Donald's Blog
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This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison,
Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the
winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were
AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there. |
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In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever,
and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything
that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool
of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the
site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc.
to: dcmusicbox@earthlink.net.
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February 3, 2012There's news and there's the op-edIt kills me the way the Wall Street Journal stays pretty much on the straight and narrow in reporting the news, no matter what the clowns on the editorial page are up to. All the pundits and contributors are always harping about the 35% tax rate on corporations, but on the front page of today's Marketplace section, the news is that "Corporate tax receipts as a share of profits are at their lowest level for at least 40 years."
Total corporate federal taxes paid fell to 12.1% of profits earned from activities within the U.S. in fiscal 2011, which ended Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That's the lowest level since at least 1972.
And that's the average, with some companies paying more and some paying nothing. This time it's because of a "temporary" two-year tax break called "bonus depreciation". But anybody with any brains knows that corporations never pay anything like 35%. That of course leaves out pundits and contributors to the Wall Street Journal, as well as most politicians.
February 2, 2012Once there was a tree
You can hardly see the tree in this spooky photograph, and now it's gone. Just a block from my house, it was removed today, stump and all. Sad to see a big old tree go away.
February 2, 2012Franz Konwitschny (1901-1962)I had heard the name of this conductor from central Europe, but never heard any of his recordings as far as I know. Now thanks to the Internet I have his interpretation of the Schubert "Great" C Major symphony, number 7, 8, 9, 10, whatever it is this week, with the Czech Philharmonic, dubbed from a Urania LP, and it is exquisite, one of the finest, with all the rhythmic integrity and excitement that the piece needs, yet incredibly elegant. I shall have to keep my eyes open for more Konwhiskey (he was nicknamed that, according to Wikipedia, because he liked a glass or two).
February 2, 2012JobsMany years ago the president of one of the big car companies -- I think it was Ford -- was showing Walter Reuther, then president of the United Auto Workers, an automated assembly line. Watching the machines moving in and out on their ways, twirling around spotwelding and whatnot like gunslingers, he said, "How are you going to collect unions dues from the machines, Walter?"
Reuther replied, "How are you going to sell them cars?"
When I started working in a car factory over 50 years ago, I wore overalls, I punched a timeclock, I belonged to the UAW, but I soon had a mortgage and I drove one of the cars. I was joining the middle class.
Now the cute little baking dishes and toy trucks and whatnot you can buy at Wegman's and in fact just about everything you can see in the stores is made in China, while American businessmen and scientists could figure out ways to make television sets and everything else here in the USA if they were encouraged to do so. The reason Apple's iPhones are made in China is because in China you can hire a thousand engineers any time you want, while American families can't afford to send their kids to college, and foreign engineering students are kicked out of the USA as soon as they graduate.
Now someone called Shikha Dalmia, writing at The-Daily.com, was quoted in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, pointing out that although America has lost six million manufacturing jobs since a peak in the 1970s, total output today is 2.5 times its 1972 level in adjusted dollars. We produce $100 billion more than China with one-tenth the workers, Dalmia says. All this was to criticize remarks Obama made in his State of the Union speech, but misses the point completely.
I don't know what we are manufacturing, but it isn't what we think of as consumer goods. Dalmia ends by saying, "The choice for American companies, then, is not between American workers and Chinese workers, but between American machines and Chinese workers." And the ladder we used to climb to get into the middle class isn't there any more. So the Chinese get richer while we get poorer: is that okay with everybody?
In today's Wall Street Journal, an article called "The 'Financial Recession' Excuse" is co-written by Phil Gramm, a former senator from Texas, the kind of "conservative" windbag I love to read for amusement. The first paragraph says that "four years after the recession began, real gross domestic product per person is down $1,112, while 5.8 million fewer Americans are working than when the recession started." A few paragraphs further down it is reported that "our current recovery has benefitted from [...] a rapid return to profitability by corporate America." So that's all right then.
