bit of a rube of course and the entire thing was some fantastic adventure, very exotic, actually very pleasant. The people couldn't have been friendlier and more personable and to this day I am thinking about many of them. But there I was at a meeting at a trade representation and with a fine fellow who was in from Kiev - a Nobel Prize nominee 3 times and he sat on the Soviet Academy of Science as a chair of the neuroscience section. A big cheese. Very big cheese.

He arrive at the meeting and a clerk for the guys who were hosting it walked up to him and curtly said "papers". Nothing more. Just "papers". The honored guest rifled through his pockets and produced his papers which were then studied over by the "clerk". I approached

him as he was famous to me and stuck out my hand in greeting mumbling something about 'what an honor' and was roughly pushed back by the "clerk" who was forbidding conversation until the good Doctor's papers were examined. All finally was deemed in order and the Doctor, now horribly embarrassed that his visitor from the United States had to witness this scene; this "in your place" scene; this personal humiliation, continued on the discussion.

I think of this horrible example of a man, this Trump fella, hell-bent on keeping out all manner of people with an endless stream of mis-labeled papers please dictates, and who by fate landed in the Oval Office to do his duty as only an insane partisan could view it, setting in motion our version of "Papers Please" and the countless humiliations to come.

It Passed

2025-07-04T11:31:00.000-04:00

Wedhesday, 249 years ago, we formally started a war, a great rebellion, one that had been going on for a while actually, and put together a resolution on independence. The vote was 13-0. (not to be confused - the signing was today, the 4th and the document was agreed to two days back - the 2nd) Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Rutledge, Rodney, Livingston, Lee, Hancock, Chase, even a Witherspoon - a collection of great men and minds debating and crafting the bounds of a new country and way of life. Amazing. Simply amazing luck to have a nation launch from such great soil.

Thank you John Adams. Thank you very much for all you did for us. Here is part of his letter to Abigail.

John Adams' Letter to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776

Yesterday the greatest question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony "that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, and as such they have, and of right ought to have, full power to make war, conclude peace, establish commerce, and to do all the other acts and things which other states may rightfully do." You will see in a few days a declaration setting forth the causes which have impelled us to this mighty revolution and the reasons which will justify it in the sight of God and man. A plan of confederation will be taken up in a few days.

saturday..in the park...think it was the 4th of july

2025-07-04T11:25:00.003-04:00

It is Saturday in the Park today.

Not Chicago, but the Fourth of July.

I think everyone needs to buy a kite today. Do something that brings folks together. Give a very simple gift. PLay with a Lego set. Swirl a hula-hoop. Show some affection. What more is there on earth than this.

It is our nation's birthday. Have a little fun.

The Dunciad

2025-07-02T17:30:00.000-04:00

I admit to reading Alexander Pope and liking the writing. This was, of course, about a million years ago and in my first English Lit class that made any sense. It was held Tu/Th/Sat at 8:00am and tough as nails. I survived and still have the books. I'll never throw them away.

Pope wrote The Dunciad, in 1728 and it was a pretty mean depiction of, well, those who are dunces, Actually a good English Lit scholar wrote this on Wiki and though my memory of it is cloudy, it is recognizeable -

"The plot of the poem is simple. Dulness, the goddess, appears at a Lord Mayor's Day in 1724 and notes that her king, Elkannah Settle, has died. She chooses Lewis Theobald as his successor. In honour of his coronation, she holds heroic games. He is then transported to the Temple of Dulness, where he has visions of the future. The poem has a consistent setting and time, as well. Book I covers the night after the Lord Mayor's Day, Book II the morning to dusk, and Book III the darkest night. Furthermore, the poem begins at the end of the Lord Mayor's procession, goes in Book II to the Strand, then to Fleet Street (where booksellers were), down by Bridewell Prison to the Fleet ditch, then to Ludgate at the end of Book II; in Book III, Dulness goes through Ludgate to the City of London to her temple."

I dug around the Dunce thing after seeing the mock photo at the top. A dunce cap, also variously known as a dunce hat, dunce's cap or dunce's hat, and is by all accounts, a pointed hat, formerly used as an article of discipline in schools. In popular culture, it is typically made of paper and often marked with a D or the word "dunce", and given to unruly schoolchildren to wear. Class clowns were frequently admonished with the dunce cap. Cap was recommended to stimulate the brain - e.g. "thinking cap".

The term "dunce cap" itself did not enter the English language until after the term "dunce" had become a synonym for "fool" or "dimwit".

Why all this?

