REVIEW POTPOURRI: A collection of great classical recordings

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Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade

William Stenberg conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; Capitol P 8305, LP, recorded 1955.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

William Steinberg had a style of conducting in which the most often recorded works (and I still persist in my fascination with duplicates of favorite pieces of music) sounded freshly minted; his LP of Scheher­azade kept me listening from beginning to end and is available on Internet sites.

Other classical recordings recently heard and worthy of attention:

Pietro Mascagni

Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana – Domenico Savino conducting the Rome Symphony Orchestra, Kapp LP, KCL-9003, recorded between late 1950s to early ’60s. Kapp released mostly popular artists such as pianist Roger Williams, arranger/conductor Marty Gold and singer Jack Jones but it did have a few classical titles including the series, Opera Without Words, featuring Domenico Savino and his Rome instrumentalists. Along with Puccini’s Turandot, Verdi’s La Forza del Destino and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Savino did an orchestral synthesis of the ever-inspired Cavalleria Rusticana of Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945). The singing is missed but the orchestral passages still shine; I played the record twice within a week recently.

Antonio Vivaldi

Vivaldi: Four Seasons – Iona Brown as soloist and conducting the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Philips 9500717 LP, 1979. The late Iona Brown (1941-2004) delivered a more understated performance of Vivaldi’s Seasons than is usually the case but her own vibrant musicianship enlivened this recording, one holding its own among many good renditions.

Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings; Mozart: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik; Sir Georg Solti conducting the Israel Philharmonic, London CS 6066, LP, recorded 1963. Sir Georg Solti (1912-1997) delivered a surging, intense performance of Tchai­kov­sky’s Serenade, one that stands with the Eugene Ormandy Philadelphia Orchestra Sony CD as exceptional; the Mozart is good but not as distinguished as those of other conductors. But Solti’s legacy of recordings is a great one. I recommend watching a 60 minute YouTube video of him rehearsing the Vienna Philharmonic playing Wagner’s Tannhauser Overture, from 1966. It is fascinating in how he goes over details of the score and relates to the orchestra.

Quote from the late humorist James Thurber (1894-1961) – “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”

COMMUNITY COMMENTARY: This is one guy who’s tired of telephone scams

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image: AARP

by Roland D. Hallee, managing editor, The Town Line newspaper

This is an important message. Do not turn the page.

Does that sound familiar? I receive something like that every day, over the phone. It’s a robo call, and it sounds like this: “This is an important message. Don’t hang up.” At which point, I instantly hang up.

Times have become perilous.

Recently, I entered my seventh decade on this planet. I grew up in the 1950s, when times were simpler. During the post World War II and Korean War era, you didn’t lock your doors, a gentlemen’s agreement was settled with a handshake, and when someone gave their word, it meant something.

The dawn of the electronic age ushered in a new era of deceit and deception. A more complex world, wary of all phone calls, emails, etc., and a genuine distrust of other people.

Last week, on the front page of The Town Line, we ran an article about an ongoing scam involving Social Security benefits. That was to alert our readers of the scam. This article is to provide more proof to our readers that these scams do exist in our area in large scale, and everyone needs to be alert.

Rewind back to last summer, when my wife checked our answering machine one afternoon when she returned home from work. There, in broken English, was a warning that the IRS investigation task force had noticed four major and serious violations on our tax returns, and we had to notify them within 24 hours to rectify the matter. They wanted us to make the payment for back taxes. If we didn’t comply, the local “cops” would be coming to arrest us.

Nice try!

I knew it was a scam because I have used the same tax preparer for over 30 years, never had a problem. And besides, we file short form, standard deduction, and could not possibly have “major” violations. If there would have been any federal violations, we would have been visited by U.S. marshals, and not the local “cops.”

A call to the local police department led to a referral to the state’s attorney general’s office, in which case I was informed that it was, indeed, a scam. A very profitable one for the scammers, according to the AG’s office.

Now, we fast forward to last Saturday.

I received a phone call, on my cell phone, from a restricted number. Now, I don’t usually answer those calls, but I was expecting a call from a state agency on another matter, one that usually comes in restricted. I answered.

It was a male voice, with a slight speech impediment, informing me that I was the chosen recipient of a Publishers’ Clearinghouse $4.5 million prize. The voice, which had an unconvincing tone of jubilance for me, asked several questions. Like what time I would be home to receive my windfall prize; what I would do with the money; how I felt about winning so much money, etc.

