Concert Reviews

It's been a good cultural stretch. We heard the Hartford Symphony on the seventeenth. They did a nice job with the 1812 Overture ( I forget how much really pretty music there is in this piece), a Koto Concerto, and a suite from Porgy and Bess. Last Friday and Saturday Jean was at LWV meetings Friday and Saturday so she missed the following.

Friday I heard the Amherst College Orchestra play Stokowski's transcription of Bach's Toccata in F (?), Beethoven's 4th piano concerto with a superb student soloist ( triple major in math, music, and French), and Brahm's 2nd Symphony. The French horns were much better in the Brahm's than the Beethoven but overall the playing was quite good. Seeing all those young faces brought back lots of good memories.

Last night it was the Pioneer Valley Symphony, which consists of volunteer adult players from the area. They did a pretty good job with a Tchaikovsky Sleeping Beauty suite; a trombone concerto which had some nice solo passages that were played beautifully; and Brahm's 4th symphony.

This afternoon we are off to see a play about Poe. A good choice for this time of year.

Very Local News

On the home front my neighbor's chickens are invading our stream bed and lawns.  I assume they will eventually run out of bugs to eat and leaves us alone.

The battle against invasive plants goes on. I was a bit dismayed to see how much nightshade and oriental bittersweet were growing along our stream. However that was nothing compared to what I felt when I went to cut them out. I discovered a small jungle of multiflora rose  with some plants having stems well over an inch in diameter. I attacked them as best I could but they fought back viciously. I'll enter the fray again as soon as I get a transfusion ( well maybe I'll just eat some red meat).

I then went and bagged some yellow flag iris that was invading a swale running down our pastureland.

A movie review

We saw the movie "the Judge" last night. Much of it was filmed in Shelburne Falls, a town about 9 miles from here. I thought the film was powerful, both the performances and the material. It delved into family relationships and what happens when a man's very strong principles, and even self righteousness, combine with his very real and imperfect humanity. It was suspenseful and absorbing, and despite the serious nature of the subjects handled, it was entertaining.

Success

This thought struck me this morning. In our classes the measure of our success (teacher's and students') was not how much you knew when you left but how much you understood. Even more so, the measure of success was how much more you wanted to understand.

The Dead Branch

The Westfield River was designated a Wild and Scenic River some time ago. A local association looks after the river and Jean and I took a walk on a tributary as part of their monitoring program. The name of the tributary is the Dead Branch, I don't know why. Here are a few pictures of a stream that is anything but dead.

More on "Enemy of the People"

This is a play written by Henrik Ibsen and adapted by Arthur Miller.  A doctor discovers that the waters  in a recently built health spring are contaminated. The spring is vital to the town's economy and to modify the water supply properly would require  a new tax levied on the not very prosperous town and two years. The play explores how the town is turned against the doctor and how most townspeople refuse to even hear what the doctor has to say, but are willing to see him as utterly evil and even threaten his safety and that of his family.  I am afraid that this type of behavior is becoming more common.

The play also has many subthemes. For example, it explores the mixed motives of a born rebel against authority (the doctor) who imagines himself as being lauded while showing the world how he is right and the people in power who chose the wrong water source were wrong. It shows the cupidity of journalists who are all for overthrowing authority until they see that opposing authority might threaten the circulation and income of their newspaper. It asks does an individual have the right to endanger his family in pursuit of  what he sees as the right. But the main theme is how an unthinking populace, egged on by demagogues, can turn a deaf ear to truth and become unreasoning and violent mob.

Busy Start to October

It's been another busy stretch. During the last ten days: went to the dentist and got a clean bill of oral health; attended a lecture by Nobel Winner Sheldon Glashow on how basic research has yielded much of the basis of our current economy and our improved health technology; reorganized shelving and bought, cut to fit, installed eight two by 8 by ten foot long braces on the first floor and in the loft of the barn; attended services for the holidays; helped build a sukkhot; finished all the anchoring, new supports, trimming the door, and cutting and installing new trim for the doorway in the barn basement; tutored twice; got some nice walks and one ride in ; explored two nearby towns; did a tour of our property with a botanist to identify invasive species; bought lots of tools and CDs I didn't need, heard some good fiddle music, and spent a lot of time wandering around our outstanding and very crowded fall festival; attended a demonstration of colonial era woodworking ( learned a lot of good stuff there); saw a very good performance of the Ibsen/Miller play: "An Enemy of the People" ( more on this later); enjoyed a visit from friends from New Jersey; and went to an antique show and visited some museums in old Deerfield.


Took a walk around the neighborhood and took some pictures  including one of the neighbor's dog, Jessie who is getting too round to move much. The Swiss chard shown below is the size of a medium hippo. The horses seen in a neighbor's pasture are retired Amish draft horses and soon after this picture was taken wandered up to another neighbor's orchard where they entertained the pick your own apple crowd for a while. I think the flowers are called flox up here but that might not be their correct name.