SPD in the dust

There was a lot of talk from Germany’s Social Democrats about “don’t support the capitalists who brought you this economic crisis.”

So of course people listened: they didn’t support those capitalists, they supported other capitalists. Merkel’s CDU lost 2 points, but the Free Democrats, their new coalition parters got 15%. They’re probably the least objectionable of the German parties.

Fress Scheiß und sterb, Steinmeier!

Who are Akron Voices for Animals?

The Liz Carlisle bunny-drowning case wends its way through the courts of state and of public opinion. She was excused from a pre-trial hearing because of death threats against her, and her lawyer said that “she has been relocated.” That sounds like cruelty to an animal to me, but as Napoleon the Pig said, “Some animals are more equal than others.”

One of the commenters made an interesting observation: there seems to be no sign of the group Akron Voices for Animals except in connection with this case. I looked too, and aside from Elinor/Eleanor (which is it, R-C? Apparently Elinor, per the Web) Israel’s signature line, there’s no evidence that such a group exists. There’s no website, no announcement of meetings…it’s just something she made up to make it sound like she had a movement behind her. That tradition in politics goes back at least to the 70s, so maybe I shouldn’t be hard on her. I’ve seen enough of it in the neo-pagan community. But certainly the Record-Courier should have followed up with some questions about AVA.

Bur since they didn’t, let’s look at Fair Elinor, shall we?
8/7 Letter to the editor re proposals to regulate farming in Ohio
7/9 looking for shelter for rescued cats, uses AVA byline. More about her participation here.

That’s about it. Not a big record of activism, before this case.
There’s an Elinor R. and an Elinor N. in Akron, both age 57.
She kept her nose pretty clean in Summit County. There’s a personal injury civil case from 1990 by Elinor R. and Edward J, of 205 Shawnee Path, Akron, against Cassandra R. Murray, which was dismissed without prejudice. Nothing in Portage either. She apparently has nothing to do with KSU or the University of Akron.

Oh my, here’s some paydirt, a kind of liberal Facebook:

If I were Mayor, I’d make the world a better place by: Free all animals by cl;osing down the factory farms, fur farms and any other places that abuse and kill animals. If I were Queen of the World everyone would be vegan!

And a big list of organizations she’s part of as of 1/8/09…not including AVA. Yes, she’s married, with grandkids. Funny, she didn’t look that old in the picture. She probably say it was the vegan diet; I’d say it was Lady Clairol and a distant shot.

Crashed

I’m whipped and wiped. I was a fool for trying to do brass and reeds both.

Breakfast with (inter alia) Barbara Weiss, who it turns out is in Asheville NC and has a real job (Physical therapy for old ladies I think), but still does music when it comes to her. she seems happy, so I’m cool with that

Morning dulcian class was great, but tough…just Laura and I, and Dr. Gerald Hoekstra sitting in to listen and take notes. Bob was pretty unimpressed with my current reeds, but needs to adjust the ones he made me to the instrument. And when I’m trying to play well with others and implement a whole ton of new directives, my playing goes right to hell.

Sackbut class was more a playing session…we got drafted to play at the observatory visit tomorrow night, while people are waiting for their turn at the telescope. The reed playing didn’t mess my brass chops up much, but then we were mostly doing Susato dances transposed down, and it was harder on my arms than my face. Then off to a lecture on Galileo, and back to my room for lunch.

Loud band was the killer: it was Laura and I vs. 5 sackbuts, and a lot of the charts were ATTB.  And since the sackbuts were in the majority, it was the shawms that had to transpose (or rather, to read G fingerings instead of F fingerings). So I was playing in the upper register, in a strange fingering system, having to play Bb (the worst note on a G shawm). It was a case of epic FAIL. Joan had a Hanchet F, which made transposition easier but not playing in general…I found it heavy, an uncomfortable finger stretch, and unresponsive, besides not sounding much like a shawm. But it may be the best solution. I hate to suck, but I’ll be lucky to find any practice time before tomorrow’s rehearsal.

Mass wasn’t bad once my lips decompressed from the shawm, but I left exhausted, went out for another overpriced and undervalued meal, wandered too far, and got back too late to practice before the concert: Landini by the Newberry Consort. I’ll have to ask David Douglas how he gets international violin virtuosi to stoop to playing rebec for him. I knew that Rachel Barton Pine played Baroque, but never knew she had any interest in medieval. Her star moment was trading phrases in “La manfredina” with David, in an accelerating tempo. David held his own well, but I think it was obvious who was used to offering fistfuls of fast notes.

Off to bed…

“Take me home, I hate Granada…”

The bed was comfortable, and room layout nicely done. But it’s a dorm. There’s no light near the bed, fridge sounds like a herd of elephants when it turns on, light pours through the bottom of the door. A thunderstorm came through, and it sounded like oceans of water were pouring off the building (doubtless exactly what was happening). And I miss my wife. I woke up just before 5, which is not unusual for me. But that’s 4 Central. And there’s NO COFFEE! There’s complimentary coffee in another building, and there will be for breakfast, but that’s not until 8:30, body time.

