It Is Now The Vulgar Mob That Gives The Tone

For the Age has itself become vulgar, and most people have no idea to what extent they are themselves tainted. The bad manners of all parliaments, the general tendency to connive at a rather shady business transaction if it promises to bring in money without work, jazz and Negro dances as the spiritual outlet in all circles of society, women painted like prostitutes, the efforts of writers to win popularity by ridiculing in their novels and plays the correctness of well-bred people, and the bad taste shown even by the nobility and old princely families in throwing off every kind of social restraint and time-honored custom: all of these go to prove that it is now the vulgar mob that gives the tone.

Oswald Spengler, in “The Hour Of Decision” (1933)

In Fact, The Mistranslation Is Automatic . . .

A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

Bertrand Russell

In Thanks

How often do we meet someone to whom we owe thanks without remembering that?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Eiffel Tower In January

I like the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas more than the actual one.

Photographer David LaChapelle

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I have never been to Las Vegas, but I doubt I would share LaChapelle’s sentiment.

I would like to return to Paris in January 2014, but it will not be possible.

Andrew and I will be going to Oklahoma for Christmas. Early next year, we have planned an extended weekend in New York for February and an extended weekend in Boston for March.

Vacation time is not elastic.

The Ugly And The Stupid

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.

Oscar Wilde

Categorization

Men are basically smart or dumb, lazy or ambitious. The dumb and ambitious ones are dangerous and I get rid of them. The dumb and lazy ones I give mundane duties. The smart and ambitious ones I put on my staff. The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders.

Erwin Rommel

Paris

In Paris, they simply stared when I spoke to them in French. I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

Mark Twain

The Most Stupid Of Vices

Envy is the most stupid of vices, for there is no single advantage to be gained from it.

Honoré de Balzac

Principles And Manners

A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.

Samuel Adams

These Are Fighting Words

Despite the scruples and delicate complexities, his work suffers from a major defect: the absence of life.

Jorge Luis Borges, on the novels of Henry James

On Measurement

One of the hardest things for people to imagine is that they are not smarter than average.

Jonathan Fuerbringer

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There is great truth in Fuerbringer’s statement.

Andrew’s father puts the same matter this way:

Whenever people wonder whether they’re smart, they need to look at their W-9s. Their W-9s will always give them the answer.

An Acute Observation

Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.

Samuel Johnson

“Geld Und Geist"

In a high civilization, the things that satisfy our innumerable desires look as if they were supplied automatically, mechanically, so that nothing is owed to particular persons; goods belong by congenital right to anybody who takes the trouble to be born.

This is the infant's normal greed prolonged into adult life and headed for retribution. When sufficiently general, the habit of grabbing, cheating, and evading reciprocity is the best way to degrade a civilization, and perhaps bring about its collapse.

Jacques Barzun

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Peter McGuire, violinist with the Minnesota Orchestra, has announced that he is leaving the orchestra, having accepted a position with the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich.

In making his move, McGuire is taking a brutal financial loss. Musicians of the Zurich Tonhalle are paid far less than musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra. Further, Zurich is one of the three or four highest-cost cities in the world, with a cost of living more than double the cost of living in the Twin Cities. The financial sacrifice McGuire is making is considerable.

Why is McGuire leaving? Because he is upset that the Minnesota Orchestra has asked musicians to accept a pay cut.

Why Zurich? Because other U.S. orchestras are reluctant to hire Minnesota Orchestra musicians, as Minnesota Orchestra musicians have long been known within the orchestra field as labor agitators. When Minnesota Orchestra musicians transfer to other American orchestras, they invariably are obliged to move to orchestras with less prestige and lower pay, such as the Oregon Symphony.

McGuire is not a learned or sophisticated man (as the photograph above amply demonstrates). In a news story about the current labor troubles at both the Minnesota Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the local press offered the following quote from McGuire:

There was this kind of “the bully's going to meet you at lunchtime” feeling for at least a year and a half. You say I'm much less valuable than I have been, and what choice do I have but to prove that's not the case? A 42 percent cut? Would you not look for work the next day?

If I found myself in McGuire’s shoes, I would certainly—unlike McGuire—not choose to cut off my nose to spite my face.

However, I am not a hillbilly. It is difficult for me to grasp what goes through the mind of a hillbilly.

(In the back of my mind is one thought: I wonder whether McGuire is leaving the Twin Cities in hopes of improving what clearly is a deplorable housing situation. I would be the first to acknowledge that McGuire’s current abode appears to be truly gruesome, and impossible to endure much longer.)

McGuire, I fear, has a few unpleasant surprises in store once he leaves the U.S.

In Zurich, McGuire will find, very quickly, that the Swiss, as a people, do not take to hillbillies.

McGuire will also find that the Zurich Tonhalle is not an orchestra in which hillbillies are welcomed and made to feel comfortable.

Lastly, I predict that McGuire will be shown the door within two years of arriving in Zurich. The Tonhalle will seize upon some technicality, as the Swiss are prone to do, as excuse for evicting McGuire not only from the Tonhalle but from Switzerland itself.

