Christmas $

This year Christmas was a simple affair enjoying salmon steaks at Fr. Vin’s place and the most delicious apple pie I’ve ever had courtesy of his neighbor who’s a real artist in the bakery.  Fr. Vin also entertained us with such gag gifts as an orange (all wrapped up fancy, even with ribbon and bow), no doubt inspired by a gag gift from his neighbors in which they gave him a stocking housing an actual lump of coal.  My favorite gag gift was a whiskey flask (given of course to the one family member who, with the possible exception of the occasional annual glass of wine, never goes near liquor.)  One thing you immediately notice about a flask is that there’s no way to clean them; so they really cannot be used for anything other than alcohol.  It’ll be fun to keep it on display or take it to parties and make everyone think I’m a boozer. 

The DaVinci Code (in C minor)

Slawomir Zubrzycki performing in Cracow October 18th

Most of you probably didn’t notice, but last week was quite an historic one for the music world, particularly for the piano community. And though most of you probably didn’t notice, it was of sufficient significance to have been featured on the evening news. I found the report quite fascinating and wrote to Pam about it last Wednesday evening, wondering if she had heard of it. (She had not.) But even as I was writing the email, Letterman was on and suddenly was talking about this thing. I knew it was big, but I had no idea it was that big. It even made Letterman.

#666: Religion, Politics & Halloween

A few days ago, I sent off the 660 page final accounting report for the closure of Mom’s estate two years 3-1/2 months after Mom died and nearly 9 years since Dad’s death started this enormous estate project. I’ve been working on it all year but with particular intensity since June and have been determined in the last couple of months not to have any other distractions until this was done. That is why this year, the year I turned 60, I did not write my traditional Halloween essay. Until now.

My Weekend With Michelle Williams

 

Michelle Williams in her Oscar
nominated role in
"Brokeback Mountain"

I had promised myself no more blog postings until the estate accounting was done (which it now very nearly is; my last post was in June and I've been doing very little other than accounting since) but I am making an exception now due to unusual developments over the weekend. As I’m sure I’ve written on a number of occasions, I very much admire the 32 year old film actress Michelle Williams who had already achieved stardom by age 15 and has gone on to such luminary roles as her Oscar-nominated performance in "Brokeback Mountain" and "Blue Valentine" among others. My very favorite film of her’s was 2011’s "My Week With Marilyn" in which she did a spot-on reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe (also Oscar nominated) in the "true" story of her "romance" with Laurence Olivier’s production assistant Colin Clark (and on whose memoirs the film is based) during the 1956 production of "The Prince and the Showgirl." 

More Views of 3535

It’s occurred to me that my May 19^th entry did not really include very complete coverage of the new landscaping at 3535. So when I did my usual drive-by on Saturday, I noticed Shaun’s rhododendron had more blooms on it and the new bush near the lavatory window was now in full bloom. And I realized I never gave anyone a decent view of the new front of the house, nor any view of the new view from the west.

Performance Anxiety

The German made Perzina grand piano

 

As it is every year, my Piano Guild audition, which was held last Friday at 4 p.m., is the most important day of the year for me. It is the culmination of a full year of work and is the only opportunity I get every year to get an opinion about my playing from some highly qualified person who is not my teacher. This year was particularly anxiety provoking as it was by far the most challenging program I’ve ever performed, 8 very difficult pieces and 20 minutes of continuous playing in front of a judge who is a concert pianist and who grades your performance. (By contrast, almost all other students play only 2-4 pieces.) 

Metamorphosis at 3535: A Photo Essay

Last night I did my usual Saturday driveby of the old homestead after 5:00 Mass at OLR and photographed some of the changes I observed, thinking you all might be interested in a preview of what our childhood home is metamorphozing into. I happened to run into Joe and he gave me another tour. His grand plan to move in by Easter had turned into Memorial Day and is now much more likely to be closer to the 4^th of July, possibly even Labor Day. Even from the nickel tour he gave me, it’s obvious that there’s still quite a lot to be done.

Oscar Picks 2012

The 85^th annual Academy Awards are this Sunday and the nine nominees for Best Picture are:

Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and Zero Dark Thirty.

