finding the word & a found poem

Is there a word for  the condition of finding the word that describes your condition? Because there should be. I recently came across the Japanese word tsundoku, defined as "the state of buying books and letting them pile up unread," which is as good a description of my life as any. I cannot resist bookstores, and find comfort in the piles of books, all close to hand. I assure myself that some day I will get to each and every one of them, even the ones that have been waiting on my shelves for decades. (We all have our ways of denying our mortality.) Recently while re-arranging the teetering piles, I came across this juxtaposition:

No points to the designers for originality, but it does seem like the quintessential image for a certain sort of nineteenth-century attitude.

Recently Oxford University Press was having another sale so I bought a pile of books from the Oxford World's Classics series, even though I've barely made a dent in the previous piles I bought at their previous sales (hence: tsundoku). I noticed that the backs of most of the books had big pull-quotes in red, and looking through them I felt they were a found poem:

Being persuaded that no woman was chaste, he resolved, in order to prevent the disloyalty of such as he should afterwards marry, to wed one every night, and have her strangled the next morning.

At least their lives would remain a protest against those brute forces of society which fill with wreck the abysses of the nether world.

These hours of solitude and meditation are the only time of the day when I am completely myself.

I am not a man, I am dynamite.

Arms and the man I sing of Troy. . . 

His rise testifies to the decline of a whole society.

The nearest the general run get to art is Action: sex is their form of art: the battle for existence is their picture.

Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful one who taught by the pen, who taught man what he did not know.

For a wondrous power ordains that I shall walk hand-in-hand with my strange heroes for a long time yet, viewing the broad sweep and rapid flow of life, viewing it through the laughter that the world sees and the tears that it neither sees nor suspects.

9 November 2016

My Götterdämmerung t-shirt from my first Ring Cycle (Seattle, 1995).

I am slowly emerging from a state of shock (and the shock is partly that I was shocked . . . ).

Take care of yourselves, and then help take care of the world. The American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, environmental and social justice groups, arts organizations – all are continuing their work of inching the world forward. Donate, volunteer, move forward: every ending is a beginning.

Captain Ahab Does Not Need Your God-damned GPS

Previously, William Wordsworth shared his thoughts on those who cannot tear their eyes away from their "smart" phones. And now Captain Ahab discusses the pros and cons of using a GPS, or Global Positioning System:

Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other, its numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered: "Foolish toy! babies' plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores, and Captains; the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but what after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou thyself happenest to be on this wide planet, and the hand that holds thee: no! not one jot more! Thou canst not tell where one drop of water or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon; and yet with thy impotence thou insultest the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this earth's horizon are the glances of man's eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze on his firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant!" dashing it to the deck, "no longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship's compass, and the level dead-reckoning, by log and by line; these shall conduct me, and show me my place on the sea. Aye," lighting from the boat to the deck, "thus I trample on thee, thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!"

Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter CXVIII, The Quadrant

Though personally, speaking as a passenger, I have found such systems to be quite useful.

butterfly on the lantana

Sometimes wonderful things happen in gardens – like when I stand there with the hose, watering something, and a hummingbird comes by and sticks his beak into the stream, and I don't move until he flies off – and sometimes I manage to grab my camera. Here are some shots of the butterfly that was fluttering over the lantana last week.

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William Wordsworth analyzes the smart phone phenomenon

Here's something else to file under "the more things change":

On Seeing Some Tourists of the Lakes Pass by Reading; a Practice Very Common

What waste in the labour of Chariot and Steed!
For this came ye hither? is this your delight?
There are twenty-four letters, and those ye can read;
But Nature's ten thousand are Blanks in your sight.
Then throw by your Books, and the study begin;
Or sleep, and be blameless, and wake at Your Inn!

-- William Wordsworth

Very elegant and witty, and pointed, but I'll probably just continue snarling "Watch where you're going" to those clueless idiots who walk down the sidewalk staring at their stupid toys, assuming everyone else will leap out of their way. If it's so awful to be where you are, maybe you should think about why it's so awful, and what you're doing there.

The poem is on page 432 of the Penguin Classics edition of The Poems of William Wordsworth, Volume 1.

O Internet, I love you so!

One of my favorite professors at Cal (though she moved on before I graduated) was Professor Margaret Anne Doody, from whom I had two classes in mostly eighteenth-century English literature: one was a survey course that started with Milton and went to the edge of the Romantic movement, and the other was a course in the English novel from Defoe to Austen. About two-thirds of the way through the quarter she asked each of us in the novel class to say which was our favorite so far. I felt, once again, incurably boring and wishy-washy, because everyone had strong opinions and I had none, I had enjoyed them all equally. I was trying to express general love and excitement at discovering the richness and strangeness of the period, but I was conscious that I just sounded feeble. (It occurs to me now that the rest of the class probably assumed I hadn't read any of the novels.)

That was before the next book on the syllabus, which would have provided me with a clear favorite: Fanny Burney's Evelina. Professor Doody was an expert on Burney as well as on Samuel Richardson (it was thanks to her lectures on Pamela that I spent my Christmas break reading Clarissa, and finding the unabridged four-volume Everyman edition of that novel still counts as one of my greatest finds at Moe's Used Books).

Anyway, I loved Evelina, and spent years searching, mostly in vain, for Burney's other novels: Cecilia, Camilla, and The Wanderer. (In case you're wondering, this was long before the Internet or Kindles; if you wanted an out-of-print book, you had to hope it would show up in a used book store.) Burney gets compared to Austen (who greatly admired her predecessor), but that's mostly because they're both women who wrote at roughly the same period, and because most people have only read Evelina, which is indeed like a more rambunctious Austen novel.

Eventually I found copies of the elusive three (pictured above). Two of them are from the Oxford World's Classics series, which also published Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison around that time, so the 1980s, in retrospect, were good for at least one thing: finding copies of hitherto unavailable eighteenth-century English novels. I think several of these have since been allowed to go out of print, but of course it's much easier to find used books these days, what with the aforementioned Internet and Kindle-type products. At some point I sold or otherwise disposed of my copy of Evelina, which had a truly clunky and hideous 1970s cover. But that's always been the Burney novel that's easiest to find. Anyway, after finding and reading the other three novels (though so long ago I should probably re-read them), I can tell you Burney is actually more like Dickens: she has that kind of vast social range and ambition, and that wild comic sense mixed with the searingly dramatic.

