Cat fight

I had previously mentioned our cat Midnight, who we got March 23 when he was two months, two days old. What I have not mention is that we subsequently got Stormy, back on August 15, when she was two months old to the day, as a companion for Midnight.

Midnight was instantly hostile to Stormy, even when we had her in a cage, or him in the cage, in order that they get to know each other better. And after she got fixed, we continued to separate them for fear that he might hurt her.

So this is how it worked: two feeding stations, two litter boxes, one in the kitchen, one in the Daughter’s room. The cats would alternate being in the room or the rest of the house. This was really a pain to maintain. And when the one in the room got out, there was a lot of drama in the house until the recapture.

January Rambling: looking for good news

Arthur’s article Why we think the news is worse than it is. This led to a thread that I wrote about finding good news amongst the bad which are here and here and here.

People I know personally, at least one an artist, seemed really irritated that a Norman Rockwell painting fetched a record price last month. This antipathy seemed to be tied to the notion of Rockwell as artistic pablum. Another view of the artist

I bought me a cat

Being the terrible blogger that I am, I have totally neglected mentioning the fact that we got a cat this year.

The Daughter has been wary of animals, especially dogs and cats. So we had never had pets of any kind since she was born. But as she spent more time with her friends’ cats, she decided that she wanted a feline of her own. In fact, when she didn’t get one for Christmas 2012, she gave us a deadline of her birthday in March to get one. Finally, around that date, she and her mother went to went to the animal shelter. There were two kittens she really loved who liked playing with each other . But before they could decide on which one to get, or possible get them both, one was selected by another family.

December Ramblin'

I’ve enjoyed seeing composer Steven Sondheim, lyricist for West Side story, a funny Thing happened on the Way to the Forum, and many, many other musicals, a couple times on television recently, promoting his book “Finishing the Hat: Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes.” I’ve ordered the book if only for the lyrics themselves, and what he’ll have to say about them. I enjoyed hearing about the strong tutelege of family friend Oscar Hammerstein. He has appeared on Stephen Colbert‘s program and on The Newshour on PBS. Part of the latter interview is here:
JEFFREY BROWN: And the greatest focus is on words that rhyme….He uses an old rhyming dictionary and a 1946 edition of “Roget’s Thesaurus.”
STEPHEN SONDHEIM: A rhyme draws the ear’s attention to the word. So, you don’t make the least important word in the line the rhyme word. So, you have to — and also a rhyme can take something that is not too strong and make it much stronger…
BROWN: And…he believes words that are spelled differently, but sound alike, such as rougher and suffer

The Cats' Meow

CATS was playing at Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady this past weekend (July 16-18). I had never been to a production. Other than knowing that it was based on some minor poems by T.S. Eliot, and that Andrew Lloyd Webber and his ex-wife Sarah Brightman were involved, I knew surprisingly little about it. So the wife, daughter and I went; we got some seats on the side, about 2/3s of the way back, and we had a good sightline, especially since much of the action seemed to skew stage left (audience right), where we were. Separately, my brother-in-law, his wife and their two daughters also attended.

Did you ever see a performance, whether it be a band or orchestra or play, where you recognize the tremendous talent of the performers, the excellent technique of the stage crew (I rather liked the lighting, which was strewn into the audience section), the imagination of the set design, yet somehow feel really disengaged from the performance? That’s how I felt about much of the first act. Oh, there would be a song or two that gained my attention, followed by gaps where I nearly fell asleep. Then near the end of the first part, a song I recognized: Memory. Oh, THAT song.

The second act featured