1.1 2026 January
1.1.1 2026 January 1 - Happy New Year
A Happy New Year to all my web-page readers.
I'm told the fitness gyms are packed wall to wall
for the first two weeks in January with people
who swear that this year they're going
to stay in shape.
My New Year Resolution is going to be keeping up this weblog
and my
issues weblog pages.
Time will tell how well I do with it.
Here is a link directly to the
most-recent
entry.
Also, of course,
here
is last year's weblog.
1.1.2 2026 January 4 - Mid Century
I remember when the year 2001 was The Future,
big, bold, and scary.
Walter Cronkite had a show about this big, bold, scary future
called "The Twenty-First Century" where he discussed cool
technology things that might happen.
(I don't think he mentioned hoverboards
or microwave micro-pizza.)
Now, here we are in the mid-Twenty-First Century.
1.1.3 2026 January 8 - Soapboxes
I'm not sure I've seen an actual soapbox.
I've seen blue-plastic milk-transport containers
and orange crates, but actual wooden crates for soap
I'm not so sure.
I am sure that I've seen and heard
too many famous celebrities spend their
hard-earned fame on political
causes.
Morgan Freeman has political feelings that aren't the
same as mine, as he mentioned them briefly in passing a
few years ago in some video clip I saw, there was plenty
of opportunity to dwell on racism and oppression and all
that, but he didn't do either politics or racial posturing.
Instead he spent his well-earned reputation sharing
the intensity and culture of the music itself and how it
was a fundamental part of rock and roll which came later.
(I believe it was similarly foundational for jazz,
but I don't recall him mentioning that
in his short video speaking parts.)
Morgan Freeman got on his soapbox to promote music
and culture from his own important part of American history
with pride and it was wonderful.
I'll offer my thanks to
Arizona Musicfest
for putting on this marvelous show.
I have a busy two weeks ahead.
Tomorrow is Phoenix Downtown Chamber Series,
Saturday is Neil Berg's History of Rock and Roll,
Sunday is the Phoenix Symphony "Pictures at an Exhibition,"
Tuesday is Jeffrey Siegel's Keyboard Conversation about Chopin,
and Thursday is the Chicago Symphony with Riccardo Muti.
I have thirty programs signed by him from the days
when he was conducting at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.
Maybe I can sleep on the flight to New York City
where I'm doing six concerts in six nights,
two operas, two ballets, and two concerts at Carnegie Hall.
1.1.4 2026 January 12 - Clapping Between Movements
I have been a near-brilliant mathematician,
a well-traveled and educated person,
an erudite contributor in the performing arts,
and a generally-interesting person with fun hobbies.
Still, it seems these days,
when my coffin lid closes after the eulogies,
the greatest impact will be Phoenix concert directors
relieved that I'll stop hounding them
about their audiences clapping between movements.
Much of what we call "classical" music,
especially symphonies and concerti,
was written as a sequence of "movements"
as part of the greater whole.
Symphonies usually have four movements,
a perky introduction of themes in sonata-allegro form,
a slow and gentle part,
a shorter waltz scherzo, and
a grand finale.
Concerti, usually piano, often violin or 'cello,
usually have three movements,
the same without the light-hearted scherzo.
There are usually "cadenzas" where the soloist
gets to show off.
I say "usually" because anybody who has been to
more than a few classical concerts can rattle off
a dozen symphones and a few concerti that don't fit this pattern,
but the concept of movements is nearly universal
and extends to other works as well.
In this classical-music world,
the silent space between movements is like the sorbet served
between courses in a fancy meal,
it cleanses the musical palette and prepares the listener
for the next helping of aural adventure and beauty.
Sometimes it's an opportunity to clear our throats
so we don't cough during the actual performance.
Since the music often comes to a dramatic close
at the end of a movement and there is a visible rest
where the conductors rest their arms
and musicians often lower their instruments,
audiences unfamilier with classical music,
especially those in Phoenix, Arizona,
will applaud between movements.
It may not be as offensive and annoying
as singing along with the music or playing the kazoo
or talking during the music,
but it's very annoying to those of us
who grew up with this music.
Musicians and concert leaders have various strategies.
Violinist Itzhak Perlman had a cute bit where he pulled
out his cell phone and says he just got a call from
Mr. Beethoven asking the audience to hold its applause.
The Scottsdale Symphonic Orchestra has a bold-font message
in its program asking the audience to refrain from applause
until the end of the piece.