Burney also wrote plays, which were mostly unstaged, because her father, the historian of music Charles Burney, felt that writing for the stage was inappropriate for a lady (gone were the days of Aphra Behn, though she probably doesn't count as the right kind of lady anyway). Burney did write several, both comedies and tragedies, which have been published in a two-volume set. I recall Professor Doody telling us about seeing one of the comedies, The Witlings, which apparently worked quite well on stage. I found the copy of the set below from a catalogue, now vanished as far as I can tell, called The Scholar's Bookshelf, which basically sold remaindered books from university presses. I loved that catalogue.

That catalogue is also where I bought my copy of the Burney biography eventually published by Professor Doody. (Note the name in the title: Burney is usually called Fanny, sometimes Frances by those who feel the diminutive undercuts her with a sort of coziness, and occasionally Mme D'Arblay, her married name. There's an almost Wagnerian thing going on with the names there! Interestingly, Cecilia pivots on the question of women's names; the eponymous character is left a fortune by her uncle with the stipulation that any husband she takes must take her name; this is a problem for the sort of old, proud English families who consider themselves entitles to heiresses.)

Throughout her long life (1752 - 1840) Burney was connected to many of the key figures and events of her time; early on she was befriended by Dr Johnson, she worked as Second Keeper of the Robes at the court of George III and became friends with Queen Charlotte, she married a French emigre general and was drawn into the political difficulties of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. And she kept a diary and wrote letters throughout it all. After her death these were often printed in excerpted or otherwise abridged form, but from 1972 to 1984 Oxford did publish a twelve-volume set, which was one of my prize purchases from The Scholar's Bookshelf. Except it wasn't quite a twelve-volume set: Volume 2, covering her courtship and marriage, was missing (this was made clear to potential purchasers in the catalogue; I never really understood why a set would be missing one volume, but there are lots of things I don't understand).

So for over twenty years I looked for a copy of Volume 2. I called Oxford University Press and was told the set was out of print (which would of course explain why The Scholar's Bookshelf had it). Whenever I went into a used bookstore, which was whenever I saw one, I would always check for the stray volume, because you never know: surely all those Volume 2s missing from those otherwise complete sets must have gone someplace? I even had fleeting thoughts of seeing if the libraries at UC Berkeley had a copy of Volume 2 and then photocopying the whole thing. I just couldn't start reading any of these volumes until I had all of them. I didn't even want to read the biography until I could follow it with the diaries and letters. Time passed and there were plenty of other things to be read, but in the back of my mind I kept hoping Volume 2 would show up. Once I discovered Amazon (and Alibris and other such sites), Volume 2 was one of the first things I checked for. But nothing turned up. It began to seem hopeless. Then one day a few months ago, realizing I hadn't searched Amazon for Volume 2 in quite a while, I decided to check again, more from habit and boredom than anything else: and there it was. I wasn't entirely sure it was the right book until it actually arrived from England a week or so later. Not only was it the long-missing volume, at last, but my total cost for the book and shipping was $7.87. Seriously.

Once the book arrived I began a frantic search late on a Friday night for the box that held the other eleven volumes. I knew I had lugged it through various moves and finally stuck it in a closet to wait until the unforeseen day when the lost volume returned to the fold. Eventually I remembered which closet I had put it in, but not before some panicking when it wasn't in the first two places I looked. What I did find in the first place I looked (so I guess it's a good thing I hadn't put the books there) was a horrible swarming mass of ugly brown insects devouring all the cardboard boxes in that closet. I raced those boxes into the backyard and emptied and vacuumed the closet and called the next day to schedule a termite examination.

Luckily for me, the swarm had not caused any structural damage. But I had a horrifying thought of how far the nasty nibblers would have gone if I hadn't happened to check that very messy closet at that particular time. So that is the story of how the Internet united me with Frances Burney and saved my house from the terrible jaws of the termites.

