Heavenly!

Another piece I used to listen to when I was small: an early (Opus 11!) Beethoven trio for piano, cello, and clarinet. It’s not a very serious piece: the last movement in particular, a theme and variations based on a popular song, has many moments that are exaggerated or over-dramatic. And this version is particularly fun because the musicians go along with that, and at times are almost giggling on-stage. The pianist in particular does some Chico-Marx-like flourishes, eliciting appreciative laughter from the audience. (I’ve heard this piece many times but never seen it before, so I didn’t appreciate how much of the piano part is played with one hand, leaving him free to gesture with the other.)

Image by Better Than Bacon

Mike Schilling
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Mike has been a software engineer far longer than he would like to admit. He has strong opinions on baseball, software, science fiction, comedy, contract bridge, and European history, any of which he's willing to share with almost no prompting whatsoever. ...more →

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2 thoughts on “Heavenly!”

Doctor Jay says:
October 31, 2016 at 4:14 pm
Its so easy to think of Beethoven the Mighty, the Stern and the Anguished, struggling mightily with the world with every bar appassionato, and so odd to encounter Beethoven the Cheerful, who’s just playin’
That’s what this is.
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Will H. says:
October 31, 2016 at 4:17 pm
I find the instrumentation interesting.
Pleasant. A bit campy at times, but this is easily forgiven, as those passages tend to not linger over-long.
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Satellites

State of the Discussion

2 hours ago

to Morat20

DavidTC

+ I, as a middle class white guy, do not routinely get harassed by cops while driving. I do not get pulled over, routinely, for no [. . .]

I, as a middle class white guy, do not routinely get harassed by cops while driving. I do not get pulled over, routinely, for no reason– yet a friend of mine, who makes a hell of a lot more than me (and, sucks to be him, has to wear a suit to work) gets pulled over a lot for what amounts to “being black while driving a nice car”.

I always found it funny that I, as a white guy, basically once got pulled over because of the opposite...I basically got pulled over because I was driving a crappy and unwashed (I lived on a dirty road, the car was unwashed by definition.) car down a major meth artery in the middle of the day. So not only can black guys not drive nice cars, but white guys apparently can't drive crappy ones!

I kid, I kid. I know it's not comparable.

Weirdly, the cop immediately decided I wasn't a drug runner very shortly after he came up to my car. I'm not sure if it was my local license, my local theatre shirt (Which he commented on), or maybe the fact I had all my teeth?

(It's weird because, if _I_ had been a cop that jumped to conclusions based on stereotypes, I would have thought 'Guy wearing a theatre show shirt with long hair? He's a hippy. He's probably got some pot in the car.'. But whatever. Perhaps he was only looking for meth.)

And just as weirdly, I know all this because he _told_ me all that, to explain why he pulled me over for 'weaving'. Seriously, he was completely honest that he pulled me over for no real reason except he thought I might be running drugs, and I laughed and told him to have fun searching my car, which he did rather half-heartedly.

And then, because my car actually was as crappy as it looked, I had to get a jump off him to continue down the road.

It was a weird day. And probably wouldn't have gone anywhere near as well if I hadn't been white.

[View in thread] -

When Schools Get Political, What Should Teachers Do?

3 hours ago

to Michele Kerr

DavidTC

+ @michele-kerr Saying “Joey, please call people by their preferred names.” is not political. “Joey, you are insisting on treating Thomas as a girl and if you [. . .]

@michele-kerr

Saying “Joey, please call people by their preferred names.” is not political.
“Joey, you are insisting on treating Thomas as a girl and if you keep doing it I will write you up and call your parents in and tell them that if you don’t acknowledge Thomas’s right to choose his own gender you’ll be expelled.” is political.

Erm...to me, those are exactly the same things, except two trivial wording differences. First, you've included the punishment on the second, but not the first. So let me add that:

Saying “Joey, please call people by their preferred names and if you keep not doing it I will write you up and call your parents in and tell them that if you don’t acknowledge Thomas’s right to choose his own name you’ll be expelled.” is not political.
“Joey, you are insisting on treating Thomas as a girl and if you keep doing it I will write you up and call your parents in and tell them that if you don’t acknowledge Thomas’s right to choose his own gender you’ll be expelled.” is political.

