Matching Tracksuits

Month: July 2012

The Story of Three Tempi

Tuesday 31 July 2012

A little over two years ago, K and I invested in a digital piano with our tax return windfall. The Girl was taking an increasing interest in music, and guitar is not an ideal instrument for youthful, musical experimentation and discovery: you really have to coordinate both hands at once to get anything vaguely meaningful unless you’re in an open tuning with a slide. Having taken piano lessons for several years in my youth, I was also eager to rediscover the piano.

Since then, I’ve combed my old piano books for familiar and new. One of the pieces I’ve fallen in love with and begun working on is Mozart’s “Fantasia No. 3 in D minor”, K. 397. Naturally, I turned to YouTube and found three radically different interpretations.

You can tell a lot just by looking at the times of the video: Jorg Demus’s version clocks in at 4:12; Gould’s lasts an excruciating 8:22; Arrau’s, a reasonable 6:07. Just from looking at the times, you see that Demus is playing twice as fast as Gould, who in turn is taking a tempo thirty percent slower than what seems reasonable.

Jorg Demus plays it like he’s taken a whole bottle of speed. At this speed, the second part of the piece, which transposes into D major, sounds almost like a tape played at double-speed. This portion is marked allegretto, which Demus seems to think is synonymous with presto. It’s most painful at the 3:30 mark. In fact, as I listen, it sounds like it must be artificially accelerated.

Gould, on the other hand, plays it like he’s taken a bottle of valium. Slow, plodding, almost childishly mocking, with typical Gould liberties: erratic tempo, unnecessarily arpeggiated chords.

And of course, there’s that ever-annoying Gould humming in the background. I can put up with it on his second recording of Goldberg Variations, but perhaps that’s only out of habit.

Only Arrau plays it as it seems it should be played. The tempi aren’t exaggerated — allegretto sounds like Allegretto — and there’s enough of a lyrical touch to infuse an artist’s ever-important “interpretation” (often “mutilation”) without compromising the period and making it sound like a Romantic wannabe. Arrau has such a perfect touch that I’d have been partial to his interpretation from the start.

Yes, this is a filler post…

Downtown Rock Hill, Part 1

Monday 30 July 2012

Visits to Rock Hill are visits to family. Only rarely is anything else involved. But every now and then, we go beyond the normal visit schedule. This week, we went downtown to visit the children’s museum. After the visit and a quick lunch, we went for a quick walk.

Like many old, small downtown areas, Rock Hill’s small main street is both heartening and depressing.

On the heartening side, it’s good to see so many beautiful, historic buildings renovated and put to new use. A Baptist church is now a community center.

Yet the renaissance is only partial, as it often is. Across the street from the restored church is an abandoned post office that stands empty. What are the possibilities? Certainly endless, but the economy places its own limitations, I suppose.

Just down the street, more evidence of a halting recovering for the downtown area.

Yet perhaps things are not as they seem. A quick search reveals that Penny Young still runs a studio by the name Photographic Designs. Perhaps she outgrew the space?

Still, one has to admire the effort and the little touches, like the music in the trees, initially confusing as one wanders about,

and the little cafes with outside tables that would be more inviting if it weren’t for the heat of a South Carolina summer.

As we walked, though, we weren’t as interested in what is happening in 2012; we were more interested in what was happening in the early 1950’s when Papa was a kid.

“Here’s where we had our high school Bucket of Lard sermon,” he explained, with typical sarcasm, pointing to a church just meters away from the renovated church/community center. Who knew there were so many churches in downtown Rock Hill?

Another church, just down the street, was the sight of a run-in with the police. “We were roaring down the street on our skates — and these were those skates you strapped onto the bottom of your shoes and tighten with the key you kept hung round your neck — and the officer comes running out to us, furious. ‘Don’t you boys know there’s a funeral going on in there?'” One can only imagine the noise several boys on metal-wheeled skates.

Still, it wasn’t all amusing stories. Some were touching.

At the coveted location of the prestigious Dee & Lee Unique Hair Design, there was once a jewelry store. The large display windows are now virtually empty, though one can imagine them filled with bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and rings of gold and silver, all glittering enticingly.

The significance is likely obvious: “This is where I bought Nana’s engagement ring,” he explained as we passed by. It was a photo op one couldn’t pass up: a happy couple standing in front of a hair salon — a picture that contains a secret history.

Children’s Museum

Sunday 29 July 2012

Our trips to Rock Hill are almost always the same: we go to visit family. It’s a rhythm, as predictable as the beat of a Sousa march. That’s not meant to be a complaint: there’s comfort in ritual.

Yet sometimes, it’s good to change the beat a little. K, with her adventuring spirit, is always a catalyst for those changes.

