From The Weekend

It was a very good weekend.

Friday evening, OS encountered two nominees for the 2010 Green Shoots Award.

Krzysztof Penderecki and Barry Douglas
joined forces with the Nashville Symphony to present Penderecki's Piano Concerto, which dates from 2002. The composer conducted. OS bought tickets, expecting no more than to be able to say, 'I saw the great Penderecki at work before he went to his reward', since the gent is now seventy-nine years old.
He is still spry, conducts pretty stiffly, but managed to convey enough to the musicians for them to carry the piece off.

It was an amazing event. The Concerto is a long, complex, madly difficult, and utterly luminous piece of music. One long, long movement, and OS was saddened to hear it end. If Solzhenitsyn had written music, it may well have sounded like this piece.

Barry Douglas' performance was, well, amazing.  The piece is fiendishly hard, with none of the usual mental landmarks a standard concerto contains, and was performed from memory.  We sat in the balcony over his right shoulder, in full view of the keyboard.

Why, the reader asks, does this matter to anyone? Well, again, look at the header of the blog.  We need the Pendereckis and the Douglases to keep reminding us of our better angels.  Truth and beauty walk hand-in-hand, and moments like this remind us that the grim realities of economics, politics and power are not all there is.  There is an Unseen Hand involved, actively at work in a lot more than our daily soap opera, and two of The Hand's emissaries showed up last Friday night in Nashville. If you view their bios, linked above, you'll see that these gents are not ivory tower 'artistes'--they're teaching, mentoring, building bridges across hostile real-estate, really contributing to the world. Contrast them with the narcissism of our pop culture heroes, and reality comes into focus a bit better.

It was a good night to meet up with friends, in the same balcony. One college professor friend at the LargeStateU was describing how the campus is literally being over-run with students, with kids parking themselves in halls and stairways of the aging building he teaches in, because there is no place for them to go.  Of course, no capital projects even in planning now.

He is graduating bright kids to a world of no jobs, where previously there were always openings.

And Tennessee's in better shape than a lot of states!

At the same time, he reports good morale amongst the students. They're all happy to be there, working hard and happily.

OS has work to complete today, opportunities to meet, a loving wife, two thriving adult children.

He lives a blessed life, and every single day is a gift of grace, completely undeserved.


P.S.--If you are a US citizen, have your called your Senators yet?  Ben Bernanke's gotta go.  Strike a blow for the culture. We don't want to be Argentina.  One is enough.

Even if he stays,  he and the Senate need to know there are a ton of really really unhappy voters out there who daily wish him gone.  Last week's moment of sobriety needs to be extended.

Remember, thirty-three of those guys and gals have to explain themselves this November.

Make them think about their vote this week, and yours.