#IWSG – AUGUST UPDATE – MOSTLY RANTING AND TO RUSSIA, WITH LOVE

What a stupid title, for my #IWSG check in for August. But for the fact that this summer started off so very badly, I know I really do have plenty to be grateful for, but at times, the gratitude wears thin, and the worrying about the future returns. “Living in the moment” has never been easy for me, and it has taken me a long time to try and “wear the world lightly” upon my shoulders. I'm certain it is this way for many people; it's just not something I care to holler from the rooftops or yammer too much about in my blog. I know I've come a long way back to regain my good physical health, and as for my mental state, it is what it is. I manage it.

"Goldurnit! I thought this was a Kermit the Frog costume. Who in the Hell is Kermit the Spider?"

With that said, it seems that all I've seen in the news and have reacted to has been negative. We don't seem to be going in a direction that indicates any enlightenment that I can see, and yet, as I commented to one of my readers, we cannot give up hope, nor can we ever stop trying to better ourselves, our environment, our lives and I don't mean in just a general way, but in a patently observable way, that is noticeable around us. I don't believe that we are just put on this planet to live from day-to-day, without making some effort to help ourselves or others around us. It's the, for want of a better word, struggle that makes us alive.

Now, I feel like I'm on some treadmill here, trying to explain myself, but I think it's patently obvious that I mean working or giving our service to others, either in volunteer work, or in helping a neighbor. I was horrified when they removed my “fairy-lady” neighbor from her home, recently. Her husband does not speak English, and I found myself trying to find her. She was located and returned, but I stopped and wondered what would have happened had we not located her. She's not always coherent, but she's easily dealt with. I was able to put forth my own information as a “next of kin” or “emergency contact”. I wish I had thought of it sooner. Thankfully, she's home and all is well. Just as my neighbor – or my “pretend adopted son, Alex” is my “emergency contact”, and I, his. We had to start really thinking of these little things, after Jim died. How that really makes things better, is a tangible thing. It's so we don't get lost in the system. It does happen, as I've found on a research project I am doing for a political action group. But enough about that. 

Для моих русских читателей и последователей : Огромное спасибо за вашу веру в меня , и я надеюсь встретиться с вами когда-нибудь, когда я посещаю . До тех пор , до свидания ! 

I have been writing and trying to make it a more regular thing. I like the idea of the #IWSG Writing Sprint, but I haven't been as good about it as I could be. The only really interesting thing, is that I find for the first time this week, my Russian readers outnumbered my American readers, since I started this blog in 2011. It has never been any secret that I have a huge affinity and love for the Russians and I primarily came to know them through their music and then later, their stunning literature and poetry. I adore the mysticism and the hardiness of these wonderful people and their sense of humor. I guess you'd better have one, if you're going to live in a country that tough! At any rate, this is my monthly check-in and I hope to have at least some coherent words in something resembling a plot line, maybe. The Orchestra starts back up on the 1^st of September and we will be playing Rimsky-Korsakov's “Scheherazade” on our first concert. I'm really looking forward to that. Again, with the beautiful Russian music!

#ROW80 – THE DEATH OF CECIL THE LION AND THE BANALITY OF EVIL

Like everyone in the world this week, I have been saddened and hurt in a way that I had to work through and try to decipher just WHY I hurt so profoundly and so deeply over the death of a cherished and favorite lion, named “Cecil” who lived in the Zimbabwe Animal Reserve and was lured out of the park, by trackers who have had trouble with poaching laws previously, then, shot with a bow and arrow and tracked for forty hours before being shot to death with a rifle, then beheaded and skinned. The person who was responsible for these actions is an American Dentist out of Bloomington, Minnesota, named Walter James Palmer and his supposed “hobby” is big-game hunting. He paid $55,000.00 American dollars for the rights to commit this heinous action. The two trackers who lured Cecil out of his safety zone, illegally, and were arrested, arraigned and paid 1,000.00 each for bail and released the same day, will still have turned a profit for their company, and the country of Zimbabwe, presumably. But, I'll get to that in a moment.

Lions are the most companionable of all the big cats. They tend to live in prides, and families, when the females no longer breed. This batch lives on a preserve in Russia and is quite large. They are part of a larger group; Russia has worked harder and India have worked longer and harder than anyone to preserve and turn the loss of the big cats around and are actually seeing small increases in their tiger populations.