(If students keep doing anything the teacher tells them not to, regardless of how trivial, eventually they will get in trouble, otherwise the teacher literally has no authority.)

Second, you seem to be saying that 'treating someone as a girl' is apparently somehow different than 'calling them by a feminine name'. Now, I can think of _other_ ways to 'treat someone as a girl', but from what I can tell, the topic is, indeed, calling someone by the wrong gender name. In fact, it started with you objecting to the idea 'Sure, forcing kids to politick is bad, but forcing kids to call Rachel Thomas isn’t political.'

So, to summarize, from what I can tell, I seem to get the idea that a teacher demanding students call a student who was born 'Rachel' with the name 'Thomas' is 'political'...but it's not political when a teacher demands students don't _tease_ Thomas in that manner by using a name he doesn't want them to use, and that the teacher themselves should use the preferred name.

...so...huh? Is that idea that teachers might 'politically' demand students use one name to refer to a trans student who doesn't care what name people call him? That's a pretty obscure situation.

Or is the difference something to do with forcing the student to 'acknowledge' Thomas's gender? I...am not sure what you are thinking this would consist of. As you've said it's perfectly find to force the student to use the preferred name, I assume it can't be that...is it using specific pronouns? Some sort of announcement in front of the class that they admit Thomas is male?

Why don't you give a specific example where you think a teacher would be acting politically? Not just what they are saying (Which seems basically identical to the non-political thing), but some actual events that could happen and what a 'political' response would be.

[View in thread] -

When Schools Get Political, What Should Teachers Do?

3 hours ago

to DavidTC

Maribou

+ @davidtc Let me know how that goes for you. (On a similar note, were I Memphis, the last thing I'd be wanting to do would be [. . .]

@davidtc Let me know how that goes for you.

(On a similar note, were I Memphis, the last thing I'd be wanting to do would be to invite state law enforcement in to patrol my streets.)

[View in thread] -

Tennessee’s General Assembly Sure Is Concerned With Keeping Racists Happy

4 hours ago

to gabriel conroy

Maribou

+ @gabriel-conroy I'd like to see what your real definition is - where you actually draw those lines and why - which is why I prodded [. . .]

@gabriel-conroy I'd like to see what your real definition is - where you actually draw those lines and why - which is why I prodded at that one. On the other hand, I don't actually think children should be forced to do even a third, or a half, of the things they are forced to do by the school system*** (or by their parents, or etc etc etc) so I wouldn't necessarily mind if we adopted a definition exactly that extreme. But I hadn't thought you were nearly as anarchic as I am :D. Plus I see that as the very long game, not something we can deal with immediately.

***there are some things I think smallish children should be forced to do, for their own safety and because that sort of forcing is just part of how mammals learn. being picked up and moved around in order to be fed, when they're upset and unable to figure out what to do because they're hungry, for example. and then, the line between force, coercion, and persuasion is IMO, a vector, not a pair of barriers.... but that's a whole nother discussion I suppose.

[View in thread] -

When Schools Get Political, What Should Teachers Do?

4 hours ago

to DavidTC

DavidTC

+ And, oh, I just checked the law: You don't have to be in Tennesee to file an injunction: Any person who can demonstrate a real interest [. . .]

And, oh, I just checked the law: You don't have to be in Tennesee to file an injunction:

Any person who can demonstrate a real interest in a memorial through
aesthetic, architectural, cultural, economic, environmental, or historic injury, or through
administrative involvement in the waiver process, has standing to seek injunctive relief in chancery court of Davidson County to enforce this section

I, personally, am suffering an aesthetic injury that the State of Tennesee is flying the US flag on a flagpole outside state government buildings while at the same time passing laws clearly set up to require local governments to continue to honor traitors. Aestheticly, I would much rather they kept the flagpole bare and the flag sitting on a shelf. It would would be much less..._jarring_ to me. And, yet, every morning, they hang it up, altering the shape and position of the flag, placing it outside their buildings so it looks like they're a part of the US.

Which, yes, they technically are, but I'd rather they stop reminding me. It's an aesthetics thing.

