voting statistics

Precinct in a garage a few blocks away, same one as for the primary. Walked there, on principle and for the exercise. Passed several others en route to or from same destination. Patriotic book in hand in case the line was long: Revolutionary Characters: What Made The Founders Different by Gordon S. Wood.

5 people on line or voting when I arrived. (One, a man with an HP employee badge, was filling out a Provisional Voter form.) 10 people on line or voting when I left. Others outside coming and going. Much more than for the primary. Man on cellphone, in traditional cellphone-user manner telling caller exactly what he was doing at that moment: standing outside the polling place about to vote.

Ballot: two bedsheets with arrows to be connected with black ink. Marked Obama first. Felt more historic than voting for Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Dukakis, or Mondale.

Lawn signs spotted on the way: 2 for Obama. 1 for (Dem) congresscritter. 1 No on 8; 1 Yes on 8. 2 reading "This Is Sharks Territory" (hockey reference).

Robot phone call received while writing this post: tape of Obama taken out of context to sound as if he favors Prop 8. Too late.

Error found in morning newspaper editorial advocating national popular vote: list of popular vote winners failing to take the Electoral College, including "Benjamin Harrison, 1888." Other way around, you nitwits!

concert review: Paris Piano Trio

In the midst of the towering climax of the political campaign, I had a concert review to write. On Sunday, I picked up athenais and we headed up to the hills to listen to three piano trios, none of which either of us had ever heard before.

As so often - and this is why I like reviewing concerts; it's gratifying to be able to be complimentary - the music was excellent, even a bit overwhelming. I admired the pianist's firm, hard tone, within which he accomplished remarkable variety. Though he was French, never did he affect to be lost in Debussy or Chopin, delicate notes drifting away in the wind. The string players I felt a little more uncertain about, but their ability to respond to and reflect each other and the pianist was excellent.

What I liked most was the strong case made for Robert Schumann's Op. 110. Survey works on chamber music can't say enough bad about this piece. (Schumann's biographers generally know better.) I thought it worked splendidly, given the proper care and lyricism. A clear texture in the heavy slow movement; a successful search for variety and an avoidance of slog in the repetitions of the scherzo and finale.

The tough part of the story was the venue. This is a big ol' mansion with a huge main hallway big enough to fit a performing platform and about 150 folding chairs, so they hold concerts in it. And it's always been expensive, but though dress was casual, it's gradually become a place for display by the rich and old. I felt like the youngest person there. No, wait: athenais is a few months younger than I; she was the youngest person there. Or just about.

So now that they've replaced the simple first-come-first-served seating which caused everyone to line up, before the doors open, in a long meandering but peaceful line, and replaced it with a system of priority boarding cards (like Southwest Airlines with even more cramped seats, but better music), everyone milled around chaotically in the lobby, and then rushed in to bustle about over the seats and the right to take the ones with and without priority cards, cooing at each other like a flock of affronted pigeons. It's silly, as in a hall this tiny, all the seats are good. I've sat in the far back on earlier review visits, so I could study the score in peace, and the sound was fine, maybe better than at the front.

The ticket-taker, on noticing the press kit I'd been given (I don't know why venues give these out: they add nothing informationally to the program notes, and my editors get press photos off the web), guided us to the press seats, which were right at the front, staring up the violinist's nostrils, and our neighbors on either side wanted to know what us unfamiliar, young and non-rich looking types were doing in their rarified front row. I kept having to utter my publication's title like a password, but perhaps I should have dropped the name of our retired founder, an old-time newspaper reviewer they'd probably have heard of. Blergf.