Leif Ove Andsnes in Nighttown

This is last night. I am once again sitting in a darkened room (this time it’s Herbst Theater) once again listening to someone play piano (this time it’s Leif Ove Andsnes, and he’s playing Haydn – the Piano Sonata in C minor, Hob.XVI:20, to be specific). No introductory talks this time, for which I am as always grateful, since I’ve already had to wait until 8:00 for the performance to start – thank God it’s Thursday, and I can wander through the Asian Art Museum beforehand. The lights dim as always and he comes out, looking youthful and self-possessed. He is fairly slight of build and I wonder how many times he’s been described as “boyishly handsome.” I wonder how old he is. I’m enjoying the Haydn, of course. The program said he had just become a father, but who knows what age that is. I wonder if I’ve heard him before – wait, I am pretty sure I heard him with I think Christian Tetzlaff, also in Herbst, but a few years ago, and I was up in the balcony because G/S gave me his ticket and I mostly remember the seat being so narrow I was very conscious of not moving so I didn’t disturb those around me. Disturbing – there is an awful lot of coughing going on, much more than usual. SF Performances audiences are usually fairly well behaved, though there was that guy who moved behind me for the second half of Maltman who cleared his throat constantly, while his friend kept kneeing the back of my chair. What is wrong with people. I wonder how many times a day I think that, or have it thought about me. What is going on in the back of the theater – it sounds as if some woman has dumped the entire contents of her purse, not once but twice. Andsnes barely reacts but I see that look flit across his face. Yo-Yo Ma, back in Boston, in Jordan Hall, playing the Bach solo cello suites, when what sounded like a handful of coins fell out of somebody’s something and rolled down the floor – that look of frustration repressed on his face. I wish I always remembered the music sounds as vividly as I remember the interrupting sounds. Like that horrible woman a few years ago here at Herbst who brought her nasty little dog (what was the performance? I wish I could remember that and not the dog) and claimed it was a helper dog so no one could stop her. So rude. Since that little rodent fit in her purse I wonder what vile thing it “helped” her with. Sick. What is wrong with people? There is an epic amount of coughing tonight. I wonder why the concert season is in the winter, when people are sick – remnant of a past way of life, perhaps, like the idea of not starting until 8:00 in the evening, as if none of us have to work, though that’s probably why most of these people look retired. Pretty full house tonight though. The coughing is not letting up! Now Andsnes is back with the Bartok. My program is put away but I glance at my neighbor’s. It’s the Suite for Piano, Opus 14. At least his program is far enough away for me to read. I need new glasses. It’s always so dim in theaters now even before the concert starts – maybe a cost-saving measure? Zellerbach in particular. It is always great to hear Bartok. A man of integrity as well as a great artist – an argument against the whole trite notion that great artists are always “bad” people. Like Verdi that way. Though I only know anecdotes about Bartok, all admirable though. I did read that massive Verdi bio, which I foolishly carried on a plane. I don’t remember where I was going. The occasional lull in coughing. Concentrate! Andsnes plays so beautifully. I probably won’t post anything, though. I don’t really have much to say. Some of these people should have grabbed some of those lozenges from the bowl at the table in the lobby. It’s like a concerto for piano and bronchial tubes. Debussy now, Book One of Images. I think this is one of the reasons I got the Piano Series. Also someone is doing Kurtag, I think. Later. Epic coughing! It seems to be one woman in particular, sitting in the back. I’m trying to ignore it. Are her neighbors glaring? Why isn’t she leaving? I’ve heard several others leave with their coughing fits. They could at least have tried to leave quietly. Can she possibly think her hacking cough is not disrupting the entire auditorium? It sounds like a woman coughing – maybe it’s a countertenor, haha. Debussy – hard not to think of clouds and water, clouds passing reflected in water – sounds trite but he asks for it. Nothing wrong with clouds and water – why should I think they’re trite? They’re elemental and arresting. Wouldn’t have many haiku without them. Oh, intermission. As usual, the coughing stops as soon as the music does. John Marcher comes over – I didn’t know he was here. He goes back to his seat when the bell rings. I wonder if I was coherent. I often wonder that after I have conversations – I mean, not the ones in my head. I’m pretty witty there. L’esprit d’escalier. No coughing during the intermission, of course. Maybe she left? Andsnes comes out. He is imperturbable! I wonder what he thinks of the audience. Are we worse than usual? Better? God forbid. Does he pay attention to what’s going on out here in the dark? Are we encumbrance or inspiration? I find us an encumbrance – Hell is other people. There’s a reason that’s a commonplace. I do pay too much for concerts, considering how chancy they can be – we all have our ways of gambling, I guess. This part is all Chopin. I recognize the pieces but wouldn’t be able to name them – composers should always give names like Moonlight or Appassionata or something, not Waltz in F minor, Opus 70, no 2 – really, who remembers that? Outside of professional pianists. And show-offs. Hum the tune and I'll know it, I guess. . . .OK, now he’s standing up. Less coughing this time. I’m just listening. I just listen. I don’t know how many waltzes into the program we are. He stands and bows and we applaud. Also Named Patrick next to me says to me, bewildered, “Where are we?” Oh, good, I’m not the only one who doesn’t know! I don’t know; no breaks are indicated in the program for this half. Maybe this is now a Ballade? Very nice. Less coughing now. Also very nice. Just that one loud one at the start of the second half, like a warning shot letting us know – you’re not at peace yet! Like so many of those horrible neighbors I had in apartments. Hell is. . . . I’m very sleepy. I zone in and out. Goddam, who thinks 8:00 on a work night is a good time for a concert? So ridiculous. Well, let my body fold into the music. Maybe it sinks in – and gets lost in thee, like that line in Tennyson. Sinking in thee? I should memorize more poems. Something constructive to do with my brain, instead of obsessive circling. Beautiful encore. He perseveres. I wonder how I would feel about an audience like this, if I were up there playing. How much can they hear or see? The lights must be shining in their eyes. But he couldn’t miss that coughing woman. Beautiful encore again. Sure, I’m happy to stand. Now I sit, now I stand. It’s like a mass! The church of Art. Lights are up. Oh my God, this crowd is even slower than usual: move, move, move! The side aisle is less crowded – oh, I should stand aside, here's an old woman. I don’t think I stood aside quickly enough. She’s nice. She smiles. I smile. I say, “Excuse me.” Thank God I was raised right! And am so repressed! Otherwise I’d probably be in jail by now. Free room and board, along with the occasional rape, I guess. I wouldn’t like it, probably. OK, I’ve never seen the bathroom so crowded. Everyone is so so so slow tonight. Only two stalls – ridiculous. Another line to wash our hands. I hope I don't miss a train. I love walking through the streets on a cool uncrowded night – wish I could stroll, but the trains. . . . twenty minute wait if I miss it. I’m so tired. 8:00 is an idiotic start time. Maybe I should tell them again? They always send those “please give us feedback!” e-mails. OK, kill that coughing moron – a coffin for the cougher. Coffers. Do I alliterate too much? Quite the trap. Start at 7:30. My God, isn’t that obvious? 8:00? Bad on both ends. Hours before with nothing to do, and then a late night – I’ll feel this tomorrow. That last piece – what was it? It keeps going through my head in snatches. But it’s starting to bleed into recordings of it I’ve heard, whatever it was. Over and over. Whatever it is. Pink lights along the side of the Asian Art Museum. Yellowish lights on UN Plaza. Greenish lights going down to BART. At least the woman blocking the escalator was nice about moving aside. Sometimes they aren’t – why not? What is wrong with people? A rush of wind from below – a train coming? Like after that play at the Aurora (what play was it?) when I felt the wind from the tunnel below and rushed down just in time – twenty minute wait otherwise. That’s a long time late at night when you’re tired. I’m very tired. Lawyers bill clients in increments of fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes is longer. By a third. There’s a train, it’s not my train, I’m very tired. Seven minutes until the Dublin train, not too bad a wait. It’s a four-car train. Motherfucker! I hate BART and that is the worst thing about BART – short trains. Of course it’s packed even before Civic Center. Loud bad music, chasing out what's left in my head from tonight. Like coming back from vacation – airports undo any good the vacation has done. Oh, here’s a seat. I should have gone into the first car – no bicycles. Three of them are crowded in here. People are standing. No one I need to give a seat to, I guess. I hope I don’t fall asleep. Maybe I should stand so I don't. No room to stand. Goddam short trains. They still charge full price, though. What was that last piece? It all evaporates so quickly. I try to read Barnaby Rudge. I’m too tired. My noise-reduction headphones are not reducing the noise. Whose device is that – three suspects, each likely to be listening to that shit music. A phone? an iPod? I don't even know what people use anymore. bonk bonk bonk bonk – so irritating. Can’t block it out; it's too regular. My other headphones were better. They broke. Cheap plastic. Maybe I need to change the batteries in these? I give up on Barnaby Rudge. New York Review: an article about Shia and Sunni Muslims. Sectarian violence. I’m so tired. I can’t keep them straight. I can't read this either. More time lost, and the words pile up to be read. I’ll stare at random sentences. Idiotic start times. Why do I keep doing this? That last piece – what was it? I know it. I’m getting worse with names anyway. What lasts? What’s lost? Lost, lost, lost . . . .Banal, but true. The music is already bleeding away, fleeting. What do other people hear? How do they hear? Why do they hear? I don’t think I’ll post about this, I love it but don’t really have anything to say. Beautiful, though, that’s worth something (I spend too much on music). But I’m starting to write in my head and it goes around and around and around. Write it to get rid of it. Should do that more often. That Hampson concert – two years ago? Three? Still stuck in my head. Still, good to have memories of what I spend so much time and money on. . . . Always a relief to get out of BART. Talk about spending time and money on. . . .The streets can be empty but a car will always show up exactly when I need to cross. What’s that white thing in front of that bush? A huge cup from one of our fine fast-food emporia. The nastier the food, the more likely people are to litter. Right in front of my house. WTF. What is wrong with people. How odd to place it carefully down, out of the way, instead of just tossing it – so I guess that’s good. I’m so tired. 8:00 – idiotic. I won’t be able to sleep if I know it’s out here, though. Leaves are OK, but I hate trash. That old man next door who got so angry about the leaves – attacking me on Christmas Eve, had to knock him down. Twice. Over leaves. He had a car rusting in his driveway, but was obsessed with the leaves. Little golden leaves. They are a bitch to sweep up though. God, I hope I'm not getting like him. He’s probably dead now. Kind of young to have Alzheimer’s, but it happens. I’m getting worse with names. The cup: it’s only half full. I don’t know what bin to put it in. I’ll put it on top of this one and hope no stray cats knock it down. That last piece – now it’s a recording I’m hearing. It’ll say tomorrow what it was, on the site. What did we do before the Internet? Is this cup Styrofoam? Plastic? Either way, it’ll last longer than I will. Or memory, or live music. Hey, a package! Must be my new camera. I can’t look at any of this stuff now. I’m so tired. I’ll feel this tomorrow, especially in the afternoon. Afternoons are a drag anyway. Siesta time! Live music – like a drug. For a clean-living guy: it’s gambling and drugs! Flip off the switch – it’s so dark. Oh, I didn’t go upstairs to turn a light on before I turned off the downstairs lights, that's why it's so dark. Empty pockets – lozenge wrappers, random receipts. Admission ticket to the Asian. OK, at least on Thursday I can go to the Asian. Goddam 8:00 start times. V always says she’s most tired on Thursdays. Is that happening to me now? I was tired all day though. Maybe because of winter? Should I turn the heat on? It's not that cold. PG&E bills too high. They'll go down in a month or so, but still, I do turn the heat on more than I used to. I don’t remember names as well as I used to. I’m tired, it’s dark. Lights now on upstairs, turned off downstairs, keys go here, wallet goes here, handkerchiefs here, undress, put on boxers, put on T-shirt, brush, floss – should I skip flossing? No, floss, piss (where was the moon tonight? it was so bright the other morning – that Larkin poem, groping my way back to bed and so forth, I should memorize more poems), wash hands, wash face, turn off the bathroom light, set the alarm, don’t turn on TV you’re already so tired, I should cancel cable, I spend too much, I’m so tired, I’ll feel this tomorrow, pillows just so, I'm in my room (those people who see the house and say, "Is this your room?" and I say: "All the rooms are mine. It's my house" – another funny expression, "your room" for bedroom like "language" when people mean swear words: "there is language in it") and now off go the lights, at last. And now I can’t sleep.