My responses were mostly one word.

My wife and I are known to binge watch the three NCIS series, Monk, Bones, Columbo and Matlock. I consider myself an amateur sleuth, trying to figure out the conclusion of the episode before it gets there. I needed to follow this trail as far as it would take me, without compromising my financial assets. Then, pass my experience on to others, as to what I had learned, and warn them of impending fraud calls.

The first thing that tipped me off was the fact that he said I was selected because I had returned the form they had sent by mail. Something I never did. All of those mailings went straight into the paper shredder.

He then proceeded to give me a “code” number, and that I needed three forms of identification: my driver’s license, another one that I don’t quite remember, and that I had to produce the “invitational receipt.” When I informed the caller that I did not have that, he replied by saying, “Don’t worry, we can remedy that. Go to the nearest Wal-Mart, proceed to the customer service counter, and they would have the receipt there for me.”

Up came red flag No. 2. A lot of unlawful activities occur in Wal-Mart parking lots. And with the sophisticated electronic equipment of today, they probably could have retrieved all my personal information off my driver’s license while it was still in my pocket. I was not about to risk that, even if it is not possible.

He then informed me he would be calling back in 30 minutes. Now, when the call first came in, I suspected scam, and told the caller that I was driving and unable to take down notes. He asked if I could pull over and take down the information. I wasn’t really driving, but sitting in a rocking chair at a friend’s home where my wife and I had gone for Saturday morning coffee.

I concurred, pretended to pull over by the side of the road, and took down the information.

Thirty minutes later, the person called again. This time he asked if I was at Wal-Mart yet. I told him that I was still about 45 minutes away. I was on the road, and was headed home. He then instructed me to proceed to the Wal-Mart parking lot, and sit and wait in the car until he called again, in 45 minutes, with additional instructions before I entered Wal-Mart. Another red flag!

Within that 45 minutes, I called the local police department and informed them of the scam that was developing. They instructed me to not answer the phone when it rang.

Exactly 45 minutes to the second, my phone rang again. I did not answer. The phone rang a second time. Again, I did not answer. The caller tried four more times to contact me, within a span of five minutes. Every time, the caller ID indicated it was from an unavailable number. The calls then stopped.

I figured we were done.

At ten minutes before 2 p.m., the time they were supposed to deliver my “certified bank check, for $4.5 million,” my phone rang again. This time from a local number that looked familiar. I answered. It was that male voice again, asking what had happened and whether I was at Wal-Mart.

At that point, I informed him that I was through with him, that I had called the police, and that this was a scam.

I hadn’t even finished uttering the word “police” when the line went dead.

That was the end of that. But, my reason for relaying this story is that if you are in your senior years, and you receive calls like this, hang up immediately, do not engage in conversation with these people. They can make things look mighty attractive, and plant that doubt in your mind of, “what if this is legitimate?” But, as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, they will ask for money somewhere along the way.

Remember the tried and true saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

My solution to all of this? As of this writing, Sunday afternoon, I am a little disappointed that I  have not heard back from the police seeking more details about the scam. The scam caller gave me his phone number to call if I had questions. The police had told me that this was the first time they had heard about his scam. So, maybe, this is something new and that word has to be relayed to folks to be on the lookout for this particular scam.

Instead of diverting $5.7 billion to build a wall on our southern border, why not appropriate funds to establish an agency, a la FBI, that investigates these scams, and tracks down these predators of the elderly for prosecution? This is going on all over America, and many unsuspecting and vulnerable senior citizens are being bilked of their hard-earned, well-deserved, and under-compensated livelyhood following a lifetime of work.

Dear fellow senior citizens, please be vigilant, and as attractive as an offer sounds, don’t fall for it.

SOLON & BEYOND: Week of January 31, 2019

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Marilyn Rogers-Bull & Percyby Marilyn Rogers-Bull & Percy
grams29@tds.net
Solon, Maine 04979

Good morning dear friends, don’t worry, be happy!

The Solon Pine Tree 4-H Club had a meeting on January 12 with Cooper Dellarma presiding. At that meeting there were two leaders and 10 members present.

Three members have been invited to demonstrate and talk about 4-H. This will be done in the spring.

At the last meeting Hailey Dellarma did a presentation, followed by Debra Kanter doing a officer training, then she handed out pins and a folder with officer information on information on it.

