Althouse: Fall color.

September 3, 2017

Fall color.

Today, near the boathouse on Lake Mendota.

15 comments:

mockturtle said...: Advice to men: If you are trying to hit on a woman you just met, do not regale her with tales of how your ex-wife played you for a fool, ruined your life, was unfaithful, ran off with the plumber, or whatever marital woes befell you. It makes you sound like a victim. Victimhood is not attractive.; 9/3/17, 5:53 PM
tim in vermont said...: Bastard Trump is at it again.

https://mobile.twitter.com/jedgodsey/status/903714391127801856

Oh, and keep an eye on the tomatoes.; 9/3/17, 6:00 PM
tim in vermont said...: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/09/03/exceedingly-early-frost-possible-for-u-s-corn-belt-next-week/; 9/3/17, 6:01 PM
Michael K said...: "If you are trying to hit on a woman you just met, do not regale her with tales of how your ex-wife played you for a fool,"

The same applies to women. I was single for a while in middle age. I met all sorts of doctors' ex-wives and they were all angry as hell.

Not attractive. I finally married my own ex-wife and am content; 9/3/17, 6:12 PM
mockturtle said...: True, Michael. Works for either sex. I'm not in the market but sometimes I accidentally generate interest in the opposite sex and that sort of maudlin tale is certainly a turn-off and one that I hear all too often. Just thought I'd share it.

Better by far: "My wife and I kind of drifted apart but we're still good friends." Glad you rediscovered yours.; 9/3/17, 6:31 PM
Marc in Eugene said...: It's all autumnal browns and greys and yellows here too but because of the eclipse-light produced by the clouds of smoke that have been making life rather dreary for the last few days.

On the other hand, there was evidently a miraculous wind that kicked in just before the Ducks played whoever they played yesterday-- I live about a mile away, perhaps, from Autzen Stadium and have to say the miracle didn't reach this far. God moves in mysterious ways....; 9/3/17, 7:08 PM
mockturtle said...: The smoke is so widespread now in the NW that there's no avoiding it. I'm on my way back south this coming week and my route is still in question.; 9/3/17, 7:21 PM
Marc in Eugene said...: Yes, the satellite map of fires is scarily impressive. It has been breezy most of the day and still it lingers, the smoke-- and the temperature is increasing, to top 100 again tomorrow: I'd appreciate an early almost-frost here. Safe travels, mockturtle!; 9/3/17, 7:42 PM
mockturtle said...: Thank you. An early heavy snowfall would be good, wouldn't it?; 9/3/17, 7:45 PM
Marc in Eugene said...: Tim in vermont's early frost would be enough! people here can't manage to drive in a half-inch of snow-- a heavy snow would disrupt the city for a week. :-); 9/3/17, 8:24 PM
Sprezzatura said...: "The smoke is so widespread now in the NW that there's no avoiding it. I'm on my way back south this coming week and my route is still in question."

I've been back for about a month but haven't really noticed it much on the coast. During this time we spent a week in Coeur d'Alene, and I did notice it there.

Maybe I'm not very observant.

Anywho, re the loser who was hitting on you: most dudes don't got game. And, (don't take it personally) those w/ game can pick and choose, so most gals don't get the experience.

Just sayin'; 9/3/17, 10:36 PM
Marc in Eugene said...: So I'm going to avail myself of this café post to vent about the ongoing Oregon Bach Festival debacle.

OBF on the 24th fired its artistic director, Matthew Halls, whose contract ran through 2020, via a telephone call. A local journalist published this news on the morning of the 27th (after a telephone conversation with Halls) following which bombshell the UO media operation published a (now-infamous) press release disclosing 'the parting of the ways' and declaring that beginning next summer OBF would use a 'guest curator' each season to increase Diversity etc.

[OBF is legally a creature of the UO, when all is said and done. There is a 'Board of Directors of the Friends of the Festival' which has, until now, anyway, enjoyed a certain managerial competence and is often referred to as the 'Festival board', and OBF certainly operates or at any rate has operated as an entity distinct from the UO: but the legal fact is that the OBF depends on the University-- apparently, the university provost is the highest responsible official. Whoever fired Halls didn't consult the Festival board chairman, at any rate.]

On the 31st, the local journalist (Bob Keefer, who was formerly arts critic for the local daily newspaper and now is arts editor for the local free weekly) reported that someone or some ones at the UO were insinuating that Halls had been fired because of a 'racist incident'-- he interviewed the principals, flaying the life out of that purported 'incident', but confirming that suspicions about Diversity and Inclusion and all that nonsense were perhaps also involved in Halls's termination.

Also on the 31st, the director of the Ojai Festival, which festival's putative use of 'guest curators' each season had been cited as inspiration for the OBF's new course in the infamous press release four days earlier wrote to the OBF executive director and Bob Keefer and publicly that Ojai doesn't at all do what the infamous press release suggested that it does, leading to further suspicions that someone or some ones at the OBF or UO are idiots or were hastily trying to assemble a public but not necessarily entirely true rationale for Halls's firing.

Dr Bill Harbaugh, who is a (tenured) professor of economics at the UO and a long-standing thorn in the side of the UO bureaucrats, has blogged about this debacle here.

No additional clarifications or explanations have been made, either by the UO or the OBF, since the 27th's infamous press release. I certainly won't donate to the OBF again unless they can force themselves to be more forthcoming about all of this.

Perhaps Maestro Halls has in fact "for many years flirted with termination because of questionable judgement with regard to personal comportment" (that's one of the half dozen comments-- from the only anonymous commenter, as it happens-- at Bob Hick's article at Oregon ArtsWatch). Perhaps the UO was panicking about the decline in ticket sales, perhaps the UO juggernaut 'Diversity, Equity, Inclusion' is rolling forward (they just last year had to deal with the 'blackfaced-law professor-at-Halloween' nonsense), perhaps.... But if they end up ruining the OBF in their pettiness, that would be a terrible shame.; 9/4/17, 11:10 AM
mockturtle said...: Marc, that this type of witch hunt has imperiled a Bach festival is an outrage. The minority in question, himself, denied any offense was taken from his 'old friend' Halls. Things have reached beyond absurd and into the realm of ridiculous. If we as sane citizens let it go uncontested, then we have lost the First Amendment for all time.; 9/4/17, 12:07 PM
Marc in Eugene said...: If in fact that 'racism' business has anything to do with this nonsense it is indeed outrageous. On the one hand, I can conceive that this or that aspect of British humor or irony or attitude might indeed be misconstrued by some poor child at the UO as 'racism'-- I have never had anything to do with Halls, beyond polite comments made while briefly passing in the crowd-- but on the other the UO has in place (as Bill Harbaugh and others have pointed out many times) a entire public structure of grievance and identity policing that is in use, that functions so if someone had 'felt threatened' or illegitimately discriminated against he or she will have gone, so one would think, to those public guardians.

But it's entirely possible that that is all a smokescreen thrown up by the PR flacks to conceal the reality of an ill-conceived and badly designed and poorly executed series of policy changes that the powers that be will have known would meet with significant opposition, from Maestro Halls and from the Board of Directors and from the larger base of benefactors.

As in so much that has to do with public affairs, it is the lack of transparency (which is a polite way often enough of saying 'of honesty') that I find so infuriating-- last Monday I was irate, today, eh, the world goes on, doesn't it.; 9/4/17, 1:36 PM
mockturtle said...: last Monday I was irate, today, eh, the world goes on, doesn't it.

The world, perhaps. Our culture, probably not. :-(; 9/4/17, 2:42 PM