Mooch

Scaramucci

   Donald Trump, our president, has a record of acting impulsively. He has now appointed someone who outdoes even him at that game. (Game? Surely not.) Anthony Scaramucci, just made Communications Director, has stepped in with both feet, if without a head, and threatened to fire everyone in sight for leaking. True or false about those alleged leakers—and in most cases that’s not been established—it’s not what the country needs. Another lightweight full of ideas about what not to do, without a glimpse of what should be done.

   Trump’s latest appointment appears to be as incompetent as his boss, just different in the way he manifests it. Even more noisily, using a language that has not been heard coming from the office of any president. There is one thing that is good about all this. The appointment  of Scaramucci makes it very clear who Donald Trump is, to anyone who still had illusions.

   As for the future, Der Krug geht zum Brunnen bis a bricht, a favorite saying of my mother. The pitcher goes to the well until it breaks.

The Pitcher broke soon.--July 31 Times headline:

 Trump Removes Anthony Scaramucci From Communications Director Role

Arturo Toscanini

Some Comments about a  Recent Biography of Toscanini

   I heard Toscanini once in person. The music appreciation club of my high school, Brooklyn Tech, got tickets to the NBC Symphony, where we heard Toscanini conducting Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony in Studio 8H. I found out a  great many years later—or thought I did— that Shosty (as we called him) had not at all liked that performance. But now know that this report of the composer’s opinion in Solomon Volkov’s Testimony was actually quite suspect.

   I can’t say that this early NBC Symphony experience played a role in my getting to read the recent Harvey Sachs mega-biography of Toscanini, whom one might well call the paradigmatic conductor of the 20^th century. I just finished that big book—on Kindle where, lacking page numbers, you can never find out just how big a book—and now want to make a number of remarks about it—reactions that in no way add up to a review.

   The first considerable chunk of Toscanini’s conducting career had him almost exclusively conducting operas. While I was aware of this fact, I had no idea of the role opera played in those years before radio not to mention television. Large audiences expressed themselves by shouting, clapping, stamping their feet. But still, I was more aware of that involvement than I was of the actual operas that engaged these audiences.  Of course, there were the operas of Verdi and then Puccini, but there were numerous operas that I had never heard of and, more shockingly, I was totally unaware of the existence many of their composers. Toscanini’s involvement was not only deep, touching on all aspects of the music and singing, but also broad, in that he was often concerned with various aspects of an opera’s staging.

  Another news-to-me item was the revelation of the breadth of Toscanini’s repertory of orchestral music. It is true that that he never cottoned on to atonal music (he made very negative remarks about Alban Berg’s Lulu)—nor did perform music influenced by Schönberg, his repertory was much broader than the works of Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner to which, to be sure, he turned again and again.

   My final comments pertain what was for me the most revealing aspect of this biography. Toscanini’s political views were much more deep-seated than is suggested by the labels “anti-fascist” and “liberal” that have correctly been given to him. Both Mussolini and Hitler wrote wooing letters to him, reproduced in the book, to no avail whatever. He not only rejected all such approaches, but self-consciously shifted his career as a performer to make sure that he did not in any way support such ideologies. Moreover, he donated considerable sums of money to “anti” causes and actively and financially supported victims of fascist and Nazi persecution. In short, the Maestro put his money where his mouth is, distinguishing himself from many of his non-Jewish conductor-confreres.

   The Harvey Sachs biography is detailed and consistently interesting. If you are interested in learning about the long and distinguished career of a musical giant, read his Toscanini: Musician of Conscience.

Interim Report

   I have nearly finished reading the recently published mega-biography of Toscanini by Harvey Sachs. I plan to do a piece on it, though certainly not a review. A good article about Toscanini by David Denby can be found in the July 10 and 17 New Yorker, together with a GREAT picture of the conductor. Stay tuned.

   Nor do I think that I’ll do any writing during the next few days. Mark (son) will be my welcome visitor  tomorrow, staying a few days. We will spend our time talking and eating and maybe go to a museum—if it’s of interest to him. Daughter Ellie is out of town and so are the grandchildren—who are children no more. When that visit is over I’ll try to post more interesting stuff.

The Press on Trump

The Press Stays Calm

   I want to congratulate the press—or at least the small (mostly NYTimes) portion that I read—for giving a fair shake to President Trump without criticism or sarcasm. Maybe that’s what it takes to stay in business, but it is something of an achievement to remain calm and “objective” in a piece like this “Trump Says He Has Signed More Bills Than Any President, Ever. He Hasn’t.”* This is a long and respectful article that shows that the President of the United States—Our president—is ignorant about the history that he cites, brags about accomplishments that he didn’t accomplish, and just plain lies.

  Why am I congratulating the press—specifically the NYTimes for producing an article such as this? Because the authors (Michael D. Shear and Karen Yourish) and their editors have resisted the temptation, surely great, to be sarcastic, censorious, hectoring, or in other ways grandstanding. Neither they nor I have experienced a president about whom such a report could (truthfully) be written.

   But they are right to make their report straight. Those of us who are appalled by the president we have acquired don’t need journalists to express any, not to say vehement, feelings in their reporting. Those others—and there are many, since under prevailing rules, Trump was fairly elected, would only be annoyed if the likes of the Times were in such a way implicitly censoring them for having done what they did. That’s what editorials and “commentaries” are for, not news  reports. I do think, to repeat, that such virtuous journalists should be given credit for sticking to the facts, in the face of temptations to express their own opinions.