There are nice ways for a conduct to ask the audience
to keep its enthusiasm to itself during the piece.
There are relatively-rare exceptions.
I heard Mahler's Symphony No.3 in Philadelphia where
the end of the
magnificently-played, fifty-five-minute first movement
had audible audience approval.
Later I noticed in the program
there was even a gap between that movement
and the other five movements of this nearly-two-hour work.
But this is a rarity, an exceptional statement,
not routine audience participation.
I'll point out that other performances are different.
Ballet, opera, and jazz encourage audience expression of approval
for well done parts, especially solo parts.
I recall when violinist Nigel Kennedy performed
the Beethoven Violin Concerto
(with audience appropriately quiet during the piece)
he did a jazz encore with two orchestra members and
the musically-educated audience clapped heartily
after the solo parts,
just as they should.
I don't know the answer,
but I'm frustrated that I can't seem to communicate
this part of classical-music audience decorum.
When I brought this up in a local chamber-music concert
that had this problem (for the first time),
the concert director, the musicians,
and several audience members who overheard my complaining,
were similarly aghast and felt we should make some announcement.
I'm frustrated that this should become a defining part of who I am
at classical concerts.
Alas, so far, the Phoenix Symphony
has no such demonstrated concern.
If I want my big-city orchestra
inter-movement interludes unsullied by applause
(and, recently, there was even similar applause
when the music ended a crecendo that wasn't
a movement boundary),
then I guess I have the option of airline travel.
We shall see.
1.1.5 2026 January 15 - Star Wars tape
It's like a time machine, going back forty-eight years to 1977.
I saw a social-medium post on Facebook about a reel-to-reel tape
of "Star Wars" on the Twentieth-Century-Fox label.
It was on the expensive side on eBay,
I bought it anyway,
and it's terrific.
It's Dolby, I don't have Dolby, so the highs are a little bright,
but the sound is as stunning as the 19cm/sec (7.5ips) tape should be.
I think this is my newest factory-reel tape.
I thought they stopped making them around mid-decade.
I could find no reel issue, for example,
for Supertramp "Crime of the Century" in 1974,
but here this tape is from 1977.
What's cool, as I listen to this double-length tape,
is this orchestra, conducted by John Williams himself,
likely has lot seen the movie or even heard this music before.
It's new and wonderful to them,
just as "Star Wars" was to all of us back then.
1.1.6 2026 January 26 - A New York State of Mind
I had a
wonderful
week in the Big Apple.
1.2 2026 February
1.2.1 2026 February 2 - Four Calendar Lines
Most months on the calendar take five lines.
Some "perverse" months are six lines on the calendar.
Three times every twenty-eight years we have a
month like this one that fits in four lines.
If you're one of those weenie geeks like I am
who engage in social-medium debates on silly things
like whether
Alaska
is further east than Maine,
then I'll point out there are no months more than six lines
but there is a month less than four lines,
at least here in America.
See if you can figure it out in a few minutes
before clicking on
the answer.
1.2.2 2026 February 2 - Groundhog Day
I had a terrible dream where I watched the movie
"Groundhog Day" every day for a year.
1.2.3 2026 February 4 - Pink Floyd for Valentine's Day
I just got an email advertisement
that I should get my order for Pink Floyd records and memorabilia
in time for St. Valentine's Day.
As the texting-abbreviators would say, "WTF?"
What does the music of an amazing progressive-rock-and-roll band
have to do with the holiday of Eros or Cupid?
I got a new clock (left) in my bathroom.
While my toothless old cat Scruffles
is eating her wet-food breakfast
(with the door closed so the other five cats
don't compete for the delicious wet cat food)
I do some timed morning exercises,
so I got this clock and put it on the wall behind me
and this (right)
is what it looks like in the mirror.
1.2.5 2026 February 12 - Alice in Wonderland
The ballet version was wonderful.
Rather than try to recreate the plot,
which would have made for draggy acting scenes like
the first part of the Nutcracker,
they just made one ballet scene after another
with extravagant costumes, terrific sets,
and fun special effects,
all in bright colors with wonderful dancing
and great music to go with it.
It was an
evening
of joy and I got to be part of it,
complete with sharing it with some friend new to ballet
and celebrating the event afterward with
staff, dancers, and donors.
1.2.6 2026 February 14 - Great Day of Flying
First was the Arizona Flying Circus
by Mo Sheldon it his own Motown airstrip (5AZ6)
about 50 Km (thirty miles) south of Phoenix.
