A Change in the Wind
A preview. I liked the way pianist Amy Williams described this year’s music director and principal soloist, Pierre-Laurent Aimard:
“He’s a god. He’s one of those extraordinary musicians whose playing is near-perfect or perfect. I always try to hear his concerts whenever I can, and I’m always surprised and fed musically by what he does.”
But Amy Williams can play herself, as can her partner Helena Bugallo, seen here at Ojai in 2005.
Tom Toles gets scientific on the Prez.
How does The New Yorker do it? They put out a better magazine every week than most publications manage once a month, or once a quarter. I especially love their art critic, the man with the difficult name of Peter Schjeldahl, who recently had a great piece on Hopper, and this past week wrote about the East German artist Neo Rauch.
Rauch’s paintings created a sensation in Montreal last year. Now he has a solo show at the Met. In the midst of a wide-ranging discussion, the critic notes:
Today, we are flooded with accurate information—letting us confidently judge the failures and iniquities of political leaders, for instance—and we naturally feel that such clarity must influence events, but it only amplifies our dismay as the world careers from one readily foreseeable disaster to another.
How insightful! And to see this in a painting — fascinating.
It’s been lovely lately. For three or four days we actually had the perfect average temp: 68 degrees. Even here at Oak Creek, California, elevation about 1468, about ten miles from the coast, the late-night incursion of the marine layer has brought us what my aunt Ruth from back East used to call "coolth."
With luck, this may continue for a few weeks. But late last night I heard a restless wind coming in, possibly from the north, and it’s warmer this morning. NOAA says a La Niña condition is forming in the Pacific, which means the forecasts are likely to stay dry.
This morning in the Los Angeles Times, Bill Patzert told the story:
"With this late developing La Niña, that’s not good for Southern California or the Colorado River Basin. It could be dry next winter as well."
Patzert has been enjoying the early-morning gloom as well early this June, but expects the upcoming summer to be as hot as or hotter than last year’s summer, a record-breaker.
The analogues are especially alarming. File Under: Ulp!
(From NOAA’s soil moisture estimates.)
In response to intense pressure from indigenous and environmental organizations opposed to drilling for oil in an Amazon rainforest, Ecuador has gone to the world and asked for financial help, according to the Environmental News Service.
The oil fields under Yusani National Park are estimated to contain 900 million to 1 billion barrels of oil, about one-quarter of Ecuador’s total reserves. In about a year, international oil companies will be allowed to bid for the right to drill.
To avoid this fate, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa is asking the international community for about $350 million a year. For more, please see the rest of the news in Grist. Here’s a picture of the Yasuni:
Great new poem from a poet and professor not known to me, Molly Lou Freeman, called There is a Bird We Cannot See. I just have to quote a couple of lines:
She says
There is destiny in western sun,
Hopefulness manifest.
There are ways of being spoken to
And indirectly heard.
She says
We live—we choose between—
Despair and splendor—.
A little late, but via Dan Froomkin’s hard-hitting column from the Washington Post, here’s Andrew Gumbel of The Independent translating the Prez’s speech last week on global warming:
"’In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it."
Translation: In recent years, my refusal to acknowledge the reality and seriousness of global warming has turned me into a laughing-stock and contributed to my record low poll ratings. So now I have to look interested.
"’The United States takes this issue seriously."
Translation: Al Gore takes this issue seriously, his movie was a hit, and it’s causing me no end of grief.
"’By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term goal for reducing greenhouse gases."
Translation: By the end of next year, I’ll be weeks away from the end of my presidency and this can be someone else’s problem.
"’To develop this goal, the United States will convene a series of meetings of nations that produce the most greenhouse gasses, including nations with rapidly growing economies such as India and China."
Translation: We will look as busy as we can without doing anything.
"’The new initiative I am outlining today will contribute to the important dialogue that will take place in Germany."
Translation: The new initiative will put the brakes on the much more robust proposal the Germans are putting forward. As long as dialogue continues, we won’t have to abide by any decisions.
This spring a small-but-innovative dance company in Southern California called TRIP Dance Theatre premiered a production in a Hollywood theater about what poet Gary Snyder calls "the war against nature." The dance was called "Poisoning the Well."
Using delicate Asian-flavored music, played live, the dancers first appeared carrying water and gathering around a well. Slowly the audience could see the grace and beauty of these dancers, four of them women, literally turned upside down by human desperation, greed, and the raw flow of our "effluent society," including elegantly simplified depictions of "red tides," the vast gyres of plastics in the oceans, and "drunken" trees.
The dance was both gorgeous and upsetting, but called for few words. To better understand, and to introduce TRIP Dance Theatre to a wider audience, Grist asked company founder and choreographer Monica Favand Campagna to talk about her work:
This is not the prettiest of recent editorial cartoons on global warming from around the world collected by Slate, under their "hot topic" rubric. (That would have to be this one from Germany.) But speaking of climate change metaphors…here’s Heng from the The Straits Times.
Well, actually Paul’s talking about the record companies, but you’ll see what I mean:
My record producer [David Kahne] said the major record labels these days are like dinosaurs sitting around discussing the asteroid. They know it’s going to hit. They don’t know when, they don’t know where it’s coming from. But it’s sort of hit already. With iTunes, and all of that.
Easy to replace "record labels" with "humans" and describe our reaction to climate change, isn’t it? I can almost see the Calvin and Hobbes version, right now. Methinks Paul always was underrated as a wit…
From a nice LATimes story on his new record. Complete with a picture that makes him look more twenty-four than sixty-five…
Kit Stolz 