Quote from John Adams about Power, and humility

While reading The New Yorker piece about James Comey's intellectual history, I noticed a reference to his speech at UT Austin wherein he quoted John Adams. I then went down the internet-rabbit-hole to get the source -- the longer original quote seems so a propos to our times, both in the US and in the Gulf region:
“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.”

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Riding the Bus often

From 201010 Saudi scenes It is ironic that this land of cheap gasoline has so much group transport -- buses. From 201010 Saudi scenes Our housing compound has a Toyota-Coaster bus that takes some to/from school (we usually go earlier and return later, on a similar bus that the school provides). Driver Yahya takes residents on the 90-minute trip down to the Big City shopping every Thursday morning. The above picture shows our group one Thursday, usually going to Ikea or the new Lulu's Hypermarket , or the Dhahran Mall. Coleman rides a different bus every day to and from school -- usually 100 minutes there, 80 minutes back. His bus is evidently an old tourist bus, usually comfortable but a bit dusty. The air-conditioning usually works too well. I've ridden it with him several times, to attend business meetings at the district office. From 201010 Saudi scenes There he is, at 5:45am every morning, at the start of the bus run. Fortunately only about 20 stu...

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!

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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