Music Hath Charms in Charm City

     Uncle Jack was lucky that the public schools of his home town, Ashland, Wisconsin, had a wonderful music program.  He started playing a little plastic instrument called a "Tonette" in the first grade, switched to the clarinet in the fourth grade and to the bass clarinet in the eighth grade.  The band instructor, a revered teacher named Ted Mesang who later became director of bands at Oregon State University and appeared on national TV conducting a massed band with about 400 players during the half-time program at the Rose Bowl, told Uncle Jack he had a chance to become the best bass clarinet player in the history of Ashland High School and that is what he did.  He even won a full-tuition scholarship to the University of Wisconsin in Madison on the strength of his superlative bass clarinet playing. (A full year's tuition was only $100 in those days but it seemed like a lot of money at the time, especially to his parents who belatedly learned that he had spent all his hard-earned tuition money on beer during his gala senior year).
     What he is really happy about, though, is that his experiences in the Ashland High School band turned him into a lifelong classical music lover. In spite of his scholarship he never was much of a musician but he made up for his almost total lack of innate musical ability by diligent practice so that when the time came he could play the right  notes at the right time, more or less. At the same time he learned to appreciate what real
musicians can do when they put their minds to it and he has spent countless hours listening to great players rendering the work of great composers.
     Lucky for him and for Mrs. U.J., who loves good music as much as he does, Baltimore has turned out to be a music lover's paradise.  The Baltimore Symphony is world class,  Johns Hopkins University sponsors the Shriver Hall Music Series which brings world-renowned musicians to the campus all year long, the Peabody Conservatory offers student concerts several times a week, and there are a host of other music venues offering occasional performances. It is not exaggerating to say that they could attend a different concert just about every day of the week all year long if they had the time and the stamina to do it, which they don't, unfortunately.
     One of their favorite musical outings is the Thursday Noon Concert Series at the Peabody Conservatory where advanced students perform in front of an audience as part of their training.  Each concert features a different musical family, e.g. strings, brass, woodwinds, voice, percussion. in various combinations.  Every one of the half-dozen concerts they have attended has been delightful and they continue to be amazed at the remarkable skills and talents of these young people who come to Peabody from all over the world to study with great teachers.
     Last Thursday's concert featured percussionists including marimba players, tympanists, snare and bass drummers and a host of others.  The final piece was a performance of "Musique de Table" by the contemporary Belgian composer Thierry de Mey which was one of the damndest things Uncle Jack has ever experienced.  The three Peabody students who performed it must be among a tiny handful of people in the world who have mastered its intricacies and they did it flawlessly.  If you have a few minutes to spare and have never seen "Musique de Table" performed,  Uncle Jack thinks you might enjoy looking at one of the several performances of this unusual work available on YouTube.  You can get to the right place by clicking on this link below. If this one doesn't work try another. Turn the sound up so you can hear it clearly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg4quXjmoaA

:      The leaves just keep getting prettier and prettier around the JHU campus.

                                                  Ditto.

Food for thought

    Uncle Jack starts almost every morning by reading the New York Times on line.  This is probably not a good thing to do because it almost always guarantees that he will be plunged into gloom even before he has had his bran flakes.  No other publication in the world does a better job of gathering the worst news from every corner of the world and presenting it to him in eminently readable form before breakfast.
     For many years the most distressing stories have come out of Iraq where we appear to be in the final stages (maybe) of our most colossal military fiasco since the Viet Nam war.  Now the spotlight has moved to Afghanistan where we are floundering around like the blind giant of myth, trying to swat pesky flies with a club more suited to breaking skulls.  The historical record shows that Afghanistan for centuries has defeated every effort by outside powers to impose their various conceptions of proper government on this wild and crazy part of the world.  But there we are (with the reluctant assistance of a few NATO "allies") trying to do the impossible, again at great cost in lives and treasure.
     Uncle Jack has probably read a million words about what we should or should not do in Afghanistan at this point but an op-ed piece in the Times this morning has helped to focus his thinking more than anything else he has read recently.  Read it and weep, and if you find it illuminating forward it to your congressman and senator and the president.  They will need all the good advice they can get on this one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/opinion/29sebestyen.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