Well, I guess I’ll clean me and the room, and plan out the day.

“Wait a minute…it’s stopped raining.
Guys are shawming, guys are wailing,
Playing sackbut…gee, that’s bettuh,
Muddah, faddah, kindly disregard this lettuh.”

UPDATE: It turned out that the free coffee was on the 1st floor of this building, which is a much more doable proposition. And now that brekkie is in Gordon Commons (and quite good, I might add), there is “real” milk (i.e., homogenized milk with the minimum butterfat content to be called “whole milk”). I needed to correct the misinformation above, so people wouldn’t think that U-W isn’t taking care of us…they are. Downstairs coffee is nondescript (but “free trade”) machine coffee, Gordon Hall is very potent Starbucks.

Walgreens has a little taste

They’re forbidding store managers to stock the Chia Obama.

Carjack-kidnap, Amish-style

Well, not quite. It was the horse that made off with the kid in the buggy (horses don’t have parking brakes.) It was an automobile that blocked the horse so the Amish woman could get her kid back.

Yes, I’ve been quiet

There’s been a lot happening at work; classes begin Monday, so I am scheduling students, putting up reserves, weeding, catching up on shelving. Monday and Tuesday I was busy with rehearsal and Epiphany mass. The motets (Lasso and Clements non Papa) and chant went great; the Ordinary (Cardoso)  notsomuch. The Net at home was crawling over the holidays. SuddenLink, our cable company, which is the only local company that anyone even alleges to do high-speed Internet, in fact doesn’t; they say there’s not enough bandwidth, which kind of begs the question: why isn’t there?

But mostly I’m bloated and depressed. Yesterday’s post-matter was too horrid for words. Put that with the proposed $175 cow tax and likely gun control hijinks, and we’ll be lucky to have an economy left, even before the Obammers slam nails in its coffin. I really think that the situation is beyond anyone’s help, so why do help that will lead to more hurt?

Cross river, traverse woods

I’m outta here, tomorrow and Friday.

Pray for the terror victims in Mumbai.

“President Obama won’t take your guns”

Short version of this piece: “It doesn’t matter what becomes illegal, because the market will always find a way around it.”

Sure, we can all get dope, at hideously high prices. And we’ll probably even still be able to get black-market ammo for our banned guns, at $10 per .22 round. And we’ll practice our marksmanship at the same ranges that the New York City illegal gunowners do…wherever those are. Your old aunt, who really NEEDS a gun, will turn hers in. But there will still be guns…in criminal hands, by definition.

So what’s the point of comforting us by saying “they can’t do it”? They certainly can do it, bit by bit. They’re doing it now. Why excuse for one moment the merest move towards tyranny, on the grounds that the movers don’t do it well enough? They can get better at it, you know.

From roballen.com. via rightwingnation.

More computer pain

Sunday morning I downloaded Mac and Windows drivers for my MOTU FastLane MIDI interface. I went to install the Mac one on the new Mac, which was asleep. And wouldn’t wake up. So I rebooted. After an interminable time, we got to a blue desktop. I ran the hardware check…all OK. I tried to reinstall the system hardware, but got some message about base software being unreadable. I tried to boot from the install disk, and and it threw me into a long slow loop: choose boot from disc, restart, choose boot from disk, restart, repeat as needed. So back in the box it went, and another stop was added to the Cleveland trip.

I was treated quite well at the Legacy Village Apple Store. I assumed that I’d need an appointment at the Genius Bar (which I did not have…it’s a silly system; no I don’t want to look over your shoulder, I want to leave it here and have you fix it). The tech heard my story, asked questions, attempted to boot the machine, saw it wouldn’t boot. At that point, he gave me 2 options: I could make an appointment with the Genius Bar guy, if I had any data on there I wanted to save, or I could walk out with a new unit.  It was nice having the option, but in fact I had no data on there that wasn’t copied on from a program disk or a backup, so the new machine was really the best option. They switched the registration on my extended warranty and I was good to go. Alas for my vow, the new Imacs are assembled in China. Maybe that’s why I had trouble; the last one was a Melamine Milk Mac. But my laptop STILL doesn’t recognize my synth.

Then off to Micro Center to check on the old machine. It turns out they didn’t have a Mac in the shop to FireWire to mine, to read the disk as an external hard drive, but they’re working on it. The Mac salesman was busy with a customer, but I found the USB modem I needed. I expected a box like my old modems, with a wall wart. But this is just a little thing that looks like an adaptor and is powered from the USB port. It cost me $50.

Then off to Udupi Cafe for the lunch buffet (price up, quality down, alas), the to the Chamber Syphony concert (we thought it was at 3 and we were late, but it was at 3:30 and we were perfectly on time.) Back home and futzing with the new box. I am now successfully online and hooked to the keyboard, though I hit snags registering that copy of Finale (Maybe I’m on too many machines). The long return begins…