One-sided opinions?

We're all at it, all coming up with deeply held opinions on the Global Warming crisis. We should try to argue with the people who disagree with us in a restrained, objective, respectful way, but we get too emotional. Unlike my husband, I don't see commentators who disagree with me as "the trolls", necessarily; some of them seem to be as genuinely anxious as I am, but from a different standpoint. Right wing males feel particularly threatened by protests from people (women and girls in particular) of a left wing persuasion, which leads either to temper tantrums or to long-winded, defensive wordiness.

Each faction accuses the other of generating fake news. The language used by extremists on either side is remarkably similar, murderous in some cases. I do not like this.

It looks to me that there's an awful lot of what psychologists call projection going on. We accuse one another, viciously, of what we are guilty of ourselves. It happens not only behind closed doors in private homes but also in the international public arena. For instance, the billionaire, Hungarian philanthropist, George Soros, is accused of funding conspiracies that would lead to world domination. I doubt that, at the age of almost 90, this man has any desire to dominate the world like a latter-day Genghis Khan, although there are people of a different persuasion who probably do. Another example of projection (of course my examples in this post are biased): Americans who cannot accept the warnings from the vast majority of scientists --- that through our preference for carbon emitting fuels humankind is bringing about the planet's destruction --- claim that anyone trying to state the other side of that argument is having his work suppressed. And yet it is the scientists themselves, of NASA and other federal agencies, who are being forbidden (their publications censored by the government) from sharing the results of research that backs up those warnings, and their frustration is intense. So exactly who is clamping down on whom?

To judge by pages like this one (published last year for a lay readership), the NASA website does seem to be surreptitiously disobeying the clampdown, subtly sneaking in some home truths or at least the implication of home truths. It reminds me of Galileo Galilei, his work suppressed by the Roman Catholic authorities of the 16th century, smuggling his thesis out of Italy, carried by a student of his into a more enlightened place, "die Wahrheit unter dem Rock" (the truth hidden under one's coat), as Brecht put it in his play. We're half a millennium further on now, but human nature hasn't changed much.

What brought on this post was an exchange between me, my daughter Emma and a commentator from New Zealand on Avaaz' Facebook page, this week, whom I shall call RL, viz.:

RL: Poor children indoctrinated with all of those lies, robbed of the ability to think critically for themselves and make up their own minds. They have been taught to be narrow minded and totally intolerant of opinions that differ from those taught to them. The next generation is stuffed mentally and I guess that is how it has been callously planned.  

So what exactly is the climate emergency? What factors are causing it and how do they all inter relate? Have you identified all of the factors and how, precisely would you know if you had? What responses will you make for each factor and how would you measure whether the response is effective, ineffective or actually making things worse, and over what time frame would you measure that response? If the response was making things worse would you be able to fix it? These are very important questions considering the recent NASA statement saying they are unable to measure whether the sea level rise but they estimate it to be around 1 to 2 cm per century. Also in a recent presentation an IPCC scientist said they didn't know whether a temperature increase would produce more or less water vapour, and what change that might make to the climate and that they still don't understand the interaction between water vapour and CO2. Now, that is very important considering that water vapour is by far the largest greenhouse component in our atmosphere. Another thing to consider is that our planet has tilted further on it's axis than was expected. This means that how the sun heats the planet has changed, affecting surface ocean current and in turn wind currents. This can cause things like last summers European heat wave because the wind currents from the Sahara Desert covered Europe more often and for longer periods than usual and extended as far as the Arctic. If it is the rate of the earths tilt that has changed and is causing climate change, is it changing the weather is ways that are beneficial in the long term, and it may take fifty years to get that answer, and if it is making things worse just how do you propose to fix it? 

Me (quoting https://climate.nasa.gov/causes): "1,300 independent scientific experts from countries all over the world [...] concluded there's a more than 95 percent probability that human activities over the past 50 years have warmed our planet." Are you saying that all these scientists got it wrong? 

My daughter is a British metrologist who gave a keynote speech about measuring climate change at a conference in Paris today. She works with people who analyse data from satellites, and with oceanographers, all of whom believe that "human activities have warmed our planet". I shall ask her what she knows about the interaction between water vapour and CO2. She said that at the conference she also listened to a presentation about observations of carbon isotope ratios that enable scientists to distinguish between natural carbon dioxide emissions and the emissions caused by the use of fossil fuels. The graphs they generate are alarming proofs of the harm we humans are causing. I don't agree with Greta Thunberg that we should all be panicking, — panicking is no good as a strategy — but this is a global emergency for sure. 