The sky is filled with powered paragliders (PPG),
motorized single seats hanging from parachute-like
paraglider wings.
I was in continuous radio contact with folks ont the ground
while the PPG guys may not have been,
so my already-short-field landing was made even shorter
by profound braking when a PPG guy touched down
right in front of me.
Nobody got hurt,
but looking back before turning final is a good idea
and I believe that PPG pilot had that point driven home
in conversations afterward.
Food-truck breakfast-burrito breakfast at Motown
was followed by a flight to Buckeye (BXK) for their
fly-in event with lots of interesting aircraft on display
and lots of booths at the Expo with interesting stuff.
I sat at a table for the
AOPA
VIP lunch and conversed with a variety of people coming and going.
One of those was my slightly-older friend Zeke
who managed to fly unarmed rescue helicopters in Vietnam
for more hours than he would like to remember.
Now he's an old guy telling bad jokes,
but he works on his own airplane and flies a lot.
I don't have to like the war to admire the warrior
and I stand a little taller with I'm with Zeke.
Then Tyler and I flew back to Motown for dinner
and evening festivities including a band called Traveler,
paper flying fire-lights that drifted away in the sky,
a fireworks show, and an Arizona-Flying-Circus tradition
of burning a pile of dried-out Christmas trees
in a gigantic pyre of fire.
We even saw contrails in the sky from
Elon Musk's latest launch.
1.2.7 2026 February 19 - Giovanni Kiyingi
I took a chance on a musician from Uganda in Africa,
Giovanni Kiyingi, at the Tempe Center for the Arts and
the evening was a lot of fun.
He's originally from Kampala, the capital city of Uganda,
I've been there myself,
and we had a short chat about it.
I mentioned I recalled Uganda Telecom ads
and we said together,
"It all begins with U."
What was cool is he started with some
solo Africa-style songs with him and his instrument
and then made a transition to a band with more-American jazz.
Sometimes it's worth a lot to take a chance
on a concert with a musician with a funny name
I've never heard of.
1.2.8 2026 February 22 - Arizona Bach Festival
I made a cool discovery recently,
another victory for social media.
In this case Facebook was the social medium
and the scoring goal was the Arizona Bach Festival,
a four-concert series in various places.
The first was a small orchestra starting with
the fifth Brandenburg Concerto.
Bach wrote these six pieces as his resume
and he didn't get the job.
As my grandmother would curse,
"a pox onthem" for not hiring the man who wrote these
six amazingly-wonderful pieces.
I had a fun conversation with the soloist and
I asked about how he tunes his violin for this music.
To make perfect two-to-one octaves
the twelve chromatic notes mathematically-geometrically average
the twelfth-root of two, about 1.05946, a nasty, irrational number, so
musical fifths are almost three-to-two,
musical fourths are almost four-to-three, and
major thirds are almost five-to-four,
but not quite exactly.
Bach played around with even-temper, twelfth-root-of-two tuning
as well as more-pleasing-but-more-effort ratio tuning,
called "just" tuning by some of my musical friends.
He said he tunes perfect fifths and mentioned
the Emerson String Quartet tunes well-tempered and
"they sound out of tune to me."
The second concert was a gift from the gods,
or at least the muses,
with violinist Steven Moechel playing three solo Bach sonatas.
This was definitely a wonderful moment
with the second movements of these works all being fugues,
not exactly easy on a mostly-single-note instrument like the violin.
Just to make the moment all the finer,
eight of the nine intra-movement pauses were silent,
a moment for the audience to draw its collective breath
in anticipation of yet more beauty.
The silence was broken after the third second-movement fugue
where it was so spectacular, so wonderful, so beautiful,
and so hard that the audience did burst into applause.
I asked the Steven Moechel what he felt about that and
he agreed with me that the applause felt right,
it broke the tension of such a prodigious effort.
The concert was outdoors and even a helicopter flying overhead
(with the performer looking up at the time)
didn't spoil the incredible magic of the moment.
Alas, I have conflicts for the next two concerts,
but, as Arnie would say, bad pun here, "I'll be Bach."
1.3 2026 March
1.3.1 2026 March 4-7 - Philadelphia Trip
I had a wonderful trip to Philadelphia last weekend
with friends, family, dance, and music.
