This Land is Your Land (If You Can Keep It)

Some of the posts from Portland feature a group of people singing "This Land is Your Land", which seems particularly appropriate with the return of the robber barons.

Today, while catching up on Feedly, this SMBC cartoon, combined with the Portland protestors, reminded me of this old JibJab video.  

Ruminations on RR

This is coming a few days late, but I needed to raid the photo collection first.

There have been many wonderful things said about Robert Redford's actions in life. I haven't seen the following discussed.

For me, one of the defining things that Robert Redford did as an actor, especially in closeups, was the "freeze expression, slide the eyes in one direction, slide them back, continue." He could do this with a variety of emotions and apply it to scenes with different tones. It's everywhere in his body of work because he was masterful at it (and it reinforced his aura of charm).

This photo, from a fall trip to NH when I was 16, does not have Robert Redford in it. Instead that's my dad, Richard Reutter, who can sometimes make you double take before realizing no, that's not the famous actor. I'm thankful that both men have been in this world, and that my dad is still with us.

UVM Lane Series: Evren Ozel

We saw Evren Ozel perform at the UVM Lane Series on Friday.  The Lane Series has a tradition of bringing in Van Cliburn finalists, and we've made a tradition of going to those events.

Ozel's program began with three Scarlatti Sonatas (Sonata in G Major, K. 427, Sonata in C Minor, K. 11, Sonata in C Major, K. 159), then moved on to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, op. 109, and went into intermission with Bartok's Out of Doors, Sz. 81, BB 89.

After intermission, Ozel played Fauré's Nocturne No. 4 in E-flat Major, op. 36 and finished with Schumann's Carnaval, op. 9.  Aside from the Beethoven, I wasn't familiar with much of the program, and it's always interesting to be introduced to new favorites.  :-)

Ozel demonstrated extraordinary fluidity and musicality, making difficult passages seem trivial.  We placed ourselves on the left side of the stage, so that we could see the smooth and effortless movement of his hands.  He was charming and down to earth in his discussion of the pieces, with a genuine enthusiasm and love for music and music history.  And *fun*.  

He was very practical in the encore, not waiting very long before coming back out onstage.  He played Brahm's Hungarian Dance Number 5, as arranged by György Cziffra.  Then he was gracious enough to play a *second* encore, joking he'd "only keep us for one more", and finished with Leopold Godowsky's transcription of Le Cygne from Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, noting that it was, perhaps, "a little disrespectful to the cello" to play it on the piano. 

All in all a wonderful night!  To "replay" it when I like, here's a playlist with the program from that night.  (note: Spotify didn't have all of the pieces performed by Evren Ozel)

MS follies: Forms surveys

Last week, I wanted to solicit suggestions from my team at work, so I went to OneDrive, clicked the "Create or upload" button in the upper left, selected "Forms survey", created my survey, and sent the link out to my team.  This week, I wanted to look at the results, so I went back to OneDrive... which had no way to get me to the form I had created... from OneDrive.  I needed to go to forms.office.com to find the form, at which point I could export the results to Excel.

Meanwhile, Google Drive treats Forms like any other "document" that you can create and go back to from within that "one drive".  

The Mom Stays in the Picture On Mystic Lake; Kristin Hannah (1999)

On strength of The Women, I picked up a few Kristin Hannah books at a Fletcher Free Library book sale, and decided to start with the oldest of the three, On Mystic Lake, which in turn, according to the "Other books by" page, her eighth book.  The dust jacket proclaimed, "Kristin Hannah makes her hardcover debut" which initially surprised me -- I hadn't realized Hannah started as a softcover romance novelist and was now a little worried about my purchases. 😅

As it turns out, while On Mystic Lake has many of the earmarks of a standard romance novel, the kernel of the author who would write The Women is present, and it's an enjoyable read with (mostly) well-rounded characters and tackles thorny relationship complications.  

And wonderfully, on page 29, I was reminded of "The Mom Stays in the Picture": 

"There were almost no pictures of her.  Like most mothers, she was always behind the camera, and when she thought she looked tired, or fat, or thin, or ugly ... she ripped the photo in half and ditched it." 

... and then again later in the book:

"We're like that, we moms.  We take the pictures, but we don't record our own lives very well.  It's a mistake we never realize until it's too late..."