Trump's Passivity

Trump’s (Yes) Passivity

   I’m puzzled about an aspect of President Trump’s behavior, while in another part of my mind I recognize that it is not at all problematic, but wholly in character. I explain.

   Every day, my news-reading fare includes a number of pieces that are either critical of Trump, are sarcastic about him, or otherwise make fun of him. His popularity with the press—at least the chunk that I read—is as the butt of accounts of great variety.

   Well, he’s not the first in the negative eyesight of vox populi, but he may be among the rare who do not “fight back” in response of repeated “attacks.”  

   The question: is he silent because shielded by his staff from his treatment by the larger world—and hence ignorant of their reactions—or because he doesn’t give a damn. I’m no fan of Trump, but I still hope it’s the latter.   

Reading about Newton

Isaac Newton

   I’ve subscribed to the New York Review of Books since it came into existence during a New York Times strike many long years ago. I don’t think there were many issues that I read from cover to cover (I’ve long since stopped following fiction and poetry was never one of my arts), but I have read substantial chunks of most copies that came into my house.

   But recently I have become aware of a curious fact. While many an article has led me to books I then read, that was often not because the review itself, but rather because my attention was drawn to it by appearing in a NYReview article without there actually being much referred to. The NYReview article alerted me to the book’s existence, but frequently it took checking out a more conventional review to get me to read it. I wonder whether the editors of the NYReview are aware of this role they play.

  These long-winded reflections now led me to conjure into my Kindle a long and very scholarly-sounding book about Isaac Newton that should take me well beyond the foundations of modern science—if I find the determination to stick to it all the way through. Nous verrons

More on Age

Symptoms of Age, II

      A peculiar symptom of age—at least that’s what I think it is—is my sporadic thinking in German. This takes place mostly at night during fairly frequent period of lying awake. While I make up little speeches in my first language, I mostly recite—mentally, not out loud—the beginnings of a number of children’s songs. (The beginnings only because I don’t remember more lines than that, if I ever knew them.)

   I have not much used German in recent years and while it is completely fluent and unsullied by an English accent, it has the shrunken vocabulary of a teenager. Mind you, that’s not where my German got stuck. I wrote a doctoral dissertation—and my first book—based entirely on German sources; but that “learned” vocabulary did not enter into my daily (so to speak) use of German.

   By way of comment about the above, I think I may correctly call myself bilingual. But that does not mean—and probably seldom if ever does—that that “bi-“ means sameness of the two languages referred to.   

Needed: Historians

The Necessity of History, as Practiced by Historians

   During  the last few days I read Hillary Clinton’s latest book, What Happened. Then I turned to John Bridges’ Everybody Knows What Happened. The first is centered on Clinton’s account of her campaign for the presidency, while the Bridges book (he is Dr. Bridges on the title page) is a most critical account of that theme, betraying his support for Bernie Sanders. I could not have gotten through either book without generous (to me!) skipping.

   I am not noting these facts on my blog to give an account of either of these books; they are inexpensively available on Kindle.  I mention them as evidence for the title over these paragraphs. Bridges’ sources are mostly newspaper articles—giving away his orientation by the citing several times the Washington Times (look it up) and Ms. Clinton has both the advantage and handicap of speaking for herself. It’s all very provisional or, if you like, preliminary. Whoever lives long enough will begin to hear from historians.

Symptoms of Age

   A while back I casually mentioned to a friend that I feel like listing some of the symptoms of aging other than diseases or allergies acquired in old age. That is, not symptoms requiring a doctor to list and describe, but some that are aware of by the aged person.

   Well OK, but I’m not going to make this a project aiming at some sense of completeness—though I am sure that could be found on the internet, which I won’t bother to consult. So I’ll start with two.

   The first is obvious, that is noticeable by all: much increased wobbliness on my feet. Not very long ago I took long vigorous walks. Alas, that’s no longer the case. My leg muscles still seem in good shape and my brain seems to send out the signal: stride vigorously. No dice: vigorous it ain’t. Someone out there might have a more illuminating account, but I call it a symptom of relatively advanced age.

