Tuesday, April 27, 2010

One Day University--One

I admit that I'm proud that at 2 different sessions, I asked good questions--about China's involvement in Africa, about Copland's leaving Gershwin's name off a list of best American composers. So many students ask dumb questions that mine stood out--and elicited murmers of approval.

Overall, excellent talks--very worthwhile (esp at $99) -- altho the food for lunch was expensive ($3 for a Diet Coke, $3 for a small bag of cookies?)

One big benefit: Having heard a talk on Gershwin, I'll give my own lecture on Gershwin. Should attract a lot of students. (I've started reading the Pollack biography.)


I'll comment on the individual speakers and their views shortly...

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Sunday, April 25, 2010

Anti-Semitism in the Woodstock Times

Happily, there have been no letters recently in the Woodstock Times from anti-Semites castigating Israel. So I was freed from any duty of responding to these letters.

A problem is that the editor of the Woodstock Times treats these letter-writers as if they were ladies and gentlemen.

They are not.

They are cockroaches.

They don't want a compromise, they don't want a two-star solution.

The want the end of Israel.

It is their version of a new Final Solution.

The paper's editor won't let me call these people neo-Nazis. When I wrote that one letter-writer was "stupid" for suggesting that Einstein would be opposed to the State of Israel, the editor changed my word to "naive."

I believe that anti-Semites should not just be refuted, but humiliated.

I'll shortly be publishing the names of some of these cockroaches.

Library Follies

I have a weekend home in Woodstock, NY, and not long ago the library dunned me to pay for a biography of Kirsten Flagstad. I insisted that I had returned the book, but grumblingly paid to replace it. The book had been lent to the Woodstock library by the New Hyde Park Library.

I live during the week in Hackensack, NJ.

The other day, I went to a book sale in Hackensack, and there was a biography of Flagstad.

I bought it--for next to nothing.

I looked inside. The book came from the New Hyde Park Library.

I had inadvertently brought the book to the Hackensack library, not the Woodstock library.

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