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“Did you know there’s a children’s museum in Rock Hill?” she asked earlier this week. “Maybe we could go on Sunday, after we meet with family.” I did not know, but after a lazy morning, we head out for Main Street in downtown Rock Hill.

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The museum is small — minuscule, in fact, compared to the Children’s Museum of the Upstate here in Greenville, which is three stories of adventure. Yet L doesn’t complain. She takes off exploring immediately.

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Papa doesn’t complain either. He gets the Boy, who at eleven weeks looks and feels (he weighs over sixteen pounds already and is already wearing clothes for babies six to nine months old) much older than he is.

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The Girl, though, has no time to sit for pictures with Papa, or anyone else for that matter. There is a pulley systems to explore.

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And a scale with a barrel of bean bags beside it.

“Which do you think weighs more? A round one or a square one?” I ask. We perform an impromptu experiment to determine that square ones weigh a touch more.

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But what happens if we put them all in? Every last bean bag?

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And what happens if we put everything in sight into the sale?

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Soon, she’s creating magnet art with K, exploring the dress up room (located inside a vault — the building used to house a bank), and returning to her favorite stations.

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In the end, she finds perfection: a small kitchen with two buckets of bean bags. She spreads them all over the floor, then takes the broom and sweeps them into piles before collecting them in small wooden buckets she later dumps into the barrels.

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“Daddy, I’m Cinderella,” she begins, and I know the rest: “And you’re the evil step-mother.” I tell her how awfully she’s cleaning, then kiss her and remind her, “We’re just playing, remember? I don’t really think you’re doing an awful job.”

“Oh, I know.”

Meet the Boy

Saturday 28 July 2012

“Everyone wants to meet the Boy,” Nana explained a few weeks ago, and so we take a trip to Rock Hill to see the aunts, uncles, and cousins.

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A trip to Rock Hill means a trip to one of the best hosts we know — my aunt. She’ll suggest a get together, say she wants to cook as little as possible, then bring out half a dozen different dishes. We arrive early to help out a bit. I cut some squash; K makes herself busy with melons; and soon, we have too many cooks in the kitchen.

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When the rest of the family arrives and adds their food, we we end up with a bar covered with salads alone. “If anyone leaves hungry,” Nana often laughs, “It’s his own fault.”

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Yet tasty as it is, the food is not the reason for the visit. Family, family, family — and this is only the smallest portion of the smallest percent of our huge family. Had all the cousins and their children come, we would have easily had forty or fifty people in the house.

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Yet enough cousins came to make a party for the kids as well.

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I watch the kids — who can even count them all? — playing and screaming, and I think, “This must be what it’s like to be the Brady Bunch.”

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Not a bad thought, indeed.

This was written on the 28th but not uploaded due to a lack of internet access. Plus, I have to keep my once-a-day record up for July, hence the cheating back-dating.

From Dawn to Dusk

Friday 27 July 2012

Breakfast

Breakfast should have been a hint of the day to come. While at Aldi yesterday, we found a real deal on small fillets, so we had steak (one fillet shared between the two of us) and eggs for breakfast.

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The Girl entertained the Boy while we finished up breakfast, and I joked, “This is the kind of breakfast that sticks with you until dinner.”

Little did we know how busy we would be

  1. Applying another coat of Thompson’s on the deck (it didn’t make sense to leave a touch in one can) while K took care of the kids and did laundry;
  2. Mowing in 95 degree pure sun as K took care of the kids and cooked barszcz;
  3. Cleaning the house while K took care of the kids and did more laundry (The Boy goes through so much laundry that it’s a miracle there’s still water left in the county);
  4. Taking the Girl for a promised swim as K took care of the Boy;

It looks like such a short, innocuous list, but between steps three and four, K and I fell asleep while the Girl watched an episode of Martha Speaks and the Boy took a post-meal snooze.

And nature provided the first test of four mornings’ of waterproofing

Resistance

You’d think

Thursday 26 July 2012

that after spending the last three mornings/early afternoons spreading a liberal coat of water sealant on our deck that I could get by with a post-wash, pre-treatment picture from 2008, when I last did such a thorough job.

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After all, I’m just trying to post this thing so I can get back to my cigar and YouTube snooker…

Portraits

Wednesday 25 July 2012

K heads upstairs with the Boy and the camera. “We haven’t done any portraits in a while,” she says, “and the light is good in the bedroom.

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With a two-month-old, frequent portraits reveal the cumulative daily changes that seem to slip by almost unnoticed.

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Like toenails that need trimming.

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Princess Camp

Tuesday 24 July 2012

Princess ballet camp every Tuesday. Can you imagine anything any better?

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The final session today ended with a performance, which included a bit of insight into how the little ballerinas get ready — the stretching, the prep.