On February 2, Sherri and Molly Thornton will be doing a work shop on winter care of animals from 10 to 11:30 a.m., at the Somerset County Extension office.

In February the Solon Pine Tree 4-H Club will be doing the food trays for the elderly.

Also at the February 4-H meeting, Laci Dickey and Cooper Dellarma will be doing their demonstrations instead of the leaders. This is something new that is being tried this year. All of the other members should be thinking of something they can do at the March meeting.

The next meeting will be on Saturday, February 17, at the Solon Fire Station at 9:30 a.m.

On Saturday, February 2, the Solon Congregational Church will be having a baked bean and casserole supper from 5 – 6 p.m., at the Solon Masonic Hall.

I recently received another e-mail from the New Hope Church, in Solon, and it starts, Dear Friends of the Shelter, “This one thing we know, “God is good all the time….And all the time He is GOOD!” While we often look at events in our lives as something that is such a surprise to us, we can rest assured that absolutely nothing surprises God and also we can know with certainty that He will make something good out of every situation if we are surrendered to His will! It is through this lens we can know that, in His sovereignty, God has a plan for our future here at New Hope Shelter after the loss of our church pastor and board president, Tim Hunt. God’s people have sustained all of us through their prayers and support. Pat and her family are doing well and are thankful as well for your prayers. The church now has two two interim pastors who will bring the messages for us over the next few months as we prayerfully seek the Lord’s direction for the right man who is being prepared by God to come and shepherd us here at New Hope Church. Pastor Tim taught a weekly Bible study and loved spending time to get to know the women and children of the shelter. He will be missed but we rejoice with him that he is now with his Lord and those who have gone on before. We know that when he entered the gates of heaven that he heard Jesus say, ‘Well done good and faithful servant !’ Thank you, Pastor Tim for all you did here at New Hope Church and the New Hope Shelter.”

The shelter, operating under the umbrella of the church, has a board of directors who help with policy decisions, procedures and rules, financial direction, and other general guidance. While the loss of our church pastor and board president is strongly felt, we know because of our years of working on developing a firm structure that the shelter will continue to move forward successfully while still under the oversight of our board of directors.

The above letter was signed, Blessings to you all in the New Year, by Rebecca Philpot.

Last week, I wrote that I would try and find out more about our up coming town meeting, but I didn’t put in Article 2: To elect all municipal officials and school committee members as are required to be elected. Nominated candidates: Selectman, three-year term; Elaine Aloes; Road Commissioner: Gary Bishop; Town Clerk/Tax Collector, one-year term: Christine Jablon and MSAD # 74 School Board Director, three-year term: Deron Whittemore.

Percy’s very much looked forward to memoir will be a short one, because I’m almost out of space: entitled; Winter’s White Gown; Snowflakes are falling Winter’s white gown, Gentley in motion They cover the ground. Beauty awaiting Softly in sound, Crystallized snowflakes Have touched Winter’s gown. Thank You, dear Master, For all that I see, And the snowflakes of splendor Adorning the trees. And the beauty of Winter Seems silent in sound, Season’s own loveliness Dressed up in white gown. (words by Katherine Smith Matheney.)

ERIC’S TECH TALK: Where are all the aliens?

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by Eric W. Austin

(The views of the author in the following column are not necessarily those of The Town Line newspaper, or its staff and board of directors.)

Where is everybody? That’s the question posed by Italian physicist and Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi in 1950 over a casual lunch with his fellow physicists at the famous Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico.

To understand Fermi’s question and why he’s asking it, we must first review a bit of background on Earth’s own rocky road to life.

The earth formed, scientists tell us, about 4.5 billion years ago, 9 billion years after the Big Bang. From a cosmological standpoint, the earth is a bit of a late-bloomer.

After forming, Earth was a hot ball of glowing, molten rock – much too hot for life – for nearly half a billion years, but eventually the surface cooled enough for the first oceans to form. Now the stage was set for life, but once conditions were favorable, how long did it take for life to develop on the new planet?

The answer, surprisingly, is not very long. According to some estimates, it may have been as few as a hundred million years after the earth cooled. That is, from the perspective of the Universe, hardly any time at all, just a geological blink of the cosmic eye.

Assuming this is true of life across the universe and not simply a cosmic fluke when it comes to Earth, we would expect star systems which formed much earlier than our own to have developed life billions of years before ours did.

