Okay Okay, I get more comments about Sci-Fi than I do about the shameful behaviour of the U.S. Government. So I'll shut up about torture. However there's a good op-ed piece in the LA Times today about the situation. Read about it HereSo Last Weekend we drove up to Santa Barbara to visit ye olde daddy and go to a flamenco dance concert that some lovely friends of ours had given us tickets too. As we drove along the 101 we passed the Day Fire in the distance, churning smoke into the sky. In the morning our car had a fine layer of ash upon it. Smoke is best seen with polarizing lenses otherwise you can mistake it for haze or for or clouds. Like when we were coming into California last, over the Sierras, driving over Donner Pass (7089 feet high) and into the great San Joaquin Valley I saw smoke - through my polarized sunglasses and suggested to my companions that maybe we should turn the radio on and see if we could get any news about the fire and whether the road was closed. But there was scoffing, scoffing at my suggestion. I was told that the Valley was always hazy. And then of course we turned a corner and went down into a smoke bank forest fire. But the Day fire is something, fanned by Santa Anas, it is huge and has scorched acres upon acres. Luckily though no one has been killed, and very few structures have been damaged.
Well ye olde daddy made us some artichokes and mahi mahi for dinner and then we went all greased up and happy from having some champagne and mayonnaise with our protein and veg to the theatre where we saw the Omayra Amaya dance troupe. They consisted of a guitarist, a singer, a percussionist and two dancers one of each genders. The percussionist played a box which is apparently a cajon drum, but that is what you find out if you google percussion box flamenco which, of course I didn't do at the time. The two dancers did not dance with one another, they had a series of solo dances. I liked it all, I thought it was rather thrilling and that Omayra had beautiful arms. My beloved companions were less enthusiastic. But we still had a good time. I actually like going to things I don't know anything about. Was this good flamenco? Bad flamenco? Is combining Modern Dance with flamenco a tragedy or brilliant? I don't have an opinion about it! I rather liked the Isadora Duncan\Martha Graham parts of the dance. I was reminded of dancers on Greek friezes during the modern part. I liked the stampy footy part too. But the performance was part of a greater Santa Barbara effort called the Flamenco Arts Festival, so when I read the program notes, I read about the other shows that were part of the Festival and I learned one crucial thing about flamenco. You have to be BORN to it. Flamenco dancers and guitarists have pedigrees and lineages, so don't go see someone who isn't the niece of an uncle of a grandpapa. So I recommend going to the theatre and seeing some flamenco. Oh, the guitarist, Roberto Castellon was brilliant.
And just a general note, I'm so glad the U.S. government has figured out that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms. And now they're busy taking away our freedoms so that the terrorists won't hate us. Isn't that sweet?
2 comments:
But the Dems will take back Congress. Then it will be harder for them to push their agenda through. I think.
I don't know, Lib. There was a really horrifying piece in the NYTimes Sunday Op Ed section about how the Republicans are going to stick to their Karl "sputum" Rove agenda and win again. I think that history is going to compare Karl Rove to Rasputin - except more succesful. (Though I doubt Rove would last as long as Rasputin did when he was assasinated. It took like what? Forty or Fifty knife wounds and a dunk in the Neva to kill off Rasputin. Don't quote me on this, I'm too lazy to look it up, but it's something like that.)
Post a Comment