The one thing that stuck me about those adorned with a dunce cap is that they where actually bright enough to know better or "behave" and not just goof around inappropriately.

Pope's dunces are not villains, although they can be villainous, as much as they are held up as the epitome of stupidity, imposture, and connivance. Inclusion in the list below does not imply that the figure was a dullard. In fact, the opposite is likely true, as these figures needed to rise to a position of importance to be satirized in this way.

Instead, these are figures who were satirized particularly as symbols of all things "wrong" with society or a particular political position.

Got it?

It is just wrong

2025-07-02T14:56:00.000-04:00

I had a friend of sorts in middle school. He was the only Baptist I knew at that point in my life so Jim, being born in Little Rock and moving to the north, was a bit of an odd duck anyway although we were good friends and in the "musicians circle" (our version of "the six").

Jim was a churchgoer and as a Lutheran or Steve and Stewart both Jews, well, there was backsliding and not being with the program. He used to judge us - not in any mean spirited way - but he had a set of values that right or wrong he believed in and adhered to and we all admired that even though he was something of a pain in the ass. The point here being is you can believe and have a personal ethos and it is absolutely fine to proclaim it but when the other party says "nope - no sale" that is the end of it. Jim knew he wasn't going to get anywhere with the Jews and as a backsliding Lutheran he was going to have a "get lost" from me just because of nothing. We knew where he was coming from, his motivation and his overall goodwill as a person.

Now we fly into Donald Trump who talks a mean talk and of late has pretty much taken responsibility for the rising of the sun and the full moon. I am, reminded, referring to that later instance, of the legend of the "prophet" who went to a village and charged them a fee for which he would make the moon come full for a couple days a month and then make it disappear two weeks later. That is Le Donald. To be clear, and I'm in advertising, The Donald's Apprentice shows are just so much BS and claptrap and I'd never advise a client to be associated with it as a sponsor. It is like sitting at a dirty picnic table and unless you are into flys and ants, sit elsewhere.

He is suddenly in love with the phrase "stupid people". Everyone is stupid - particularly those in government and above all the President. What happens when you call someone stupid who was elected by a majority of the people. What springs to mind is that a whole bunch of really stupid people voted really stupidly and elected a stupid President while the smart ones (by default) were too stupid to get their guy elected. Mr. Trump appears to be the only smart one in the room by his own count.

He doesn't seem to take advice well - not a sign of brilliance - and is something of a sociopathic businessman - but more than anything, he has no idea of what happens in pricing in the oil-patch nor any concept whatsoever of what it takes to lead by consensus instead of dictate. He is, therefore smart on one hand and dumb as a rock on the other.

He should take a lesson from my boyhood friend Jim. Jim knew when enough was enough and when his argument was merely that - an argument - and at that point he backed off and assumed his reasonable self. Mr. Trump doesn't know when to shut his trap and when his opinion isn't anything other than a bad argument. He also, unlike Jim my boyhood friend, has no manners. Jim was polite. He would "sir" and "mame" my parents nearly to death but honestly and out of the normal respect one person has for another. Not so "the Donald". He is rude and arrogant - the proverbial turd in the punchbowl and he should learn or be taught that his type of rhetorical flourish is just wrong. It is just wrong....and on so many levels.

You liked the last fireworks (2 posts down) here is a more mellow version

2025-06-16T16:14:00.000-04:00

Here is one by Debussy (Deb u see) the French impressionist composer. I like the visual treatment very much. Hope you do too.

Piecemeal

2025-05-29T18:13:00.000-04:00

I forgot to note the past anniversary (and upcoming) of the real deal start of our Civil War; the shelling of Fort Sumter.

Fort Sumter got its name from a Revolutionary War general, Thomas Sumter who undoubtedly founded Sumterville (later just Sumter) and has a county named after him and, of course, the fort. Most things that have military/historical roots and embed lessons that are there for our use or ignorance.

Ken Burns' epic series, The Civil War, has been on public TV in New York for a few nights, mostly as public broadcasting is under siege and as a good reminder of the implications of the term "Piecemeal". Let me explain.

Piecemeal means a little at a time...incremental....step by step. One great tactic in business or in anything for that matter is to overtake your opponent a little bit here and a little bit there - never trying to do it all at once but figuring life is a game of chess and the game is going to take 40 moves a-piece (get it?) and you don't win it when you move your first pawn....you go about it piecemeal.

