Picto Diary - 15 to 20 July 2023 - Paxmans in a Pool

Above: Deer Valley Amphitheater. Beach Boys. 15 July 2023.

View from the cheap seats. It was basically the same concert as last year. Good sound and fabulous studio musicians playing with original Beach Boy, eighty-two-year-old Mike Love

Above: Deer Valley Amphitheater. Beach Boys. 15 July 2023.

TIMDT and Magnolia.

Above: Paxmans in a Pool. Image circa 1954. Provo, UT. 16 July 2023.

We hosted family friends John Paxman and Patrina Paxman at a family dinner this evening, including Koessler's family and B1b. FeeBee and Mynduveroan were on their way to Whitefish, Montana for a horse event and Drums was out somewhere with his girlfriend. John and Patrina, who live in Montreal, Quebec, were paying an annual visit to Utah staying in the long-owned Paxman family cabin at Wildwood, Utah County.

John's parents, Monroe and Shirley and my parents, Weldon and Gayle, were best friends. Monroe and Shirley were community activists and doers. The Paxmans held an annual neighborhood circus at their Provo home (200 North and 100 East... or at least nearby). The above image, "Paxmans in a Pool," was taken at one of those Paxman neighborhood circuses circa 1954. I am standing to John's right at the top of the image. My brother Dee, deceased this year, is standing directly in front of me. Others in the image are John's younger siblings.

We stayed up late talking about old times, our kids and grandkids, travel and art. Like us, Paxmans had lived and traveled in various locals around the world, including having lived two years in Trinidad. Our travel experiences and related art finds abroad made for interesting conversation.

Above: LSDM tour of new Three Kings Water Plant. Park City, UT. 19 July 2023.

$130 million project. LSDM was impressed with the scope of the project and the professionalism of its managers.

Above: Utah Symphony Orchestra; Kathryn Eberle, Associate Concertmaster and violin soloist. Mozart. Concerto #1 in B Flat Major for Violin 19. St. Mary's Catholic Church, Park City, UT. 19 July 2022.

Fabulous performance. Eberle's mastery of her craft evident in her seemingly surreal finger dexterity on the strings. Her virtuosity causes me to reflect, once again, on the too much disdained reality of gender distinctiveness. Hint: Females are nimbler than males with their fingers. Herbert Von Karahan's Berlin Philharmonic, through the end of the 20th century, by policy, had no female members. For me, it stands to reason that females, because of manual dexterity advantages over males, can compete favorably with males, to reach the apex of violin mastery.

Circa 2015 TIMDT and Mwah (sic) were visiting a tea plantation in south India. I asked the plantation manager why the tea pickers were all female? He said, ingenuously, "Women have smaller fingers. They are more dexterous. Also, we can't rely on men to pick tea. Men, too often, don't return from lunch to work." Men and women are different. On the whole, we should expect gender differences to impact on performance capability for any given activity. On a level playing field, all other things being equal (caveat: things are always not equal!) achieving violin virtuosity favors the female.

The desire of females to compete at sports and activities where males have a natural advantage has always been puzzling to me, particularly when women have their own physical advantages over men to exploit. Watching Eberle perform, without being gender handicapped, at the top of her métier was a real joy to me. Why wouldn't a female want to aspire to becoming a prima ballerina, say, rather than emulate the over celebrated Megan Rapinoe, who couldn't make an average male junior college soccer team?

At the end of last night's concert, I was in a brief conversation with Steven Brosvik, Utah Symphony and Opera CEO. I mentioned to him how Von Karahan wouldn't accept women in his symphony and how that probably, as good as the Berlin was, it drew from a sub-optimized talent pool in selecting its top musicians. Brosvik agreed and noted how much better off classical music performance is today with women aspiring to reach the top of classical music performance capability.

Incidentally, TIMDT and Mwah (sic) attended a performance of The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in Tokyo, Japan in the early eighties. Old and frail, Von Karahan led the all-male orchestra from a stool seat. The experience was electric.... as you would expect it to be for the performance of an apex orchestral ensemble. Also, TIMDT and Mwah (sic) were amazed to note the youth of the sold-out audience, mostly in their twenties and thirties.

Addendum:

Above: Idaho Image from Guzzi, motorcycling somewhere in Idaho, 15 July 2023.
Ammon Edward Bundy (born September 1, 1975)[2][3] is an American anti-government militant[4][5] and activist[6] who led the 2016 occupation occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.[7][8][9] He is the son of rancher Cliven Bundy, who was the central figure in the 2014 Bundy standoff regarding unpaid grazing fees on federally-owned public land.

In March 2020, Bundy created the far-right People's Rights network.[10] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bundy was arrested more than five times for protests and disruptions against COVID-19 mitigation efforts by the Idaho government.

Bundy ran for governor of Idaho in the 2022 election.[11] After initially filing to run in the Republican primary, he decided instead to run as an independent in the general election. Bundy lost and placed third. Wikipedia

I motorcycled to the Cliven Bundy/BLM standoff site near Mesquite, Nevada only two or three days after the end of the 2014 standoff. There were still quite a few vehicles and RVs belonging to Bundy supporters parked under the I-15 overpass where the standoff took place. It's hard to believe that otherwise benign US agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), arm their employees to the teeth.

 

Feedback on book review: "Vengeance is Mine."

Interesting question. Here are two for you:
What if the Russian-speaking regions do not want to belong to Russia?
If Mexico asks, should we give them our Spanish-speaking regions?

Tom,
Macon, GA

1. It's the story of history. What if Crazy Horse wanted to stay in Montana?
2. Same. The story of culture is the story of war.

Thank you. Fascinating read, fascinating piece of history.

Nathans,
Orlando, FL

Tks.

Peace and Violence among 19th-Century Latter-day Saints (churchofjesuschrist.org)

Drummer J,
Lehi, UT

The LDS official explanation of the Mountain Meadows Massacre is very balanced. The LDS might have had a case to say, but didn't say, massacre victims were unfortunate civilian casualties during wartime. Modern Church leaders have upheld the narrative of the heinousness of the crime calling the massacre unjustified notwithstanding the circumstances. It's hard to pass judgement on history.

Steve,

I enjoy reading your book reviews, except in this case where you went off the reservation and decided to include your socio/political views drawing an equivalence (false, in my view) between the massacre and what you have chosen to call a coronavirus “scandal". And you go on to write that a majority of Americans willingly, unthinkingly complied with the government’s ill-conceived directives, etc., etc.

You then go on to say that in the both the case of the massacre and the covid guidelines, that innocent lives were ruined and lost when critical thinking was suspended.

First of all, your hyperbolical prose detracts from you own argument. No need for all the excessive adjectives and phrases such as “scandal”., “ill conceived”, “timeworn moral principles, “innocent lives”. You write like you were writing a script for Tucker Carlson or Varney.

You don’t know how many lives were lost or ruined because of the government’s guidelines to deal with the pandemic. For all you know, more lives would’ve been lost or ruined if the government had not set out those guidelines and had not provided massive assistance to hospitals and communities all across the country. You seem to suggest that those lives that were lost or ruined were because the people were not able to think for themselves. They suspended critical thinking. Perhaps an unfair and unfounded accusation. You do not know that to be the case.

Please, don’t disgrace your excellent book reviews with your political views.

Tom