Add to this the understanding that it has taken our species less than half a million years to go from tree-dwelling primates to radio-broadcasting prima donnas and it suggests that any civilization with as little as a million-year head start on us would have spread across half the galaxy before we had even crawled out of the trees.

So, where are all the aliens?

This question has perplexed scientists for more than half a century and is known as the Fermi Paradox.

“Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy,” says Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the Institute for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). “Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire.”

He continues, “Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it’s quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years. Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.”

This creates a bit of a quandary for those seeking for intelligent life out beyond our solar system. On one hand, life appeared on Earth very early in its history – almost immediately, once conditions were right – so we would expect life to have appeared elsewhere in the universe as expeditiously as it did here on Earth. Since there are many stars much older than our sun, it only makes sense that life would pop up in many parts of the universe long before it did here on Earth.

On the other hand, it’s hard to get past the fact that we haven’t yet found any signs of life – not a smidge, smudge or random radio signal beamed out from Alpha Centauri. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

There must be something wrong with this picture.

Maybe, goes the thinking of some scientists, our assumption that life appeared very quickly here on Earth is wrong simply because the underlying assumption that life originated on Earth is wrong.

In other words, maybe life didn’t originate on Earth at all. Maybe it came from somewhere else. This idea is called the Panspermia Theory for the origin of life. The theory posits that life originated elsewhere in the universe and traveled here early in Earth’s history by way of an interstellar asteroid or meteor. Some scientists have even speculated that the impact resulting in the formation of our moon also brought with it the first microbes, seeding Earth with the life that would eventually evolve into you and me.

Where, though, did it come from? With a hundred billion stars in the observable universe, there’s a lot of places to choose from, but there is one very real possibility closer to home.

I’m speaking of Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a little older than the earth at about 4.6 billion years, and although both planets began as fiery balls of molten rock, because Mars is located further from the sun and is only half the size of the earth, it cooled much faster. Scientists believe the now-dead planet was once covered with water and had a very temperate climate sometime in the distant past. The famous “canals” of Mars were not made by little green men, but carved by liquid water flowing across its surface.

When the fires of Mars’ molten core began to die, more than 4 billion years ago, the planet lost its atmosphere and was eventually freeze-dried by the relentless solar winds. At that point, any life it had either died or retreated far beneath the planet’s surface.

What this all means is that conditions were right for life on Mars hundreds of millions of years before conditions were right for it here on Earth.

If we are willing to accept that life sprung up on Earth in a very short time (geologically-speaking), then couldn’t the same also be true of Mars? If that is correct, then life could have appeared on Mars while Earth was still a smoldering hellscape. And if we grant these two suppositions, it is a small leap to think that the life we see on Earth actually originated first on Mars and traveled here early in our history.

Are we all originally Martians? It’s an intriguing possibility, and it’s a question to which we may soon have an answer. NASA’s InSight lander touched down on Mars just last month. They recently released the first recordings of a Martian wind rippling across the dusty planet, and the space agency currently has plans for a manned mission to Mars sometime in the 2030s. Once soil samples are brought back for analysis, we may finally be able to determine whether our conjecture of past life on Mars is true. It might also tell us whether that past life bears any resemblance to the life we find on Earth.

So, the next time you’re looking up at the night sky, admiring the cosmic majesty allowed by Maine’s clear view of the stars, give a little wave. Someone, somewhere may be looking back at you and giving a little wave of their own. They might even be your distant relative.

Eric W. Austin writes about technology and community issues. He can be reached by email at ericwaustin@gmail.com.

Give Us Your Best Shot! Week of January 31, 2019

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To submit a photo for The Town Line’s “Give Us Your Best Shot!” section, please visit our contact page or email us at townline@fairpoint.net!

AHHHHH!: Rainie Bunn, of Windsor, photographed her brother’s cat, Rusty, enjoying a good rub outdoors.

 

HARD FORAGING: This female cardinal found some seed in the snow, as captured by Pat Clark, of Palermo.

 

FROZEN FUNGI: Emily Poulin, of South China, snapped these fungi frozen in ice on the underside of a log, recently.

SCORES & OUTDOORS — Rats!: wrongfully carry a legacy as filthy little creatures

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Left, Black Rat; right, Brown Rat

Roland D. Halleeby Roland D. Hallee

RATS! No, it’s not something you say when things don’t go your way. Instead, it describes, profoundly, what people think of this rodent that is perceived as a member of the underworld of the animal kingdom. They are scorned, feared and totally misunderstood. They are portrayed as evil and filthy little creatures that spread disease as they scamper through the sewers of major cities. Among unions, “rat” is a term for nonunion employers or breakers of union contracts.