The Law is an Ass, So Far

    Tragedy has visited Johns Hopkins University twice in the past month.  On the first occasion a male student killed a presumed burglar in his back yard near the campus with a samurai sword.  Then last week a female student was killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing the street in front of  Uncle Jack's condo building. Both events cast a pall of gloom over the community but the second has also raised a storm of outrage as facts have emerged about the alleged driver, John Meighan, 39, who turned himself in to the police the day after the incident.  According to a report in the Baltimore Sun newspaper:
    Meighan already has 21 motor vehicle convictions on his record, including six for driving while intoxicated and two for driving under the influence. He was free on $100,000 bail before his arrest Saturday, awaiting a December trial on unrelated hit-and-run and DWI allegations from late July. He's also been convicted of escape for leaving an alcohol treatment facility while in custody in 2002.
    On the day of the accident several eyewitnesses reported to the police that Meighan's truck was being driven erratically  and at least one witness identified Meighan as the driver a couple of hours before the fatal accident. There were no witnesses to the accident itself so the authorities have not as yet been able to add manslaughter to the long list of offenses with which Meighan has been charged.
    Meighan is now locked up without bail while awaiting further disposition of his latest and most serious alleged crime.  Needless to say Baltimoreans are aghast and astonished at the failure of the judicial system to protect other drivers from a proven menace like Meighan.  Some observers fear that the lack of an eyewitness at the scene of the accident may allow him to escape serious punishment because the only evidence against him is circumstantial at this point.
    Readers may recall a similar tragedy in Kitty Hawk a few years ago when an oft-convicted drunken driver plowed into a Jeep at an intersection on the Bypass, killing four young women.  If Uncle Jack is not mistaken the driver is serving a life term in prison for that heinous offense.  Will some way be found to keep Meighan from driving again?  Lots of folks around here, including Uncle Jack, will be watching carefully as the wheels of  justice slowly grind through this sad case.  Stay tuned.

P.S. Readers who would like to be notified by email each time Uncle Jack posts a new blog entry should click on the "comment" button below and enter their email address (which will not be visible to anyone but him).  Thanks. (And don't miss the pictures below!)

    Sunset over Johns Hopkins Homestead Campus, from Uncle Jack's balcony, October 25

                                                           Ditto

                                                        And again

More Fall in Bawlmer

     This is Uncle Jack's first fall in Charm City and it has been a revelation.  For the first time in 40 years he doesn't have to drive out to the countryside to take in the splendor of Mother Nature's annual leaf-turning extravaganza.  All he has to do is go for a walk in the neighborhood which is what he and Mrs. U.J. did again this morning. The pictures below provide a small sample of what they saw but naturally they can't do justice to the actual scene.  For that you have to get in the car and drive to Baltimore.
     He confesses to being somewhat lackadaisical about posting new entries to his blog lately.  With so much going on in the culture department he has difficulty finding time to sit down and do his duty to his faithful readers who look for something new every day but seldom find it.  He has discovered that there is a mechanism built into the blogging apparatus that makes it possible for him to notify readers when a new entry has been posted.  If you would like to be added to the "notify" list he suggests that you use the "comment" button at the end of this blog entry.  Just put your email address in the space allotted for a comment and he will add you to the list. (Your email address will be visible only to him and he promises not to sell it to anybody). It could save some wear and tear on your mouse and he will feel less guilty about the infrequency of his postings. Thanks.

                                                   On the Johns Hopkins campus.

                                                   View from the back window toward Johns Hopkins

                                                                In Roland Park

   This ancient tree in Roland Park is almost leafless now making it possible to see the amazing array of   branches.  In person it is spectacular.

                                                  Typical street in Roland Park

                    A sidewalk carpet of fallen leaves.  Jackson Pollock would be envious.

    A typical house in Roland Park except that it is one of the few not hidden by trees

                                 Sunset from the balcony last night.

