April 24, 2022
I continue to challenge myself in playing music that is very lovely and alive with feelings though to get my piano to sound with the feelings and images the composer intended is challenging with mixed results. Today I am tackling To a Waterlily by Edward MacDowell. Born in 1860 he was a child prodigy studied in Paris and Wiesbaden and then Frankford, Germany. He was befriended by Liszt so his works became better known. He married an American and immigrated to the United States. He taught music but then after some controversy with the department continued as a teacher, performer, and composer. In his Fifties he developed a severe mental illness after he was in a car accident as a pedestrian and was cared for by his wife. Marian MacDowell is known for her teaching and support to artist opening her home to artists and supporting them in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
The piece I started playing is F# major scale with F,G,A,C,D,E #. This piece is from the Woodland Sketches and my attempts gave me images of waterlilies I saw and photographed in Waimea Canyon some years ago. Through practice I can get the chords and tempo to come together so I can smile and enjoy.
Otherwise, I'm hiking two to three times per week. I go to the Gym two times per week. Going out and about still requires me to wear a mask since the threat of COVID is real and I don't want to get sick and infect Rebecca. I check my pulse and take my Iwatch EKG to check for pulse rate to high when hiking and atrial fibrillation. So far atrial fibrillation is rare. The night before hiking I take a beta blocker to keep my pulse lower for my hikes. Unfortunately, the blocker does cause me to have lapses in word finding which I don't like but on the other hand my hiking is strong even with my left lower leg brace to stabilize my ankle due to achilles tendon tear. I'm on two kinds of eye drops due to the beginnings of another macular hole in my left eye. If it develops I'm a candidate again for air in the vitreous and lying face down for three weeks again. Ugh!
Last evening I watched The Last Tepui a National Geographic Video adventure into the Amazon forest of Guyana watching hikers including an 80 year old struggle in the mud and debri of a forest heading up to sandstone mountain in the sky. The younger adventurers did scales the vertical walls of the mountain with carabiners, ropes and guts to get to the top. The scenery and wildlife was outstanding!
Thursday evenings we have a small dinner party with mostly family and Sunday for breakfast the same. These gatherings are very pleasant and warm my heart. We share common interests and sometimes reminisce so I can get some added information and appreciation concerning shared experiences. Last evening Rebecca was at a musical with our neighbor friends but her son came over with corned beef, potatoes, cabbage, and rice while my daughter baked a round cake similar to her mothers recipe which we all enjoyed many times in the past. David my son reminisced about working for my father his grandfather at the Kamehameha swap meet while he grew up. I recalled how my father as he aged and lost his vision continued to be outgoing and active. Finally bladder cancer and an indwelling catheter severely limited his activities. His vitality and pursuit of work with his family impressed all of us.
Edna St. Vincent Millay a poetess and author lived her life with individuality and her own convention unshackled by the stereotypes set for women. Her political views varied from pacisvism after WWI to actively involving USA for our engagement and triumph over fascism. Her poem of the massacre in Lidice Czechoslovakia was used in movies and other media. She was not constrained by societal strictures yet presaged the awakening of women's rights.
"First Fig"
from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)
Would you like to be a billionaire? I've noticed that some oligarchs in our country certainly have feet of clay! Jeffrey Epstein knew how to gather the very wealthy men to his prurient and exploitative sexual interests. Bill Gates lost his marriage to this. Elon Musk another example of a person so narcissistically focused that he insists that his viewpoints are all his followers should care about. His public relations team work hard to promote his viewpoints and ideas some of which are pretty bizarre to me. Yes the Ukraine is using his satellite internet system since the USA based system has been compromised by Russia but altruism may not be his attribute. Just criticize him like the rescuer Vern Unsworth, a British cave explorer did who did rescue to children trapped in a cave in Thailand. He was accused by Musk of being a pedophile and Musk used his influence to attempt to disparage him. So Putin another narcissistic man who is accused with some evidence of ordering assassinations on his opponents now attempting to destroy the democratic Ukraine through massive military might is another example of how wealth, privilege, social isolation from the general public and grandstanding and declaring untruths as facts causes chaos and death. It's my view that narcissistic psychopathic rabble rousers need to be exposed in the light of day as malevolent forces to be shunned. Bill Gates and Elon Musk so far are not in that camp but I would not trust their opinions unless carefully analyzed. The skewing of wealth over the past half century is destabilizing and I am all for our government attempting to redistribute the wealth to benefit all rather than the few. I can see that there is a trap for the fortunate professional and businessman who makes it into the somewhat wealthy thinking that redistributing and taxing the wealth will affect them adversely. I don't think they'll lose much but we will all gain in having a more vibrant middle class and hopefully reduce poverty and its attendant problems for our citizens. Just to give oligarchs some praise I'll mention Nicolas Berggruen, George Soros, and a nod to Bill Gates. Nicolas Berggruen was writeup in the New New York Times Magazine (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/magazine/nicolas-berggruen-philosophy.html?referringSource=articleShare). A wealth builder who now is using his wealth to encourage art, literature, philosophy, and democracy. The article seems fair in showing his humanity. George Soros best known in the financial world for betting against the British pound, a holocaust survivor he founded and funded Open Society which funds many projects for the betterment of humanity across the world. Now in his nineties he is changing Open Society to better combat the authoritarian anti-democrat movements across the world. Bill Gates and his former wife has a foundation which has worked to create better health care and advocate for changes that ameliorate climate change in the world.