Few animals elicit such strong and contradictory reactions as rats.

The Black Death is traditionally believed to have been caused by the micro-organism Yersinia pestis, carried by the tropical rat flea which preyed on black rats living in European cities during the epidemic outbreaks of the Middle Ages. These rats were used as transport hosts. Another disease linked to rats is the foot-and-mouth disease.

The reason I bring this up is because of something I saw last week. My wife showed a video to me on Facebook – I don’t do Facebook – showing this woman who had two pet rats she had trained to do some amazing things. That piqued my curiosity because I had heard rats are fairly intelligent.

The best known rat species are the black rat, which is considered to be one of the world’s worst invasive species, and the brown rat. Male rats are known as bucks, females are does, and infant rats are called kittens or pups. A group of rats is referred to as a “mischief.”

The woman on the video had her rats trained to bring her a tissue when she sneezed, respond to flashcard commands, and even come when called, just to name a few that I remember.

Those who keep rats as pets know them as highly intelligent and social animals who clean themselves regularly and thrive on regular interaction.

Specifically-bred rats have been kept as pets at least since the late 19th century. Pet rats are typically variants of the species brown rat, but black rats and giant pouched rats are also known to be kept. Pet rats behave differently from their wild counterparts depending on how many generations they have been kept as pets. The more generations, the more domesticated it will be. Pet rats do not pose any more of a health risk than pets such as dogs and cats. Tamed rats are generally friendly and can be taught to perform selected behaviors.

Because of evident displays of their ability to learn, rats were investigated early to see whether they exhibit general intelligence, as expressed by the definition of a g factor as observed in larger, more complex animals. Early studies around 1930 found evidence both for and against such a g factor in rats.

A 2011 controlled study found that rats are actively pro-social. They demonstrate apparent behavior to other rats in experiments, including freeing them from cages. When presented with readily available chocolate chips, test rats would first free the caged rat, and then share the food. All female rats displayed this behavior, while only 30 percent of males did not.

Rat meat has become a dietary staple in some cultures. Among others, I personally observed rats being consumed in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.

Back to the pet rat. While most people cringe at the thought of having a rat for a pet, believe it or not, domestic rats make great pets. They are not aggressive, diseased and dirty animals, but in fact are very clean, fun-loving, sensitive, very social and affectionate. They genuinely enjoy interacting with people and should be handled daily. Rats are very intelligent and can be taught simple tricks, and will often learn their names. They can be litter box trained.

Whatever you do, don’t go down to the river to select a pet rat, but rather visit your local pet shop. When choosing your rat, choose one that does not appear skittish or does not squeal when picked up. Males tend to be calmer than females. Males usually enjoy being held for longer periods of time, especially when they get older.

If you get a pet rat, it is best if they are kept indoors rather than in a shed or garage, where they would get less attention. As mentioned before, rats are extremely clean animals and will constantly groom themselves – similar to cats. If you have more than one rat, they will groom each other.

So, now that we have seen a lighter side of rats, doesn’t it make you want to run right out to get one?

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Who won the Super Bowl the last time it was held in Atlanta, Georgia?

Answer can be found here.

FOR YOUR HEALTH: Long-Distance Care-giving

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(NAPSI)—Chances are, at some point you will be a caregiver to a friend or family member. Providing care and support can be challenging in any circumstance, but caring for a loved one who lives far away presents a unique set of challenges.

When providing care for loved ones who do not live nearby, keep the following three tips in mind.

Plan ahead. Learn your loved one’s medical wishes, contact information for doctors as well as important financial and insurance information.

Research community options. Many older adults need a little help to stay healthy and independent. Area Agencies on Aging and other community-based organizations can connect caregivers to programs that help with transportation, personal care services, nutrition, home modification and repairs, legal services, falls prevention programs and more.

Care for yourself. The Eldercare Locator can connect caregivers to local resources that can help, including caregiver support programs that can provide training, and support groups and other resources that help caregivers better support their loved ones—and themselves.

The Eldercare Locator can help both care recipients and their long-distance caregivers. Through its website, www.eldercare.acl.gov, and national Call Center at (800) 677-1116, the Eldercare Locator connects long-distance caregivers to resources that can provide assistance where it is needed most—in the care recipient’s own community. The Eldercare Locator is funded by the U.S. Administration for Community Living and is administered by the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging.

