Today is the birthday (October 25, 1825 of Johann Strauss II – ‘The Waltz King’. He was a prolific composer of light music including more than 500 waltzes, polka, quadrilles, etc. His waltzes including ‘The Blue Danube Waltz’, the ‘Vienna Waltz’ and the ‘Emperor Waltz’ help popularize the waltz in Austria and elsewhere. His music is widely known. Those of you who are old enough may remember that the Blue Danube Waltz was used to score one of the remarkable scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Amazon had their ‘Prime Days’ last week and their site was filled with banners offering ‘Up to 40% off’, ‘Up to 30% off’, ‘As low as $xx’. Of course, these phrases promise exactly nothing. You probably won’t get the 40% or 30% off and may get no discount at all.
It’s a deceptive and widely used marketing practice. A famous auto insurance company has been advertising ‘save as much as 15%’ for years and they’re not the only ones. If the savings promised by the auto insurance industry were real, then by switching from one to the other repeatedly, your rate would go down to zero!
Advocacy organizations use this technique all the time: ‘Up to 8 million may starve…sea levels may rise by 20 feet…eating bacon/cheese/lettuce/chocolate/beer may shorten your life by up to 300 years’.
Of course all of these numbers are meaningless. The only thing we can be sure of when someone tells us that ‘up to 8 million may starve’ is that the number will certainly be less than 8 million and possibly zero. They use these big numbers either to grab our attention or out of laziness. I wish they would stop.
In closing I want you to know that this post will be read by up to 100,000 readers.
I just finished reading ‘The Falconer’, Dana Czapnik’s debut novel and I loved it. Salman Rushdie has been a supporter of Czapnik and it shows in her splendid prose that immerses one in 1990’s New York City.
It’s the story of 17-year old Lucy Adler, a self proclaimed ‘pizza-bagel’ (half Jewish, half Italian). It’s written in the first person as we follow Lucy in her senior year in the private school where she doesn’t fit in at all. “But I’m a girl, and I’m really tall and I don’t have Pantene-commercial hair and I’m not, let’s say, une petite fleur, so everyone just assumes I’m a lesbian.”
We first meet her on the basketball court – she is an outstanding player – with her childhood friend and crush, Percy. Through his references to French nihilism and the moral bankruptcy of his banker father, we quickly glean that Percy is an aspiring existentialist determined to disavow his upper-class roots. Lucy turns a blind eye to Percy’s hypocrisy, his escapades with other more “womanly” women, his desire to go to San Diego upon graduation since, according to him, the girls there are “the way they should be,” and his strange bouts of jealousy as she secretly negotiates her ability to be both boy-obsessed and a tomboy. It is via the prism of her relationship with Percy that Lucy begins to forge her way through and against the current of normative gender roles.
Lucy loves her basketball and the descriptions of the game are some of the best I’ve read. Czapnik’s descriptions of the New York of the 90s are captivating and fun to read.
Lucy’s coming-of-age is tempered by her constant brush-ups against the constrictions society places on her sex. Happening upon “The Falconer,” a bronze of a boy in Elizabethan dress releasing a falcon in Central Park, Lucy is envious that statues of boys depict them in action poses while women are either demure nudes or Alice in Wonderland. “Don’t you wish they made statues of girls like that?” Lucy asks Alexis. “Just some girl having unapologetic fun.” Alexis replies: “I never apologize for the fun I have. And neither do you.” Reader, beware: Spending time with Lucy is unapologetic fun, and heartbreak, and awe as well.
‘The Falconer’ is a New York Times ‘Editor’s Choice’. I loved it and I think you will too. Give it a try.
Today is the birthday of Giuseppe Verdi (October 10, 1813), one of the most wonderful of opera composers. Even if you’re not a fan of opera, you will recognize some of his music and, by the time you finish this post, may even like it! Verdi was a strong supporter of the ‘Risorgimento’ – the Italian unification movement. Much of his music was in the spirit of the movement and Verdi himself was considered a representative of the ideals.
There are certain of his pieces that I like a lot. His third opera, Nabucco, is the story of the conquest of Israel by Nebuchadnezzar and their exile and enslavement. The chorus, Va pensiero, known sometimes as ‘The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’ has, in my mind, a beautiful, haunting quality as they dream of their homeland. If you want to sing along, the text can be found HERE.
In 1851, Verdi composed ‘Rigoletto’, a tragic story revolving around the Duke of Mantua, his court jester, Rigoletto and Rigolleto’s daughter Gilda. One of the most famous aria in the opera is ‘La donna è mobile’ (woman is fickle) sung by the duke. I’m sure you’ve heard the melody:
Another of my favorites is from La Traviata which was first presented in 1853. It’s the story of a famous courtesan and a young man who falls in love with her even though she already has a wealthy lover. There is, of course, a duel and later, Violetta, the courtesan, falls ill and dies in the young mans’ arms. My favorite piece from this is, of course, the drinking song.
I don’t want to make this too long so I’ll close with ‘Aida’. The Khedive of Egypt commissioned Verdi to write an opera to celebrate the opening of the Suez canal. The result was ‘Aida’ and this triumphal march.
Happy birthday, Giuseppe!
Today, October 4, is the birthday in 1814 of Jean-François Millet, French Realist painter. He was born into a farming family and, as a boy, worked on the farm mowing, making hay, binding the sheaves, spreading manure, threshing, winnowing and so forth. Much of his work reflects his life on the farm and the lives of peasants.
This painting, The Gleaners, is one of his most famous. It depicts three peasant woman engaged in the backbreaking activity of gleaning – gathering the leftover grain missed by the farmer after harvest. Gleaning by the poor and homeless was a legal right in parts of Europe for many years. Millet tried to display the repetition and fatigue in the peasants’ daily lives. Contrast the meager amounts they have gathered with the farmer’s huge stacks of grain on the horizon.
I like this painting; I like the light and contrast of the women against the light background. I think he does a good job of representing their backbreaking labor and the miserable return they get. This particular painting is hung in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Go and see it next time you are there. You can find images of many of his other paintings in Wikimedia Commons by clicking HERE.
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