January 31, 2012Schubert's C Major symphony, renumbered againA few days ago the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra under Edo De Waart played Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in C Major, D. 944 "The Great". Yes, you read that right. The symphony once known as the 7th, now as the 9th for 50 years or so, is henceforth to be the 8th. This is from the program note by Roger Ruggeri, previously of Rochester and Dallas, who is now principal bassist in the MIlwaukee band, and also a professor at the University of Wisconsin:
Schubert's final symphony has weathered a great deal of confusion about its numbering. At a time when the B minor ("Unfinished") symphony of 1822 was unknown and the E minor sketch of 1821 was disregarded, the "Great" C major symphony of 1828 was known as Symphony No. 7. In the later 19th century, when the B minor symphony was found (after 1865), it became No. 8; the fragmentary E minor was designated as No. 7, and the present work became No. 9. The numbering of Schubert's symphonies was further complicated by those whose faith in the existence of the "Gastein" symphony of 1826 impelled them to include it chronologically as Symphony No. 9...this caused the "Great" C major to become No. 10. Thus in various editions, recordings and programs, Schubert's last symphony has been referred to as No. 7, 9, or 10.
Writing here about the C Major symphony a few weeks ago, I did not know that, whereas it had been discovered in about 1838, ten years after Schubert's death, the "Unfinished" in b minor had not been discovered until 1865. In any case, there were fragments of symphonies to be considered. It was George Grove who decided that the C Major should be number 9 in the late 19th century; then Brahms, as editor of a publishing project, called it number 7; Grove changed his mind early in the 20th century and called it number 10. Now, since 1978 already, according to Wikipedia, a German edition has flagged it number 8.
This will confuse another generation. I imagine a music lover wanting to hear the Unfinished, one of the most famous and popular pieces of all time with its "Lambie Pie" tune, downloading a recording of the C Major and being startled to hear an hour-long decidedly finished masterpiece.
January 31, 2012A good storyApparently, Newt Gingrich once asked Bob Dole why people took an immediate dislike to him.
"It saves time," said Dole.
If this story is not true, it ought to be.
January 31, 2012How we live nowWhile crime is falling in the rest of the country, it is getting worse in the Lehigh Valley: burglary, muggings and murder are increasing in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Just before Christmas four people were gunned down in three separate incidents, all in one week. The first homicide in Allentown in 2011 occurred in June; this year we have already had two in January.
We live several miles from the street violence, but there is burglary all over town. In our neighborhood there have been daylight burglaries in the last couple of years. Not long ago some moron was apprehended in a pickup truck driving up and down our alley trying to rip copper downspouts off our older homes. Recently I have been corresponding with a musician who lives in Allkentown and who says that there have been five burglaries on his block, and that he figures he hasn't been burgled because he had security installed. Well, that did it; now we have had security installed here: sensors on each door and a squawk box with buttons near the back door, where we come in and out.
So the other morning I came downstairs with the dog at five AM or so and opened the front door to bring in the papers, and heard the squawk box beeping, and didn't make it to the other end of the house in time to shut it off. So after a couple of ferocious bursts of static, a very pleasant but businesslike woman's voice demanded to know the secret word, which I gave her, as well as my name, and an explanation of what I had done, so the police were not called.
On the one hand, it is nice to know that the thing works the way it's supposed to. And now when I come downstairs in the morning I remember to disarm the system first thing, before giving Louie his morning snack, or turning the copmputer on, or bringing the papers in. And I also realize that I am constrained in my own home. I can't open any door any damned time I want, because of the druggies and wanna-be gangsters who come to poor old Allentown when the heat is on in New Jersey or New York.
I am saddened. I never thought I would feel nostalgic for Kenosha, Wisconsin circa 1950.
January 28, 2012Is Facebook a new bubble?There is an IPO in the offing, so the financial pages are asking, What is Facebook worth?
A workmate and I would like to be 'friends' on Facebook. Our names are not that common (me with my 'e') and our avatars are certainly unique, but we cannot find each other on Facebook. Maybe that's because there are 200 million 'friends'? (Or is that billion?)
Facebook to me is entertainment. If it disappeared tomorrow it would not matter much. I fail to see how anything can be worth huge sums of money all out of proportion to the benefits it brings or the jobs it creates. Is this what we mean by "money for old rope"? Maybe the key to the nation's economic problems could be found here somewhere.