I went to a kind-of-corny immersion space called OtherWorld
with lit spaces with strange sculptured environments and
the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History
with lots of interesting displays about Jews in America
from the 1600s to the 1900s.
It was a fun trip.
1.3.2 2026 March 10 - K-Tel Records
I got a bunch of vinyl records from a friend
who doesn't play them anymore.
We share a love of Herb Alpert's trumpet material
and there's a lot of stuff in the big box he sent
that I don't have in my collection.
but never got to know and never got around to buying,
so I'm happy.
I had to chuckle when one of the records was an assemblage
of songs, "The Sound of Bread," from 1973.
It's Warner material reissued on K-Tel records.
I don't have any K-Tel in my 4000 records.
They were the music equivalent of Ginzu Knives,
which I also never had the privilege of buying
amid all their advertsing.
K-Tel records advertised vigorously during my younger years.
Well, the record is great, the songs are wonderful,
and now I have a K-Tel record in my collection.
Thank you, Dave, for the memories.
1.3.3 2026 March 12 - New Yes Record
Well, I got the new, double-vinyl Yes record
album
called "Fly From Here - Return Trip."
The box was appropriately stamped
"FRAGILE - HANDLE WITH CARE."
Am I the only one who gets the
joke?
1.3.4 2026 March 14 - Tchaikovski Violin Concerto Concert
First of all, Happy Pi Day.
Since the mathematical constant Pi π is about
3.1415925358979323, or 3.14 for short,
March 14 has become Pi Day in math-geek circles.
This year it was wedged between Friday the Thirteeth
and the Ides of March.
So the Phoenix Symphony blessed us with a wonderful concert
with Lin playing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.
By some bizarre coincidence,
I just ordered a
seriously-high-fidelity master-tape copy
of Itzhak Perelman playing the same piece of music
with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1979.
It's a company new to me,
I saw their advertisement on the social medium Facebook,
so we'll see how good the tape is when I get it.
Live music is
almost
always the best,
but sometimes the players are not available or not alive
and a wonderful hifi can bring out the best.
I think of it as a time machine where I can be transported
to some special moment in 1979 for not quite an hour.
We'll see how good this tape is.
One think I'm pretty sure of
is there won't be a tuning peg falling out
during the performance on the master-dub tape.
After all, they would record it over if that happened.
During the concert, during the third movement,
the soloist stopped playing and re-tuned his violin.
I gather the peg came out and one of the strings went limp.
That's part of live music and it certainly
didn't mar the fine performance we heard.
Going back to my theme of misplaced applause between movements,
the concerto had annoying, roaring applause after the first movement.
The transition from second to third movements was so short
there wasn't time for the audience to react.
What was interesting is the second half of the concert
was two six-part excerpts of "Romeo and Juliet" by Prokofiev
and the audience was quiet between the parts.
Maybe it was because the conductor held her wand up high
between them.
Interestingly enough, the program defined two six-part segments,
the conductor played all twelve without turning around and bowing,
and the audience started to applaud after the sixth part.
If they were knowledgeable enough to read the program
and to hold their applause,
then why was the concerto so vigorously interrupted?
I do remember concerts in 2019, just before COVID,
where Phoenix-Symphony audiences were quiet between movements.
1.3.5 2026 March 16 - The Last Three Days
Well, I survived the last three days.
Friday was the thirteenth, unlucky for some,
Saturday, March 14, was Pi Day, a celebration for math geeks like me
because the magical math constant pi π is about 3.14,
and
yesterday, Sunday, was the Ides of March.
I was lucky enough not be stabbed in the back as
Julius Caesar was on this date in the forty-fourth year
before the Common Era (44 BCE).
(I doubt that year was rendered as 44 BCE back then.)
1.3.6 2026 March 16 - My Six Cats
Debbie, my cat-care person for twenty years has retired
and I'm going with a web-based service
Rover.com.
Someday I would like to have a web page form to fill out
that doesn't have me in screaming fits,
but that day isn't today.
The photo-file upload stopped working and their choices
were a bit frustrating, so here goes.
All six cats are fundamentally healthy with no diseases.
They're all cuddly with me and my guests
and generally nice to each other.
(I say "generally" as I hear some yowling at night
outside my bedroom as I don't have the cats sleeping with me.)
My concert friend is highly allergic to cats,
his new lady friend had a cat named Scruffles,
so now I have a cat named Scruffles for a total of four.
My Phoenix friends had Potato and Pickle
who stayed with me when their people traveled,
their people moved back east, and now I have
Potato and Pickle.
