Saw a Cool Thing Today

Someone had taken a whole lotta those ubiquitous yellow-ribbon “support the troops” stickers, and with minimal snipping had turned them into stylized letters which they had affixed to the tailgate of their pickup truck to read:

n o  w a r

Wish I’d had a camera on me.

Disgruntled Chemist Writes Letters

I do not know the Disgruntled Chemist, but I like his blog and the pep and righteousness of his disgruntlement. Plus dry humor. And who doesn’t love chemistry?

He posted a letter he wrote to his senator regarding U.S. policy in the Middle East and he invites all and sundry to steal and add to it and send it to their own elected officials. I will send something like it to my two Senators K. and I pass on his invitation to anyone who stumbles upon this page.

I like the notion of passing this on. It’s a rootier grass roots than old MoveOn.org, which I found inspiring during the ‘04 election, and still admire, but which now seems a bit diffuse and unfocused.(Sadly, I hardly ever open mail from Eli Pariser anymore.)

I was once a teaching assistant for a professor who tried to preach to his torpid-looking students in the windowless classroom that they ought to DO something. That activism wasn’t that hard, nor did it demand much. Five minutes a week, he said, could make a big difference. I try to remember that, and even act on it, though usually end up expending half a year’s five minuteses in one big clump, toothless and all.

Va col canto… Thank You, Lorraine

The world is a poorer place this week than last, with the untimely death of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

There are some fine obituaries of the 52-year-old mezzo-soprano in The New York Times (registration required), Playbill, and The San Francisco Chronicle, whose music critic Joshua Kosman puts it so well:

“I always loved hearing Hunt Lieberson sing, but I hated writing about her performances. More than with any other artist, her splendor seemed to defy description or accurate measure.

Words failed; superlatives bounced off her performances with an empty clang. You’d have to have been John Keats to convey any sense of the beauty she brought into the world.”

I saw her numerous times in Boston and always her first note would stun you, take your breath away, leave you all goose-bumpy. A friend who had excellent seats (center, row 4 or something) at a recital in 1998 or 99 said that sitting directly in front of her, he could feel the air vibrating before his face.

Whenever mailings came from the BSO or the Bank of America Celebrity Series, I always looked eagerly to see when she was coming to town and arrange my budgeted music consumption around that. I suspect those mailings will now pile up unread for awhile.

The New Yorker of Jan. 5, 2004, ran a profile of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Through that, and the facts of her career, she has been called the anti-diva, an arch maverick and other appealing epithets. Maybe because of going about it differently or in spite of that, she gave the world something amazing and lasting in her too short life. I am forever grateful.

If you have not heard her, try her recording of Handel Arias for a general sampling of gorgeous stuff. I am particularly partial to an early recording (she was still plain Hunt and billed as a soprano) of Handel’s cantata Clori, Tirsi e Fileno with Jill Feldman and Drew Minter. Both recordings include the aria Va col canto. (Va col canto lusingando/ la sua bella il rusignuolo…. With his singing the nightingale/ charms his beloved.) It will make you remember being in love on a crystal September day with wind in your hair. Something soaring like that.

NPR offers a free listen to a tune it called the best classical song of 2004, Handel’s Ombra mai fu. Also the aria from J.S. Bach’s cantata Ich habe genug, along with an interview with the singer.