I’M JUST CURIOUS: The experience of a three generation journey

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by Debbie Walker

Come to think of it, this has actually been a four generation female journey. The three generations, my daughter, granddaughter and myself, traveled with mom’s car that she left for me this past summer when she died.

Mom’s name was Alice. I named her car Alice. Mom came to me in a dream one night recently and said, “I gave you your wings, now fly little bird.” The trip was on!

To add to our little adventure into warmer weather, we drove into a snowstorm in Virginia! We were lucky to have our friend, Steve, monitoring the storm and what was going on ahead of us on the entire trip.

Once there, before coming to our room, my granddaughter looked out a third story window onto the parking lot below. There was a vehicle on which someone had written the name “ALICE” in the three inches of snow on the car. Okay, mom is definitely making the journey with us and wants us to know!

Virginia slowed us down with some nasty driving. My daughter has only driven on snow and ice for one week on an earlier vacation, years ago. My granddaughter, Florida born, has zero exposure to life with snow. They were both troopers, especially one stop light where the vehicles did a little slide before stopping.

That night in the hotel, I thought we might be asked to leave the premises. There were some seriously loud bouts of laughing coming from our room. Do you know what happens when three women, after hours and hours of driving on unfamiliar roads and streets, settle in for the night? It seems we can and did get pretty crazy! The two younger generations decided they would do facial masks of clay or whatever. There may be situations in which these things could be done without hysterical laughter, however, that was not the case with our aching bodies. Of course, when they took distorted pictures of the activity and sent them to various friends and loved ones it just added yet another laughing session!

I forgot to tell you about my daughter “losing” me in a totally unfamiliar city, in a snowstorm. She and my granddaughter were the lead vehicle as I followed, they had the GPS. The lead made it through a light and I got caught. Quickly she realized she left me behind. My granddaughter says her mother had a “meltdown!” All panicky because to her I was lost. So funny. Needless to say we reconnected with very little effort.

The next morning we waited until daylight to leave because of the snowstorm. After all the hoopla about the dreaded snowstorm it really wasn’t that bad. Maybe the attitude is a little different when the driver is from Maine rather than Virginia!

We did make it to Florida just fine. It was a bit rainy but we crossed that state line and I was a happy woman! Today it was in the 70s and sunny and I enjoyed every second of it.

I am just curious what sort of journey you have been on. I’d love to hear. Contact me at dwdaffy@yahoo.com. Thanks for reading!

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Composer: Anton Eberl; Broadway: Company

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Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Eberl Symphony in E-flat Major from 1803

Concerto Koln, YouTube

Anton Eberl

Anton Eberl (1765-1807) was an Austrian composer with 200 works, many of them now lost. He was acclaimed as a pianist and teacher, knew Mozart, was a very close friend of Beethoven and much loved by others during his lifetime.

The composer and his wife traveled to Rus­sia, living in St. Petersburg for several years. But his home was Vienna for most of his life.

Eberl died of scarlet fever in 1807 at the age of 41. Afterwards, for over 167 years, he went into obscurity for mysterious reasons until the slow-moving revival of interest, in 1971, in his legacy. Performances and recordings have peaked during the last decade.

Until hearing the highly recommended above YouTube recently, I did not know of him and his music; the Symphony’s individuality, charm and beauty are undeniable. Concerto Koln’s rendition without a conductor is a very good one.

Company

Original Broadway cast recording, recorded May 3, 1970, Sony/Columbia, cd remastering of original LP released in 1998.

Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim’s musical, Company, is, for me, one of the finest classical masterpieces in existence, along with Mahler’s 5th Symphony, Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, the Brahms D minor PC, Sinatra’s Watertown, Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, the Sibelius’ 7 Symphonies, Beethoven’s own 9 and his 5 PCs, Gershwin’s Concerto in F and the Puccini Tosca and Madame Butterfly with several etceteras. This original Broadway cast recording, supervised by the composer and the phenomenally gifted producer – then employed by Columbia records – Thomas Z. Shepard, is one worth having on the shelf and worth hearing countless numbers of times by a discerning connoisseur of truly beautiful recordings of great music.

