More pictures from our trip down south last January

Here are some Summer shots. Oh how it aches to see the summer sun and the shadows when they fall that way NOW when we have this sun and the shadows falling this way in the depths of Winter. That said, today was gorgeous in Wellington... so ache is not so sharp (for the moment! [as I must add cuz I must rock the cranky on teh "angry" blog, of course])

Anyway... first up is

He who must be obeyed:



Queenstown:





Milford Sound:




South coast to the west of Invercargill:



More to come, at some point...yeah.

Not Something You See Every Day

Don't ask. It will take too long.

Noted with Pleasure

Virginia Burrus (pg. 64 in her 2004 The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography) on St. Jerome's Paula:

"What Lynda Coon has dubbed ‘the patristic theology of the cosmetic’ is more than a matter of simple inversion. Resisting Jerome, Paula claims her ascetic practice as her own. Seeming to swap beauty for ugliness and pleasure for pain, she is making herself over as the bride of Christ. Her fasts are heroic (17), her illnesses frequent (19). Face furrowed by grief, body practically a corpse, her mortal flesh betrays an immense desire. Good looks disordered, her power to please is out this world."

"Her power to please is out of this world!"

[!]

You go girl, as the young people used to say.

Reception

Is this a "family blog"?-- I hate that term, effing "family blog", by the way, AND all those terms that talk about family this or family that. There is a big presumption there (a family has children in it, duh) and in the end it has less to do with children (who tend to be cruel and filthy-minded, anyway--- I mean I was there and So. Were. You.), and more to do with adults pulling a power-play on other adults. Could people mind their own business and not brandish the kids in this way? It's a thought.

That out of the way--- (and, btw, is this becoming an "Angry Blog"? Possibly.), check out what I have to *deal with* on our very own street in sweet Ngaio in Wellington:

TWO VEHICLES, PARKED


VEHICLE ON RIGHT:


VEHICLE ON LEFT:


Um...teh provocative... what I will say is the following: "interpretation happens at the point of reception." Or Pehaps "Othay Reekgay actionshay in teh Ulcay de Acsay."

Consumatum est. I give too much.

Later.

Moonrise on Cape Sounion

Look what I found at Aprile Millo's blog:



This is the most recent full moon rising right behind the temple precinct at Cape Sounion in Greece.

I of course visited this gorgeous temple (to Poseidon? Yeah? For the Romanist it is use it or lose it!) with the students in 2006 (and am slated to take another group to Greece in 2009). Here are two of my shots from 2006:





Now it is back the mines and my final labors on my book project which just seems to go on and on. (People are all like-- though they don't quite say it--- what is taking you so long?-- and all I can say [and they still don't get it] is that the demands of what I want to say and how I want to say it require that certain labor intensive things need to happen...maybe I am deluded about this.... but I have had success in the past in presenting results and in other ways, so I should follow my judgment here...and so I WILL... but...) Um, Mark, STFU and BACK THE MINES ALREADY!!

New Zealand Symphony Concert

Am I back? Well for the moment. At least. We will talk this one step at a time. First right, then left, and then we will see if I can get back into the swing.

What I did not tell you about, and which I should have I suppose, was the La Boheme back in May. The cast was good looking and they sang well enough and the Mimi in fact was even better than that. She was Antoinette Halloran who I suggest that you should try to see if she comes your way. She does have the goods. BUT, on the whole--and I am bucking the tide here, everyone "loved it," I tell you, they just "loved it"-- it was fairly provincial in terms of the expertise of most of the singers. The Rodolfo was nice, but I am so over these facsimiles of a ping when it is just tightness with just a glint of something more. But you know I need to get over myself and remember that I live in the provinces--- BUT all the same it gets irritating when the whiff of a possibility of a suspicion of ping gets the ladies and gents a-swooning--- can we not get SO excited. It is too much to ask? Clearly, it is.

Anyway, tonight TRH and I saw our excellent symphony in this program:

RAVEL La Valse
SAINT-SAËNS Piano Concerto No 2
TCHAIKOVSKY Manfred Symphony

Here are the conductor and the soloist:

YOEL LEVI Conductor
SIMON TRPČESKI Piano

It was a really good concert. The La Valse was quite engrossing and was making a nice big sound by the end. This Yoel Levi is good. He really made sure the orchestra was articulating cleanly and carefully. And he really demands and gets gradations in volume.

The concerto was a treat. Everyone and their dog of course knows this warhorse like the back of their hand, and we around here are no exception to this. Though not French, Trpčeski (how is that for a bunch of consonants at the beginning of his name!---FYI he is Macedonian), he played as though he were as French as Thibaudet. Lines were clear, clean, classical and surely St. Saens had to be smiling from somewhere as he heard his work played so elegantly and yet with fire that it needs in spots. Trpčeski, handsome devil that he is---- check him out!:



--- will be back in two weeks to play the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff and we are certainly looking forward to that.

The last work on the program was the rhapsodic Manfred Symphony. I really enjoyed this too. Again the careful control that Levi has over the orchestra paid dividends (as it did in the concerto, where the two of them combined efforts to bring out St. Saens' musical argument). The first three movements came off well. The banging conclusion to the first movement caused applause to erupt and that was not suprising, given the excellent playing and conducting. TRH found the finale somewhat rambling but I rushed to Peter Illych's defense in the car on the way home--- talking about what the audience of the time would have known about Manfred and such. (I will admit here that I sort of agree with him--- but don't tell him.) I did like the quiet ending with the great man finally after all his struggles finding rest.

(This orchestra is not provincial, by the way.)