One of history's great "what if's?" is if the South had united and essentially gone to war all at once instead of just trying to defend Sumter from resupply and prematurely shelling it in a gentlemanly fashion. What would Lincoln and the United States have done then or have thought then? Perhaps there would have been a different reaction but as it was, the South came into this conflict bit by bit.

There is a lesson here and it comes about by discerning the tactic of the opponent. Modern politics is fought like the beginning of the civil war - in a piecemeal fashion. There is the grandiose, big picture blustering, but when reality sets in the opposition draws back and nips at the heels - conducts a piecemeal approach to getting to the objective. I brought up the epic "Civil War" series, at the time and perhaps still, something that riveted public attention to the wonders of 1. a genius of film-making and 2. the value of having a venue like public broadcasting that can air a non-commercial series of this value and worth.

Make no mistake, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that is at the heart of people like Burns and venues like PBS are under direct frontal attack for reasons I simply can't fathom or explain. Nor can they. It is purely as non-sensical as Fort Sumter - a symbol of a place where something exists that isn't wanted locally but of value generally.

I take heart that most "piecemeal" wars don't work and that this type of battle only wins or has a chance in games that are prescribed with many moves. Lee, the great southern general, always divided his foes and defeated them piecemeal and would only make these moves if indeed his opponent allowed it to happen - bad tactics or an over extended line (watch the series and you'll see).

This is a time, once again, to stand united and not permit a "divide and conquer" piecemeal war.

Art Gallery - 2025

2025-05-28T18:33:00.000-04:00

"Calm After the Rain" , Pixel on Microchip, 2015

:"Hydrangeas Before the Deer Arrive", Petals on Tongue, Summer 2015

"Picnic", Sass on Grass, 2014

"Bridge on the River Kwai", Wood on Water, 2013

"Dancing Tree", Supernatural on Brain, 2012

Adventures of a Youth in Michigan

2025-05-19T10:54:00.000-04:00

Net history resourcing is an interesting thing. My father was alive and remembers Oct. 29, 1929 when the wheels really fell off the cart but he remembered them getting dicey a year or so before the bad day.

He had a job at Ford Motor in Dearborn, MI sorting the five lugg nuts that were used in all Ford cars. There was only a 16th of an inch difference one to another and barrels of these things were dumpted on a centeral sorting table with a bunch of guys counting and sorting them in to little trays for the assembly line. I guess no one ever thought to sort them to begin with so my father made that suggestion. He cut holes into a long piece of wood that was mounted on something like a coin sorter contraption and he just fed the bolts down and they dropped into the right bin below. It worked like crazy. So Ford management came over, gave him a citation and promptly fired the other 9 guys working with him. He had armed guards take him off the premises at the end of the shift for his protection. and the death threats made it impossible for him to go backi to work. So he took a railroad job that his dad got him on the run from Detroit to Grand Rapids just in time for the October 29 Black Tuesday, where he no doubt read this paper.

Pete Rose

2025-05-13T22:39:00.001-04:00

I published this a decade ago. Mr. Rose died today.

"You don't have to be an old-time baseballer to recognize this fellow. He has or had more hits in the major leagues than any play ever and that alone is saying something.

He went to Western Hills HS in Cincinnati and my brother went to Colerain HS and they played each other during that time as they (my brother and Pete) were the same age almost exactly and had similar "careers" in high school in attendance only. My brother joined the DeMolay and into the same chapter as Pete did.

Today is the day old Pete went to prison for tax evasion for gambling winnings and failure to report them to the IRS. That was 20 years ago give or take. The feds never nailed him for gambling winnings during his time in baseball when he bet regularly - even on his own team - and eventually got pretty much "persona non grata" as a result.

Fifteen years ago I was in Santa Monica and one of my accounts was Western Auto/Sears. We had some money to spend and we were buying advertising on a lot of baseball properties - well because of some good reasons and some of the Sears guys wanted exotic baseball "packages" that the networks offered as incentives if you bought advertising. Pete Rose had a baseball talk show for some reason and I got a call from his producer looking for advertising money and would we sponsor him yada yada.

I got that call on the evening of TWA 800 at my apartment and was just off the phone with home in NY and watching the coverage.

"Can Pete call you now"?

"NO."

"This is Pete Rose..the greatest ballplayer..."

"NO"

"When can Pete all you"?

"Why does he want to call me?"

"Just to thank you for advertising on his program".

"NO" tell him to call on Saturday.

Saturday:

"This is Pete Rose...how ya' doin' fella?"

"k"

"Thanks for advertising on my program..."

"I'm not"

"What?"