let nothing you dismay, part 2

I was passing through the Westfield Mall today to sneer at people who still had Christmas shopping to do when I overhead a youngish man saying, "With my sensibility, I would tend to get them joke gifts."

If phrases like "my sensibility" are part of your everyday vocabulary, you really aren't the sort of person who should be buying joke gifts.

for the solstice: lost gloves (plus one)

These are all from my last trip to New York City, which was two winters ago.

let nothing you dismay

I realized the other day that it didn't feel like Christmas because I hadn't heard anybody say that it doesn't feel like Christmas.

D'Oh!

Would someone please tell me when and why seemingly everyone suddenly started pronouncing the final "t" in Turandot?

According to every source I've seen (you can easily google this stuff, but here's the Wikipedia entry), Puccini himself did not pronounce the final "t," and neither did Rosa Raisa, who created the role, and neither did Toscanini, who conducted the premiere, and neither did Eva Turner, another famous early exponent of the title role. And isn't it obviously more awkward to sing the name with the final "t" pronounced? So why do so many people now think they know better than Eva Turner, Rosa Raisa, Arturo Toscanini, and Puccini himself?

Apparently Puccini's grand-daughter, Simonetta Puccini, favors pronouncing the final "t," with no reason given (and no citation given in Wikipedia, either); though I'm sure she's a lovely woman, there's no genetic authority here; if Puccini's contemporaries, who knew him and worked with him, say that he didn't pronounce the "t," then it shouldn't be pronounced.

As you can see from Wikipedia or other sources, the name derives from a Persian name in which the final "t" is pronounced, which is interesting but irrelevant if the creator of the opera didn't pronounce the name that way. You can also see claims that Carlo Gozzi's play Turandot should have the final "t" pronounced due to the Venetian dialect he spoke, which again is interesting but irrelevant to the opera. No one claims that Verdi's penultimate opera should be pronounced Othello rather than Otello because his source is Shakespeare and Shakespeare has the "th," or that Byron was "wrong" to anglicize the pronunciation of Don Juan into Don Jew-un.

So, seriously, what gives?

(No doubt one reason I feel strongly about this is that the pronunciation of my last name was anglicized by my grandparents (so that it rhymes with "jazz") and I constantly have to correct people who think they are being "authentic," whatever that means.)

the awful truth

The Kardashians are one of those pop-culture things I know about mostly through parodies, though I do also get updates from the hilariously named "Scoop!" section of the SF Examiner (a right-wing rag which I see because it is literally handed to the commuter crowds as they exit the BART stations, and which I take because it is printed on recycled paper with soy-based inks, making it an excellent addition to the home compost pile). Anyway, yesterday's "Scoop!" quoted one of those inevitable "insiders" on the bitter fall-out from Kim Kardashian's brief marriage to someone named Kris Humphries:

"He tried to control Kim by bringing her down," said the source. "He would say
truly terrible things. One time, he said she had no talent and her fame wouldn't
last."

