Listening to prolific
bassist Ron Carter’s 2001 version of an earlier jazz bassist composition
“Tamalpais”, by Oscar Pettiford. Has me
back in the Marin of my mind, heading north on Rt. 101 past the great mountain
on a day trip to somewhere up past Point Reyes, with the life my family and I
used to live when that was our home, what is now nearly a decade ago.
A friend recommended
Nancy Mitford’s “Voltaire in Love” which I recently finished. Fabulous.
French refinements that antedate the Proust and antedate Balzac and
antedate the guillotine. I don’t know
why but I’m often quick to disregard the eighteenth century. Perhaps its all the “Spirit of 76’”
propaganda we had forced on us during the bicentennial as a child and the
obligatory visits to “Revolutionary War” museums with candle making
classes. Nancy Mitford (1904-1973) who’s
life seems well worth a biography itself, wrote this juicy historical account
of the fifteen-year love affair between Voltaire and the Marquise du Chatelet,
(a.k.a. Emilie) in 1957. Another period
that doesn’t always come across as history’s most captivating.
Voltaire in England, a country he loved. Fascinating.
France before 1789, in the days of Louis XV, when it could truly pretend
to be the center of the civilized world.
Traveling from this villa that chateau.
Traveling from Louis’ court to Frederick II of Prussia’s court, and then
back again. A world of duels and combat
by pen, and comfy prisons when theatre and science were dangerous. Food and infidelity and discomfort and sex
and gracious forgiveness and so as to facilitate more sex, and more wine. Certainly it is not only a vivid eighteenth
century view but an alluring one.
One of the most memorable scenes was the two of them
traveling by coach. What a dreadful,
bumpy, slow way it must have been to travel!
Never comfortable. Impossible to
read. There was an accident. An axel broke And even traveling at only 10
MPH or whatever glacial speed they were moving at, one of the footman was hurt
and everyone was toppled over: 星罗棋布[1]
They were miles from a village and someone went off to find
help. They were given pillows to sit on
atop the cold winter ground. And then, the
two armature astronomers, took note of the remarkably clear winter night and,
as Nancy Mitford narrates, they forgot their coach-crash woes and the cold and
the snow and simply reveled in the night sky.
Later peasants come and, manage to fix the axle and Volatire
and Emilile stiff them for only seven livres, which seems to happen a lot to
local French villagers in the 1840s. They set off amidst much complaining, and manage to progress for fifty feet or when the axle breaks again. Now the villagers demand a hefty pre-pay fee,
which the aristocrats have no choice but to cough up. And later, when they finally they arrive at
their destination they kill some chickens and pigeons in the poultry yard, have
a huge feast and go to bed. (pp.
178-179).1
I just had drinks with a friend who recently her finished
her MBA which she’d been pursuing in France.
She is Chinese and she said the south of France was more important, more
enjoyable to her than any other place among the many she’d visited in
Europe. I for one have never spent time
there. I must return to Volatire and to
Mitford when I do, ultimately go.
Who knows what phone I’ll be packing when I get there. Is the mighty Samsung, the vanguard of all
South Korean hard and soft power finally having trouble? It would appear that their high end phones
are now being pummeled in the China market and it is having an impact on the
bottom line globally: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/business/international/samsung-forecasts-a-greater-earnings-decline-than-expected-for-end-of-2013.html?hp
I worked at Motorola in the late nineties here in Beijing
and watched Mot go from misstep to misstep to division in Google. I worked with a Finnish company five years ago
and visited Oulu where Nokia was headquartered.
Finnish friends still haven’t seemed to recover from Nokia’s
demise. Samsung, who once modeled
themselves on Sony, whom they’ve long since overtaken, seemed different. This will be an epic challenge for them and
for South Koreans themselves. Sooner or
later there will have to be another operating system for handsets besides iOS
and Android, or another axel will invariably crack, irreparably.
[1]
xīngluóqíbù: scattered about like stars in the sky or chess pieces on a board
(idiom); spread all over the place
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