Negative populism

 And one more quote, this time from Bill Clinton reflecting on the prevailing sentiment these days which he calls 'negative populism' and defines this way ... "You may not win in this new deal, but at least they'll lose."

Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances ...

 

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

― George Bernard Shaw

That time of year, Messiah

The Handel + Haydn Society of Boston first performed Handel's Messiah (or at least portions of it) on Christmas night 1815, only 73 years after it was first performed in Dublin around Easter, 1742.

And starting in 1854, H + H has performed the entire Messiah every year at Christmas time. This year was no exception, with concerts in late November and early December in Boston's Symphony Hall.

Generations upon generations of Bostonians, both native born and transplants, have been able to hear this music every single year. 

As I sat in the concert hall -- itself a throwback unchanged in character since its very first opening night in 1900 (according to Wikipedia, "The hall's leather seats are the originals installed in 1900") -- I started to count back through the generations with this question in mind, "How far back do you have to go until you find an era of audience who are now all dead?"

Is anyone who attended the performance in Christmas 1963, one month after Kennedy's assassination, still alive? Probably yes. 

How about the audience of 1953? Or the audience of 1943? If children were in attendance, and they were probably in audience in 1943, then yes. 

But at some point, for some audience, there are no longer any living members of THAT performance, whichever performance it was. And all of the musicians who played the notes that were heard by that audience are also dead.

And I thought to myself: Different musicians. Different audience members. Old ones replaced by new ones. Yet, the music doesn't change. Always the same music. 

That must be a definition of culture.

The Commodore Hotel

My idea for a play ...

Characters:

Marco Antonius (aka Marc Anthony) - Italian impresario

Morty Blumenstein, aka Ferdinand de Bullock, diplomat

Grace Belleville de Quincy-Beaufort, matron

Constance Belleville de Quincy-Beaufort, her daughter

Svetlana Plekova, wife of Andrei Abromovitsky, Russian oligarch

The location: The Commodore Hotel, in the English seaside village of BlanketBarn

Story: 

Marco Antonius, the famous Italian impresario, has arrived in the small English seaside village of BlanketBarn to find the cast for his upcoming show “Girls, Girls, Girls, a comedy in three acts!”

He will stay at the Commodore Hotel, the most ritzy of the local pensions, with its tea served precisely at 4pm and its tiny little restaurant with its understaffed kitchen off the back.

Marc Antony, as he is commonly called in England, produces extravangzas of the first order and it’s the dream of many an aspiring young actress to get into one of his shows. Hence, the dancing girls (well, really young women) who have packed onto trains to get to BlanketBarn early are now lined up outside the hotel to see if they might find a room there. Or do they need to traipse  around town looking for other lodging?

In the lobby, they fail to see a short fat man in a seersucker jacket, sweating profusely while trying to stuff the last bites of a sandwich into his mouth as he leans uncomfortably against the concierge’s oak desk. He is Morty Blumenstein, of New Jersey in the United States, trying to check into the hotel under the name of Ferdinand de Bullock, Spanish diplomat. Morty is here because Grace Belleville de Quincy-Beaufort is here, with her 16-year old daughter Constance.

Why are Grace and Constance here, you ask? The annual meeting of the British Temperance Union, Grace Belleville de Quincy-Beaufort president.  

Every year, the Union (as it’s known) hosts a gala ball with Grace presiding. It is Morty’s firm belief that she will be wearing the famous Madagascar diamond. “Worth a trip from Jersey to try to get my hands on that rock,” is what he said to his mother as he departed for the docks in lower Manhattan to get on the boat that would take him here. 

Grace’s daughter Constance is here because as a 16-year old, she had no choice. Grace’s husband, William Belleville de Quincy-Beaufort, retired ambassador to Kumpour, cares not a wit for the Temperance Union, indeed enjoys his tipple a little, and wouldn’t be caught dead in the Commodore Hotel this weekend. He’d rather take care of his tomatoes, sunflowers and zucchini than be dragged down to BlanketBarn for that dreadful affair.

So, Grace decided it would be best to bring Constance along. Little does she know that Constance … virginal, pure, unblemished Constance … wants nothing more than to be in one of Marc Antony’s shows. This she has kept from her dear mother because of the shock it would cause. This precious, some would say mischievous, innocent angel would never want to be in a show like that!

Meanwhile, Svetlana Plekova is also standing in the lobby. Dark black hair tied back in a bun, she is trying to check into

Dog walking on the Harvard campus the morning after Election Day

 

"More than a few people have a stunned, glazed look on their faces as they wander silently and slightly aimlessly towards their morning destinations."

A letter to a colleague after yesterday's election

This is a brief note I wrote this morning to a colleague --

Thank you for going out to OH and PA to do the hard work of campaigning for the issues and the people we all care about. I didn’t do more than contribute some money.

It’s hard to imagine why anyone would invite that guy back in, given all that we already know about him. It’s scary not to recognize one’s own country. I can’t decide if this feels closer to Germany of the 1930s or the final days of the Roman Republic. Both historical examples come to mind. 

I only hope that the upcoming damage to our institutions, our reputation and our personal liberties will not be irreversible.

For the time being, we are relegated to working in our regional enclaves to defend and promote the principles and truths we hold to be self-evident, those that make America a truly great nation. We also must work on reducing the divisions in our land. As the saying goes, united we stand, divided we fall.

Bullsh*t

 

Our mother

Our mother was many things over the course of her lifetime. Not all of them were pretty. 

But as a young thing, she certainly could cut a figure. Smart, elegant, arrogant, a ‘cliffee, she had a lot going for her, and that photo effectively conveys it. 

It was also the era of another Harvardian, John F. Kennedy, so the aroma was in the air. My parents thought they were pretty hot stuff, and maybe they were. “It was a heady time,” was a favorite phrase of my mother’s. I’m certain it was.

Phyllis Munro Ferguson Seidel (1938-2024), circa 1963