The New "Rich"

So what else do you do at 3 a.m. in the middle of a blizzard except write in a blog? And what’s more fun to write about than money? As the snow piles up, one of the more major stories in this week’s news has been the new Bloomberg Billionaires ranking which has for the first time named the 30 year old Lynsi Torres, owner of In ‘N Out Burgers, as the world’s first youngest female billionaire. I mention this recent news item since it illustrates a debate that has been raging in this country for over a hundred years, and has been particularly in the news since the economy crashed in 2008 - that is the wide divide between rich and poor in this country. This divide has gotten much wider in the last 20 years, which some would point to as proof that the American Dream is dead and maybe never existed at all. It has triggered the 99 Percenters movement which posits that most of the country’s wealth lies with the top 1% of the population. This debate is hardly new. We talked about it extensively in Poli Sci at BU in 1972 and it was a primary motivator behind the New Deal.

Piety and Pornography ... (plus a little art)

"Francesca"
Rare Masseria collotype at Manresa

It has been four weeks since my Manresa retreat and I am just now able to write about it. Not all my retreats leave me feeling like I’m on fire with the spirit. Most of the time I do leave the 40 hour weekend feeling refreshed, recharged, and quite a lot better about life than when the weekend began. Obviously if I was not having some sort of reaction along these lines, I would not have attended 19 years in a row. 
       But they don’t all turn out great. In fact some are downright miserable. One in particular in the mid-90s they put me in a room where the pipes were so noisy that I was unable to sleep. When I complained about it, they put me in another room that was even noisier. I was at the time in the depths of the CFS so not getting any rest for the weekend was not the right prescription for meditation and spiritual growth. I was miserable. I left resolved never to do another retreat there. However, by the time the following January came around, I solved the problem simply by requesting a room in the new wing, all of which were very quiet. They have been very good about accommodating that ever since.

Saturn Blues

It has now been two weeks since I brought my new used 2008 Saturn Astra home from Lunghamer GMC in Waterford and it is working out fine. So I thought it was time to share a photo of my new baby. So far the biggest problem has been that the car, originally sold in Quebec, came only with a French language owner’s manual. Every other piece of documentation in the car including the warranty book and the OnStar manual are bilingual. But not the owner’s manual, which has been a considerable obstacle in figuring out how the car works. For instance, it took me over an hour just to figure out how to open the hood. (Details below.) The French is rather quaint considering my background in and love of all things French but, still, I have no desire to teach myself how to use this car by translating this manual. I downloaded the free online manual the very night I took delivery and it has been helpful but no substitute for paper - it's quite difficult to read the instructions and then go out and try to remember how to do it in the car. (I think I just found an advantage to tablets.) Of course, I could make copies -- and I did just that at first -- but I've had so many questions that for all the copies I'd be making I might as well buy the book.

Blinkin' Lincoln

Over the Thanksgiving weekend I finally got the opportunity to catch Spielberg’s marvelous new film, "Lincoln," and what a thing to be thankful for, a powerful portrait of this incredibly gifted leader who championed the Union to one of history’s hardest fought victories. 2012, in case you don’t know it, is the year that has given us not one but two films about Lincoln, and they couldn’t be more different. "Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" was a sci-fi fantasy out during the summer and produced by Tim Burton, a film with the perfectly absurd premise that our 16^th president, from the time of his youth all the way through the end of his administration, had a secret double-life as a vampire slayer. It is the plot of this film that the Confederacy had a secret weapon in a vampire army and that the only reason the Union prevailed is that Lincoln personally left the White House every night to go kill rebel vampires. Perhaps I’d feel differently if I gave it a chance (a very mixed public reception and a blatant thumbs-down from the critics), but I would think any Civil War/Lincoln buff would be offended by this bastardization of one of the greatest U.S. presidents. I am very grateful to Steven Spielberg for offering his alternative in a very respectful and admiring story that could not be more different than vampires. I’m hoping that because of Spielberg, Vampire Hunter will now be forgotten in the blink of an eye.