I'm not aware of any study that looks into the psychology and moral compasses of the oligarchs of the world. Does extreme wealth corrupt and lead to narcissistic actions and traits? Are some oligarchs just opportunists which happenstance and manipulations allowed them to have extreme wealth and their wealth was part of their narcissistic nature? Are aristocratic oligarchs different from others? Neal Stephenson in Termination Shock presented a nice view of how an aristocratic Queen of the Netherlands attempted to improve our planet against the devastating effects of climate change (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel) Not one of his best but a good read.
There are so many issues requiring more immediate attention yet our attention span is only able to hold a few for a short time. The Tepui is pristine and so far seems untouched by climate change and human interference. Yet on the horizon danger lurches due to human activities damaging our environment. Vested interests in fossil fuel, mining, and corporation farming and harvesting attempt to divert our attention, attempt to undermine our science data showing harm, and use their monetary powers to further their activities while politicians struggle knowing that these groups can marshall forces to defeat them in office. Money and corporation power wielded by a few on top can be opposed but that requires our commitment and efforts. We have many examples of how to win in this struggle. Remember A Silent Spring by Rachel Carson? Science and her advocacy prevailed fortunately. Recently Bernie Sanders our Senator from Vermont has come out opposing congress bail out Jeff Bezos space company when Bezos has 160 billion dollars of wealth. He's suggesting that Bezos and Musk currently treat NASA as their ATM card!
On the home front here in Hawaii an owner of two beachfront homes used an excavator move public beach sand up to his two homes, place sandbags in front and concrete barriers, and when confronted by land use inspectors threatened them. He's been fined close to $100,000 but persists in his self righteous defense of his actions. Can threats and righteous indignation acted without acknowledgment of error prevail?
I finished the Books of Jacob finally! A work of fiction which seems to parallel the history of Jacob Frank. I found some of the source material of Frank's and sycophants writings and they appear to verify the novel. Frank was a Jewish proselytizer who claimed to be the second messiah (after Tsvi) who had mass followers that rallied to his directions even when imprisoned for fourteen years in a monastery in the mid seventeenth century. He had all the tools to propagandize his assertions. He could single handedly fight and prevail against trained soldiers and guards of authorities in Turkey associated with the Sultan and yet in the end be in the rulers good graces. Sick and maimed with the laying on of hands walked without impairment. He advocated that his Jewish followers do not adhere to Talmudical rules and prohibitions so that orgies in which he participated were reported. He advocated that his followers become baptized in the Polish church which many did. He died in Offenbach, Germany and his followers drifted apart afterwards.
Given that our character flaws are persistent and evident sometimes throughout our lives are psychopathic and criminal people capable of changing to have more loving and caring characteristics so that we are no longer psychopathic or dangerous in our behavior? Given that we are fixed in our personality characteristics for the most part throughout our lives can we change some of these characteristics for the better? In forensic psychiatry the court may ask an expert like myself to opine whether an individual may become dangerous to self, others, or property if released from prison or a mental health institution. There are a number of checklist questionnaires that can be scored to arrive at a prediction. The problem is that mental health practitioners are not good at prediction. The questionnaires rely to a large part on past behaviors as predictors of future behaviors. There are many examples of great transformations of character in some select prisoners who appear to be different people now. Here's an article to ponder (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/opinion/forgiveness-redemption.html). Now I'm wondering if this line of inquiry about our character relates to how difficult it is to change our political beliefs and inclinations so that facts and studies reported are ignored and beliefs remain unchanged as does our character traits that define our personality.
Well, this Saturday we hiked Puu Mei'ele'eli trail in a reverse order than usual. Besides the beautiful views we scrambled up and down some very steep and rock crumbly trails and lived the moments!
Here's a photographs of a viewpoint and our group.
Leonard
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