The brute! I'm sure she's extremely talented at . . . whatever it is she does. Apparently the "insider" repeated this "truly terrible" remark without laughing.

The moral, which like most morals depends on where you're standing, is either that you should avoid your own blabbing "insiders" or that reality stars can't take too much reality.

art & life at SFMoMA

Duchamp's Fountain from the permanent collection on the second floor and a urinal from the fifth floor men's room

the kind of information you might want to put on your website

At lunch today I tried to go to the Noontime Concert at Old St Mary's, which is reasonably close to where I work. These concerts normally start at 12:30 and are designed for people on lunch break. This one featured soprano Shauna Falihee and Miles Graber on piano performing Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs, John Harbison's Mirabai Songs, and, according to the website, More! I'm afraid I can't tell you what constituted "More!" since I found out when I got to St Mary's that the concert wasn't starting until 12:45. Fifteen minutes is actually a pretty big chunk of time for someone on an hour-long lunch break. I pondered staying anyway, then realized the timing just wouldn't work out and I had better skip the concert, which is too bad since I had had my eyes on this one for several weeks now. I even double-checked the website this morning, and there was nothing about a special start time. I'm guessing the noon mass at St Mary's was especially long since this is All Saint's Day, but it would have been nice to have the information before I got there. On the "making lemonade out of lemons" front (I am a notorious optimist!), at least I varied my lunchtime routine a bit, though not in the way I had hoped.

dealing in realities

When I posted my August preview the other day I mentioned that whoever scheduled the Merola production of Barber of Seville was, to quote myself, "simply not dealing in reality." (My original post, and my explanation for saying that, can be found here.) A friend of mine e-mailed me an objection to what I said and how I said it. With his permission I’m posting what he wrote, followed by my response. His text is in blue. I've omitted some stuff that doesn't directly pertain to his argument.

Dearest Patrick,

I was going to leave this in the comments on the fun stuff post then thought better of it because of how it may sound. As you know, I am not retired, unemployed, self-employed, nor am I a student – but I'll be there both nights because I can walk home afterwards – and stop home and have a bite to eat beforehand. I'm not gloating about this, it's just a fact. I don't think the start times are the real issue here as much as the location of your home in relation to the event. Most people don't view that three hour gap as "wasting time" but as an opportunity to have dinner with someone, go home and change, whatever. I find it more difficult and annoying to have to be at something that starts at 7 or 7:30 than at 8:00 and as I've said to you before, I wish this stuff didn't start til 8:30 or 9:00 – which would be more convenient for me but would cause you to go apoplectic – or at least give up on performances altogether. I don't do a lot in Berkeley for the same reason, but that doesn't make them wrong when it obviously works for so many people.

I don't know – I say this to you as a friend and someone I admire and respect, but to say "these people are simply not dealing in reality" sounds pretty harsh to me and I don't think we bloggers are at the top of the list when considerations are made on scheduling the starting times of events – but I do think they are interested in making it convenient for all those folks who want to eat at Absinthe or the Hayes Valley Grill (or at the Grove or Arlequin for that matter) and that's the majority. And for those that abhor late nights, that's what weekend matinees are for, but why would they want to willingly give away comp tickets to performances that won't get them coverage until after it's all over (and to performances that will probably sell better than the evening shows)?

Just wanted to share these thoughts with you.

[from a second e-mail, after I thanked him for responding and told him he should post his remarks or let me post them]:

I just don't want to come across like I'm criticizing you because that's not my intent. I remember when you wrote to me about "War Music" that just because I didn't like how they did it didn't make them wrong for doing it that way, and that's really the spirit of what I'm saying here.

It's up to you whether or not you want to post it and respond [. . . ] and be "nice" in your response, please.

Are you at least going to the Friday performance?

My response now follows. I will point out here that what I said in my original post and what I'm saying here about start times applies generally to performing arts groups in the Bay Area, not just to the Merola Program or the San Francisco Opera.

I was going to leave this in the comments on the fun stuff post then thought better of it because of how it may sound.

It sounds fine. Tone is conveyed not only by what people say but in how the reader reads it. I’m reading it in a positive way. I’m not big on personal abuse but I’m always open to differing viewpoints. I assume people realize that but maybe I shouldn't make that assumption.

As I’ve said all along (for instance, in this post about the Royal Danish Ballet fiasco at Cal), I’m perfectly willing to stick the subject of start times in the FML file if anyone can give me solid reasons why every performance in the Bay Area has to start at 8:00. Please note that in that entry I define what a “solid reason” is.

As you know, I am not retired, unemployed, self-employed, nor am I a student- but I'll be there both nights

I’m sure there were other regularly employed people there; I’m speaking broadly about the attendees. The point I was making is that most people who attend midweek 8:00 performances, aside from the occasional live-performance addict like you and me, are clearly retired people or students, something that is easily verifiable at any performance. I notice that in your write-up (which I will be happy to link to if you wish to identify yourself) you mention how little sleep you got. You have to be very dedicated to the Barber of Seville to make that sacrifice. Most working people aren’t going to make it.

because I can walk home afterwards- and stop home and have a bite to eat beforehand. I'm not gloating about this, it's just a fact.

Yes, that is very handy (I was in a similar situation when I lived in Boston) but you don’t seriously think that most theater-goers live that close to Civic Center, do you? (And if so, what do they do if they want to see something across the bay or downtown?) Also, I know quite a few people (men as well as women) who would not be willing to walk through the neighborhood you walk through late at night. You’re talking about a very small group here – people who, in the first place, are interested in live theater and can afford it, and who live close enough to the theater (or at least a theater) to walk to it, and who are OK with walking alone at night. That's a pretty small subset of potential ticket-buyers. I think the majority of theater-goers are people who work downtown but live farther out.

Let’s also remember that a sizable percentage of them take public transportation, which, in the Bay Area, tends to shut down shortly after midnight. We've all been at opera performances where a lot of the audience is silently screaming "just die already!" because they're afraid of missing the last train. Anything that discourages the use of public transportation is bad. It is way past time when we need to adopt policies that discourage our non-sustainable reliance on cars. (I’m not even going to get into the trouble and expense of parking in San Francisco.)