Alluding to A. A. Milne, Now We Are Six.
All are rescue cats except Pickle who is a bred Bengal cat.
I keep two food-and-water areas,
one downstairs on my stove with a feeder and
two flowing water devices
and the other in the upstairs-middle bathroom
with dry food and water treated with
a small squirt of stuff for their teeth.
Once a day I put a can of wet food in my master bathroom
for Scruffles since she has no teeth.
I keep the door closed until she's finished
so Devin doesn't eat her food.
While I keep my bedroom cat free when I sleep at night,
my afternoon naps I let them stay with me,
Devin and Jane on the bed on either side of me
and Potato and Pickle watching over me
from other parts of the bedroom.
So here are my daily-cat-care instructions and recommendations.
First, downstairs bathroom near the door:
Scoop all litter boxes and put the poop
in the Genie left of the toilet.
Second, downstairs kitchen stove:
Fill the cat-feeding station with food from the pantry to your left
and top off the water in both fountains with water
from the left side of the sink.
Third, upstairs-middle bathroom:
Fill the food bowl on the right with food from left of the toilet
and top off the water from the white tubs or the tap.
If the water has been sitting for two days or more,
then replace the bowl and water and then clean out the used bowl.
Scoop both litter boxes and put the poop and congealed litter
in the Genie left of the toilet.
Fourth, master bedroom:
Put a can of wet food from the floor under the counter
into one bowl and tap water into a hand-cleaned bowl behind it.
Fifth, far bedroom:
Pet Miss Pris.
While you're there, check out the Shark robot floor cleaner and
press the right button
(as you face the unit,
it would be the left button from the machine's viewpoint,
if it had a viewpoint)
so it starts cleaning.
Pet any cats you encounter and count all six cats.
If you have time, then brush cats other than Pickle.
1.3.7 2026 March 20 - Plurals
I don't know if other languages do this,
but English keeps native plurals in some strange ways.
I don't see it in verb conjugation,
but native-plural nouns abound in my own mother tongue.
We have plusses, minuses,
campuses, cacti, genera,
hippopotamoi, and octopodes,
all words ending in us.
We have homonyms alumni and alumnae.
We have museums and stadia, foxes and oxen.
We have irises and crises and axes.
Just to be ornery, we have antennae for bugs
and antennas for radio systems.
Don't forget data is the plural of datum.
We have cans and men,
houses and mice, nooses and geese,
pies and dice, roots and feet,
aversions and criteria,
annexes and indices,
guilds and children, and
then there are Hebrew plurals like
kibbutzim and menorot
and Italian plurals like panini and paparazzi and
the musical concerti and soprani and celli.
At least we can still use the more-normal
forms flutes and violins.
Don't forget that often the noun part gets the plural
like mothers in law, attorneys general,
and passersby.
Is women part of a pattern somehow?
Has anybody used the singular spaghetto?
Finally there are all those words,
often animals,
whose plurals are the same as their singulars like fish,
sheep, deer, and shrimp.
1.3.8 2026 March 22 - Six Concert Weekend
The last four days of my extended weekend
have been a concert whirlwind, seriously intense fun.
I've enjoyed famous people using their fame to promote
messages and causes and music that aren't political at all.
A few years ago
I saw and heard comedian Steve Martin
promote bluegrass music with his bango group,
one and two and three years ago
I saw and heard broadway-composer Neil Berg
celebrating the history of rock-and-roll,
a year ago
I saw and heard heard classical-violinist Itzhak Perlman
"In the Fiddler's House" promoting Jewish klezmer music
from 150 years ago,
a few weeks ago
I saw and heard actor Jeff Goldblum
play a mean jazz piano in his own jazz band,
and, tonight, I saw and heard
actor Morgan Freeman's Symphonic Blues Experience,
a bizarre and wonderful combination of American
Mississippi-Delta blues and a symphonic orchestra. There
were joy and spirit from this wonderful, foundational
American music that spawned rock and roll and much of jazz
along with a chance to learn from Freeman's brief lectures
introducing the music. (He couldn't be here in person, so
he made video recordings of his short speeches.)
2026 January
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
2025 November
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31
2026 February
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
1.2.4 2026 February 11 - My New Bathroom Clock
Ballet Arizona did a ballet version of "Alice in Wonderland."
Charles Dodgson wrote a story
"Alice's Adventures Under Ground" which became
Alice in Wonderland under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.
