I’m back to the August doldrums. After therapy I went home and watched the Mets lose. That’s my plan for tonight too, except for the game’s outcome. I got something done; I recorded two editions of Gord’s Gold, featuring Her Crooked Heart and Jean Rohe. I had already recorded Jean’s but that was before I got the nifty new mic. Now it sounds much better. I feel bad about all the ones I recorded pre-microphone that were aired. It wasn’t fair to those artists. It’s not just the equipment, I’ve gotten better. You always have a steep learning curve at the start of any endeavor. It would be easier if I had a better space to use as a studio. You can hear street noise from my living room so I record late at night and even then sometimes there will be a disturbance outside. During my best take last night one of the cats decided that was the time for her to work on her scratching. I had to wait to start because there was one cat or another happily purring on top of my chair, next to my head, for much of the night. If this were on video it would be different. Seeing the cat there would be funny.
The Magic Flute is playing on WQXR now. It’s one of the very special works of art. I am going to write about things in the world that are bothering me but the opera puts things in perspective. I’m very lucky to live in the same universe as Mozart. There are many wonderful things in this world even if it doesn’t sit atop four giant elephants standing on the great world turtle A’Tuin. We do have Terry Pratchett. I use the present tense for we still have the works of Sir Terry and Wolfgang Amadeus and that’s the only way most of us even interacted with them.
Reading the news this last week reminded me how many terrible people are running countries that I care about, countries that have done better. There’s the United States (Trump), The United Kingdom (Johnson), Israel (Netanyahu), and India (Modi). I don’t expect better out of North Korea, Russia, or China; they have no democratic tradition. Those four countries that I hold near and dear are being led by people that cater to people’s worst instincts. Just keep in mind that the countries are not their leaders. For instance, I’m part of the United States, excellent chance you are too. We are just as much America as the president is.
I get upset reading Facebook and seeing how many people search for truthiness not truth. People I know and love determine truth by how it makes them feel. People are terrible judges of what is obvious. For millennia it was obvious the earth was flat. Look around you, it looks flat. We eventually learned that it wasn’t through an accumulation of evidence that most people have not directly experienced, and even if they have is not obviously connected to the earth being round. It requires knowledge of geometry. If they didn’t grow up knowing the earth was round many people would reject the notion. They wouldn’t believe the sources of the information since they counter what they “know” is true. People are blithely unaware how easy it is to fool themselves. If you only accept things that already fit your world view it’s easy to be sure of things. People aren’t stupid, they aren’t evil, they are people. That’s what makes it so difficult. I never know how to deal with it. For the most part I don’t, at least directly. I just get it off my chest here and listen to Pa Pa Pa Pa.
I made sure to cook dinner last night. I’ve been setting for peanut butter to often of late. What I made was minimum effort, hot dogs and French fries, but I love them and pimped them up a bit. I didn’t have hot dog rolls so I wrapped the franks in a mini-naan and added a slice of cheese. I cut the potato into slices like thick potato chips. Oddly the shape of fries changes the culinary experience as it affects the surface to area ratio. It’s only the surface that gets crisp and only the surface that holds the salt and pepper. In a bow to health I had fruit for dessert, clementines. I wish I could eat more fruits but thanks to allergies and Crohn’s I can’t eat my two favorites, apples and figs. Maybe as we get into the fall I’ll make baked apple. I can eat them when they are cooked. Cool thing I recently learned. What I’m allergic to is not the apples, but ragweed pollen that is absorbed into the skin.
It’s a beautiful day so I should take a walk. Tonight after the Met game I’ll record another Gord’s Gold. I’m supposed to do two a week but nothing wrong with getting ahead of schedule. Tonight I’ll discuss Emerald Rae. She was the very first artist I talked about but that was an experiment. It was not suitable for airing. Now I can do her justice.
Wise Madness 