"I'm not buying advertising on your program".

"This is Pete Rose..."

"Yeah I know. My brother played against you in HS".

"Wow that's great what was his name"?

"Mike but you don't know him so don't pretend".

silence

"Look Mr. Rose. You were a great player. You also are one of the most dishonorable people ever to play. I used to run ticker tape for Waite Hoyte at Crosley Field so my time with the Cincinnati Reds goes back 40 years. Call me back in 40 more years and I'll reconsider".

I hung up. I was rude. I apologize. What I will never understand is when gifted individuals have the world on a silver platter - not the world of a baseball diamond or a football field or for that matter a golf course and due to their exploits are given carte blanche to the rest of life and they blow it. I guess its because they are, in essence, "one note Johnnys" who only have that one gift and no others".

Trees and War/ June 6

2025-05-05T21:17:00.000-04:00

A tree on Dog
Red Beach, Normandy

Almost 80 years ago on an upcoming morning was the Normandy Invasion; D-day. It appears today without much fanfare, fuss and feathers, and the like. Maybe we are getting close to our limit of war or tolerance of it and, in particular politicians who talk about the grandeur of the undertaking. The grunt in the field probably doesn't share the enthusiasm.

I happened upon the picture (above) of a scrubby little tree in the midst of bomb craters on Dog Red Beach in Normandy. Dog Red was the name given to one sector of Omaha Beach and pretty much smack dab in the center of things. I doubt there was a tree to be seen and that got me to thinking.

The clump of trees on the
right was the focal point

Trees are focal points of sorts. They mark and decorate our property as living landmarks. I'll meet you by the tree is a clear as a bell remark. When Pickett charged at Gettysburg (150+ years ago next month) the "target of the charge, when the line was to converge, was a group of trees on the right. All accounts depict the trees after the battle as useless bits of splinters.

Mulling this over this morning I noted some trees on the far south of the property, up against the bay backdrop. Their enemies have been hurricanes, humans, lots of dogs and not infrequent storms

Our trees

(nor'easters) and have survived pretty well. In fact very well considering. They survived so well in the elements due to their type and perhaps, just perhaps, no one dropped a bomb nearby or used them as a target. The rough and tumbles of nature were testing but not life threatening. Bombs and hot lead - well not so good.

I think people are like trees.

Just a thought on the upcoming anniversary of a day of carnage.

The Haymarket Affair Revisited

2025-05-01T19:05:00.000-04:00

While we suffer the fools in various Midwest states and elsewhere, where governors and their legislatures are flat out trying to dismantle unions, it is good on this May Day to remember back 139 years ago to the Haymarket Affair in Chicago. The year was 1886 and the scene started at the McCormick Harvester Plant.

The long and short was a strike at the plant and the police were called in by management and 4 "strikers" were shot dead. The next day, at the Haymarket Square in Chicago, there was a demonstration of outrage over the ability of an industrialist being able to call in the police department to disperse workers who were striking or protesting and that they would shoot 4 of them dead. The police showed up again at the Haymarket and a bomb was tossed and a policeman along with a dozen or so others died. More died in the chaos that followed.

A trial took place over the policeman's death and for that there was no evidence as to who threw what. A dozen or so folks were, however, tried on charges of "anarchy" and convicted and 4 were hung for it. This was obviously the south pole of a number of issues not the least of which was a company, when confronted by a strike, could call out the police to rid itself of the issue, the police could shoot strikers, a demonstration ensued in which more deaths occurred and absent any evidence whatsoever that the arrested men had anything to do with the deaths, the charges were changed to anarchy and 4 were hanged.

The result was a shot heard around the world and workers and unions everywhere on earth took up the cause. As it happened on May 1 and thereafter, the normal May Day - or Flora Day or Walpurgis Night Day - the day of flowers and planting and the emergence of things that start afresh - shouldn't be lost on anyone. Basic rights that have to do with how people spend - other than sleeping - the majority of their organized time deserves consideration and perhaps some reverence pagan or otherwise. It needs to be renewed every so often and not plowed back into the ground as now seems to be the case.

I'm taken aback by the union bashing in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, etc., as it seems to me to be grossly unfair. Not to the extreme levels of calling in the government to shoot strikers and trying unionists for anarchy and hanging them, nor remembering the Flat Iron fire when management locked women in a sewing sweat shop and washed their hands of responsibility when fire broke out and they were burned alive because they couldn't get out of the only door. It is deeper than these deaths. It is the realization that without the people involved in making things there would be no company.