Election Eve: Why I Know Obama Will Win

Four More Days, Four More Years, the slogans have been flying like crazy the last few days. This is the one election in our lifetime where the choice has never been so clear. Depending on one’s political orientation, it’s either painfully obvious that Obama is the vastly superior choice or just as obvious that Romney is. Depending entirely on which polls you’re watching, either Obama has a modest edge or Romney does.

A Tale of Three Cities



Pianoforte made of papier-mache
 for 1867 Paris World's Fair

Reunion season is officially over but I’m taking an extra couple days just for myself before the immersion into the final five weeks of the move. There have been three reunions in as many weeks but, of course, the big one was in Kansas City Wednesday thru Monday, from which I have just returned. It has been nearly 20 years since my last foray to KCMO and it is a delightful city. Since much of the reunion centered around art, I will be referring to this as the GroHo reunion, not only to protect the guilty (since this is a public blog, though I have intentionally disguised it so it should be next to impossible for anybody not on the list to find it) but because our excursions reminded me so much of Manhattan’s SoHo arts district that I thought it was an appropriate acronym.

Apartment Hunting in the 21st Century

Enough of you have inquired about my apartment hunt that I thought I’d make it easy and inform everyone all at once. Needles and pins anyone? That’s how it’s felt the past several weeks since our buyer first accepted our counter-offer and we signed the purchase agreement. The agreement states that I have until August 1^st to vacate, which was considered generous at the time but that of course assumed we’d have some finality within a week or two. I was hoping I’d have two full months to wrap things up. As things are going, it looks like that’s going to be more like five weeks. I was supposed to have the answer last week, now being told maybe next week. The good news: both the roofing inspector and asbestos inspector came by today and found no serious problems (or so they told me, but I’m not the guy they work for.)   But it’s not done until it’s done. There is so much that I cannot proceed with until we know the deal is done. One of those things is getting my new place.

Battling Bach

Bosendorfer Imperial 290 Concert Grand

It’s been quite a week, and getting our first (and hopefully final) offer on the house was, believe it or not, the least of it. This was the week that each year I spend the entire year preparing for, the week of the nationwide auditions of the National Piano Guild. Every year, at the first lesson after the June recital, we are assigned the four to six pieces that we will spend an entire year studying and practicing in preparation to perform before a concert pianist judge at the Guild auditions the following spring. This year – seven very challenging pieces from the likes of none other than Bach, Burgmuller, and Spindler, to name a few.

Oakland University Gone Wild! ... (or The One Thing Hitler Did Right)

As events have evolved, it turns out my piano Easter/Spring break is revolving largely around the Department of Music at Oakland University. Last Friday, I was privileged to be invited by Professor Yin Zheng to observe a masterclass conducted by concert pianist Dr. Solungga Fang-Tzu Liu of Bowling Green State University. During the next five nights, there will be four more piano events by way of year-end finals recitals and the annual departmental recital. This is the time of year that Oakland University goes wild with its performance arts offerings. You may be asking what all this has to do with Hitler? Did my headline work? Did it grab your attention? I’m actually not being exploitative here at all; there is a connection between OU and Hitler, but it’s a good connection. (Wow, now I’ve really got your attention!)

A Happy Ending

I’ve had a stomach flu all week so I have been feeling quite delicate. Since the discovery of my sleep apnea and subsequent treatment thereof, my overall health has been returning to a state of normalcy such that, during weeks like this when I am ill, it is a normal feeling of illness. During the depths of my Chronic Fatigue during the 90s and beyond, it was quite a different story.

And the Oscar Goes To ...

Ladies and germs, it’s that time of year again, one day ‘til Oscars.  Last year was easy.  "The King’s Speech" stood out so far above the rest of the crowd that it was quite a no-brainer to predict it would sweep the awards.  And it did.  But this year, it’s really a tough call.  Virtually all of the nominees are very good, and there are four that are simply outstanding. 

Two Weekends Apart

As January of a new year draws to a close, there are two eventful weekends that occurred two weekends apart this month that I have been meaning to write about: my annual Manresa Jesuit retreat that was January 6-8 and Uncle Don’s funeral in North Carolina January 20-22. I had intended to write about them separately but as the month comes to an end, I will combine them. They are after all thematically similar. Both weekends had in common rituals we follow to seek out personal peace and harmony in a world that is full of change and disharmony.