(Dover printed a book version of Dodgson's
handwritten version of "Alice's Adventures Under Ground"
complete with his illustrations.
That's the one I grew up with.)
There are two February fly-in events for local pilots
here in the Phoenix Valley of the Sun and, as is often the case,
they came on the same day, this year 2026 February 14,
St. Valentine's Day.
I did both of them with my young friend Tyler
complete with Tyler's and my
pictures
of all the festivities.
Neil and I few together 1987-1991.
He was and still is a flight instructor in
Monmouth County in New Jersey.
We celebrate our aviation experiences over the past four decades
and the people we knew and know.
Phil and I were classmates at Cheltenham High School back in 1974.
We didn't know each other then,
but we have become friends more recently.
He is an entrepreneur today with his own Dream Awake
house-painting business,
but he used to drive trucks for Hostess in the Philadelphia area.
That's kind of like a Fifth Column because there's a rivalry
between New York's Hostess and Philadelphia's Tastykake.
(Both are delicious,
but I happen to be a Philadelphia boy who
still prefers Tastykake to Hostess.)
When I mentioned Hostess and the rivalry
to Neil he asked if I would eat
a Hostess Twinkie dipped in chocolate, I said yes,
and, somehow, he produced such a treat that I ate heartily.
I'm not going to ask how he happened to have such a thing handy,
but I enjoyed eating it.
They make these chocolate tasties at Delicious Orchards where
I used to pick apples when I lived in New Jersey.
Len and I worked together in 1982 at
Bell Telephone Laboratories on the
Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS),
which is what we called cellular telephones back then.
Len started a few months before me and, funny thing,
both of our interviews there were disrupted by
serious blizzards in 1982, his in January and mine in April,
and we both ended up working at the satellite facility
in West Long Branch, New Jersey.
He reminisced about learning the hard, technical stuff
from some of the luminaries we worked with.
As I understand it his so-called "exploratory" work back then
became the foundation of WiFi technology today.
Sometime around 1885 Chaim Abramer left Lithuania for America
and became Hyman Rosenberg.
(I think somebody named Rosenberg paid for his trip.)
I am the sole
living
descendant with the name Rosenberg,
but a group of cousins met at my sister's place
for stories and general good times.
There were Norm, Lisette, Michael, Toby, Elizabeth, and me.
Before the donor rehearsal I had lunch with
Emily and PJ who told me about some of the exciting
things happening at the Philadephia Ballet.
Seeing the rehearsal made the show even more wonderful,
improved ever-so-much-more-so by the company of
my sister Elizabeth and nephew Gabe
for dinner and the ballet performance of "The Merry Widow."
Through the miracle of targeted advertising
I went to a magic show at the House of Magic
about a mile from my AirBnB in Glenside, Pennsylvania,
where John Shryock did a wonderful, light magic show with
card tricks, coins, rope, and balls in cups.
I think he does bigger shows with fire and fancier tricks
in Las Vegas.
This show was close and inimate and fun and wonderful.
Through the miracle of targeted advertising
I had one of those insider chuckles.
The joke's not funny when you have to explain it.
I remember a cute social-medium meme from a restaurant
with a sign "Restroom for eating customers only" with
an insert picture of Hannibel Lechter.
If you have to explain it, then the humor is lost.
For years going back to 1983 I have had two cats.
When an older cat left this mortal coil I got another, younger cat.
I had Evelyn, Brandon, Tabitha, Jack, Maria, and Max in pairs.
After five-year-cancer-surviver Maria died of Cushings
I went to the cat-rescue place on 2017 July 20
and couldn't bear to separate the two cute Russian-Blue kittens
Devin and Jane to bring the total to three.
Since 2009 April 7 my cats have been in the care
of Dr. Krista Gibson,
now at Kierland Animal Medical 1-480-948-1420,
and I have been delighted with
how she takes care of my menagerie and how she treats me.
Devin and Jane are litter-mate Russian Blue cats
who are really monochrome gray.
They're smaller cats, four kilograms, nine pounds.
Neither lives up to his or her namesake.
Devin is named after basketball player Devin Booker
but my Devin can't shoot or dribble at all
and Jane is named after poetess Jane Eyre
but my Jane can't write poetry at all and her prose isn't good.
With so many more cats their world shrank from my entire house
where Jane would sleep atop my turntable dust cover
to a few rooms upstairs, but they're doing okay.