[View in thread] -

Tennessee’s General Assembly Sure Is Concerned With Keeping Racists Happy

4 hours ago

to Oscar Gordon

Maribou

+ @oscar-gordon That's an interesting take, and it's good to know he's useful to... *someone* I know. Still I'd hate for anyone to think the [. . .]

@oscar-gordon That's an interesting take, and it's good to know he's useful to... *someone* I know. Still I'd hate for anyone to think the generally kind and gracious and self-effacing (i mean, overall at least) population of Seattle is in some way represented by him.

[View in thread] -

Yes California? #Calexit Returns

4 hours ago

DavidTC

+ As an aside, as at this point it's pretty clear that Memphis abided by Tenneesee's stupid law and got punished anyway, so the correct solution [. . .]

As an aside, as at this point it's pretty clear that Memphis abided by Tenneesee's stupid law and got punished anyway, so the correct solution for cities that want statues removed is basically complete lawlessness.

I mean that literally: They should make a statement that, as far as the city is concerned, as far as local law enforcement is concerned, literally anyone can do anything to those statues that they want. Tear them down, deface them, knock the heads off, anything. The _city_ may be barred from doing stuff to their own property, but no law makes them protect their own property from other people damaging it, or makes them fix it if damaged.

Sure the state could, in theory, send in state law enforcement to protect that statues, vandalism of public property is a state law...so I guess those guys will just patrol forever?

---

BTW, in case no one has ever bothered to mention this before: Their law stupidly makes lowering and raising public flags illegal. Including the US flag:
(a) (3) "Historic entity" means any entity recognized as having state, national, military, or historical significance;

(a) (7) (B) Any statue, monument, memorial, bust, nameplate, plaque, artwork, flag, historic display, school, street, bridge, or building that has been erected for, named, or dedicated on public property in honor of any historic conflict, historic entity, historic event, historic figure, or historic organization; and

(b) (1) Except as otherwise provided in this section, no memorial regarding a historic conflict, historic entity, historic event, historic figure, or historic organization that is, or is located on, public property, may be removed, renamed, relocated, altered, rededicated, or otherwise disturbed or altered.

The entity 'The United States of America' quite obviously has national significance (What a strange thing to say), so is a historic entity, and the US flag is erected in honor of it...and thus any US flag on public property in Tennesee cannot legally be removed or altered in any manner.

Before anyone goes 'This only applies to things erected before 1970'...most flags were. They were, of course, repeated unerested and reerected, but that can't possibly undo the concept..the law explicitly applies to flags and no flag has hung undisturbed for almost 50 years. It's simply not possible to make that happen. So to follow the 'laws have to make sense' rule, the only logical interpetation is it applies to a flag that is repeatedly hung and removed, as long as that started before 1970.

And the law they just passed idiotically made those flags unalterable, which I _suspect_ they meant 'You have to keep putting it up', but actually means 'You cannot put it down or up', because, duh, that alters a flag. And putting it down 'removes' it also.

Someone needs to go and file an injunction against the State of Tennessee for lowering the US flag. And the Tennessee flag, as the State of Tennessee presumably has 'state significance' to Tennessee.

[View in thread] -

Tennessee’s General Assembly Sure Is Concerned With Keeping Racists Happy

4 hours ago

to bookdragon

Maribou

+ @bookdragon That's absolutely fair, you shouldn't feel the need to, and I didn't mean to suggest that her response was courteous. (In fact, there's [. . .]

@bookdragon That's absolutely fair, you shouldn't feel the need to, and I didn't mean to suggest that her response was courteous. (In fact, there's a comment in this comment section somewhere where I talked about how frustrated I was at a pattern I feel she is demonstrating of responding to things people experienced by implying they didn't happen, in a way that feels like she's mocking their lived experiences.)

I was merely saying that it was, in some part, a response to being asked, albeit indirectly, whether she would do something awful that she already made it clear (fairly repeatedly) she wouldn't do, elsewhere in the comments on this post. Whether she's offended or not, few people react as their kindest selves in that context.

(Also, as an aside, what happened to your kid really sucks, and I'm sorry your family had to go through that.)

[View in thread] -

When Schools Get Political, What Should Teachers Do?

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2 thoughts on “Heavenly!”