My View For Awhile: escape from humidity edition

Off I go again.

We are in the wretched boarding phase, during which everyone in an aisle seat is reduced to a meat turnstile by those who have no sense either of their depth and girth as augmented by packs and purses, or of the presence of other human beings around them.

No I did not buy this at the Strand, though it would have been great to be able to do so.


I spoke by phone with the author recently.  He’s a great fellow.  I look forward to meeting him in person before too long.

UPDATE:

It’s nice to be able to check luggage status  using the app.  

Yes.  So far so good.

UPDATE:

Waiting.  Leaning.

It occurred to me that my last flight had the same number of people board as the flight in the movie Sully which I saw the other day.  Real suspense, even though you know the outcome, which is hard to pull off.   It was a bit creepy, since I’ve flown into LGA quite a few times.


I wonder:  A good candidate for an inflight movie?

In any event, it seems that Tom Hanks would be dangerous to travel with.  There was Sully, and the one where he crashed in the ocean and was stranded on an island.  And the terrific Apollo 13.  Hanks and flying… not so much.

So waiting …

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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18 Comments

  1. excalibur says:

    Father Z, more evidence of the death of the former Christendom.

    TV Ad Encourages German Women to Wear Hijabs

    Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

    JMJ

  2. Charles E Flynn says:

    Fortunately, your flight will not require the Auto-GCAS . (scroll down to video: 1 min. 20 sec.; sound is relatively loud)

  3. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    Hurrah for the Pärt Advent Antiphons in German translation (both versions)! – though in some ways I like the Charpentier ones even more. (Was it – is it – a common thing to have polyphonic Advent antiphon settings? What gems do I not yet know about…?)

  4. FXR2 says:

    excalibur said:
    16 September 2016 at 3:43 PM
    Father Z, more evidence of the death of the former Christendom.

    TV Ad Encourages German Women to Wear Hijabs

    Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

    JMJ

    Second the prayers to OL Fatima, adding prayers to St. Michael the Archangel!

    Let’s not forget, Fatima was named after Mohammed’s daughter.

    fxr2

  5. Gilbert Fritz says:

    Yes, Fr. James Jackson is wonderful, one of John Senior’s many converts.

  6. KateD says:

    [I deleted. I strive to know as little as possible about actors, etc.]

  7. The Masked Chicken says:

    “Hurrah for the Pärt Advent Antiphons in German translation (both versions)! ”

    Man, now I just feel plain unegimacated. I had never heard of Avro Pärt until I looked up the music for the climactic scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron (it is his, Kryie, from the Berliner Messe, 1990) and I am supposed to know something about avant-garde music :( This is not meant the way it might sound, but how do you people get to know this sort of stuff? Pärt was writing this music in the 1970 – 2000 period and I never heard of him. How does on find out about these composers? They are not a part of the standard academic training (and I studied modern music with a professor who is an expert in Polish music).

    The Chicken

  8. VexillaRegis says:

    Oh dear, Chicken! :-) Never heard of Arvo Pärt before?! If you hadn’t been taught by a Polish professor, I would have suspected that it was because you studied in America… ;-)

    This marvelous Estonian, who studied in Tallinn and in the Soviet Union, also lived in Germany and in Britain before moving back to Tallinn some years ago. Here in Scandinavia he’s so well known, that when his music is played in a TV program people (anyone) say ” oh, that sounds like something by Pärt, doesn’t it.”

    I think that all of Arvo Pärts speaks to us from The Other World.

  9. Mariana2 says:

    The Chicken said
    “How does on find out about these composers?”

    Here in Scandinavia we have great radio. Arvo Pärt is standard stuff. Unfortunately, you of the American persuasion have rubbish radio stations. When my husband and I lived in the US, we used to listen to a programme called Music You Can’t Hear on the Radio on WPRB, just to hear a normal mix of music, not (shudder) the usual “easy listening.” WNYC is good, too.

