It’s been a reasonably productive weekend. I finished the first draft of all of the new material for the current writing project (more details on that later when I have a better understanding of how it fits in with other projects and a timeline for actually appearing in print). I took a look at the current series of long posts on the blog and decided to migrate everything after January 20, 2025 from their current homes over to Substack to try and get them to a bit wider audience. It will take me a few days to complete that task but I’m under no deadline. No, I’m not going to start charging y’all $9.95 to read them. I’ll only monetize if all of a sudden thousands upon thousands start reading them and it’s too good a chance to pass up. I don’t expect anything like that to happen. I don’t think I’m that good a writer and my current writings are just too diffuse. Unlike the covid writings which were focused enough so that books made sense, these are wandering through all sorts of facets of public health, medicine, politics and don’t have a core focus. I suppose I could make them all anti-Trump all the time but if any of you have actually read my writings, you’ll know that I don’t consider him the source of most of our current issues. He’s a symptom, not the disease.
I’ve been trying to decide what sort of dystopia we’re all cheerily barreling our way towards. I keep hearing 1984 and Brave New World and the classical literary ones we all read in high school, presumably to warn us against the kind of society we’re now concocting. And there are the inevitable comparisons to Nazi Germany and other historical authoritarian regimes. But I don’t think any of them quite capture the sense of lunacy of which we’re all in the midst. They were all promulgated by intelligent, serious people who understood how politics and economics works, not the know-nothing reality TV rejects that empower the current administration. There’s only one dystopia that comes close – Terry Gilliam’s Brazil from the 1985 film of that name. It has it all – an administrative error caused by a literal bug in the system that no one can seem to rectify and which destroys lives, a bureaucracy constantly looking over their shoulders while being distracted by mindless entertainment, an infrastructure in various states of collapse, an elite enjoying their privileges while a disgruntled proletariat takes potshots at the symbols of such, even women addicted to plastic surgery and eternal youth. I just hope I don’t have to escape from it in the same way that Jonathan Pryce does at the end of the film.
The political news of the last few weeks has all been about the now you see them, now you don’t tariffs which change faster than the Ansager in Politically Incorrect Cabaret. I haven’t a clue where they currently stand nor do I think does anyone else. I just feel for small businesses who have outsourced their manufacture to China. Many will go under when they can’t get their orders filled without paying 145% tariff as they come into the country. Unlike the makers of smartphones and computers, they don’t have the clout to go hat in hand and with a few million dollars in bribes in order to get a carve out. In the rest of the world where smart people control economic policy, there are meetings and strategizing and understanding that we live in a global economy and they’ll just give the US more and more rope. We’ve pretty much forgotten about the headlines of two weeks ago when we were all up in arms about military plans being shared in Signal chat groups where random folk were being added in. It’s so yesterday’s news.
The administration has still not been able to return the Salvadoran here on asylum who was picked up and sent to that gulag due to an ‘administrative error’ despite multiple judicial orders and a 9-0 supreme court decision. The state department claims he is alive and secure but that they cannot retrieve him if El Salvador doesn’t want to give him up. Funny how we were able to get a whole camera crew worthy of a major Hollywood production down there to take propaganda video of the arrivals but can’t get one person wrongfully detained released. In other detainee news, DOJ has not been able to produce one shred of evidence in court that the Tufts graduate student they snatched off the street had any ties to terrorism or was in anyway antisemitic, the excuses made for her detention. There have been multiple stories of Europeans, Canadians, and Australians being turned back at the borders just because they can. We’re supposed to be hosting the Olympics in Los Angeles in 20228. If I were the IOC, I would remove that right now until we can decide to treat foreign visitors with respect.
The more immediate concern to me is that the World Pride celebration is scheduled for Washington DC for May of this year. This large LGBTQIA event has been years in the planning so no one wants to cancel at this late date but I fear for the safety of international visitors coming to participate and I won’t be in the least surprised if the administration either instigates or allows some sort of violence to take place that will allow them to continue demonizing LGBTQIA folk and enable some sort of crackdown. I might have thought about going, but not in this political climate. Going to DC to take part in a celebration of alternate sexualities strikes me as unwise at the moment. I’m not a coward. I would consider going for a protest knowing that there will need to be a certain amount of street disorderliness and that there are plans for handling that on my side. Forewarned is forearmed.
The symphony chorus acquitted itself well this weekend with Bernstein’s Missa Brevis and Chichester Psalms, at least that’s my read from audience reaction and hearing back from people I trust who attended. They were fun pieces to sing. We come back in October with Beethoven’s 9th symphony under a new chorus master as Philip Copeland is moving on after seventeen years at the helm. I assume they’ll still want me in the Bass II section as I can hit those low growly notes fairly well. I’m itching to go public about another ASO gig next year but I can’t discuss it in this forum until all the contracts are in place.
The respiratory illness season seems to finally be abating. At least I and my colleagues are finally seeing a let up in the number of cases of bronchitis, chest and head colds, and various flu symptoms that were running rampant a month ago. I wish I could give you solid updated numbers but the gutting of the CDC means that meaningful statistics are not currently being collected and published in an easily searchable form. I can say that the number of measles cases is now up around 800 and continuing to spread. There will be more dead children before that dies down. RFK Jr. made remarks where he acknowledged that the MMR vaccine was the best way to control the spread. The anti-vaccination wing of MAGA turned their full fury on him for that so he’s unlikely to follow up with any real action. I’m waiting for some of these lunkheads to turn against indoor plumbing as it’s more natural to poop on the back lawn.
Back to rehearsals tomorrow evening for the play Second Samuel with Bell Tower Players. I’m playing the town doctor. Type casting. It opens mother’s day weekend if you’re local and enjoy southern fried dramedy. I’m also starting prep work on Richard II which I am directing this summer for the same company. Trying to make judicious cuts to get 2800 lines of poetry down to about 2000 so as to be able to pace it properly. We’ll see how that goes.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 