The end of a decade...

Where's all the folks going, "Ri-i-i-ight!"

Back at the end of 2000, I put in my two coppers about the start of the "new" millennium (Have you had your millennium yet?), which was partially prompted by the pronouncements of self-appointed "math police," to the effect that the old millennium would actually end and the new one would really begin during the night when 2000 became 2001.

One would think the same misguided souls would be out "correcting" the tendency of people to be going around talking about "the end of the decade" in about two weeks, since "technically" (and, in my opinion, erroneously) said first decade doesn't end until a little over a year from now.

I like to think this is a trend in math policing, but I doubt it (and here I have in mind what Einstein had to say about how he wasn't sure the universe was infinite). Me, I hope to mark the end of the decade in style, in just over two weeks!

Every day marks the start of a new millennium, and a new decade, for that matter.

Cheers...

Listening to opera...

I have to be in the right mood to sustain listening to opera. In a way, it's a little like combat: long periods of boredom interrupted by moments of total concentration.

My late mother was a real opera hound, but not to the extent of Mr. and Mrs. Glaser, who lived a couple of doors down the block and who would take my best friend Leopold with them every weekend, it seemed, to some cultural event, including quite a number of operas.

My listening was limited to the records my parents owned, and like most people, I learned early that not all classical music was to my taste. My mother didn't mind my playing the records, and without any prodding from either her or my stepdad, I fell in love with pieces such as Tchaikovsky's Ouverture Solonelle (known to most of us as the "1812 Overture"), Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, and Kachaturian's Sabre Dance from Gayane.

Still, operas remained at the bottom of my list of favorites, mostly because they involve a bunch of people dying at the end. It was almost a rule, and it depressed me.

Then I ran across the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan and the operas of Mozart, and things changed.

But right now, I'm listening to that crazy Lucia.

What a trip.

Cheers...