Falltimore

     After a brace of dismal, rainy days over the weekend fall has broken out all over Baltimore (which could just as appropriately be call Tree City as Charm City).  It's a bit early in the cycle but lots of leaves have begun to turn  and many more have fallen, making walking a bit hazardous in many areas.  Nevertheless Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. set forth bravely this balmy afternoon for a stroll to Sherwood Gardens, as can be deduced from the pictures below.
     The fall cultural season is also getting underway, too, and they have been doing their best to keep up.  Last Thursday's free noontime concert at the Peabody Conservatory was delightful, featuring some very talented voice students singing a wide variety of music from Italian opera to Schubert lieder to songs by Richard Strauss.  The highlight of the concert for Uncle Jack was the amusing Largo al Factotum from Rossini's Barber of Seville sung with great enthusiasm by a barrel-chested baritone named Kangho Lee accompanied at the piano by Younggun Kim. Judging from the names of some of the other performers (Mika Sasaki,  Kanyoung Yoo, Emily Sanchez, Solon Mainguene, Margarita Loukachkina) Peabody has a substantial contingent of students from other countries in its roster---as does the rest of Johns Hopkins University.
     The Belcea Quartet opened the 44th season for the Shriver Hall Concert Series and Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. were happy to join the capacity crowd in this beautiful hall on the JHU campus only a ten-minute walk from their condo.  Future concerts in this series will feature illustrious performers like Midori, Emanuel Ax, the Juilliard Quartet, and Yefim Bronfman at prices that make their great music accessible even to impecunious retirees like you-know-who.
     Tonight it's a lecture by Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the great oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, who will no doubt take listeners' minds off the current troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan by describing the many ways mankind is screwing up the oceans of the world.  Sigh.

                                                           Tree on Greenway in Guilford.

                                       Fall blooms in Sherwood Gardens in Guilford.

                                                                           Ditto

                                                    Another tree on Greenway.
      

When the Outer Banks was Utopia.

     On a recent trip to his former home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina Uncle Jack retrieved from his garage a  box of old papers that he hadn't looked at for many years.  It turned out to be a collection of odd printed material that he has never been able to throw away and after sorting through it he has decided that he will just have to hang on to it a bit longer.  One of the gems in this strange assortment of stuff was an excerpt from a novel entitled "Roanoke: or Where is Utopia" by C.H. Wiley, published in Sartain's Union Magazine of Literature and Art, Vol. 4 No. 3, March 1849.  
     Calvin Henderson Wiley, the author, was born in Guilford County, N.C. in 1819 and graduated from the University of N.C. in 1840.  He was editor of the Oxford, S.C. Mercury for a few years, served in the N.C. legislature, and was a licensed Presbyterian minister. He was the author of several books in addition to Roanoke. He remained a bachelor until the age of  43 but made up for lost time by fathering seven children.
     Where he got his information about the denizens of the Outer Banks nearly two centuries ago is a mystery to Uncle Jack but if he is correct they were a remarkable group indeed. Some of their salient characteristics have survived through the generations and are quite noticeable in more than a few of today's "Bankers" as you will see.  There is food for thought in this piece, and not just in the section on wife-swapping. 