   *ttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/us/politics/trump-laws-bills.html?hp&action=click&pgtype           

My Life--Again

How I Spent My Life

   This will be the beginning of a piece on a topic that might generate a much longer essay and perhaps will one day. When you get old, it is well established, your thoughts turn more often to the past—probably in part because, having retired from an active career, there is less to engage the mind contemporaneously. So it has been with me, at ninety years, to the point that at night, during spells of wakedness, I recite to myself German songs—or at least their opening lines—which I have not sung since after the age of twelve, when we left Germany for America.

   But there are less trivial ways in which the past creeps into my present mind. I think about what I have done with my life—not in a weighty sense that reflects on accomplishments and failures, but in the quite casual sense as to how I have spent my time, though I won’t take up activities pertaining to family nor recreational and just plain living activities.

   First, there is reading and writing of philosophy. That’s first, because I think that I am mostly identified as a retired professor of  philosophy. Second there is my involvement with higher education as something of a commentator and as an administrator. Third is a long career as a woodworker. Fourth is my involvement with music, mostly passive, as a “serious” listener, and active as a member of various choruses over the years.

   Woodwork came early. I took to Laubsägen (jigsaw) when I was maybe ten and never abandoned my engagement with wood. I “discovered” music when about fourteen and took advantage of New York’s concert scene, while my high school chorus was the first of many to follow. Philosophy was the result of a casual encounter. I had taken a number of undergraduate philosophy courses (there were no majors at Columbia in my day), so when I returned from a fellowship year in Europe and a job in evaluation in the Voice of America was not funded, my undergraduate mentor, then chairman of Columbia’s philosophy department, said: “So, you might as well sign up as a philosophy graduate student” and promptly arranged for a small scholarship. Finally, after a series of department chairmanships, I let my name run in a search for dean of arts and sciences at Northwestern, which made me an administrator, but also led to my writings on higher education, in books and articles.

   There’s an outline. As suggested at the outset, I may flesh this out at a later time.






 

How I Spent my Life, [I]

   This will be the beginning of a piece on a topic that might generate a much longer essay and perhaps will one day. When you get old, it is well established, your thoughts turn more often to the past—probably in part because, having retired from an active career, there is less to engage the mind contemporaneously. So it has been with me, now ninety years old, to the point that at night, during spells of wakedness, I recite to myself German songs—or at least their opening lines—which I have not sung since after the age of twelve, when we left Germany for America.

   But there are less trivial ways in which the past creeps into my present mind. I think about what I have done with my life—not in a weighty sense that reflects on accomplishments and failures, but in the quite casual sense as to how I have spent my time. I won’t discuss activities pertaining to family and recreational and just plain living activities.

   First, there is reading and writing of philosophy. That’s first, because I think that I am mostly identified as a retired professor of  philosophy. Second there is my involvement with higher education as something of a commentator and an administrator. Third is a long career as a woodworker.

   This last came first by many years. I took to Laubsägen (jigsaw) when I was maybe ten and never abandoned that engagement with wood. Philosophy was the result of a casual encounter. I had returned from a fellowship year in Europe and visited my undergraduate mentor, then chairman of Columbia’s philosophy department. I had applied for a job as an evaluator of the Voice of America which turned out not to be funded. “So, you might as well sign up as a philosophy graduate students and promptly arranged for a small scholarship. And that’s how I got into philosophy.  More anon.






 

Caro On Robert Moses

I am done with the Robert Caro book on Robert Moses—all the way to page 1162, plus some of the back matter, as it’s called in the book trade. In the course of reading, I marked some passages and made a few notes in preparation of a blog post; but have now decided to let a decent review inform you instead: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/23/the-power-broker-robert-moses-and-the-fall-of-new-york-robert-caro-review.

   Here I just want to note how impressive I find Caro’s achievement to be. He has control of a mind-boggling amount of detail, always given in its authentic specificity, composed in a narrative that moves along, at all times clear, never “rhetorical.” The book deserves all the praise and prizes it has received, plus one for the ability to harness so huge amount of material between the pages of a mere book.

   I am puzzled about one thing, the subtitle: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. As a somewhat casual reader, I thought of Moses’ impact on New York was both good and bad. But while certainly bad, I don’t see the very extreme “fall of New York” label reflected in the text. I suspect an editor’s “suggestion.” A very good book! After this, on to other things. 

   

Falling

Falling When Old

   Old people fall. My father, in his eighties, fell and broke a hip. (I was not living in New York, where my parents were at home in a Second Avenue apartment.) My father was hospitalized and passed away not long after arriving there. It was either a stroke or a heart attack. My mother and I agreed that there was no point to authorizing an autopsy to determine which was the cause  of death.
   Now, nearly half a century later, 

   I am old—at the age of 90; and I fall. Several times in the last couple of years. One fall led to a visit to the hospital and an excessive number of x-rays that found a couple of cracked ribs. The other times yielded a variety of scrapes and wrenches, but thankfully no trips to the hospital.

   But why do old people fall?  I am sure there is an answer on the internet, but I have not sought that out. 

   Why do I fall? I have no ready answer. For one of those episodes alcohol may have been a contributing cause. But that was distinctly not the case for others and certainly not for a recent instant that left a number of unwanted marks on me, some quite painful.

    I now move along very carefully and lately use a cane even in the house; a walker is next, now standing by. This is not an hysterical worry; I feel mighty insecure just walking along on a clear flat surface. Nor does there seem to be anything wrong with the muscles of my legs, When suitably accompanied, I can stride forward at a quite decent pace.

   So what accounts for the distinct strong sense of wobbliness that I now feel just going from my room to the bathroom a few feet down the hall? My mind is functioning more or less as it has all these years and my leg muscles seem in good shape.

  What I have so far withheld is that there has been a certain numbness in my feet(cause unknown), though that seems to have no effect on mobility. In short, I cannot find in me a cause of the distinct wobbliness that characterizes my walking. Ideas anybody?