Its classics include the eloquent duet, Barcelona, sung by Dean Jones as Bobby, a bachelor living a life of quiet desperation; and Susan Browning as April, a lonely stewardess whose potential for true love keeps being unrequited. Susan Browning died in 2006 at 65 while Dean Jones passed away in 2015 at 65 – both lived good lives and are very much missed .

Others are Being Alive, The Ladies Who Lunch, Little Things You Do Together, Another Hundred People, Getting Married Today, Someone is Waiting, and the opening Overture, one riveting piece of music on its terms, played, cast- sung, and conducted by the exceptionally gifted Harold Hastings, who died of a heart attack in 1973, at the young age of 57.

After a Boston tryout, Company opened at the Alvin Theatre April 26, 1970, generating 690 performances. Mark Kirkeby’s liner notes for the 1998 CD reissue are fascinating, along with Wiki pieces on the musical and Stephen Sondheim.

A quote from the composer- “I was raised to be charming, not sincere.”

SOLON & BEYOND: Abbreviated look at warrant as town meeting time approaches

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Marilyn Rogers-Bull & Percyby Marilyn Rogers-Bull & Percy
grams29@tds.net
Solon, Maine 04979

Good morning my friends, don’t worry, be happy!

Here it is almost town meeting day! How time does fly!

I went to the town office, and got the 2019 budget meeting agenda for the meeting on January 19 to discuss the following: financial state of the town, budget overview, and warrant articles overview by the selectmen. Review of warrant articles and ordinances and review of proposed budget.

There will be a public hearing for the three ordinances that will be voted on at the annual town meeting: The proposed ordinances Shoreland Zoning Ordinance revision, Foreclosed Property Ordinance revision, and Home Cultivation of Marijuana Ordinance. I will try and let you know when that meeting is coming up.

The revenue from state revenue sharing is up about $4,000 from 2017. The excise tax revenues are up about $14,000 from 2017. The Road Paving Project ended up costing $137,906.85 less than was budgeted, so we did not have to borrow the $98,000. They did a chip seal process on the roads and also did crack sealing and crack repairing on the other paved roads in the town out of the Road Paving Project funds.

The town did not receive the BETE reimbursement for 2018 because the state was slow in processing them. The town will be receiving the $113,444 BETE reimbursement from the state this month. They will be asking to use those funds to reduce taxes in 2019.

New one time expenditures: LED electronic notice sign for town office; GIS mapping of the town; new furnace for the fire station; dump body for the 1995 Ford truck for the highway department; and surveying the Coolidge Library property.

There are also increased costs for the expanded town office hours to be open.

I’m going to print a few of the articles that I have room for in this column. Art.4: To see if the town will vote to increase the property tax levy limit of $572,934, established for the town of Solon by state law, in the event the municipal budget approved under the following articles will result in a tax commitment that is greater than that property tax levy limit. Selectmen recommend Yes.

Art. 17: To see if the Town will raise funds for a land survey for the Coolidge Library property. Selectmen recommend up to $3,000 with the funds coming from the Library Capital Reserve Account.

Art. 18: To see if the Town will vote to change the Tax Collector/Clerk position from an elected position to a position that is appointed by the selectmen with the effective date of this change being March 7, 2020.

Art. 19: To see if the Town will vote to form a library building committee, with a minimum of five members, for the purpose of developing plans to build a Coolidge Library addition and exploring funding options. Selectmen recommend Yes.

Art. 20: To see if the Town will approve creating a Swim/Camp Program Reserve Account with the funds to be used for the Swim Camp Program. Selectmen recommend Yes and with this year’s appropriation funds to be put in this reserve account.

Art. 21: To see if the Town will adopt the “Ordinance Limiting Home Cultivation of Marijuana for Personal Adult Use.” Selectmen recommend Yes. Also, on another page in the papers I got it states: WHEREAS, the Town of Solon deems it in the best interest of citizens to limit the cultivation of marijuana for personal adult use within the Town, without affecting cultivation, use, or distribution of Medical Marijuana as allowed by 22.

I was unable to attend the above budget committee meeting, (that is only the second or third one I have ever missed) my apologies, but I hope to have more to share with you about it next week.

Now for Percy’s memoir entitled “It’s Worth Pondering.” We must not, in the course of public life, expect immediate approbation and immediate grateful acknowledgment of our services. But let us persevere through abuse and even injury. The internal satisfaction of a good conscience is always present, and time will do us justice in the minds of the people, even those at present the most prejudiced against us. (words by Benjamin Franklin, 1772.)