I brush each of them one hundred strokes every morning
(from the old Breck-hair-conditioner commercials).
When big, orange-tabby, young Max died suddenly at eight years old,
after two kitten rescues,
I chose an older cat, Miss Pris, a dark, small, tortoise-shell cat,
the anti-Max.
She's three kilograms, seven pounds.
She has been timid around the other cats and
keeps to her space upstairs, but I've never seen
her bullied by the other five cats.
She gets her hundred-strokes brushing every morning.
My concert friend is highly allergic to cats,
his new lady friend had an old cat names Scruffles,
and, since 2023 December 6, I have an old cat named Scruffles.
With bathroom door closed while I'm doing my morning stuff
she eats about half a can of wet food and
I brush her one hundred strokes.
I think she's around three and a half kilograms, eight pounds.
My friends got kittens Potato 2020 November 26
and Pickle 2021 December 18.
Potato and I have had a game where we spar,
he attacks my arm, hand, and fingers.
As a kitten he didn't really get the part of keeping claws retracted
so I would have blood on my hands, but I enjoyed it anyway.
As he grew up he learned to keep claws retracted and
almost never broke the skin with his teeth.
More recently he licks me more than he mock-fights,
but we still have fun faux-fighting.
Potato is a large cat, eight kilograms, seventeen pounds.
Pickle used to be aloof, but now she is very friendly
and she has a cute habit of jumping on my back and even
the backs of my guests.
She's about three and a half kilograms, eight pounds,
a very athletic cat.
2026 March 19, Thursday, was Olga Kern
at the Mesa Arts Center playing the piano.
It was a wonderful program with terrific encores.
The first encore was by Claude Debussy, a usual encore,
but the second interested me more.
She said she went to a library and paged through dusty scores
to find a piece that looked interesting.
What was cool to me is she played a piece
she likely never heard before,
she just liked what the musical notes sounded like
when she played them.
2026 March 20, Friday, was Sue Foley, One Guitar Woman,
at the Chandler Center for the Arts,
a terrific concert where she played all kinds of guitar music
from classical through rock and roll with an emphasis on blues
from female guitar players.
One piece was fun because it was played by Marion Carter
and she had to listen to a fuzzy recording over and over
to devine all the notes.
It was a cool contract to Olga Kern playing a score she never heard
and Sue Foley playing a piece she heard but never saw on a score.
2026 March 21, Saturday afternoon, was
three singers performing songs by
American troubadors James Taylor, Carly Simon, and Carole King
with a terrific jazz band behind them.
Except for Carole-King song "Chains" that appeared
on the Beatles record "Please Please Me"
I knew every song they sang the whole afternoon.
It was a fun drive down Memory Lane.
2026 March 21, Saturday evening, was
Ballet Arizona "Cacti & Other Works" at the Orpheum Theater.
It says here on a web
page,
"These include
George Balanchine's seminal Apollo, the 1928
neoclassical masterpiece set to Stravinsky's radiant score; Hans van
Manen's Concertante, a refined yet tension-filled exploration of
human relationships performed as a tribute to the late choreographic
icon; and Cacti, a witty, exuberant satire that playfully dismantles
artistic pretension through physical humor, sharp theatricality, and
live on-stage music by the Opus 76 Quartet."
I enjoyed "Concertante" with its exciting dance and beautiful costumes,
"Apollo" was pretty, and I found "Cacti" frustrating
with its bright, flashy lighting games, perplexing narration,
and modern dance style quite far from ballet.
2026 March 22, Sunday afternoon was two hours
at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral
of medieval music with the Phoenix Chorale and Floriani,
a men's vocal ensemble dedicated to sacred music.
They asked for applause to be held to the end of the concert.
As tempting as it may have been to show appreciation in between
the audience was quiet and totally respectful the whole concert.
The music was amazing with singers of various parts
in various places in the long, reverberant, lovely hall.
Check out the next
section
for a lifetime moment I had at this concert.
2026 March 22, Sunday evening,
Downtown Chamber Series at the Monroe Street Abbey,
was also all-vocal
mid-Second-Millennium music, but quite different from
my afternoon experience.
The group was
Helios
and I look forward to hearing them again.
It was an outdoor setting
(the roof had blown off of the Monroe Street Abbey in Phoenix)
with a wonderful group of seven singers
and truly-minimal instrumentation,
just a small harp and a hand-sized drum for a couple of pieces.
There were several familiar faces in the audience.
