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e_julianaRare color photographs of World War I. Fascinating and touching at the same time. It makes a distant war seem all that more real.
Let me both curse and praise![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stephl for linking me to the Bartleby edition of the 1922 Emily Post. I am obsessed with manners books (I desperately want the new Manners book by Kate Spade. Actually, the entire series would not be unwelcome), and Miss Post is the grande dame of American manners, both clever and precise. I aspire to contain that much grace, and will probably fall short of the mark for many years to come. Especially today, as my productivity at work is put aside in favor of reading such observations as this:
It would seem that the variability of the weather was purposely devised to furnish mankind with unfailing material for conversation.
So very true.
Z & I went to see Theater Latté Da's production of La Bohème. Director Peter Rothstein decided to set it in 1940s Paris, using Nazi imagery for the soldiers and putting a Star of David on Colline. There are days when I ungenerously wonder what many artists would have used for conceptual fodder if the Nazis had never come to power. It was a good production overall, but I was reminded that I don't often enjoy opera for various reasons usually associated with the script and pacing. Also, the audiences. Ah, opera audiences, full of pretentiousness and self-congratulation, who either shush everyone around them in a bullhorn voice or else talk throughout the show, commenting on every single little piece of set or staging. We heard no less than four people last night ask during the singing if Colline was wearing a star in the second act. Let's see - we've already seen a representation of Hitler and a swastika on a soldier's arm, and you ask if the yellow piece of fabric on his lapel is a star? Come here so that I may beat you with a clue-by-four. You don't even have the excuse of distance, because the farthest the audience can be from the back wall of the set is 30 feet, and he was downstage. (Side note - the man playing Colline does not look like a basso profundo. I was amazed every time that voice came out of that slight frame.)
We see Pericles Wednesday, and then close Measure For Measure on Sunday. I need some rest.
Let me both curse and praise
stephl for linking me to the Bartleby edition of the 1922 Emily Post. I am obsessed with manners books (I desperately want the new Manners book by Kate Spade. Actually, the entire series would not be unwelcome), and Miss Post is the grande dame of American manners, both clever and precise. I aspire to contain that much grace, and will probably fall short of the mark for many years to come. Especially today, as my productivity at work is put aside in favor of reading such observations as this:It would seem that the variability of the weather was purposely devised to furnish mankind with unfailing material for conversation.
So very true.
Z & I went to see Theater Latté Da's production of La Bohème. Director Peter Rothstein decided to set it in 1940s Paris, using Nazi imagery for the soldiers and putting a Star of David on Colline. There are days when I ungenerously wonder what many artists would have used for conceptual fodder if the Nazis had never come to power. It was a good production overall, but I was reminded that I don't often enjoy opera for various reasons usually associated with the script and pacing. Also, the audiences. Ah, opera audiences, full of pretentiousness and self-congratulation, who either shush everyone around them in a bullhorn voice or else talk throughout the show, commenting on every single little piece of set or staging. We heard no less than four people last night ask during the singing if Colline was wearing a star in the second act. Let's see - we've already seen a representation of Hitler and a swastika on a soldier's arm, and you ask if the yellow piece of fabric on his lapel is a star? Come here so that I may beat you with a clue-by-four. You don't even have the excuse of distance, because the farthest the audience can be from the back wall of the set is 30 feet, and he was downstage. (Side note - the man playing Colline does not look like a basso profundo. I was amazed every time that voice came out of that slight frame.)
We see Pericles Wednesday, and then close Measure For Measure on Sunday. I need some rest.