Emma Woolliams: Alison’s daughter here. Very happy to explain any aspects of the science you have questions on. And yes, there are questions on the exact nature of the cloud feedback. A hotter atmosphere (from CO2) holds more water vapour before it forms clouds and rains. As water vapour is the dominant (natural) greenhouse gas (without it, average global temperatures would be about -15 degC) increasing water vapour in the atmosphere acts as a positive (that’s bad!) feedback loop for the climate. However it creates more clouds and that tends to warm nights and cool days (and other things). So yes, scientists are still working on understanding that detail. But - and this is crucial- just because we don’t understand everything, doesn’t mean we understand nothing. As scientists we are always open about what we do and don’t know - and my research is about the uncertainties in climate observations. I am evaluating how much we don’t know. Do not mix the normal scientific process with “doubt”. 

Very happy to discuss further - send me a PM if you’d like to know more. 

Me: I didn't bring my daughter up to be "narrow minded and intolerant", quite the contrary, as you see. Education, in my opinion, is all about encouraging young people to ask questions in a critical (but not impolite) way. I dare say these "poor children" indoctrinate one another when they're together, that's normal too — human beings become tribal in a crowd — but I don't agree that their minds have been callously and deliberately manipulated by adults. Teenagers are quick to notice and condemn hypocrisy and I think there's a large element of that in the protests we saw last week. 

Your question to scientists and policy makers: "just how do you propose to fix [weather that is making things worse]?" is a very good one. Let's hope everyone with a brain will work together (without panicking) from now on (and without wasting time over petty arguments about personalities) to come up with answers to that question.

RL: Alison Hobbs, all of those scientists did not get it wrong, the people that put the survey together got it wrong, quite deliberately as it turned out when it was discredited, and they admitted to it. I have looked at that NASA site and am disappointed to see some of that information with those manipulated graphs still around. The majority of those children have been deliberately indoctrinated and taught that anyone who disagrees with them or questions what they say is a hateful nasty piece of work who doesn't deserve to live, and that is often reflected in the way they talk, and I have been subject to that abuse on this forum many times. Many scientists have been fired, had funding removed or severely punished and had gag orders imposed them when their legitimate research produces outcomes that differ from this enforced climate change narrative, and many others are just too frightened to question anything because they have witnessed the lives and names of good, honest and hard working colleagues destroyed. I do not believe that this is how good science should be conducted. It just creates an atmosphere of fear, distrust and ignorance and is not a conducive environment for robust scientific outcomes. The science on global warming is no where near settled.

Me: Oh dear, I'm sorry to hear of the abuse to which you've been subjected. There is no excuse for hateful speech or other bullying tactics, anywhere. If only we could discuss these things in a genuine spirit of inquiry and in a civilised manner, without taking sides—without the fear, distrust and ignorance, as you rightly say! But nobody, including you and me, wants to admit that his or her assumptions might be wrong.

Before the dawn

Our teenager friend Jessica and I spent eight minutes, on Saturday, immersed in a Virtual Reality show, and I am still thinking about its implications. Jessica is from Toronto, and so was the show. It was created by Anishinaabe film-maker Lisa Jackson in collaboration with her fellow artists and is entitled Biidaaban: First Light. It is an example of Indigenous futurism. Remember that term, because this is a new trend in art and literature, in Canada and elsewhere. We came across it on the ground floor of the National Arts Centre here in Ottawa, where the VR experience was being offered cost free to anyone interested, as part of the current Mòshkamo festival, the first festival of its kind, that celebrates " the resurgence of Indigenous Arts" in Canada. The Algonquin word mòshkamo apparently means something like "appearing out of water." Last December I went to a talk about the Indigenous arts by the festival's instigator, Lori Marchand, an interesting person! I helped to publish an article about that talk in the February issue of our CFUW-Ottawa newsletter (on page 6).