January 27, 2012A lecture on populismGeorge A. Nation III is a professor of law and business at Lehigh University. Today in the Morning Call he published an article called "Obama's State of the union speech lacks true populist ideas". His idea is that "the clear majority of voters belong to the middle and lower economic classes and thus the result of a federal advisory referendum will clearly reflect the views of these classes." To deal with the deficit, for example,
the president should have selected the plan proposed by any one of several deficit-focused committees (for example, the Gang of Six, Simpson-Bowles, etc.) and presented the plan to the American people in the form of an advisory referendum. Approval by the electorate...would give politicians a clear incentive to implement the plan approved.
The political immaturity of this proposal is breathtaking. If a proposal were going to be presented to the electorate for its approval, it would take forever to formulate, and the result would be something with no backbone. But the author goes on:
The same approach should have been taken regarding health care reform. The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act should have been presented directly to the American voters for their approval.
A classic example of missing the point. The problem is that we can't get what we want. Take a survey of the American people and what they want is a national single-payer scheme like most other industrial democracies have, paid for out of taxes, and without any burden on employers. But in the USA no proposal is going to be put forward unless it is approved by big pharma and the insurance companies, so we end up with Obamacare. How likely is a referendum on a ragbag, and what good would it do?
If this is an example of the quality of the teaching at Lehigh, I am sorely disappointed.
January 26, 2012History and the Times Literary SupplementI found an old copy of the TLS on my desk, and looking at it I remember why I was keeping it in front of me. It's from December 9, but it is not too late to celebrate it.
Some politicians are lucky, and some are not. Obama hasn't been particularly lucky; Jimmy Carter had cursed luck. If he had sent one more helicopter into the desert and rescued the Iranian hostages in 1980, Ronald Reagan never would have been elected, and it would still be safe to be a chicken farmer. [Reagan deregulated everything, so that if you are a chicken farmer, you sell your chickens to the nearest big food processing company for the price they want to pay, or eat them all yourself. With business untrammeled, there are no free markets anymore in the USA.]
What a great paper like the TLS reminds us of is that there's nothing new under the sun. The lead review in the December 9 issue is by Ferdinand Mount, reviewing John Bew's Castlereagh: Enlightenment, war and tyranny, a biography of the great British statesman. He first stood for election as a progressive who championed parliamentary reform, writes Mount. "Thus he came into the public world as mint-green and liberal-minded as any young man in Ireland. Then, to borrow Whittaker Chambers's apology, history hit him like a freight train." The French revolution had stirred up Irishmen who wanted an end to British rule by any means necessary, including a great many Presbyterian ministers.
Still only twenty-seven years old, Castlereagh found himself asked to fill in temporarily as Chief Secretary at the worst possible time. Amid the heap of titled dullards in the administration, he almost automatically assumed the leading role in putting down the rebellion and dealing with its leaders. He is generally agreed to have done what he could to soften the revenge insisted on by the hardline loyalists, saying that he refused "to shut the door of mercy." But the épuration was terrible. The Revd James Porter was hanged outside his own church in full ecclesiastical dress. Lord Cornwallis, the incoming Lord Lieutenant, who had seen a thing or two in India since he surrendered at Yorktown, reported that he found the country "streaming with blood": "the only engines of government were the bayonet, the torch and the cat o'nine tails". Castlereagh was forever tarnished as an apostate from the cause of freedom and a murderer of his own people. He told the House of Commons years later, "With respect to Ireland, I know I shall never be forgiven". And he wasn't.
Castlereagh believed in tolerance and mercy, and never wavered in his pursuit of Catholic emancipation and the abolition of slavery. After Waterloo, he opposed severe reparations from France: "It is not our business to collect trophies but to try to bring the world back to peaceful habits". If only someone like that had been in charge after World War One. He also tried to see to it that Napoleon's people were kept employed, so as to keep them out of trouble, "again a principle that might have been imitated in more recent times, after the fall of Saddam Hussein", writes Mount.