                                                                  Chapter II


                                                      The Arabs of North Carolina


     The sand bar which stretches along the coast of North Carolina separates the ocean from a succession of sounds, the largest and most beautiful of which are those well known by the names of Albermarle, Pamlico and Currituck.  East of these inland seas is the bar, a waste and barren region, in some places bleak and wild as the deserts of Africa, and strangely in keeping with the majesty of that mighty deep whose awful grandeur is enhanced by the silence and desolation that reign along its borders.
     Even here, in this dreary, naked and sterile region, are the haunts and homes of men, a race who have never been classified by science, and who, though sometimes called Arabs, belong neither to the savage nor civilized state of society.  They are generally a motley collection of idle, roving, harmless creatures, leading an easy, indolent life, free alike from the cruel, murderous and plundering propensities of barbarians and the more christian vices of polished communities.  In the curious and beautiful little lakes of clear fresh water that gleam like mirrors in their arid and wild domain, myriads of fish abound; wild ducks, wild geese, and other sea fowls in countless thousands cover the waters, and on these, which are easily taken, they chiefly live.
     In former times, however, they had another source of subsistence;  a source from which they drew their main supplies of money, goods and groceries. They followed the occupation of wreckers; a business whose prosperity was attested by the long dark line of keels, hulks and dismantled vessels that covered the shore. It would seem that this fraternity would have found sufficient employment in the unavoidable casualties of the winds ad waves on this disastrous and melancholy coast; but population and competition increased, and the cunning of man was sometimes employed to add to the natural horrors of the dreaded region.
     The public were not concerned in these wicked tricks, and rude as it was, it would not have countenanced them; but those who used them were secret in their operations, and as it happens in all communities, would often be respected for wealth which they had obtained by disreputable means.  Thefts, of course, were common, and stranded cargoes rapidly diminished from the time they were landed on the beach, till the time of sale; still the crews were always saved and treated with a kindness and attention that often attached them to the Bankers.
     Neither their goods nor their wives were held altogether in common by those people, but while they were profusely generous  and hospitable, they entertained peculiar notions upon the subject of matrimony and the virtues it inculcates.  Polygamy was not allowed, but in its stead there was a prevalent custom much more convenient to the Bankers and better suited to the changing tastes of men.  The women were treated kindly as equals, but every man was considered as having the right to sell or swap his wife whenever he chose, and in this business there was a constant and lively trade.
     Modern improvements, arts and wants have found their way among the Bankers; and it is not to be supposed that the description herein given would at present suit them.  There was a time, however, a period not remote, when unfettered by the fluctuations of trade, the rise and fall of dynasties and the irregularity of the seasons, they led a careless, indolent and happy life, strangers alike to the sweltering hosts of summer and the snows of winter.  Without fear of pride, malice or ambition, abundantly and easily supplied with food and caring little for clothing, their existence had many charms for them and would not be without its attractions in the view of a certain class of philosophers and philanthropists.  Some of these had cast their eyes upon this country in former times, and from them it received the appellation of Utopia; a name which perhaps it merited as well as did the the famous island of Sir Thomas More.


Editor's note:  And then they built the bridge.

Send not to ask for whom Nobel tolls....

     There are Nobel Prizes and there are Nobel Prizes, apparently.  Everybody in Bawlmer, to which Uncle Jack  has returned after a pleasant week on the Outer Banks, is delighted by the fact that a Johns Hopkins professor named Carol Greider shared this year's prize in medicine while in Washington (just 35 miles down the road) everybody (well maybe not everybody) seems to be in a snit because President Obama was awarded the Peace prize.  While the latter seemed a bit premature to Uncle Jack he thinks he can understand where the Norwegians were coming from after eight years of  Bush's war in Iraq.  Some commentators seem to believe that it was despicable for the president to accept the award, which he did in an extremely self-effacing manner, but for the life of him Uncle Jack cannot understand why.  If he had refused it his critics would probably be jumping all over him for being an ingrate.

    Besides the recent samurai sword slaying of an alleged burglar by a Johns Hopkins student, Charm City has been in the news recently for yet another odd reason.  Two persons presenting themselves as a prostitute and her pimp visited an office of the organization known as ACORN (Association for Community Organizations) ostensibly seeking help in setting up a cathouse and shielding the profits from taxation.  Apparently the two female ACORN employees were several marbles short of a counter-top because they did attempt to offer assistance while their blundering was being digitally recorded by the phony supplicants.  The bumbling employees were promptly fired but the event was a public relations disaster for ACORN which has been a target of conservative critics for many years.

     While Uncle Jack has no axe to grind for ACORN, especially in this instance, he cannot help but notice the irony in the fact that if the two perpetrators of the hoax had gone to any number of legitimate law offices in Baltimore looking for advice on how to avoid paying income taxes they would have been welcomed with open arms and charged upwards of $400 an hour for the privilege.  They could have filmed the entire session in technicolor and nobody would have raised an eyebrow.

     A propos of  Uncle Jack's recent blog on the hazards of  football (with an assist by the Sage of Bawlmer himself) he recommends this week's issue of  the New Yorker magazine which contains an excellent article by Malcolm Gladwell on---what else---the hazards of football.  Recent research has shed more light on the kinds of brain damage suffered by football players as a result of repeated blows to the head which are all but unavoidable in the game.  This article is a real downer so if you are a diehard football fan you might want to think twice before reading it.