What you see in 3-D, when you put on the headset, are recognisable images of the Toronto cityscape, but re-imagined, as if some catastrophe had obliterated all of today's citizens and their accoutrements. All that's left of Toronto is the ruined buildings, like some prehistoric Inca palace rediscovered by archaeologists, wild plants growing out of the cracks, with pools of water inhabited by turtles in the subway stations. The city is silent except for bird calls and the chirp of crickets. There's a canoe lying by the subway tunnel and a tent made from animal skins. A girl dressed in white is digging something out of a hole. Crows hop around on the stones. You see the moon rise and the stars coming out. The other sounds you hear through the headset are the voices of Anishinaabe speakers intoning prayers to Mother Earth in their own language, as these images appear. Suddenly you are surrounded by stars, the Milky Way seen in all its splendour above the ruins of the city, unpolluted by man-made lights. The stars swirl around you. (This bit was so powerful that I felt I should have been given a rail to hang onto; I was quite unbalanced by it!) As the dawn comes, you find yourself on the roof of a skyscraper above the ruins of Nathan Phillips Square in the open air. If you step forward you can peer down to ground level, over a low ledge. It gives you vertigo, but it is all strangely beautiful, and peaceful.

Do I need to spell out the implications of this artwork? Perhaps there's an element of wishful thinking in this dream of a future Canada in which the native peoples are the only survivors, the only ones who would have managed to cope with an apocalypse and start over, in a way that's primitive but at least in tune with nature. When I described the VR film to Chris (who wasn't there to watch it) he was reminded of Edwin Muir's visionary poem about The Horses:

Barely a twelvemonth after 

The seven days war that put the world to sleep, 

Late in the evening the strange horses came...

from "some wilderness of the broken world".

And I have been thinking of Wagner's opera Götterdämmerung, an invented word meaning: der Untergang der Götter vor Anbruch eines neuen Zeitalters = the downfall of the Gods before the advent of a new age.

The Bøyg v. Greta

A battle for the future of the world is being waged today, with (literally) millions of children skipping school in order to demonstrate on the streets in a frenzied attempt to get the adult authorities, world wide, to do something about human-caused global warming and the deterioration of our environment. The something that needs to be done is not exactly spelled out, although their young Swedish leader, Greta Thunberg, the Jeanne d'Arc of our present day*, says that a good start would be for decision makers to listen to the scientists whose warnings have too often gone unheeded.

Since my daughter --- giving a keynote speech at an international congress in Paris next week on The European Metrology Network for Climate and Ocean Observation --- is one of those very scientists (she established and now manages that network) my sympathies have to lie with Greta and her supporters.

Less sympathetic adults, most of them with an axe to grind, deride young Greta or try to claim that she is mentally unstable and therefore shouldn't be given so much publicity. They imply that the phenomenon of the children's walkouts is simply mass hysteria.

The New York Times reports:

Rarely, if ever, has the modern world witnessed a youth movement so large and wide, spanning across societies rich and poor, tied together by a common if inchoate sense of rage.

Something here reminds me of Peer Gynt confronting the Bøyg on the Scandinavian mountainside in Ibsen's allegorical play. Peer has challenged the monstrous troll and finally collapses in exhaustion. He is about to perish when women's voices are heard in the distance. Peer's young soul is fortified. The Bøyg then suddenly capitulates ("shrinks to nothing" in one translation), with the words: "He was too strong. There were women behind him!"

I hope Greta's cause will one day prevail in this vulnerable world and that we shall be able to say in retrospect that the trolls and her other detractors failed to defeat her because ... "She was too strong. There were adults behind her."

It would only be fair to add here that Greta T. herself wrote, back in February: "...Many people love to spread rumors saying that I have people ”behind me” or that I’m being ”paid” or ”used” to do what I’m doing. But there is no one ”behind” me except for myself. My parents were as far from climate activists as possible before I made them aware of the situation. I am not part of any organization."


  * Malala Yousafzai is another such person.

Vikings and other explorers and their ships

[This post, published out of chronological order, will shortly be moved into the folder for May 2019.]

A lifelike waxwork at Vikingaliv

In Stockholm, on our first day in Sweden, we visited Vikingaliv, the museum about the Vikings. There was little about the violent raids that gave their story a bad press; rather, this exhibition focused on their peaceful everyday life on the farm, their runes, their wise women, the Nordic sagas. We studied the exhibits, watched some of the videos; I tried on a suit of armour, and then, wearing headphones, we went on the little red train that went through tunnels (reminding me of the Ghost Ride in Scarborough's amusement arcades of my childhood --- which, incredibly, is still in operation). At each bend was a diorama inset into the tunnel wall:

Reconstruction of a
Viking interior

Ragnfrid’s Saga is a Viking ride where you get to follow along on a trip to the Viking Age. The journey begins at Frösala Farm with Ragnfrid and her husband Harald. Then you proceed to go on a journey where you witness plundering in the west and slave trade in the east. With sounds, light and atmospheric environments you travel through the 11-minute journey that is told by Ragnfrid herself.