  10. The Masked Chicken says:

    VexillaRegis wrote:

    “If you hadn’t been taught by a Polish professor, I would have suspected that it was because you studied in America… ;-)”

    The professor was not Polish. He was an expert in avante-garde and modern music, especially of the Polish school. It is possible that Part hadn’t made a significant in-road at the time (computers still used tape drives, back then, when I was a beginning graduate student). Well, my master’s advisor (a different professor), wrote the Twentieth-century volume in music history for the Prentice-Hall series, so we were big into that back then. My knowledge of Scandinavian composers is somewhat limited, outside of the really historical ones (we did study composers from across the world, so, at the time I was up on trends in a lot of countries). I did play under a visiting Scandinavian conductor when I was working on my doctorate, however (he brought some new compositions for us go read through). Does that count?

    The Chicken

  11. APX says:

    We are in the wretched boarding phase
    If we boarded planes based on common sense, it wouldn’t be so bad, but since we’re a people of class and special privileges, and airlines looking for ways to make more money, planes board in the manner least in line with common sense. Planes should be boarded with people who sit at the back first, thus there’s no congestion up at the front of the plane with the Privileged People clogging up the front of the plane trying to stuff their oversized carry on luggage in the overhead compartment, while the rest of the people are trying to board.

    I wonder: A good candidate for an inflight movie?
    Yes, along with Alive while flying over the mountains.

    Personally, I’m a fan of watching plane crash documentaries the night before I fly and while I’m waiting to board. Who would think that a little bit of ice on the plane’s wings when flying could cause it to crash so frequently? Hopefully budget cuts don’t result in using Type I de-icing fluid instead of Type II in the Great White North.

  12. Charivari Rob says:

    “In any event, it seems that Tom Hanks would be dangerous to travel with. There was Sully, and the one where he crashed in the ocean and was stranded on an island. And the terrific Apollo 13. Hanks and flying… not so much.”

    My thing would be a weekend at somebody’s country house or a wedding or somesuch and finding out that my assigned dinner companion is Angela Lansbury. Might as well be the redshirt in the landing party.

  13. VexillaRegis says:

    Dear Chicken, of course that counts :-)! Sorry, I misread about the expert in Polish music.

    The computer tape system – ah that must have been in the Mid Eighties or there about. When I started my musical college studies the were floppy discs in the ONE computer the college owned…

    Back to Arvo Pärt. He wasn’t widely known in the Eighties here either, and that was because the Iron Curtain didn’t fall until 1989. Before that, the contact between the Baltic countries, which were occupied by the SSSR, and the rest of Europe – and the Western World!- , was almost non-existent. I might also mention, that Estonia isn’t a Scandinavian country, but belongs to the Baltics together with Latvia and Lithuania, and that probably explains why Pärt didn’t appear in the Scandinavian section of your curriculum.

    Yours sincerely, Vexilla Regis

  14. VexillaRegis says:

    PS. One of Pärt’s most known pieces is Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in mirror) from 1978: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZe3mXlnfNc
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegel_im_Spiegel

  15. Kerry says:

    Dear Masked Chicken, Thank you for the reference to Pius XII and his Humani Generis. I shall read it.
    And Arvo Part, oh wow! His Agnus Dei from the Berlinner Mass, listened to on the internet and following with the score, “Oh my!”. Fur Alina, Kanon Pokajanen, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten. You will be floating for weeks.

  16. Giuseppe says:

    Don’t forget The Terminal, where he wound up living in an airport.

    Safe travels, Padre.

  17. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    The Masked Chicken asks, “how do you people get to know this sort of stuff?” Anecdotally speaking, Providentially: (early-mid-1980s), ran into somebody with Part LPs. The Advent antiphons (1990s): ran into a CD in a shop with the first version; later ran into a CD in another shop with the revised version. That last CD was by the Hilliard Ensemble, so running into them in one context or another might also have lead to Part – I have the impression they did a lot to popularize him in the English-speaking world (e.g., live performance of his Passio (Latin St. John’s Passion) in the Cathedral in Christ Church College, Oxford, in the 1980s, and I think some commissions of works).

  18. robtbrown says:

    Fr Z says,

    I spoke by phone with the author recently.  He’s a great fellow.  I look forward to meeting him in person before too long.

    He, Bishop Conley, and Abp Coakley shared a house at KU–Fr Jackson and Bp Conley are converts.

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