Sunset over the Hudson, Years at SingSing

July 5^th Ossining waterfront featured a sunset concert where we enjoyed a picnic. Jazz combo with KJ Denhert played wonderfully, illustrating the pleasant weather and sunset over the Hudson River. We saw some old acquaintances, and shared dinner with the D'attores. Afterward the village showed an outdoor movie at the fence of SingSing Prison 20000 years in SingSing. We watched for a while; it was a bit eerie to see a watchtower in the 80-year-old movie, then turn to see the original watchtower in real life.

Days in Ossining packing and repacking suitcases, retrieving and organizing boxes in the attic at Hudson View Hill – fortunately the renters went away for the weekend, so we spend Saturday and much of Sunday in the hot hot attic. Winter clothes were our primary target, but it gave us opportunity to sort and discard other papers and photos and books, as well as select more items to ship to Korea. In the end, we relieved the attic of a dozen boxes, and a few hundred pounds of weight; and relieved our future sorting effort somewhat (oh, we'll get to that later...).

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String Quartet Broken String

We attended a marvelous concert last night, at the Porto Museum of Casa do Infante , a beautifully-renovated 1325 building near the river. At one point it served as a customs house. The government sponsors Portuguese musicians to return from other European orchestras to perform in their homeland. We heard and saw this group play a traditional piece – Haydn string quartet Opus 20 #2. Then the modern Benjamin Britten's Three Divertimenti – the stunning last movement of which they performed as an encore. They performed (and I recorded) the Shostakovich Quartet #9, during which the first-violinist broke a string (it features several strongly-plucked chords!) and had to retreat&repeat!

EUA: tanto estrago em tão pouco tempo

As part of my effort to learn about Portugal, both the country and the language, I'm subscribing to the centrist newspaper, O Publico . There are plenty of newspapers: conservative tabloids, and socialist and communist-sponsored daily papers; I find O Publico to be most sober, with consistently interesting columnists and opinion pieces, in addition to some local (Porto) news, with just enough sporting news to keep me chatting with the taxi driver. Today's opinion piece sums up, I think, European pundits' view of the U.S. government. As the title puts it: so much damage in so little time. I shudder at the rank incompetence and corrupt behavior, demonstrating a cynical attitude toward public service, showing indeed that the cruelty is the point. What scandal, what damage will be the tipping point to collapse this government? And what will it take to recover from the damage? Who will be able to trust the US government again, ever? Only ni...

Música Tunas e Boémia

We attended an unusual concert last night: Música Tunas e Boémia (bands and parties) University student folk-music groups — big groups of 40 and more each! put on a great show of singing, playing, flag-twirling, tambourine-swinging, all at the major (private) concert hall. The most unusual thing about it was that nobody used any electronic device (except for microphone amplification)—no electric guitar or keyboard, no big drum set…every instrument and prop was hand-held. The singing was quite good, given the effort to synchronize 40 voices.

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