In Norway two weeks later, on May 18th, while we were in Oslo, we took the ferry from the Rådhusbrygge (City Hall Pier) to the Museums at Bygdøy. At the Viking Ship Museum, our first call, we found the unearthed burial ship, the Oseberg. Another once-buried ship, the Gokstad, had once sailed on the high seas. A documentary film was projected on the walls of the museum, helping us to imagine the Vikings as they set sail. In the end, these ships served as tombs for the Viking aristocracy: a tent like structure on the deck was where their bodies were laid, along with important artefacts, before earth was piled on top of the whole ship. Some mysterious decorations have been found in these graves, with Buddha-like heads.

The Oseberg

The Gokstad

On the rim of a barrel found with the buried ship

After this, we walked beside an inlet on the Bygdøy peninsula, where boats were moored near some posh houses, to the Fram Museum, that my daughter and others had been recommended to me. The Fram was once an explorers' ship, now kept above water and housed in a Toblerone-shaped building to make it fit. On board this ship, I went virtually sailing past icebergs in the polar regions, an audio-visual show projecting this seascape onto the walls. It got rough on board when a storm blew up; I had the illusion the ship was actually rolling in the waves and held onto the rail.

A lifelike waxwork of Nansen (leader of the Fram's 1890s expedition) sat in his cabin. Vital equipment was stored in the bows of the ship and an upright piano stood in the mess.  In another part of the museum I found Amundsen's boots, more sensible than the ones his British rival, Capt. Scott, wore, whose team arrived at the South Pole 33 days too late to beat the Norwegians. Amundsen's ship was the Maud, by the way, not the Fram.

Waxwork of Nansen on the Fram

While I was touring the Fram museum, Chis sat on a bench by the fjord, reading a book he'd bought at the Viking Ship Museum and enjoying the view.

On the O-Train

A train arrives at Rideau station

At last, we have a functioning light rail network in Ottawa. The Confederation Line, with 2.5 km of tunnel, has been opened and connects with the existing Trillium Line at Bayview. Only consisting of 17 stations so far, it is nothing like as complex as the networks of other capital cities in the world of a similar size, such as Copenhagen, but at least it's a start in the right direction. The airport will be connected to downtown Ottawa three years from now (allegedly) as part of the Stage 2 enhancements that will eventually give us 24 more stations. There are vaguer plans for a Stage 3 in the distant future, probably well beyond the time when Chris stops going to work in the mornings and coming home in the evenings from Kanata. Let's hope someone else will benefit, though. If only a rail bridge could take these trains across the Ottawa River into Gatineau too, wouldn't that be wonderful?

Waiting for my first ride

It remains to be seen how well the new transportation system will function during the winter. We're hopeful that it'll be an improvement on what we've had till now.

Ottawa citizens seem excited by the new trains (although commuters are frustrated about the time it takes to connect to a bus ride home, once they have disembarked from the train, at the Tunney's Pasture terminal in particular). There ought to be larger parking lots at the end stations, in my opinion, to encourage people to park and ride. When the lines get extended, that is more likely to be the case.

On the train

On impulse, Chris and I decided to go for a ride on the new line on its opening day. We didn't go until the evening, when the crowds had diminished a little, but it was still standing room only on the eastbound train we took from Rideau to Tremblay, the stop we'd need if we were hoping to catch a ViaRail train bound for Montreal or Toronto or places in between. We used our local Presto cards which work at the gates just like London's Oyster cards* or Tokyo's PASMO cards. The mood on board was positively jubilant, everyone talking at once, joking and celebrating. Most passengers were just riding the new train for fun, some of them buying drinks at each end of the line! In a few months' time it will doubtless be a more routine and less exhilarating experience.

Tremblay station

The station at Rideau is deep underground, requiring a series of escalators to reach its platforms. A little further west the tunnel is as much as 40m from the surface. I thought the escalators at Rideau juddered and wobbled a bit, which shouldn't happen; the managers need to make this part of the journey smoother or people will feel too anxious to repeat the experience. Teething troubles only, I hope. At Tremblay where we got off, there were no escalators at all, just stair cases and elevators, which surprised me, since people with luggage are going to be using this station.