   The second age symptom with which I want to start this (possible) series pertains to hair—and I am thinking particularly of hair on the body—on the arms and legs and the bushier pubic growth. All that hair has gotten markedly finer than it had been. I attribute this—quite ignorantly, to be sure—to the fact that it has lost its original color—brown—and become call it transparent. Anyway, I take that fuzz to be a symptom of age.    

Words

English Vocabulary

   I do a fair amount of reading and recently became somewhat self-conscious about it. That has made me become, sporadically, far more aware of what those accounts are composed of: vocabulary in use. Not surprisingly, the number of words I actually use is a very small fraction of the existent store in English. There are several categories—more than I would have thought.

   [1] The words that I have been using for many years; I understand them and could define them.

   [2] The words I understand and could informally define but, as far as I can recollect, have never              used.

   [3] The words the meaning of which I couldn’t state, but somehow get—or think I do.

   [4]  Words the meaning of which I don’t have a clue.

Those categories hold for English and not for all other languages—a complicated story that I won’t try to tackle.

The Past Recedes

For quite some years after I left Pittsburgh to live with my daughter’s family in Mexico City, I emailed to friends in Pittsburgh and at other places where I had lived earlier. I got some responses, though of course by no means from everyone.

   But for the last few weeks I’ve conducted an experiment: I did not send an email to any Pittsburgh and prior acquaintance to see if I would e-hear from any. The result: silence, nada, niente, rien. So I’ll now also stop badgering them.

   I’m not at all upset about that; I’ve been gone for quite a while. I’ve just exchanged emails with a friend who goes back to Heidelberg, a very long time ago. So I don’t lack connections with my past.

   But I do wish those relations to be two-way. I do hope that some of my friends follow my blog, since that’ all they will now get from me unless—I hear from them. 

The Quality of Writing

   I want to make two sets of comments that have impressed me about very different sets of writing. The first, unexpectantly, is about the Readers’ comments that follow New York Times articles on the paper’s internet incarnation. There are sometimes an inordinate number of those—one thousand and more—and there are seldom far more than just a few. Needless to say, I sample only a small number of these, as far as I know the earliest ones submitted. I also believe that except for the elimination of obscene or libelous ones they are unedited by the editors of the Times. I say that because I want to declare that a large majority of them are to the point, often smart, and mostly stylistically literate. A sample of the public? I don’t know, but certainly a sample of Times readers.

   The second set of writings of which I want to take note is vastly more formidable. I’m just done with the Robert Blake biography of Disraeli. As a major work about its hero, it quotes an enormous number of letters, written over a period of decades of the Disraeli century. They are all in English, meaning good English; not flowery, but clear and at times eloquent and often better even than that.

   While I am sure that many members of the cast of character of that book were (for the time) well educated, I am very doubtful that they could all produce such error-free felicitous prose. It would be most interesting to have an account—and there may be such a one, though unknown to me—of the behind the scenes (literate) scribes that polished those letters. What’s for sure is the fact that the telephone and other contemporary ways of communicating has deprived the public of much of a valuable store of communications by a huge cast of characters.

Da Ponte's Other Mozart Libretto

Cosi fan Tutte

   This afternoon, Saturday, Ellie and I saw the Met broadcast of the third of Mozart’s Da Ponte operas, Cosi fan tutte. It is much less frequently performed than either of its predecessors, The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, and it is not hard to figure out why. While it has best-of-Mozart music, it does not have any “hits” of which each of the others has quite a few. It is also much “slimmer” than Da Ponte’s previous ones, consisting of  just two principal pairs of characters, with both of them primarily distinguished by their voices—soprano and mezzo soprano and tenor and baritone—rather than significantly differentiated in character or dramatic role. The two other singers are a maid (soprano) and a “philosopher”—instigator of action—essentially a baritone, labeled a bass. There are several not very extensive choral passages.

  That was it, the only other time I saw Cosi, many years ago and not well-remembered. This time opera was set—implausibly, but who cares—in Coney Island, which, in case you don’t know, is in Brooklyn. That “expansion” not only added a visual context, but a large cast of non-singing characters in a great variety of costumes. This Met production in effect expanded what is essentially a chamber opera into a quasi-grand opera. Had they not found someone willing and able to do that, Cosi would have remained to be just the other Da Ponte opera.