I don't think the start times are the real issue here as much as the location of your home in relation to the event.

Nope. I don’t think it’s a violation of my personal privacy guidelines to say I live in San Leandro, right next to Oakland, where instead of living in a cramped, overpriced, and relentlessly noisy apartment (as I did in Boston) I can own a pretty nice house with a yard. But it’s not as if I’m out in the boonies, either – the local BART station is a quick walk away, and from there I can catch a direct train that will get me to either downtown San Francisco or Oakland/Berkeley in about 25 minutes.

I get the “one hour” figure I always use by adding in travel to and from the stations and waiting for the train, which can be up to 20 minutes late at night. So the whole trip after commute hours almost always takes an hour. That’s still a shorter trip from Civic Center than to almost anyplace within San Francisco – I’ve occasionally, while staying in the city, spent 30 minutes just waiting for a bus to show up. I could, if I were so minded, come home after work, spend about an hour here, and still get to the theater in time, which I think strengthens my point that there is an absurd amount of time to fill before an 8:00 performance.

If theaters can’t accommodate people who live where I live then they’re in trouble – I would guess most of the local ticket buyers live a similar distance away, even if they're San Francisco residents, and quite a few live even further out, in the Walnut Creek area. It's really great to live as close as you do, but most of the potential audience is just not in that situation.

Most people don't view that three hour gap as "wasting time" but as an opportunity to have dinner with someone, go home and change, whatever.

Well, last time I flew back from New York we sat on the runway for almost three hours, and though I got a lot of reading done (from one of my favorite authors, too – I had Volume 2 of the LOA edition of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s complete stories), I pretty much considered that Jet Blue was wasting my time. I’m very skeptical of institutions that tell me their bizarre delays are really for my benefit.

I’m also wondering how you know this – most people I know definitely regard it as lost time, which is why many of them have dropped live performance in favor of more accommodating forms of culture and entertainment.

Incidentally I have had a couple of friends offer to kill time with me beforehand, which seems like an imposition but they made the offer. But it’s a lot to assume that they’re going to be available when I need them to be, and will be willing to wander off when I need to get to the theater. There are always time pressures when you’re going to a performance, which is why so many restaurants offer special menus for those who have to make a curtain time. I go out to dinner with friends fairly often, but that’s about spending time with them, not using them as filler because theaters, for reasons still unclear to me, insist on starting everything at 8:00.

As I have said before, most working people I know, unless they are hardcore live-performance aficionados, are not even going to consider going to something that won't even start until 8:00 on a worknight. I’ve had retired people say to me that they don’t know how someone who is still working can manage to go to the theater and I’ve had temporarily-fully-employed freelancers tell me they do not know how I can do it. I've had people tell me that when they worked in SF they remember how dull it was waiting for performances to start. The only person I've ever met who doesn't consider the time a waste is you, which of course is a perfectly legitimate position, but as far as I can tell, and in my almost invariable experience, you're in the minority on this.

This does get into the social aspect of theater-going. I realized long ago that no one I knew was interested in going to the theater as often as I was, so I developed the habit of going by myself. I know there are lots of people who view theater as an adjunct to their social life rather than as a thing in itself.

I think of this by and large as the “gracious living” school of theater-going, by which I mean people who see going to the theater as an aspect of their self-image as well-off, cultured people. (To some extent we all do that, no doubt.) I am going to state clearly and emphatically that I am not issuing judgments about whether a more social motivation for theater-going is worse, more trivial, or so forth, than going for the sake of the performance itself. I am stating this clearly and emphatically because though I really do feel people can go to the theater for whatever reason makes them happy, I also have an instinctive stomach-clenching revulsion when people say things like “it’s so civilized!” or “enjoy a leisurely supper beforehand” and suchlike. There is a comic aspect to seeing an aesthete such as myself as an angry proletariat, but there it is. I also reject completely the common stereotype that the "real" lovers of music and theater are of course the poor people up in the cheap seats and never the rich people in the expensive ones, so there that is.

I understand the appeal of a nice night out. But most of the people who feel that way (yes, there are many exceptions, you among them, but I think I’m describing the majority of the group accurately) are, at a deep level, more about self-image than about whatever is actually being performed. These people are no doubt the majority, which explains why we have so much safe theater that pretends it’s edgy.

“Safe” theater is different from bad theater: I’m talking basically about people who want well-known established brand-name performers and works. Nothing wrong with that – there’s usually a good reason why certain works and performers are classics, and we all like to ride our favorite warhorses – but I do think theaters that embrace a role as just another luxury good are making themselves ultimately irrelevant.

All live performance, and this isn’t an Internet thing but rather dates back to the advent of cinema/radio/TV, is – I won’t say “elitist,” because that’s such a loaded term, but “of interest to a minority.” What is new with the Internet is the dumbfounding range of great works that are easily and flexibly accessible. Live performance isn’t the only cultural game in town anymore. Yes, there is something irreplaceable about the experience of live performance (though you could make a valid argument that what you lose in immediacy you gain in breadth of repertory – if the local theaters are doing Barbiere over and over, you can turn to DVD for Moses und Aron).

But it also has many drawbacks: it’s expensive, you are crammed in with a lot of (often irritating) people, and you have to be at a certain place at a certain time. That’s very different from the way that “culture” is, increasingly, consumed. I think theaters would do well to emphasize the specialness of the experience itself, and not sell themselves as just part of a lifestyle, one which only emphasizes the stereotype that live theater is a toy for the contented.

OK, I’m getting a little far afield here, so I’ll go back to your points.

I find it more difficult and annoying to have to be at something that starts at 7 or 7:30 than at 8:00

OK, you're certainly entitled to annoyance, but you don't say why you find it difficult. I have gone to things at Berkeley that started at 7:00, and I have time to take public transportation from work in San Francisco, eat a decent dinner slowly, and still arrive in the theater lobby right after the ushers. And the theater is full when the show starts at 7:00, so plenty of other people are managing to make it there in time. I'm not saying that everyone has to do things the way I do, but I am saying that it is possible to work a regular day and arrive in a different city for a 7:00 performance without an annoying rush. Do you really know a lot of people (who work, and whose jobs have regular hours) who say, “I would love to go to the theater more, but I just can’t get there by 8:00?” (Yes, as I have repeatedly stated, I do know a lot of people who tell me they won’t go to anything that starts at 8:00.)

and as I've said to you before, I wish this stuff didn't start til 8:30 or 9:00 – which would be more convenient for me but would cause you to go apoplectic – or at least give up on performances altogether.