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Cleaning

Monday 23 July 2012

It’s a time of recycling. All the infant toys that have sat in storage for literally years are now out, dumped in the bathroom sink for a good scrubbing before handing them off to the Boy.

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The Girl’s constant refrain — “Can I help?” — receives an enthusiastic “Yes.”

The New

Sunday 22 July 2012

With temperatures what they are, the new will have to wait. Exploring this or that place with a sweaty infant does not in the least sound entertaining. For anyone.

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So a third afternoon out of four at the pool seems the only logical response.

Point of View

Saturday 21 July 2012

The Boy likes his bassinet. He giggles to his bears, squeals when they start swinging, and fusses when they calm down. His cow can hold undivided attention for whole, long stretches. The newest addition — the plastic chain — is of little interest now, but perhaps that will change when his still-shaky emerging hand-eye coordination improves. It does beg to be grasped at.

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Sometimes, something will catch his eye — something outside the bassinet — and he’ll look, seemingly unblinkingly, for several minutes. Other times, he’ll simply lie quietly, looking up at his bears.

Still, it must be something like a prison. Walls on the sides, a covering, and a restricted coordinated movement hamper his ability to look at what he wishes, to explore, to see anything more than bears and faces.

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Sources of Joy

Friday 20 July 2012

Having someone play with you and your dolls is a great source of joy. “Pretend she’s…” begins most every sentence — and this time, the playmate will actually play along with the request.

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Being surrounded by dogs thrilled to be with you and eager to show you is an endless source of joy. It lasts as long as the dogs’ energy, hence it is truly seems infinite.

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Having a good stretch after filling your belly is joy that at its very center is complete contentment.

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For good friends, it’s something a simple as sharing food — a freshly-picked cherry tomato or a plate of pierogi.

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Untameable tomato plants that tower above you are a promise of present and future joy.

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And the greatest source of joy is seeing all those you love happy.

Perfect Days

Thursday 19 July 2012

Some days are simply perfect.

Some days are filled with just enough of the adventure of the new and the comfort of the known to keep your eyes open but your spirit relaxed.

Such days are filled with napping and affection.

Such days have just enough hint of gray

that we appreciate the smiles that follow.

Some days are filled with friends and family, smiles and conversation, and the comfort of knowing that you belong just where you are.

These days have a hint of belle epoque and impressionism.

And they smell like dogs.

Schedules

Wednesday 18 July 2012

Weeding

It’s easy to weed when you have a semi-set schedule, when there’s not a little squirmy body waiting for regular feeding, when evenings seem to drift by. But we have a wonderful squirmy baby, and evenings don’t drift by, and we have no schedule of our own. As such, weeding happens at six in the morning…

That that that that caused all the trouble could be a mistake…

Tuesday 17 July 2012

If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.

Thanks to an old friend, I revisited the now-famous, allegedly anti-business Obama quote that’s getting conservatives’ dander up across the country. My thinking, though, led me in a slightly different direction than my friend might have hoped. Being a supporter of Obama, I would suspect that he might hope my conclusions might be a little more left-leaning.

Anyone notice what I did there? Hopefully someone asked the question, “Wait — who is the supporter of Obama? You or your friend?” I purposely concluded that paragraph with a sentence using an English teacher’s old nemesis: the dangling participle. Technically, that “being a support of Obama” modifies the nearest noun or pronoun, in this case, “I.” Yet I don’t think many people doubt that I certainly don’t support Obama, though I did vote for him in 2008. Then again, maybe not everyone knows that.

Oh, see, I did it again. This time, I used one of English teachers’ other enemies: the unclear pronoun antecedent. Just what was I referring to when I said “Then again, maybe not everyone knows that?” Just what is “that” taking the place of? There are two possibilities:

  • “Yet I don’t think many people doubt that I certainly don’t support Obama”
  • “though I did vote for him in 2008”?

In this case, it could be either of the two. We just don’t know what I might have been referring to when I said some people don’t know “that.”

Looking back at what Obama said, it’s clear that he’s not being the blatantly anti-business ideologue everyone on the right is accusing him of being.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

What is he referring to when he says, “you didn’t build that“? Technically, as with my first example, it’s modifying the nearest possible agent, in this case, the subordinate clause, “If you’ve got a business.” But look earlier: “Someone invested in roads and bridges.” Could it be that that is the “that” that he’s referring to?

See how confusing “that” can be? It serves so many roles in our language. Among others:

  • Demonstrative pronoun: “That is stupid.”
  • Demonstrative adjective: “That idea is stupid.”
  • Relative pronoun: “On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.” (Woody Allen)

Is it any wonder that that “that” can get just a bit confusing? In other languages, there is differentiation, different words entirely, but not in English.

Obama made a grammatical error. It happens all the time, to all of us.