Never mind the fact that there are fewer than 20,000 fewer African lions living in the wild. Never mind the fact that there are fewer than 3200 tigers living in the wild. Never mind the fact that Jaguars and Panthers, ALL of the big cats are on the endangered list; some more than others. Never mind the fact that, yes, this man spent his money his way, and it was his to do with as he wished. I've heard no compelling argument about wildlife management, since this happened. The fact is, that Cecil left behind many cubs, which will be killed by any competing males, and I understand that as few as six or as many as twelve cubs – exponentially, that's a huge loss – were fathered by Cecil. I did hear one man complain about his name, as in being named for Cecil Rhodes of Rhodesia, who was an enforcer or apartheid. I asked him, “Would there be more outrage if the lion's name were “Nelson” like, for “Nelson Mandela”? A ridiculous and stupid question, and it did nothing to answer my question about why we are so upset and traumatized over this.

Lion Rampant; the national symbol of Scotland. A male lion in the wild is expected to live an average of 13 to 15 years. In captivity, from 15 to 20 years. Regardless of this, the hierarchy of the Pride dictates that the reigning male must be able to fend off all challengers and by all accounts, Cecil was a healthy, adult, male lion. With three lionesses and six to twelve cubs, the Pride was extremely healthy. Any of the "cousins" or other adult males around, will most likely kill the cubs to pass on their own genetics, but, in the end, we're all poorer for it, as there are fewer than 20,000 African lions in the wild.

One scientist has stated that it has to do with the fact that humans don't relate to many animals, which very well may be the case, but I've stopped people from being cruel to supposedly unfeeling creatures such as fish. So, I don't think that's the case, and have stopped a man here beating his dogs, which any right-thinking and sane person would do. After I scared the absolute shit out of that guy, I called the police. I think he was glad I did. It's not the first time people have been happier to deal with the police than with me. But, what I think the absolute mind-boggling rage is over is how utterly plain and banal this guy is. He's us. I'm not the first person to make this connection, but we forget. When we forget, we get things, like Auschwitz, waterboarding, and we cross lines that are morally not acceptable under any circumstances.

In a bizarre moment of schädenfreude, I thought I was looking at Vladimir Putin, until I realized THIS asshole wants to BE ole Vlad. But then, I realized this guy looked like a complete milquetoast. I could kick his ass, easily, with one hand. Be careful what you wish for Dr. Walt. It sure sucks to be you, right now.

It's like when Adolph Eichmann was on trial for war crimes in Israel in 1962. He was the “Man in the Glass Booth”. He had been giving testimony and he was just this guy in a drab every-day man's suit. He looked like your accountant. Or an attorney. Just a guy. While he was giving his testimony, some man who had been in Auschwitz and was in the panel to give testimony against Eichmann, just keeled over and fainted dead away. Pandemonium ensued in the courtroom in Israel and the courtroom had to be cleared. When they got the witness back up on his feet, and got him some water, they asked him what had happened. He replied, “I just realized that what I expected to see as Evil wasn't. It was just this man. In a suit. He was just this petty thing. Banal.” Or, as Stephen King has called it “Evil” with a little “e”. That's what bothers me about this guy. 

Look around; we have Ferguson. We have the abrogation of our privacy; just cheerfully giving it away under the Patriot Act. Oh, I know the Act is supposed to be "dead", but when has the genie ever been put back into the bottle? It never happens. As Americans, we've had our III, IV, V, IX and XIV Amendments abrogated under the Patriot Act by the NSA and had our information willingly handed over by several large *cough* -- Verizon, I'm lookin' at you *cough* telecommunications firms and Microsoft to sift through our records and private conversations, using warrentless wiretaps. We have police on the streets who do not know how to protect the citizenry, much less themselves and committing murders and covering them up. This is just crazy. We need to really stop, and look and see what WE, as a human race are becoming and go back to what really worked. 

You cannot tell me that there is not a spark of divinity in each one of us and I am not here to argue religion. But to blindly follow a belief, or to throw money around and spend more than you need to on despicable things such as trophy-hunting is wrong. If you're a decent human being, your heart should tell you so. You don't need a priest or a rabbi or an imam to tell you this. If you are saying hurtful things to be mean, stop. If you are working an angle to swindle some other guy out of a few bucks, don't do it. Look at yourself in the mirror each day, and at least, AT LEAST, try to commit to making the world a bit better place. We seem to be heading towards some epoch of barbarism that makes no sense in a time, when we are better able to become enlightened, learn more and live longer, with less.

They say there is no love like a mother's love and I believe that to be true. These lionesses also have hearts as big as the outdoors. See what the lioness below does after she kills a baboon and discovers that baboon had a baby.