Actually I wouldn’t go apoplectic, I would just do other things with my time. As would anyone who takes public transportation, needs a certain amount of sleep, hates wasting half an evening waiting for an 8:00 curtain, etc. The thing is, theaters are interested in selling as many tickets as possible, aren’t they? Should they really be writing off large segments of potential ticket-buyers?

This may be a problem without a solution; somewhere in the three volumes of Shaw's music criticism, he mentions that audiences tend to be young or old; the middle group is busy with work and family. But I don't think live performance is in such a vibrant state that it can afford to ignore such a large pool of potential ticket-buyers.

I think theaters are already aware that 8:00 start times are a problem, as witness the slowly increasing experimentation with earlier start times – even when they’re misconceived, like the Symphony’s 6:30 Fridays, there is an awareness that 8:00 is a problem for many potential ticket-buyers. (Incidentally I don't see much experimentation with later start times.) We’re all certainly entitled to our personal preferences, but I really think the majority of potential ticket-buyers in this area are not longing for later start times.

I don't do a lot in Berkeley for the same reason, but that doesn't make them wrong when it obviously works for so many people.

Well, exactly: there’s lots of great stuff in Berkeley, not only from Cal Performances but from Berkeley Rep and the Aurora Theater, but if it’s too much of a burden you’re not going to go. Wasting three hours between work and the start of a performance is a burden, and you have not persuaded me that most people don’t see the waiting time as wasted. To some extent, yes, it works for many people in the sense that current audiences are OK with the 8:00 start time, but as I've pointed out, those audiences tend to be made up of retired people, students, and others with flexible schedules. Most working people just don't bother to go.

I don't know – I say this to you as a friend and someone I admire and respect, but to say "these people are simply not dealing in reality" sounds pretty harsh to me

I don’t mean it to be harsh (as it would be if I said something like, “these people are crazy”). I’m not trying to be harsh, or snarky, or “controversial”: I’m trying to be accurate. I think they are not dealing in reality, and I think this is the easily verifiable local reality:

1) Most people in this area have jobs that start at 8:00 in the morning or earlier. I don’t know for sure (it probably has something to do with the financial markets in New York and the three-hour time difference) why my jobs back east were 9:00 to 5:00 and out here they’re 8:00 to 5:00, but such is the case. I frequently get to work between 7:30 and 8:00 and the office is already mostly full and that is not considered unusual. Walk through the Financial District at that hour and the streets are packed. Unless you’re someone who likes to think of himself or herself as the sort of person who stays out late, you’re not going to go to many things that end late, because it makes the next day too difficult.

2) Most Americans do not get enough time off and even those who do often end up not using their allotment because of workplace pressures. Time off is precious. Hours spent waiting for a performance to begin start adding up as wasted hours. Go to the theater enough and you’re going to start adding up the hours spent waiting and you will start thinking this is maybe not the most productive use of your time. It gets back to a conversation I had with you several months ago that really resonated with me: I mentioned that you seemed to have cut back on theater and one of the reasons you gave was to avoid “entertaining yourself to death” at the expense of other things you could be doing with your life. Exactly.

3) Live performance is competing against plenty of cultural choices that are cheaper and more easily accessible. Theaters need as many paying customers as possible, and it is foolish to make it so inconvenient for working people.

Given the fungible nature of reality, people are of course free to dispute the points above, but it needs to be about accuracy, not personal preference. I really don't think that what I'm saying here is the equivalent of "well, I'm here, so they can start now." I think my experience is shared by many.

and I don't think we bloggers are at the top of the list when considerations are made on scheduling the starting times of events –

I’m making this point not as a blogger, but as a frequent theater-goer (who buys expensive tickets and often donates to theaters, by the way – they’re losing more than a $10 ticket when they lose me) who also works a regular 8:00 to 5:00 job. Blogging is essentially irrelevant to what I'm saying here.

but I do think they are interested in making it convenient for all those folks who want to eat at Absinthe or the Hayes Valley Grill (or at the Grove or Arlequin for that matter) and that's the majority.

I’m curious where you’re getting that information. That group couldn’t possibly be the majority because I doubt that all those restaurants combined (and throw in Jardiniere as well) have enough seating to accommodate the audience in Herbst, let alone Davies Hall and the Opera House, on those nights when all three venues are on.

Also: those are fairly expensive restaurants. I prefer to spend my money on tickets. You’re taking an expensive evening and making it even more expensive. I thought theaters were trying to fight the image that they were only for the rich, or for people who didn’t need to work? Look, if theaters want to cater to that crowd (yeah, instinctive revulsion is going on), that’s (quite literally) their business, but, as noted earlier: looming irrelevance. Because even if the fine-diners are the majority (which I doubt), going after that group instead of those interested in theater itself is, as I have pointed out above, the way to cultural irrelevance.

And for those that abhor late nights,

This isn’t about “abhorring”; it’s about a realistic assessment of the hours most working people in this area have to keep. There’s no attempt at curfew here; anyone who likes late nights is free to go to a bar or restaurant after the show. I do realize there aren’t many open then, because there aren’t enough customers for it to be economically feasible. There aren't enough customers because most people have to work early the next day.

that's what weekend matinees are for,

Sure, but weekends get filled up, and so do weekend matinees. Theaters realize this, which is why so many of them charge more for weekend tickets. Wouldn’t it make sense for them to increase the potential number of ticket-buyers, and therefore increase the theater's income, by instituting more realistic start times during the week?

but why would they want to willingly give away comp tickets to performances that won't get them coverage until after it's all over

Again: my point is not about getting comp tickets. I get them so seldom that it's not really a consideration for me. In the original entry I went back and forth on whether it should be “bloggers” or “working people” who had difficulties with 8:00 weeknight performances. I ended up going with “bloggers,” which perhaps obscured my point.

As for not getting coverage, well, even professional reviewers are not going to have a review in print until the run is pretty much over. That’s what happens when your run is over a single weekend. You have the same problem when the performance is a one-off, as are most recitals etc. I assume the benefits of getting the word out about a particular performer or theater group make it worthwhile for them to hand out comp tickets. It’s not really my problem. Though I will happily accept free tickets, I never ask for them and don’t count on them. My point here is about regular theater-goers, that is, people who pay for their tickets.