It was already dark when we rode the train so we couldn't really see the views from its windows and most people, Chris for instance, hadn't a clue where we were. I knew though. I have studied the map!


* The Oyster card is fairly redundant these days since London Transport's card readers were modified to allow passengers to tap a credit card, instead.

Faces by Gauguin

Self-portrait of Gauguin as a young man

Je ne montre que ce que je veux bien montrer, said Paul Gauguin, speaking of his art in 1903. So his images keep us guessing.

His mother was of Inca descent. Born in 1848, he spent his childhood in Peru. When he grew up he went into the French navy and also worked as a stockbroker. He was a full time artist from the 1880s onwards, living in Brittany, Martinique, Polynesia (in self imposed exile), and finally Tahiti.

This restless soul, according to the notes on the wall of the National Gallery of Canada's exhibition this summer, was "cut off and shrouded in gloom". Although they had five children together, his marriage to a Danish woman fell apart and the (very young) Tahitian girls with whom he lived abandoned him as well. A self portrait of 1891 is entitled Jésus abandonné, ses disciples le quittant. Presumably he was implying that he knew how Jesus felt.

The Auto portrait au Christ jaune is another meaningful painting, first exhibited in 1892, with a Polynesian idol in the background as well as the crucified figure; the Christ jaune was a canvas he had worked on three years previously.

Meijer de Haan is the "thinker" in the background of several paintings: Gauguin's ginger-haired Dutch friend and fellow artist. A better known associate of Gauguin was Vincent van Gogh with whom he lived for a while in Arles, where colours were their obsession:

Dans ma chambre jaune, des fleurs de soleil aux yeux pourpres se détachent sur un fond jaune; elles se baignent les pieds dans un pot jaune, sur une table jaune. Dans un coin du tableau, le signature: Vincent. Et le soleil jaune qui passe a travers les rideaux jaunes de ma chambre, inonde d'or toute cette floraison, et le matin, de mon lit, quand je me réveille, je m'imagine que tout cela sent tres bon. [...] Quand nous étions tous deux a Arles, fous tous deux, en guerre continuelle pour les belles couleurs, moi j'adorais le rouge.

This all sounds very poetic, if more than a little manic. The co-habitation famously came to a sad end when Vincent got his razor out and lashed out at Paul and at his own ear, after which episode he (Vincent) was put out of harm's way by the doctors.

Jean Moréas was another friend who looked weird, a poet, one of the symbolistes. Mallarmé, poet of symbolism and synaesthesia, was the most famous of the symbolists' circle in France. Gauguin's cylindrical carving in native Polynesian style, L'Apres-midi d'un Faune, 1893, is a mysterious fantasy inspired by Mallarmé's poem of that title (published in 1876). Does it depict encounters with beautiful nymphs, or what? It is unclear what's happening in Gauguin's image, something sexual, certainly. In a variety of art forms, the poem inspired music by Debussy, was danced by Nijinsky and was translated into English by Aldous Huxley (among others).

Clovis

Annette Belfils (1890)

Having been to the exhibition twice, I felt that what I'd remember of this were the faces. The portrait of Annette Belfils (1890), in simple lines of crayon and chalk, was remarkably well done, as was the sympathetic and sincere painting of a two year old who had just died in Tahiti, lying as if asleep, done in 1892 for the child's parents who apparently hung onto this painting all their lives. Gauguin painted portraits of his own children, for example of his son Clovis in 1886, the boy's expression old beyond his years (his parents separated when he was six; he died at the age of 21). Gauguin's immortalisation of An Old Man with a Stick (1888) was beautifully observed, still touching those who look at it. Then there were portraits of an Arlésienne and of a young Breton woman, thin and depressed. It seemed to me that Gauguin became less crazy whenever he was focusing on someone other than himself.

La Boudeuse, a likewise depressed Tahitian girl in a long, red, western (missionary) dress, is perhaps one of the ones he made pregnant; I'd guess she was sickened by the loss of her innocence or the loss of her cultural heritage, and that the artist knew it. By contrast, La Femme au Mango, in purple, looks more cheerful and self-assured.

Les Ancetres de Tehamama portrays another mysterious Tahitian girl, Teha'amana, who was only 13 when handed to Gauguin as a "bride". He paints this naked girl lying face down on a bed with "the spirits of the dead watching", 1894. Perhaps those dead ones disapproved of how he was using her. Perhaps he created this picture in order to confront his own shame. We shall never know.

