Month: April 2018

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Can you catalog this…?

…If so, you can be a librarian. Researching something for work, I came across the Prelinger Archive, a wealth of footage from educational, amateur and other sources, much of it public domain. Although I did not find the thing I was looking for, I did find this adorable career video for would-be librarians from 1947.

 

I hadn’t heard of “extension librarians” but certainly am familiar with the patron who comes in and says, “I’m looking for a book…I think it was blue?”

You can check out the whole Prelinger Archive here. (Not to mention the rest of the Internet Archive’s video resources.)

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Tuesday Listen: CPE Bach

One of the many Bach children, Carl Philip Emmanuel, was perhaps the greatest composer (worthy of comparison with JSB, and honored by Mozart among others).  He is best known for keyboard music full of imaginative color and flights of fancy.

Here is one of hundreds of his keyboard pieces, the evocative farewell to his Silbermann Clavichord.  (Here in a piano performance.)

Evocative–and to my ears–some elements of a modern improvisatory feel.

He also wrote lots of ornate showpieces, for the piano, then a relatively new instrument, such as the piano lesson favorite Solfeggietto in C Minor (sorry about the weird open).
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A Couple of Warren Buffett Tidbits

Warren Buffett is of course a subject of (perhaps unhealthy) interest from many people. Two interesting tidbits I have encountered in reading.

Things that mattered: he started early, and let compounding compound.  From a blog post by  Morgan Housel http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-freakishly-strong-base/

“What if Buffett got serious about investing when he was age 22 – just out of college – instead of age 10? Imagine he spends his 20s learning about investments, and his net worth at age 30 was in the still-impressive 90th percentile. Using today’s net worth percentiles and adjusting them for 1960s-era inflation, that would mean he’d be worth about $24,000 at age 30.

Now we can do some fun calculations.

If, at age 30, Buffett was worth $24,000 instead of the $1 million he actually accumulated, and went on to earn the same returns, how much would he be worth today?

$1.9 billion.”  [Instead of 81 billion]

Later in the same piece,

“But there are times when you have to relentlessly leave something that looks small alone so it has a chance of compounding into something big. Charlie Munger explained: “The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.”

The whole thing is worth reading. On the starting early, I blogged about this before.

The other point comes from the FT writer John Kay (great stylist and incisive about the woes and wonders of finance).  He points out that had Buffett invested through a managed fund (instead of investing for himself), the typical 2 and 20 fees would mean that Buffett’s personal fortune would today be 5 billion, with the fund that managed his money getting the rest.  (Kay was doing this calculation a few years back when Buffett was at a mere 50 millions: fees would take 90% of his money!).

So take aways: start early, let compounding compound, and minimize fees!

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Poetry: Gray’s Elegy

It is perhaps too long, yet remains one of those poems from which lines float up unbidden (and not just because they have found their way to so many titles).

graveyardElegy Written in a Country Churchyard

By Thomas Gray

 

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
         The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
         And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimm’ring landscape on the sight,
         And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
         And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow’r
         The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand’ring near her secret bow’r,
         Molest her ancient solitary reign.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
         Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
         The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
         The swallow twitt’ring from the straw-built shed,
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
         No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
         Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
         Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
         Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
         How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Continues at…
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Great Ledes

 

Fruits of a long habit of noting great ledes (or leads in this non-hot type era).  Two recent ones that kept me reading, and the third from an Anthony Lane movie review from years ago.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/12/samuel-taylor-coleridge-poet-remains-rediscovered-wine-cellar

It probably wouldn’t have surprised his long-suffering friends, but the remains of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge have been rediscovered in a wine cellar.

2.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/the-man-who-is-glitterbombing-new-york-city-politics.html

We’ve met only a few hours before and already New York City’s second-most powerful politician has told me about the moment he found out he was HIV positive, his former cocaine habit, the night he decided to get sober, has complained about online gay dating in New York, gotten choked up at least three times, told me he barely gets laid, talked about his mother’s love life, told me how he wants a husband and kids, smoked a cigarette, invited me over to his tiny studio apartment so I can see precisely how small it is — a touch over 300 square feet — and presented me with a proposed theme for a potential 2021 mayoral run.

That message: “Stop Fucking With Us.”

3. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/30/big-kills

That is it like being Timur Bekmambetov? No artist should be confused too closely with his creations, but anybody who sits through “Wanted,” Bekmambetov’s new movie, will be tempted to wonder if the life style of the characters might not reflect or rub off on that of the director. How, for example, does he make a cup of coffee? My best guess, based on the evidence of the film, is that he tosses a handful of beans toward the ceiling, shoots them individually into a fine powder, leaves it hanging in the air, runs downstairs, breaks open a fire hydrant with his head, carefully directs the jet of water through the window of his apartment, sets fire to the building, then stands patiently with his mug amid the blazing ruins to collect the precious percolated drops. Don’t even think about a cappuccino.

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Viola Jokes

So for the record, I love the viola, that bari-tenor member of the string family, and I even have tickets for a performance of the Walton Viola Concert later this season (see end of this list), but sometimes you just need a good viola joke to get you through. A few for your delectation:

Q: How was the canon invented?
A: Two violists were trying to play the same passage together.

Q: What’s the definition of a minor second?
A: Two violists playing a unison.

Q: How can you tell when a violist is playing out of tune?
A: The bow is moving.

Q: If you’re lost in the desert, what do you aim for? A good viola player, a bad viola player or an oasis?
A: The bad viola player. The other two are only figments of your imagination.

Q: What’s the difference between the first and last desk of a viola section?
A: Half a measure and a semi-tone.

Q: Why do violists stand a long time at people’s houses?
A: Because they can’t find the key and don’t know when to come in.

Q: What is a string quartet?
A: A string quartet consists of a good violinist, a bad violinist, somebody who hates the violin, and somebody who doesn’t know what a violin is.

Q: What’s the best recording of William Walton’s viola concerto?
A: Music Minus One

And in response, some beautiful examples…

And that wonderful Walton, with the former principal viola of the National Symphony, Roberto Diaz.

 

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Masterpiece Cake Case back in the Day: Georgetown vs. DC on Gay Student Groups

Reading Constitutional lawyer  Paul Smith’s comments on the “Wedding Cake Case” now before the Supreme Court reminded me of a long ago case in DC involving Georgetown University, which had run afoul of Washington D.C.’s human rights law. Georgetown, as a Roman Catholic institution in the Jesuit tradition, had declined to recognize the gay student group on campus as an official group, and thereby denying it certain services and benefits. (Full background here: https://law.justia.com/cases/district-of-columbia/court-of-appeals/1987/84-50-4.html). (And because they were Jesuits they documented this copiously.)

The university objected to the implication that official support would be construed as endorsement of positions that were at variance with official Catholic teaching (and thereby the foundation of the institution). This shades into the “forced speech” argument of the baker who declines to make a cake for a same-sex wedding because he believes it to be a forced endorsement of something contrary to his understanding of Christian doctrine, this then rolling into an argument about the meaning of the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion.

The way the Georgetown case played out is instructive. The question became whether Georgetown was in fact being forced to endorse some position on homosexuality if it was merely providing tangible benefits and services to a group. Although strongly contested (and with dissent from more than one judge), the ultimate decision was that tangible support did not equal endorsement, and a constitutional question (such as infringement of rights) was not reached. This was rather brilliantly achieved, in part, by the work of the attorneys for the gay group. They called representatives of many officially recognized student groups to testify: for instance the chess club, athletic groups, et al; and asked them the same set of questions about their connection to the university. Were they  endorsed?, what tangible benefits did they receive? how were their programs publicized?, etc. The pay dirt moment came when the head of the Jewish students’ group was asked, after  questions about their access to university facilities, support from institution etc, “And does your group hold any views at variance with the official teachings or doctrines of the Catholic Church?” Answer: “Well, we do deny the divinity of Jesus Christ.” The game was up.