So many jobs have been sent overseas due to fun and games tax rules and the overall disintegration of the management-worker bond. Some of this is economics and I think a lot of this is just plain sweatshop mentality. Our clothing sellers don't seem to mind that a lot of the stuff they sell is made by kids somewhere working 60 hour weeks for nothing.

Think of that the next time you lace up your Nike designer shoes.

eBay makes me crazy

2025-05-01T14:40:00.000-04:00

When I was a student a Michigan State the "du jour" was to go over on College Ave for breakfast (when of course we could afford it) get to our 8am theory classes (music theory - don't ask) back to Marshalls music to see what new had come in and then look at the record sale rack which went up at 10am sharp daily.

I own this record. I bought it for $.99 in 1968. It is up on eBay for $33. Little Train of Caipira is on it. I had a music lit class on French music of the 19-20 century and Honegger's Pacific 231 was the big deal about train music.

THIS IS SOOOOO MUCH BETTER. If you aren't on a train in the Brazilian wilderness..then god help ya.

Mama Cass

2025-04-29T17:17:00.000-04:00

I encourage you to sing along. It will
clear your mind and all that.

50+ years ago. Midwest and college. Saturday night late in the frat house. Before Saturday Night Live. WFTM in Chicago 'cause we had an antenna on the roof. The Midnight Special. Momma Cass. Sigh.

Ignorance

2025-04-28T22:23:00.000-04:00

(The November Uprising)

I grew up in a town that was heavily Polish. Where I live now it is fairly common to hear Polish spoken on the street or in stores; so common as to not even notice. My knowledge of Poland centers mainly in the events of the last century and of WWII so, in a nutshell, I'm simply ignorant of a prior heritage and history that has and is all around me and has been for half a century.

written in 1830, Chopin was 20 and about to
graduate from the Warsaw Conservatory

As a musician by education and heart, I studied Chopin, the pianist and composer, and thought of him as the forefront, go-to guy of Polish music and we learned from our texts that he was born in 1810 and left Poland for Paris in 1830, was involved with the writer George Sand ("Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.) We mostly studied his "etudes" (studies) as something of an encyclopedia of piano techniques.

Why he left Poland wasn't mentioned in our highly romantic, highly prejudiced texts, nor did we learn that there really wasn't a Poland in 1830 as we think of it, but a divided state, part Russian, part Germanic and part Austrian. The Russian part (where Chopin lived) went in revolt (the November Uprising) and Chopin was off, essentially into exile, as did the regions cream of the intellectual crop. There is much more to it than that and from a few hours reading, my capital "I" ignorance is showing so I'll stop writing here until I get all this history into my mind.

We all need to do that some, you know. When you find a time, or subject, about which you know little, instead of the easy way - well - dig in and find out stuff. A little music, a quiet chair and lamp, and some flipping of pages may be just the ticket. Won't hurt.

Bay City Michigan 1959

2025-04-20T09:08:00.000-04:00

Our backyard in Bay City faced North and we just moved in late that proceeding summer and I had hounded my parents for a telescope figuring like any kid in a new town with no friends I had to have something to do that I could do by myself.
Well it finally came at Christmas time in 1959 or perhaps 58, memory fails me and of course, it was Bay City Michigan and it was 3000 degrees below zero with snow.

I had to wait for week to be able to get in a view of the Moon which I thought was going to be bigger than life. It was late January and I think it was about midnight I snuck out because my parents thought I was crazy if I did go, and put the little tripod together and aimed the telescope towards the first glimpse of moon I saw. Well not the first one I saw but the one that came visible after about 3 weeks of snow skies. Anyone who lives in Bay City knows exactly what I mean.

I was in awe as anyone is the first time one looks out into space. The moon was as I imagined it would be only more so and I didn't even have a powerful telescope. But what I thought was more entrancing was looking past the moon into the deepest black I never could imagine. There was nothing and it seemed to go on forever and in an actuality it did.

At the same time I was studying piano or at least making an attempt at it and one piece I was able to play and thought was justl absolutely stunning was Clair de Lune by Debussy.

I'm not sure if Debussy ever looked at the moon the way I did lying on my back in the snow off Carroll Park in Bay City Michigan in late December, but I saw the same Moon that he imagined and that piano piece became alive in my mind and still is 65+ years later.

