ChaiTeaLatte

Beantown Jazz (JLH)

Fantastic fall weather for the Boston Jazz festival

I don’t have enough passion for most music to consider it more than a backdrop for a scene in the drama of my life, but jazz may be the exception. I enjoy fully instrumental, extended sessions based on recognizable Broadway show tunes or popular ballads played by a well matched quartet. I saw two performances by saxophonist Branford Marsalis with his quartet at the regatta bar and Sander’s theatre last year that were entrancing. The pieces started with a melody that formed the connection between the players as they diverged into a series of extended solos before being pulled back together by a secret signal from their leader indicating approval or “enough already”.

I have completely different tastes in recorded Jazz that reflect my love of the piano (i.e Dave Breubeck), and short attention span. I grew up listening to Marian McPartlan’s piano Jazz on WNYC (Boston public radio stations have disappointingly limited programming). Marion is marvelous herself, but played a more important role as interviewer introducing me to saxiphonist Lee Konitz , pianist Bill Evans. Although I do own the recordings, more extended abstract work such as Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain can’t recreate the concert feeling when I’m alone in my living room (This may be partly related to the sonic limits of my mini-boom box).

Today’s festival was centered around 3 stages featuring world music, more bluesy style vocal jazz, and a third sponsored by Marsalis Music, the Cambridge-based record label begun by Branford Marsalis. I obviously chose the third option and had the treat of seeing Drummer Jimmy Cobb of Miles Davis fame. He was playing with a young saxiphonist named Javon Jackson and I was entertained.

As happens at outdoor city fairs, things got too crowded, the eating and meeting started to encroach on the music, and I got fidgety sitting on the grass. So I wandered back toward home for tea, a cupcake and a blog entry.

Paul as Pericles (JLH)

Our hospital CEO Paul Levy is now blogging. This entry took me back to my college classics on Thucidides

The Three Musketeers, Grinnell College, 1986* (MD)

I can't remember who was lying on the sidewalk in front of the student union. Was it me? Was it Chase? Was it Amy? I'd say it's a strong memory but in truth it's only a fragment of remembered emotion; a sensation, a mood. A vividly imperfect image, with thunder and lightening.

So one of us is lying down on the sidewalk and the clouds have just rolled in, late afternoon: heavy, dark, thundery. No rain, yet. Every time the thunder cracks, CRACK, we laugh. Hysterically, timed to coincide with the thunder, a made up laugh that turns into the real thing, belly laughs, cramps in our stomachs and hands at our waist. We three are in our own little bubble, safe, young, youthful, watched and watching. We must have looked like fools. We must have looked happy.

*Originally, I had the date as 1990, but it was 1986: I wasn't at Grinnell College in 1990. I am subconscious-intentionally-ish underselling my age.....

Inconsequential (MD)

If JLH can be serious (see below), then I can be the total lightweight that I am. What? It's my life.....

1. I stopped by the Starbucks in our hospital last night just before closing and the kids who work there were tallying and organizing uneaten, unsold sandwiches from that day to throw out. "Why don't you give them away," I said. "Well, if someone gets sick," they answer. Ahhh.

2. I have a million more reunion stories but I'm not in the mood. Eh, it's a long story.

3. Okay, I do have one: JLH and I were getting out of my parent's car in the parking lot of the Country Club back home, when one of my best friends from my first year of college, and a high-school goer with me, pulls up in a crazy white van covered with I-hate-Bush stickers. She parks and runs over to give me a big hug. She has five children and looks as thin and fit and beautiful as she did back in college. Red-haired, freckled, ebullient. I was glad to see her. Her children (whom I met at a picnic later that reunion weekend) are gorgeous. Such beautiful children, A. And thanks for remembering the 'three musketeers.' We were that, weren't we? The Three Musketeers.

The art of science (JLH)

Having finally escaped from a 150 minute research meeting with my epidemiologist collaborators, my thoughts turned to a book by Edward Tufte that’s been on my wish list forever.

Schadenfreude (JLH)

Only 4 days of repentance left until to Yom Kippur and I’m engaging in Schadenfreude (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude).

English Papers (JLH)

I read Bill Pritchard’s memoirs, “English papers” with some amusement on the way home from NY.

No room on the quiet car (JLH)

I'm M's friend JLH and she's going to let me post my thought from time to time. Please don't hold her responsible for any of my entries; our politics and writing styles are polar opposites.  Anything more about me you want to know, just ask.

Here's my first post (It sounds like fiction, but it actually happened on Friday's Acela).

Short-staffed

....short-staffed, short-staffed, short-staffed at the medical-industrial complex......so, slow blogging for a bit.