(and to performances that will probably sell better than the evening shows)?

If weekend matinees are selling better than 8:00 evening shows, theaters might want to do some serious thinking about why that is.

[from a second e-mail, after I thanked him for responding and told him he should post his remarks or let me post them]:

I just don't want to come across like I'm criticizing you because that's not my intent.

As stated earlier, I’m fine with hearing different viewpoints. I’ve usually come from the theater, not Mount Sinai, and I have no tablets of celestial law.

I remember when you wrote to me about "War Music" that just because I didn't like how they did it didn't make them wrong for doing it that way, and that's really the spirit of what I'm saying here.

Indeed. I meant that more to apply to what theaters are staging as opposed to how they’re operating, but it’s still a valid point. And I don’t say theaters are wrong for persisting in the 8:00 start time. I say they’re foolish, because as far as I can see they’re missing out on a lot of their potential audience.

If that’s what they want to do, that’s their choice, but then they really do need to drop the whole “expanding the audience” blah blah blah shtick. Being innovative in this case isn’t about setting up a Twitter feed or whatever the e-thing of the moment is; it’s about taking a hard look at the fundamentals of what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, and maybe doing things differently.

It's up to you whether or not you want to post it and respond [. . . ] be "nice" in your response, please.

I’m actually not sure how to take that. I think I’m always nice, sometimes too much so, though of course I realize that for various reasons people don't always see things my way. But I wasn’t kidding in my original entry when I said I was speaking with love in my heart. I never try to be snarky, I try to be accurate. I’m afraid you have not convinced me that I’m wrong in what I said, so I’ve had to express that. I’ve realized that no matter how carefully I phrase things (and people don’t always realize how carefully I’m phrasing certain things) people are sometimes going to read them in a tone that’s very different from the one I had in mind. There’s not much I can do about that, short of emoticons.

;-)

Are you at least going to the Friday performance?

No, I did not, and here’s a summary of what I did with my evening instead: a light workout, then I worked in my garden for an hour, then washed the dishes and did a load of laundry and some other housekeeping stuff, I checked e-mail, I read about the first book and a half of Sarah Ruden’s new translation of the Aeneid, I listened to my new Kurtag CD, watched an episode of South Park, and was asleep by about the time the second act of Barbiere would have been beginning, which was good because I was exhausted and would rather sleep at home than in the theater. (We've all seen people who nod off as soon as the lights go out: another hazard of late start times.)

I had a good evening: productive and filled with cultural enrichment. I hope yours was also pleasant.

former pigeon

Justin Herman Plaza, the Embarcadero, San Francisco

on Jackson Street

San Francisco, November 2010

Haiku 2011/70 (plus a random dream)

just touching the door –
fingertips on the doorframe –
a leaf, drifting down

So here’s part of last night’s dream: I was talking to my friend Arby, and we seemed to be in San Francisco, even though he hasn’t lived there in years, but there were very steep hills and Victorian architecture, including an extremely beautiful mosque that was half Victorian gingerbread and half Islamic arabesques. It was made out of wood and brightly colored. (It was not a building that really exists in the world.) I told him that the book I had contained a poem by Horace I wanted to show him. I kept flipping through the pages, seeing many different photographs (usually spare and sort of abstract, with an occasional cat the only living thing in them), and I kept looking for the poem because I knew the version I remembered was incorrect. I remembered it as:

NOTICE EVERYTHING
Smile
– Horace

which sounded wrong to me.

Finally I found it. It read:

NOTICE ENOUGH
Smile
– Horace

And I told Arby that the sentiment if not the style seemed like Horace. Then I woke up, trying to figure out where I was.

file this one under "the more things change. . . ."

"A little reflection," continued Frank, "soon convinces a man that rough downright stealing is an awkward, foolish trade; and it therefore falls into the hands of those who want education for the higher efforts of dishonesty. To get into a bank at midnight and steal what little there may be in the till, or even an armful of bank-notes, with the probability of a policeman catching you as you creep out of the chimney and through a hole, is clumsy work; but to walk in amidst the smiles and bows of admiring managers and draw out money over the counter by thousands and tens of thousands, which you have never put in and which you can never repay; and which, when all is done, you have only borrowed; -- that is a great feat."

from Anthony Trollope, The Eustace Diamonds, Vol 2 p 124 in my old Oxford edition; originally published in 1873

helpful advice for fund-raisers in the arts

Here it is: I am not kidding when I tell you not to call me.

Perhaps some dimwit consultant has told you that calling helps establish human contact, thereby presumably rendering me more likely to donate. Unless the human contact you're looking for includes irritation and harassment, which, I should point out, make me less likely to give, even to groups I generally support, then please consider that bad advice.

I generally solve this problem by not answering my phone (leading to occasional awkwardness when I do pick it up and it's someone I know who was clearly hoping for voicemail). But some of these groups also have my work number, where I am generally expected to pick up the phone when it rings. And no matter what I say, they keep calling.

I tell them I never pledge money over the phone. ("Oh, why not?" one asked. "Because then people keep calling," I explained, before hanging up.)

I tell them I prefer to donate when I renew a subscription. They seem to think that, since they are so worthy, I should donate on their schedule, not my own.

I tell them that they can send me something in the mail or through e-mail. They then call back to follow up on what they sent.

I do actually donate to arts groups, which is why I don't just hang up on such callers the way I hang up on those people who call suggesting I really need to refinance my mortgage. Hence the awkwardness! But it's a simple and obvious matter of customer relations: you don't contact customers (that is, people from whom you want money) in a way that is guaranteed to piss them off. I am using many italics in this entry, because I can't emphasize this enough, and arts groups really don't seem to understand this. I've already stopped giving to one group in part because of my irritation at their fund-raising practices. And the past couple of weeks another group, one which I still support (ironically, one I give to because I appreciate how considerate they are to their donors and subscribers) has been harassing me at work with calls, which is making me reconsider my normal donation to this group. (Here's a hint: both of these groups have "Performances" in their name.)

All businesses need occasional reminders not only that the customer is not there for their convenience, but that it's the other way around. If you are working from a phone list it's easy enough to put "do not call" next to someone's name. Seriously. How many ways can I say this? And how many times do I need to say this?