Hassagot השגות

The Bad Air has Come to Chicago

I cannot recall a day quite like this.  The air smells like you are sitting next to an active fire-pit.   Visibility is very poor.  The sky is grey without clouds.  The sun is mostly concealed by smoke.  

The temperature is 71 degrees Fahrenheit in mid-afternoon on a late June day that my weather app describes as being "Mostly Sunny."  The same app gives an  Air Quality Index of 187.  Airnow.gov shows a current air quality of "Very Unhealthy".  The fire and smoke map of fire.airnow.gov shows a red and purple blotch over the Great Lakes.  IQAir.com rates Chicago as having the worst air quality and pollution ranking in the world, ahead of Detroit, Lahore, and Karachi.

Who cares about numbers, apps, and data.  The air bites the lungs, stings the eyes, afflicts the throat, clouds the mind.  Smoke has traveled from Canadian forest fires to our city, as it has to many others.

Focus

I tried to focus on what was left of the tooth.  I also took a photo of the chunk that came out.  That's the last time I'm ever eating Milk Duds.  My dentist responded to my text quickly.  A few days later, I was sitting in her dentist's chair, having an impression taken for a crown.  I had to miss an IEP meeting.  

I asked my dentist if she had been affected by the recent mass shooting in her town.  She and her husband were about to walk the few blocks when they heard loud bangs.  At first, it sounded like a vehicle backfiring.  Then came a PSA from the city.   Right away, they began texting family and friends, to assure and to be reassured.

The shooter had a history of mental illness.  With the apparent help of a member of his family, he was able to purchase the gun legally.   Questions abounded:  Had his mental problems been addressed?  Why did a relative give him permission to purchase a gun?  What does this tragedy say about our area and our country?

Granted, gun violence is on the list of current concerns.  So are global warming and Russia's war in Ukraine.  If it isn't the second coming of fascism, it's the proverbial frog in the water.  Except, it isn't completely proverbial.  Sometimes we actually are in the water, with rising sea levels, massive snow falls, and monsoons.  

Meanwhile, the planet continues to spin on its axis and orbit the sun, slowly losing momentum as it flies.   The sun is gradually burning itself dark.  At some point, we'll be swallowed by the nearest available black hole.  I guess that's a very long time off.  Way beyond the one hundred and twenty, or sixty, or ninety years we've been allotted.

I prefer not to think about annihilation in a black hole, tanks in the Donbas, chunks of arctic ice breaking off,  the second amendment, or the perpetrator and victims of a pointless shooting.  I prefer not to think about my tooth and will stop thinking about it once the permanent crown is glued in place.  I lean over the railing of our back stair and look at the garden.   If I were Darwin, the colors and aromas would appear all in a Malthusian shambles: a vista of death.  I focus on the glorious hibiscus, the milk weed finally flowering, and a small blue butterfly taking in the scene before it flies off to share its findings with its kind.

 

 

Three Sketches

I.

This writing is true.  Here the author records what he knows to be so.  He has not added to or subtracted from a straightforward account of events as they transpired.   For example, the day when the baby was born was indeed unusually hot for early May.  Two weeks earlier, an unusual chill had brought some lake-effect flurries to the neighborhood.  Now, the day started warm and close.  The sky was clear of clouds and metallic with humidity.  The heat affected the neighborhood, but was not noticed by the new mother, whose pain and contractions distracted her from the delivery room's cool or indeed from anything else.  The baby weighed eight pounds twelve ounces.  Or it might have been ten ounces.  The new mom was relieved to be on the other side of labor.  The baby reminded her of her father.  The obstetrician confirmed a high Apgar score.  

II.

You don't know what you're talking about.  Everything you have written in "I." is a fabrication.  There was never such a mom, nor such a day, nor was any such baby born either at eight pounds twelve ounces or eight pounds ten ounces.  The mother, had she existed, would not have been relieved following the birth.  She surely would have had an intimation of what the future would bring such a child.  After investing so much in his growth and education for so many years, a fluke would bring his life to an end.  She would grieve beyond the month of mourning, beyond a year.  Why would God take him back so young?  Would that he never have been born.  Better not to dwell on his birth.  You should not write such things.  

III. 

I see a boy of ten or eleven riding down the sidewalk on his Segway.  He squeezes his knees, changes the angle of his feet, or leans backward to control it.  He is not wearing a helmet.  At the end of the block, he crosses the street and then rides westward.  I think, he could get killed.   I recall seeing a boy riding a similar device a few years ago.  He rode through an intersection without stopping or looking for cars.  A lawn sign at the intersection encouraged drivers to show more care.  A few weeks earlier, a boy had been riding his bike on an early summer evening.  I didn't see it happen but I heard about the tragic accident.   The family had given him a drum set just a day or two earlier.

Music I enjoyed in ... 2021

A silver lining of Covid Time in my life:  The opportunity to explore some Baroque music.

Domenico Scarlatti, The Complete Keyboard Works (555 Sonatas, almost all for solo harpsichord).   Performed by the late great Scott Ross.  I have also enjoyed recordings by Christoph Ullrich, Vladimir Horowitz, Yevgeny Sudbin, Ivo Pogolerich, Avi Avital (on mandolin), Alexandre Tharaud, Marcdelle Meyer, Lucas Debargue, Martha Argerich, Pierre Hantaï, Jean Rondeau, and - yes - Chick Corea.  I spent many hours listening and listening again.  I selected my favorite individual sonatas as well as playlists of favorite sonatas as they appear in the groups of 2 or occasionally 3 related sonatas (see Ralph Kirkpatrick's book on Scarlatti).

J. S. Bach, The Art of Fugue; Musical Offering; Orchestral Suites; Goldberg Variations; Brandenburg Concertos

Henry Purcell, Suites for Harpsichord. Yes--harpsichord, more harpsichord, and yet more harpsichord

Handel, Complete Harpsichord Music

Girolamo Frescobaldi, Keyboard Works (a selection recorded by Hank Knox in 2006)

I have enjoyed Jean Rondeau's collection of Italian and English harpsichord works, Melancholy Grace  (issued this year) - appropriate for a year of plague.  

A remarkable discovery:  the music of Thomas Adès (United Kingdom, b. 1971). I am particularly interested in his In Seven Days for piano and orchestra (2008).  I have also heard his Arcadiana for string quartet (1993-4).