I truly think trophy-hunting should be stopped, world-wide and now! Stop. It! By doing this, we do encourage poaching, which then leads to stupid things like tigers ending up in wine. The ironic thing about this, is I am taking part in a 3-week challenge with my clan and it's for WWF, the World Wild-Life Foundation in bringing awareness to just how endangered all of the big cats are. Or course, it's not just the cats, but bears, musk ox, anything you can think of, but trophy-hunting is just evil and needs to stop. That $55,000.00 the Dr. Walter James Palmer spent on shooting this magnificent lion could have built schools, funded infrastructure, put people through college, or started a fund to protect endangered species. Just because someone has all this money to blow does not mean that they get to spoil the planet and kill resources that are already in peril. If we are going to spend money on this continent, it should be money spent, helping these people become educated, so the exploitation stops. It stops with the diamond mines of Kimberley and it stops with the minerals and other gems and big game. Just. Stop!

I understand the Obama Administration wants Dr. Palmer to call them for a little “chat”, which is a huge horse-laugh, because don't we have the crackerjack NSA with all their spying ability nonsense? Can't they just sift through their dailies for Dr. Palmer's GPS locations, like they do with every one else who ends up getting arrested. At the risk of getting off point, it just sounds to me like Dr. Palmer went dark, threw out all his iPhones, bought burners and got the hell off the grid.

Adolf Eichmann in the glass booth in Israel, in 1962. The picture in the corner shows him when he was a member of the Schutzstaffel, or SS. The Jewish man who fainted upon first seeing Eichmann in a plain business suit realized that Eichmann wasn't this monster and that he had focused on the uniform. "The man could have been one of us," the witness said. Eichmann was found guilty and executed in Ramla, Israel, 1 June, 1962

At any rate, who even knows if any good will come from this. Jane Goodall said that this may be a silver lining, and “wake people up”. I do think that Jane is a tad naïve here, because the bastards are everywhere. What CAN be done, is to make the fines so abhorrently stiff, or make any breaking of the laws, such as the Lacey Act, which Dr. Palmer is being invited to “chat” with the Obama administration about come with some prison time, and HARD time. Banal won't do very well in a super-max.

#CHERISH – WOLF

We are writing about objects that we cherish and have so much meaning in our lives. Mine is my viola, named “Wolf” by his luthier, who cared for him, when I lived in Detroit, Michigan. Fine instruments are given names by luthiers; I am not sure why that is. I acquired Wolf when I was eighteen years of age, getting ready to start college, and my mother didn't want me to start on a “block of wood” as she termed it. The luthier in San Francisco who sold us the viola, bought “him” from an estate sale, of a woman who had died in her late 70s. She had developed something like MS or some motor disorder and had been a young violist in the San Francisco Symphony. Wolf was found in her closet after her passing.

The one time I don't want a picture of the cat, she sneaks in; the bow is German-made, by Richard Grunke, and at 72 grams is the heaviest viola bow made.

She had all of his papers and provenance, so there is no question that he is a Guidantus Florenus of the Bolognese school of violin making, not the Cremonese school, which turned out the lovely Stradivarius, Amati and Guarneri instruments. You can go on for days and days about different makers, houses, schools, blah blah blah. I have all the viola I need right here. When I first played Wolf, I could not believe the sound that came out of this small, unassuming looking instrument. It was huge! The lower notes were full and rich, the higher ones were sweet and piercing without stridency. I had to take this instrument to my professor to have him listen. There is an adage: "Don't buy the first instrument you play" and naturally, this was the first one I played!

Florenus had some odd little things that he would do with his instruments; here, he has managed to match up 2 pieces of maple so that Wolf appears to have "stripes" the length of his back.

I took him to my professor, the good and kind, late Dr. Jakey and we went to the concert hall. I played Wolf, while he walked around the hall and listened. He had me turn my back to him, because conversely, the viola's sound is projected through the back of the instrument, due to it's size, and not the f-holes, like the violin (probably more than you want to know, but there it is) and he walked up and down, back and forth. Then, he played and I did pretty much the same thing. There wasn't a false note on the instrument, no matter how high up the register, or high up you played on the lower strings. The viola was just solid and so rich. Wolf "plays easily" too. By that I mean, he's a dream to play. I had a viola once that I was trying to sell for a friend, and I felt like I'd been in a cat-fight every time I played it.

Another "hallmark" of Florenus' house (usually several members of one family worked on a "bench" or for a "house" - Antonio Stradivarius passed on his fiddle-making to his sons) is that his f-hole work looks like cavemen chiseled them out with rocks. Interesting, since he took such care with the backs, but then, wait until you see the scroll!