Georgetown could not, under law, deny tangible services and benefits to those with whom it disagreed and whose positions were at variance to their own. Perhaps the baker in the Masterpiece case holds convictions as as sincere as Georgetown, and has a religious sensitivity as delicate. (Has he not been asked to bake wedding cakes for atheists? for observant members of non-Christian religions? an enthusiastic blasphemer with a taste for baked goods?) But that does not allow him to deny a tangible service for customers who hold views (and who incidentally might be just as fervent Christians as he is) at variance with his own. Even more so, when those customers are explicitly protected by non-discrimination statutes. Georgetown can’t discriminate against gay student groups, no matter how legitimately its religious convictions are offended, and nor can a commercial establishment.  Speech is in fact unimpaired: The Baker is a star of the anti-marriage equality movement (and certainly the Catholic Church seems to have no problem making its positions known). No one will be confused about that, I dare say.  But when it comes to wedding cakes, if he sells them to anybody, he sells them to all comers who are getting legally married. That means for Paul Smith’s marriage, or for mine.

I’ll let Paul, wonderfully, a now Georgetown Law Professor himself, have the last word.

People in this country have every right to personally disapprove of my marriage.  But they should not have a right to translate those beliefs into exclusionary policies when they open a business like the Masterpiece Cakeshop.  They can choose who to associate with in their private lives.  But not when they open a business serving the public.  That is where we have always drawn the line in this country, and that shouldn’t change just because a purveyor of really excellent wedding cakes asks for the right to refuse to serve us because of who we are.

Okay, end of political tirade. Back to music and art tomorrow.

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Teach Now: Teacher Corps for 50-somethings

Financial Times writer Lucy Kellaway, has wrapped up her 30+ year as a journalist, let her hair go gray, and decided to become a secondary school mathematics teacher (or ‘maths’ in U.K. parlance).

Here she is in a TED Talk describing her decision.

Kellaway was droll and feisty as a columnist, usually a ball to read, making wicked fun of FT’s own class of corporate types. Here she is on the inanity of corporate gobbledygook.

In her TED talk she admits to something few journalists might, that she feared her writing wasn’t getting any better, she wasn’t learning anything new, and the job, though posh, hardly made much difference. (Her takedowns of corporate-speak do not seem to have reformed corporate culture, any more than the Dilbert comic strip has.)

So she decided to become a teacher, which, among other things, holds at least the possibility of greater personal meaning and satisfaction. Now in the student-teacher part of her training, she seems willing to assess her performance in class with the same candor that she brought to the subjects of her journalism. (She reports that her charges can’t wait for their regular teacher to return, and the habits of an award-winning journalist are a little slovenly for for the classroom.)

There are some things that are a bit questionable. It seems her effort is vaguely modeled on a British version of Teach for America (the well-intentioned program that places new graduates from elite colleges and universities in schools often for a resume burnishing stint pre-grad school.) Kellaway is past that (she describes her self as “post status” which is a bit laughable; perhaps she thinks three decades on one of the planet’s most prestigious newspapers doesn’t count as status, but status it is.) It’s the status of teachers and teaching that I would hope she focuses on, which is not something that the celebrity returning to teach automatically manages to foreground. (This is not a new phenomena: Tony Danza tried it in Philadelphia a few years back, with a film crew in tow. His teaching career didn’t last (and judging by his amiable incompetence on display in the show, that was a good thing), but to his credit he has stayed connected to the high school and wrote a book about it.

Kellaway gets that teaching is a profession, and a demanding one, and seems to understand the significant amount of work required to achieve mere competence, much less exceptional proficiency. (That her mother and daughter were teachers helps.) That she assumes that accomplished people from professional life in the later decades would take to it and thrive is both an intriguing thought, but should be leavened with a real understanding and respect for people who have been doing it their whole lives, and for whom it was affirmative career choice from day one, and as worthy of respect as any corporate path, not an afterthought.

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Poetry Month: D. Nurske

Although I’m not posting a poem a day (as in some past years), still in honor of poetry month, one from D. Nurske.

A Rest in Our Savior’s Garden

The fat pigeons
don’t seem exhausted.
A squirrel begs
with a trace of contempt.
A tiny sparrow
walks straight up to me
wide-eyed in a trance
in the shadow of wings —

even though each crumb
that falls from my fingers
glints with fever.

Sickness with the force of miracle.
The statue of the Virgin
wears a stone veil.

I still have a few poppy seeds
in the life-line and the love-line

but now the birds are gone,
the squirrel found an acorn,
night hides the wasp
that once made my body
the center of a dazzling circle.

D. Nurkse