Cold War and Cowboys and Indians

2025-04-16T19:20:00.000-04:00

1953, Dayton, Ohio

This is a birthday party when I was 6. I'm second from the left in the first row. Robbie is wearing the hat. Peter has the bow tie. That's all I can remember. It is in Dayton Ohio at 334 Fountain Ave. I remember my phone as Oregon 8990. I can also remember how to walk to kindergarten at Van Cleve Elementary (bet you don't know who Van Cleve was do you?).

This was the year that my parents would let me go the Saturday matinee at the Main Theater with my friends and of course walk to and from school.

Cookie Willis lived next door. He was a Korean War vet and took one day to shooting up the neighborhood "so we would learn what war was like". They got him alive and took him away. We survived.

The most popular TV shows were Captain Video and the Lone Ranger. I think Gogi Grant sang "The Western Wind was a Wayward Wind" or something. I'm not going to look it up. I'm just trying to figure out how moms got 6 year olds in white shirts and ties. (not me by the way). My first girl friend (because she could play "cowboys and Indians" in the back yards) was Sasha and she is behind me to my left. Her family was from Germany and I liked her.
They (Sasha's family) lived across the street in a funny apartment building with parking in the basement. When I was allowed to cross the street at some place other than the corner at the stop sign, she and Peter who lived there too would come out and we would visit the woman up the street who baked cookies. She had an older brother probably about 15 or so. My sister didn't like him. Her dad was an air force related something or other and worked with some other Germans at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. I imagine there was quite a story there but will never know. The "how they got to Dayton" must have been a doozie.

In 1953, they didn't have a lot of friends.

Les Preludes

2025-04-16T19:13:00.000-04:00

Franz Liszt, composer
of Les Preludes about
150 years or so ago

You've heard this a million times - mostly as background music to the Lone Ranger type of TV serial westerns and countless Warner Brothers Cartoons.

About a million years ago, I got to conduct this piece with the American Symphony Orchestra League in NY. I loved it. Others thought and still do think it trite but I've found that these are the same folks who associate the William Tell Overture with the Lone Ranger theme song.

LaMartines d'après Lamartine (Les Preludes)

What else is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown Hymn, the first and solemn note of which is intoned by Death?—Love is the glowing dawn of all existence; but what is the fate where the first delights of happiness are not interrupted by some storm, the mortal blast of which dissipates its fine illusions, the fatal lightning of which consumes its altar; and where is the cruelly wounded soul which, on issuing from one of these tempests, does not endeavour to rest his recollection in the calm serenity of life in the fields? Nevertheless man hardly gives himself up for long to the enjoyment of the beneficent stillness which at first he has shared in Nature's bosom, and when "the trumpet sounds the alarm", he hastens, to the dangerous post, whatever the war may be, which calls him to its ranks, in order at last to recover in the combat full consciousness of himself and entire possession of his energy.

"Create excitement. Don't get excited."

2025-04-13T19:11:00.000-04:00

Janos Starker
cellist
July 5 1924 - April 28, 2013

The last thing you want to read about on such a glorious Sunday evening is a snippet about a cellist, Janos Starker who died years back at age 88 in Bloomington, Indiana. He had an amazing career as a prodigy, soloist, symphony musician, teacher and clinician. Someone actually updated his Wiki entry to mark his death while I was writing this.

He hailed from Budapest prior to WWII and the Nazis who killed his brothers. He was, in simple terms, incredibly gifted - born with the muse on his shoulder. From his picture, he appears somewhat "severe" and that is accurate in his professional demeanor. I saw him in Chicago a zillion years ago playing with the symphony there; perhaps one of the most magnificent orchestras in the history of the world. He portrayed very little emotion -passive almost - to the point that I often pictured him in some sort of dark, 1930s realism/fascist type of painting. Obviously he was anything but that but it was covered a bit by his silent manner broken only when talking about music.

I saw him give a master class in Stillwater, OK about 45 years ago. One of the players in my orchestra was a volunteer "red meat" to be a learner under his eye. He stopped her pretty quick, smiled, was gracious and then suggested they turn their attention to "making a sound out of each note", meaning that the notes didn't have the same sound all the way through but we kinda jagged; some parts louder, some nicer, some parts downright ugly. He wouldn't go on until she could play at least one note correctly.

I'm sure you have seen/heard actors and actress who do this - their diction, their way of pronouncing a word or sentence - effortless and clear. Others (e.g. Snookie, Kim, et all) sound like they have a mouthful of a disagreeable substance and can't figure out if they should spit it out first. Starker's cello sound had "diction". Every note was even and uniform. It was as if every note was a whole sentence perfectly spoken.

Starker died. Age 88. He lived a life of great clarity.