More thoughts in the time of COVID-19 …
Well, my birthday month is here and following an old adage about reversing your age when it seems fit … I will soon be 19.
~~~
I saw the dentist last thursday and had a tooth pulled. It was a tooth which had broken off several years ago after an 80 year old filling fell out. It had developed an abscess … a rather massive abscess complete with PAIN and some swelling.
Fortunately, I am rather healthy, even for a 19-year-old, so pulling the tooth, draining the abscess as much as possible, and seven days on Amoxicillin seems to have done the trick. I see the dentist for a follow-up and a full exam in a couple of weeks.
That final day had been a real doozy. I’ve gone through childbirth three times and they were nothing compared to this.
One side effect I hadn’t expected was that when I finally looked at myself in a mirror I was surprised at the external bruising. My chin went through the full panoply of colours. The purple was rather eye catching.
~~~
Because of the tooth problem, I missed the return of the local senior luncheons. COVID restrictions have made it a requirement that we sign up so they can control the number of folks they feed at a time. The young man in charge of registration went to school with my middle son (which means he’s in his mid-fifties … wow) and always greets me with a hug, so called I him as soon as I could talk well enough to be understood and said “Don’t drop me from the list!”
I haven’t talked with either of my lunch buddies yet to learn how it went, but that’s on the to-do list for later today.
~~~
Last week I sort of drowned you in opera. I’d apologize but it was just me sharing events that gave me joy.
All that time spent thinking about Philip Glass’s opera got me thinking about his easily identifiable musical style and I came to understand that what is initially heard as a monotonous, repetitious three or four note phrase is actual a repeating chord progression where the notes which are usually played together are played one at a time, most of the time rising but sometimes descending and even occasionally out of order.
What a discovery.
~~~
Another musical discovery came when I switched the Sirius channel from Symphony Hall to 40s Junction. I am not a musician. I don’t know a 5th whatever from any other chord or how to tell key designations. And if that sounds incredibly stupid to those of you who do know these things, well … I am a good ear and I discovered that a lot of the girl and boy singers of that era didn’t always hit the note intended. I know it isn’t something wrong with the recordings or intentional style since the oops moments aren’t consistent.
There were a few singers I have yet to hear hit an incorrect note … Miss Peggy Lee for one … and Sinatra, but then he studied voice with an opera teacher so his pitch, breathing, timing, etc. was right on.
~~~
Weather isn’t warm yet, but the chill doesn’t last too long in the morning and days are getting to be quite pleasant. There are more and more blossoms, both “wild” and cultivated.
The lupins will be showing soon as will the fir tips.
~~~
To close out the week, here’s a note based on words written by Issac Azimov …
Genuinely smart people look for answers from people who are smarter, in reference to the subject in question, than they are. Only ignorant people believe their guess is as good as anyone else’s.
So ‘til next week