Canning and Castlereagh took turns in the government. Canning was a silver-tongued devil, while Castlereagh, like George Bush, had trouble getting the words out straight. But Prime Minister Liverpool had them both as Foreign Secretaries, and said that "Lord Castlereagh used to do everything he could to smooth difficulties and make things easier for me. But if there is a pamphlet or a passage of a newspaper that Canning thinks he has reason to complain of, he comes to me about it". "Castlereagh was the grown-up", writes Mount. Yet he was hated, and is still hated today. Mount's wonderful piece goes on for thousands of wonderful words, and reminded me of how much I love this paper.
The next review, by Jonathan Barnes, is of John Sutherland's Lives Of The Novelists: A history of fiction in 294 lives, over 800 pages of biographical sketches, and full of vignettes: Henry Fielding's wedding to his wife's former maid, six months pregant as she lumbered up the aisle; Benjamin Disraeli proposing to the widow of his patron while the coroner was still clumping around in the house; James Joyce throwing stones at local dogs, because, he said, "They have no souls". The movie version of the Wizard of Oz that starred Judy Garland was the eighth film adaptation. Elmore Leonard is "the greatest American novelist never to be mentioned in the same breath as 'Nobel Prize'." Laurence Sterne's corpse was stolen, and recognized just before its dismemberment in a medical school. Sutherland writes about Anthony Powell, and Barnes says that the character that Sutherland resembles most is Nicholas Jenkins, in Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time: "the wise observer, he who is welcome anywhere, the quiet man who sees and understands".
If I could I would assign every young person in the English-speaking world to read the Times Literary Supplement every week. At first they wouldn't understand a word of it; after a year they would be on their way to knowing everything there is to know.
January 26, 2012Hello, what's this?
January 26, 2012Brussel sprouts! Yum yum!
January 25, 2012It's a dog's life
January 25, 2012In the storeMusic. This week in the store among the CDs we are being bribed to play are a compilation of Sinatra including some of his nicest tracks ("I've Got You Under My Skin", "Witchcraft") and another CD by somebody called Landau Eugene Murphy Jr doing the same sort of material and many of the same songs, with arrangements copied from the old Sinatra records. The comparison is not kind to Mr. Murphy, who was evidently successful on one of those TV amateur hours. I don't know who told him he could sing this kind of material.
Sinatra became a star in 1940 and remained one for over half a century on the strength, they said, of his phrasing; this young man, in every phrase, sounds clunky, over and over again, like a nerd singing karaoke.
Harry Connick can do it; Michael Bublé isn't bad. Eric Felten does it justice. I have my doubts about Michael Feinstein. Rod Stewart and Landau Eugene Murphy Jr probably have no idea how bad they are.
Fashion. I hadn't looked at the newsstand for a while; then last night there was a new large format mag called Bound by ink ("various lifestyles and cultures"), with photos of a young tattooed blonde woman on two different covers, and the following legend:
Already a gifted and talented painter, Kelly is now making a vivid and inspired imprint in the world of modeling. She is living out her dreams in a world filled with art, expression, passion, and empowerment.
On both covers she is wearing what appears to be bondage gear around her neck. Some empowerment. Hand me your leash, dear...
January 24, 2012The poor old Post OfficeAs I say, I've got a lot of time for the United States Post Office, but I'm giving up on its parcel service.
Before Christmas I sent a parcel to my great-grandson in Las Vegas, and it took so long to get there from Allentown that we were afraid it had been lost. But I thought, what the hell, they must be really busy that time of the year. Then I sent two indentical parcels, identically addressed, to my son in Fort Benning Georgia, on January 11. One of them was delivered on January 17, and the other was apparently returned to the Allentown post office on the 21st, described as "missent", then as "undeliverable as addressed". On the 23rd it was at an "origin sort facility" in Jersey City.
This morning I went to the main post office in Allentown, where they told me basically that nothing could be done, despite the fact that the parcel has a number on it and we know where it is. Looking it up again back at home I see it is in Atlanta and expected to be delivered today after all, but I don't need this additional burden on the leisure class to which I aspire; from now on its FedEx for me.
That spinning noise is my grandfather in his grave, who was a parcel postman for decades.
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