Granted, Obama should not have even said “that” if he were referring to “roads and bridges.” He should have said “those,” which would have eliminated the confusion. And this leads to a likely conservative rebuttal: “Alright, so he made a grammar boo-boo. It’s a slip, though, that is nothing more than a manifestation of his anti-business ideology.” Possibly, but I don’t see that we can make that claim here. It was an error: in spoken English, even the best of us make mistakes like dangling participles and unclear pronoun antecedents.

Still, it is worrying that so many are making such a big deal out of this. It makes the right look relatively foolish, especially when (and here’s where my liberal friend will likely begin disagreeing with me) what he said was a thousand times worse than merely a clumsy anti-business remark. Look at the whole context of that “that,” with some of my emphasis added:

We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts. We can make some more cuts in programs that don’t work, and make government work more efficiently…We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more …

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me, because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for president — because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.

Obama is not simply suggesting that businesses succeed because of others’ work; he’s suggesting that because of that, those who succeed owe something to those who didn’t. He’s suggesting that the only fair thing is to ask those who are successful to pay more than those who are not successful. After all, they got successful off of our hard work as well as theirs. They rode our backs to success. Their success depends on us.

Isn’t that starting to sound familiar? Say, Moscow, circa 1915? No, I’m not suggesting that this is an attempt to recreate a communist revolution in America. I’m not even convinced one can say Obama is a socialist. I do see myself as a right-leaning moderate, after all.

Still, it strikes me as yet another attempt to frame this whole issue in terms of class struggle. “Dang it, those rich folks used our roads to run their dump trucks on to build their fortune.”

So what do we do? We “ask the wealthy to pay a little bit more.”

Yet this is missing the obvious point: the rich did help pay for those roads, and if certain figures I’ve heard bandied about are to be believed, they in fact paid a great deal for those roads. Not only that, but they often are paying for services they aren’t getting: if they chose to spend money to send their children to private schools, they’re paying taxes for public education and tuition for private education. That’s a choice they have and are free to make, but taking that into consideration, it seems a little odd to complain about how they’re not paying their fair share.

So it seems conservatives are really missing the significance of this speech. Obama made a grammar goof that they’re jumping all over while ignoring the real issues in his ideology.

They’re hearing what they want to hear.

Of course, being human, liberals are also guilty of that charge, but that’s for a later post.

Weather

Monday 16 July 2012

Why talk about the weather unless you’re in an uncomfortable situation? Perhaps when the weather is exceptional? Perhaps a week with almost daily rain in the heat of a South Carolina July?

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Still, it’s not so much the rain, or even the storm, that’s worthy of comment: it’s the still-green grass in the front yard midway through July that’s striking.

Friends and Fiends

Sunday 15 July 2012

There’s only one letter difference between them, but perhaps that’s on purpose. At five, best friends can turn into worst enemies and back to bosom buddies again in the space of seconds.

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Yet things can be complicated further, for little brothers cause trouble, and L’s best friend has a little brother.

Little brothers get frustrated with big brothers and their friends do things that purposely irritate or exclude them. They are likely to destroy totally big brother’s blanket tent if big brother doesn’t allow him to join in the fun. Little brothers are for teaching patience and sharing.

So get ready, L.

Thematic

Saturday 14 July 2012

Today the theme was simple and prophetic. Again and again, the Girl performed the simple act that we have been raising her to do, the act we’ve been fearing for her to begin, the act we’re always excited to watch.

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Forward momentum with a temporary moment of uncertainty.

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Knowing and not knowing what the next second holds.

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Having a certain faith that whatever happens next, it will be for the best.

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Going for it.

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Taking risks that might ultimately sink her.

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Today, the Girl jumped, in more senses than one.

Recital 2012

Friday 13 July 2012

The Boy’s first outing back in late May was to the Girl’s ballet recital.

Papa’s Boy

Thursday 12 July 2012

When Papa is around and the topic is politics (or religion or history or sports or any number of things), it can be hard to get a word in. When Papa is around with the Boy, it’s easy to get a word in, but it’s hard to pry the Boy out of Papa’s arms.

From the beginning of any visit, Nana just waits patiently, often pretending to be content to look on as Papa burps, rocks, cuddles, and coos with the Boy. When Nana finally gets to hold him, Papa is eager to “help” by taking him back. Let Nana sit just so and pinch a nerve or find her leg slightly uncomfortable and make any kind of sound that even vaguely hints at discomfort, and Papa is ready.

“You okay? You want me to take him?”

He’s like a kid with a new toy. An expensive new toy. That cries. And passes gas. And gets fussy for no apparent reason. And then coos to sooth everyone’s nerves.

“If I’d known being a grandfather was so much fun…” he often begins the now-familiar joke.