"Je ne montre que ce que je veux bien montrer."

Easy listening

A new season of DOMS concerts has begun. Today I went to listen to an organ and saxophone duet, an unusual combination. The saxophone sounds quite like an extension to the organ, an extra, on-stage pipe. Ludovik Lesage-Hinse from Trois-Rivieres played both a soprano and an alto saxophone during his performance, with Jocelyn Lafond, also from the Trois-Rivieres Conservatoire de musique, at the organ.

The composer featured in this concert was another French-Canadian, Denis Bédard, of my generation, born 1950. Half way through the concert I realised what it reminded me of, the easy-to-listen-to harmonies, rhythms and melodies of John Rutter.

At the beginning we heard a piece by Bédard for organ alone, variations on the tune of a hymn we used to sing long ago, known as The Old Hundredth:

All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.
Him serve with mirth, His praise forth tell,
Come ye before Him and rejoice.

At least, that is what I learned then. In modern hymn books (such as the ones kept in the pews at Southminster Church), it reads like this ...

All people that on earth do dwell
Sing out your faith with cheerful voice.
Delight in God whose praise you tell,
Whose presence calls you to rejoice.

What a comedown! For one thing, to that tune, it puts the stresses on the wrong syllables (DE-light in in God ... WHOSE presence calls you TO rejoice.) What was wrong with the older version? To serve "with mirth" admittedly sounds odd nowadays (in the 16th century it meant "joyfully") but I don't recall that this used to bother me; I liked the funny-sounding old words and could follow their meaning perfectly well. Then I bet the language committee censored "the Lord ... His praise" and "... before Him ..." because it's now considered sexist to give God a masculine identity. And they probably thought that the retention of words like "ye" would deter modern youth from entering a church. That sort of nonsense irritates me immensely.

Such thoughts interfered with my concentration on the music today, a series of variations on the chorale-like melody of this hymn. When I was listening, I was feeling critical of the music too: interesting ideas but unoriginal chords, tempo too fast. The variations didn't altogether fit with the hymn's solemnity, but fair enough, they are supposed to be variations. At one point the organist added vibrato effects, as with the old fairground or cinema organs. (Where I grew up there used to be a swimming pool organ, even. Wandering thoughts, again!) I liked the variation that presented the tune on the foot pedals, with swooping downward arpeggios above it. That one had some substance.

There followed an arrangement of another Protestant chorale (Befiehl du deine Wege) by a composer I'd never heard of, Gotthilf Friedrich Ebhardt of the 18th / 19th century, played here on the trumpet-like soprano saxophone, with organ accompaniment. This composer didn't write music in the style of his day either, sounding more late-Baroque than early-Romantic.

Back to Bédard for the rest of the programme. The saxophonist played seven Vocalises originally intended to be performed by a mezzo soprano. "They're really beautiful!" he told us. The first was wistful, as was the fourth. Other movements had a more folksy quality. The 2nd vocalise I found rather Swiss, where the organ kept echoing the saxophone (voice) part. I almost expected yodellers to chime in. The last movement was clearly inspired by French-Canadian folksongs.

The soprano instrument was then put away. The last item on the programme was Bédard's Sonata No.1 for alto saxophone and organ. Apparently there are two more such sonatas, to be set aside for a later concert in the series! Again, the music sounded sweetly derivative, pleasant enough to listen to, but lacking depth, I felt. Most of the audience was enchanted by it. The faster movement at the end, the Humoresque, seemed to have more character, a bouncy piece that would also have come across well on a clarinet.

They gave us"one more", perhaps a movement from one of the other sonatas, I didn't catch. The composer's signature style seems to be a long drawn out, emotional melody line with a steady beat in a low register on the accompanying instrument.

So why am I so snobbishly critical of light, crowd-pleasing music? It goes back to my upbringing and further back yet. In his impoverished youth, my father was given free, private music lessons by a retired Oxford don, a long story. One of the things this "Great Man" impressed upon him was that there are standards to be met in music, as in life. He taught him, for example, that a dominant seventh in compositions was a cliché to be used only sparingly, and that sentimentality made musical compositions mediocre. When I in turn became my father's music student, such attitudes rubbed off onto me, and (more than ninety years later) still stick.