“I can’t just pray
I can’t just hope
I can’t just preach.”
John Legend, “Preach”
The Weekend
John Legend
Over the weekend a huge crowd gathered in New York’s Central Park for the Global Citizen festival, many inspired by the Senate testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford against Supreme Court nominee Brett Cavanaugh. The day-long program featuring an array of stars, including Gary’s own Janet Jackson, Janell Monae, John Legend, and The Weekend, born Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, the son of Ethiopian migrants to Canada. Introducing recent composition “Preach,”John Legend stated: “You can’t just talk about it or tweet about it. You’ve got to do something.”
Matt Damon as Brett Kavanaugh on Saturday Night Live
photo by Ray Smock
Ray Smock was vacationing in Maine atop Cadillac Mountain on the banks of the Bagaduce River with wife Phyllis and Don and Anne Ritchie during the Kavanaugh hearings staying in a house without TV away from, in his words, “the daily ebb and flow of political culture in the nation’s political culture”and relieved not to feel compelled to watch, “all the nuances and the frustrations and utter embarrassment of the proceedings on many levels.” His sober prediction:
Senate Republicans will push Kavanaugh through and count on the American public to have a short attention span and an even shorter historical memory. They expect the American public to move on to the next circus act and forget that this nasty show ever played here at all. The Supreme Court will embrace whomever is confirmed and that person will become an instant colleague in this very small, very exclusive, high-powered branch of government. We like to think that a lifetime appointment frees justices on the high court from the daily concerns of partisan politics. Brett Kavanaugh has shown that he has had trouble containing his partisanship and his cool during these hearings.
Maine native Gaard Logan, back from the south of France, was equally pleased to have stayed in a house without television.
At Culver’s with James after Saturday bowling, I learned that his Advanced English class has been assigned Carmac McCormick’s “No Country for Old Men,” written as grist for a screenplay in more straightforward than “Blood Meridian” (1985) or “All the Pretty Horses” (1992). It’s about the consequences of a botched a drug deal that takes place near the Mexican border being investigated by a Texas sheriff nearing retirement. I recall the Coen Brothers dramatization, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem as the primary antagonists, to be quite bloody and cynical.
The “Welcome” section of Barb Walczak’s Newsletter profiled Jim McDonald’s guest Leon Chen (above). Walczak wrote:
Chen lives in California outside of San Francisco and is a native of Shanghai. He learned bridge in college but then stopped for a long time. He picked it back up after he retired. He started duplicate in 2012. He considers bridge an intellectual exercise. It keeps your brain active and is an avenue for making friends. Leon was a scientist (phyics) and a solar engineer. He has 2 children and 3 grandchildren and says he is quite the ballroom dancer.
above, conductor Robert Vzdnoy; below, actor Adam Gustas
Dick Hagelberg drove us to the Memorial Opera House musical “Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” Stephen Sondheim’s musical numbers were excellent and the orchestra under Robert Vodnoy (Kirk Muspratt’s predecessor with Northwest Indiana Symphony) top notch, but a play about a mass murderer bent on vengeance was not my cup of tea. As neighbor George put it while we were putting out the trash, “good music, bad story.” His first reaction when I told him what we’d seen was, “Plenty of meat pies,” a reference to what Sweeny Todd and Mrs. Lovett made from the victims. Comic relief (probably intentional) was provided by a member of the ensemble who kept returning in different costumes for a shave only to have his throat slashed and body sent down a chute to be grinded up for meat pies. Adam Gustas was especially charismatic as Tobias rag, naïve assistant to a scam artist and later Mrs. Lovett. At Pesco’s for dinner I ordered my usual, steak salad and a Yuenling on draft.
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