What will McGuire do then to earn a living? Return to the U.S. and pray for a revival of “Hee Haw”?

More likely, McGuire will simply ask for handouts.

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According to Dobson West, President of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the musicians of the SPCO, having rejected all salary cuts, have proposed that the SPCO take the following steps in order to raise revenue so as to sustain their current salaries:

(1) Increase ticket prices.

(2) Raise more donations.

(3) Reallocate and redefine restricted gifts.

(4) Initiate “extraordinary” draws from the endowment.

(5) Borrow money.

I pity Mr. West.

Mr. West is dealing not so much with a musician labor problem, always amenable to solution, as a musician IQ problem.

IQs are determined at birth, and the musicians of the SPCO clearly were not winners in the Great IQ Sweepstakes—and there is nothing Mr. West and the SPCO Board can do to address IQ deficiencies among the Saint Paul musicians.

IQs are fixed, permanent and immutable, not amenable to being improved through encouragement and enticement, no matter the effort.

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What kind of person issues public letters full of basic grammatical errors?

In fact, what kind of person issues public letters at all?

Well . . . “Mary Lois Hall, M.D.” does.

“Mary Lois Hall, M.D.” has written two public letters criticizing the Board of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (she very well may have written more than two such letters for all I know). The letters are chilling for the lack of education they evince on the part of the author.

I offer two sentences, one each from the letters signed “Mary Lois Hall, M.D.”:

Please re-read the excerpted paragraph above, especially the part about how an organization can be debilitated, damage its reputation, and loose its focus at a strategic and operational level.

Now I am truly scared that the SPCO will loose many of these extraordinary artists, which will destroy the soul of our beloved and unique chamber orchestra.

Would someone please offer assistance to this foolish woman, and explain to her the difference between “lose” and “loose”? And bring her up to snuff on the rules of parallel construction?

That there are people like “Mary Lois Hall, M.D.” out there, running loose, writing idiotic letters, is what makes ME feel “truly scared”.

According to state records, there is one physician named Mary Lois Hall licensed by the State Of Minnesota. Mary Lois Hall, according to such records, obtained her medical degree from Rush University.

I suppose that explains everything.

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There is something sordid, creepy and cancerous running through the world of music today.

Last night, I read a dumbfounding statement on the website of a major American orchestra that just wrapped up a tour of Europe.

Yesterday, the concertmaster of the American orchestra wrote his own personal weblog entry on the orchestra’s website. In his entry, the concertmaster, among other things, praised the guest artist, a European instrumentalist, that had joined the American orchestra on its European tour.

The guest artist in question, from 2002 onward, had faced numerous allegations of pedophilia in his home country, with the result that a summer music camp he personally founded was first seized and later shut down, permanently, by his nation’s government.

It is inconceivable that the concertmaster of the American orchestra, who studied in Europe at the time in which the investigation was coming to a head (and being widely discussed among musicians and lawyers all over Europe), was not fully aware of what had happened.

Nonetheless, this particular concertmaster wrote on his orchestra’s website yesterday:

It has been a real pleasure to work with [so and so] on this tour. He is a fabulous [instrumentalist], as well as a very nice guy.

I managed to restrain myself from submitting a comment: “And I bet the 11-year-old boys he raped (and later paid off) think he’s a real nice guy, too!”

London 1940

A rare color photograph of Central London in 1940, showing damage caused by The Blitz.

In 1940, The Blitz was ongoing, not to end until May 1941.

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World War I broke out largely because of an arms race, and World War II because of the lack of an arms race.

Herman Kahn

“The Will Of An Epoch Translated Into Space”

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

Voltaire

I Guess I Had Better Brush Up On My German

It is a noteworthy feature of 20th-Century culture that, for the first time in over a thousand years, its educated class is not expected to be at least bilingual.

Jacques Barzun

“Custom Will Reconcile People To Any Atrocity”

George Bernard Shaw, more gadfly than thinker, offered aphorisms by the truckload—and the aphorisms, more often than not, contained little if any truth.

In Which Another Idiot Joins The Fray

Joseph Stalin was a great man. Few other men of the 20th Century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. He seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity. He was the son of a serf but stood calmly before the great without hesitation or nerves. But also—and this was the highest proof of his greatness—he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.

W.E.B. DuBois

A Moron Speaks

In all spheres of modern life, the influence of Stalin reaches wide and deep. From his last simply-written but vastly-discerning and comprehensive document, back through the years, his contributions to the science of our world society remain invaluable. One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin—the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future.

Paul Robeson

Wolf Pack

A rare color photograph of two German U-Boats, both having surfaced during Wolf Pack maneuvers in The Battle Of The Atlantic.

I suspect this undated photograph (which, suspiciously, looks like a movie still) is from 1941 or 1942, before The Battle Of The Atlantic turned in favor of the Allies. The turn in the fortunes of the warring parties in the Atlantic came about within the span of two months in the Spring of 1943.

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Enemy submarines are to be called U-Boats. The term submarine is to be reserved for Allied underwater vessels. U-Boats are those dastardly villains that sink our ships, while submarines are those gallant and noble craft that sink theirs.

Winston Churchill (in remarks made during The Great War)