Before Wolf got his name, I had to have some work done on him. I took him to my luthier in Detroit, Michigan. I needed to have all of his pegs changed out to rosewood, his fingerboard was beveled as was the custom in the 18th century and needed to be smoothed out and evened, I wanted to have him outfitted with matching chin rest and end pin to match his pegs. He also had a tiny, tiny crack on the front and that needed to be fixed. The luthier, Peter, said he could do all of that, but would have to take the top off. I went into a near-frenzy. I think all players do that. He said, "relax, just going to put a tiny cleat on that crack underneath". 

Wolf is small compared to most violas; 15 and 7/8" inches, instead of 16 1/2, or 17 inches, but because he is "fat" between his front and his back, he is able to project the kind of sound much larger violas produce. He can pretty much out-shout bigger ones, but then I have a "heavy" arm and have had to learn to back off and play with a lighter arm, when necessary. Now, that I'm back playing symphonically and no longer a free-range violist, I actually have to pay attention to the dynamics. When I toured with rock 'n' roll bands, like Styx and the Moody Blues, no one gave a hoot about dynamics. 

He went off to do his voo-doo, while I paced around and fretted. Peter came back in a bit, and said, "come here, I want you to see this?" I'm thinking, "oh geeze, he's gonna tell me the thing's got termites." So we go back into his inner sanctum, and he's taken the top off of Wolf. First off, there's a dust bunny in there, that's been there so long and is so huge, it's viola-shaped. Just kidding. Peter shows me where he fixed the tiny crack and the set of pegs, chin rest and tail or end pin, that he's picked out for Wolf. Wolf is not a deep red, or mahogany; he's blond and his varnish is also a softer varnish. That's another thing string people yap about; varnish. For days. 

This is a true Florenus scroll. It's out of kilter. It looks like something that got left out in the sun and kind of melted. There is no symmetry and I laugh every time I see it. If I were to have no provenance or proof of Wolf's lineage, an appraiser would look at this, his f-holes and his back and go, "yep, Florenus". They're all horrible. It's like Florenus just didn't care, at least about the head-on part of it. 

Anyway, Peter is looking at Wolf's scroll and his front, deep in thought. He says, "Mary, I've seen this viola before." I'm like "Orly?" in my head. Peter goes to his catalogs. Luthiers have very, very expensive catalogs that are updated every so many years with notable string instruments. He hunts around for a certain year and pulls out this book. It's huge and it's heavy and he flips through it to the "F" section and there is my Florenus. I was pretty shocked. I told him I have the bill of sale. I had to have the instrument authenticated and insured, but Peter named him "Wolf" because of his huge, at times gruff sounds on his lower strings. Another weird convention: Wolf is a "him" because I'm female. This is not etched in stone, it is more a tradition that has gone on through the centuries, among luthiers and string players. 

Wolf and I have been a team now for nearly 41 years; that's longer than any of my marriages have lasted and longer than the time I had my father in my life. Wolf is by my side pretty much all the time, and we have had our adventures, and our disasters, although I make sure that if it's gonna get physical, I take the brunt of it, like falling off a stage. Ribs can heal; it's damnably hard and expensive to fix an Italian Aristocrat. This happened to a friend of mine; I completely understand his “tuck and roll” move.

I do have to give Florenus this much. When it came to the serif and the profile, there were few better. The sweep from the serif up to the crest is gorgeous. The only prettier one I've seen is on a Gofriller cello. All in all, Wolf is a spectacular instrument! I'm so fortunate to have him.

In an eery coincidence, several years ago, I developed a motor disorder and it was though that I would not play again. Understandably, this may have been caused in part by about 10 or 15 years of total hell – went blind, had congestive heart failure, during which time, husband got a girl friend, left his cheating ass, tried to buy a house with the settlement, lost it in econ meltdown of 2008, got sick AGAIN and HOMELESS, this time – and at one point, I just wanted to lay down in my traces like a tired old cart horse and not get up. But, that's not what we do in my family. We come roaring back, and are usually made stronger by whatever set us back on our pins in the first place.

But, the motor disorder, is in fact inherited and I had been displaying symptoms for many years. They just chose to become overt and I was unable to play. Well. Shit. After two years of fighting with a bunch of quacks who call themselves “neurologists” I was set up through the Parkinson's Foundation with a world-class neurologist, who had me diagnosed and out the door in well under 2 years. Understand, that neurological problems typically take from 6 to 10 years for a diagnosis. Within a year, I was playing again. I joined the local symphony and took it head-on. We started our season with Beethoven's 5^th Symphony (Oh, I should mention, Beethoven is my muse, not just for music, but for life) and ended with Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony for Big Orchestra, and gave a seminal performance. I am so thrilled to be able to make music again on this level! It was just a dream, but to have Wolf? Icing on the cake and I'm making up for lost time!