Father’s
day, down in Shanghai. I’ll have
to give my hold man a ring when I cut off this evening, late, around 9:15PM. His father’s day will be dawning back
in New York. My girls will likely
be checking in with me before long.
Where do you draw the line on Hallmark holidays? The promotion of “Grandparents Day”
always seemed a bit forced, though perhaps I’ll feel different when my kids
have offspring. China celebrates
“Children’s Day”, which is as reasonable a holiday as any, I suppose. But I didn’t grow up with it and so I
tend to ‘pooh pooh’ it whenever it comes around over here. I always hear my mother’s retort in my
ears. When we were kids, growing
up in suburban New York and would ask “why isn’t there kids day?” She’d reply, “every day is kid’s day.”
Finished up Tacitus’ Annals the day before last, flying up
from Guangzhou. Now I understand
about the fire that consumed Rome, during Nero’s rule. Reading the first part of the Annals
where the focus is on Tiberius, I, for one, can’t not think of the BBC’s 1976
televised rendition of “I Claudius” and the hapless, doomed-to-rule, Tiberius
played by George Baker.
Tacitus doesn’t seem to bother much with the horor of Caligula though it
may be that the writing was simply lost.
Rather the last four books concentrate on Nero. And though there is a brief appearance
in the BBC production by Christopher Biggins as the L'enfant terrible he follows Claudius rule and so, the story of his
rule is not covered and my mind is freer to imagine this as I please.
What a mess.
Assassination is a rough business.
The death of Caesar was all carried off fairly effectively by a limited
number of plotters. In Book 15
after a long cataloging a litany of Nero’s outrages, the senators, begin to
plot, en masse, to dispose of Nero and promote Gaius Piso. The fault, it seems is that the conspiracy
grew so large and had so many people implicated that the temptation for
Milichus, the knife-sharpener to surmise the plot and turn the plotters in for
a reward. Even if the conspirators
intentions are worthy, to rid the weary of Empire of a delusional ruler, once
murder is on the table, even if it isn’t 谋财害命[1] our most base instincts it seems are set
free. Former niceties, decorum,
inhibitions and fears are all cast aside.
Once Milichus spills the beans and the plot is uncovered the
rest of this Book and the next are an unerring blood letting that implicates
the guilty and the innocent, including, famously Nero’s teacher, the dramatist
and philosopher Seneca the Younger who is ordered by Nero to kill himself.
I’m not much of a soccer fan, though I did notice that
Spain, England and Uruguay are suffering while the Netherlands, Italy and Costa
Rica are smiling . . . but my friend’s list of Brazilian funk for me to
investigate continues to cast a sunny Brazilian glow to my Shanghai
sojourn. This morning I’ve got the
silver sounds of Sandalia de Prata with their juicy contemporary samba. The
album” Samba Pesado” is from 2006, though if I had just heard this somewhere,
I’d have placed it much earlier.
The Wiki page for them is in Portuguese and perhaps there is something
askew with the translation, but what it suggests is they “appeared” one day in
a neighborhood in Sao Paulo and began playing. I will choose to imagine them this way, spontaneously
materializing there like an extraterrestrial landing.
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand%C3%A1lia_de_Prata There are some nice photos of the group
on their own, official site. http://www.sandaliadeprata.com.br/10anos/
No comments:
Post a Comment