2020 in Review

There are years which linger in memory for all the wrong reasons.  1980, the year of my parents’ divorce and my abduction to California, is one.  2005 is another, for reasons I won’t enumerate here.  In many ways, 2020 will eclipse them all.  Certainly, 2020 was the most challenging year Americans have faced since 1968, with consequences even more devastating.  For me, it was a year of personal disruption and concern for friends, for family, for nation, and for our world.

2020 marked the passing of a member of my extended family, with other members of Dan’s and my family facing profound medical challenges, which occupy a large portion of our thoughts.

But for me the most personally devastating event of 2020 was the death of my dog Mason.  At the beginning of 2020, he seemed healthy and vigorous, and I hoped he might make it to the age of 15.  But he began to slow down in the spring and deteriorated further in the summer – dying just short of his 12^th birthday.  I still think of Mason every day, feel a pang in my gut from missing him.  Daniel and I have considered getting another dog (or two) but have decided to hold off until the pandemic is under control and life returns to relative normal.  With me working at home full time, a sudden return to onsite work might be distressing for a dog.    

Now he's with the angels.

Just as there are those who shared with their grandchildren their experience of combat in World War II, or where they were when President Kennedy was assassinated, or how they watched the first moon landing, there are those today who will tell younger generations of how we sheltered in our homes, avoided restaurants except for take-out, and wore masks during the year of COVID-19. And we will tell tales of the willfully ignorant who laughed at the very real threat COVID poised, refused to wear masks, making asses of themselves while bringing danger to themselves and others – and how a number of them faced a fatal comeuppance.  Those fools will go down in history alongside those who protested against school integration and civil rights.  Those who lost loved ones to COVID – without even being able to properly say “goodbye” – will have the most poignant stories of all.  And we will, hopefully, remember and speak of the lessons we learned at a frightful cost: Listen to the scientists, not the political propagandists.  Put the needs of your community above your own convenience.

Working from home, which will likely continue for me until summer 2021, has been a mixed bag.  On the plus side, not having to commute to work gives me back about an hour of my day and saves the cost of commuting and buying lunch (I’m too lazy to brown bag it).  On the other hand, my home utility bills have increased due to additional usage.  Most of all, I miss my work friends.

Home offices have their advantages

The pandemic has created ripples that extend far beyond the sick and dying.  Public events from concerts to sports were cancelled or moved online.  Who among us will forget the bizarre experience of watching baseball players in an empty stadium, with a cardboard cutout crowd and recorded cheers?  After over a century, the art form of cinema is likely near an end – at least as far as groups of strangers purchasing tickets and overpriced food to crowd into a closed room with often sticky floors and stare at a screen.  I’ve enjoyed the shared experience of movie theatres since I was a child, but the writing has been on the wall for a decade and is now crystal clear: streaming is replacing movie theatres.  I am hopeful this will not be the case for live performances, which are ephemeral and can’t be fully captured by a screen of any size or home speakers of even the finest quality.  That hope is backed up by the fact that whenever Daniel and I have gone to Severance Hall and especially Playhouse Square, the house has been well filled – which was rarely the case with cinema before the pandemic.    

We will also likely tell subsequent generations about the anxious, fraught week following the November election – undoubtedly the most consequential our nation has faced since 1940 – and the weeks of disinformation emanating from Donald Trump and his enablers, their pathetic posturing, and futile legal efforts to thwart the clear will of the American people. 

The Trump era has been a difficult one for Daniel and me, and we seriously considered becoming expatriates should Trump get a second term.  As it is, even with Trump’s defeat we have reexamined our future priorities and relationship to my home state of Ohio.  Most of my formative years were spent here, and I returned age 27 after nine years in Massachusetts to care for my maternal grandmother after the death of my mother.  But it’s clear to me that Ohio has changed over the past decades, and not for the better.  With each passing year, it becomes less and less likely we will remain here past retirement and we may leave even before then.  I will miss Cleveland’s rich cultural landscape, but as my hearing continues to slowly deteriorate, will likely not derive as much pleasure as I have from the Cleveland Orchestra or Playhouse Square over the past decades.  Nor is it likely we will move to Florida, even though I have family there – unless that state’s political landscape changes drastically for the better. 

The above opens a dilemma for me.  Where to live my last years?  A blue oasis in a deep red state is something I’ve experienced in Cleveland and likely would in Tampa.  Many blue states, on the other hand, are beyond my reach financially.  A relative of mine who is known neither for her wit nor her sagacity ranted that “liberals” are why California is so expensive to live in.  But the reality is that even in the most left-wing locations, including the West Coast, capitalism drives the market.  More and more, New Mexico is looking promising – there are suburbs of Santa Fe that are affordable, and the city offers the kind of cultural amenities usually seen in much larger metropolises.   

For those who believe I am obsessing over something that is over a decade away, planning for the future has always been a way to help me navigate through a difficult present. 

Meanwhile, I am using time alone to work on myself.  One such effort is to correct an issue that’s been unresolved since my teenage years: my teeth.  I never had braces even though I needed them.  In November, I began the process of correcting the issue via aligners.  There has been some minor discomfort, but this is both expected and manageable.

1968, a traumatic year, ended on a hopeful note with Apollo 8’s orbit of the moon, allowing humans their first opportunity to see their planet as one organism.  

2020 is ending with vaccines against COVID-19 that appear to be over 90% affective, and the disintegration of the Trump Administration, despite the disgraced soon to be ex-President’s attempts at a coup.  But the more things change, the more they stay the same.  It seems inevitable that our societal divisions, driven by gun zealotry, religious fundamentalism, and Randian Objectivism, will continue.  

I hope the lessons of 2020 will not be forgotten.

Driving with your favorite music (or podcasts)

I’ve enjoyed several longer road trips over the years, including to New England and Ontario, down the East Coast to Florida, and as far west as central Illinois.  I’ve not yet undertaken a road trip to the West Coast, but if I did, I would be sure to have my music with me.  FM radio has limited range, and it’s my luck to lose reception just as the program gets interesting.  AM radio is mostly devoted to screaming talk meisters and not interesting to me.  For a while, I dabbled in SiriusXM, but found that the audio quality was unacceptable for most music, the service was undependable in mountainous areas, and the cost exorbitant.  So, I mostly listened to music on my car’s CD player.  Remember those? 

Back in 1986, I shelled out over $300 for my first CD player (an exorbitant price for a recent high school graduate working an entry level retail job).  CD players and the discs themselves became less expensive over time.  I still have my very first CD, RCA Red Seal RCD14585 – Horowitz at the Met, and it still plays fine.  To that I’ve added about 4,500 discs over the decades – mostly Classical, along with Film and TV scores, a bit of Jazz, Pop, and Spoken Word.  The vast majority of these discs continue to play just as well as when they were new, so despite the constant drone of news about the death of the CD format, I have no plans to discard them – despite periodic culls from my collection. 

But though I am a stubborn luddite, I am faced with the fact that new cars don’t have CD players as standard equipment or even an option.  Newer cars do, however, have USB ports.  That, plus the hazard of trying to change a CD while driving, has led me to rip about a thousand of my favorite albums to my laptop.  These, in addition to the few dozen albums I purchased as audio files and never had on CD, I’ve copied onto one of three thumb drives (one each for piano music, one for non-piano instrumental/orchestral/chamber/opera, one for non-Classical) that I take with me in the car.  (At this point, some would also point out apps like Pandora and Spotify one can use in the car, but they are dependent on having a clear signal – and they are notoriously unfriendly for Classical music.)  

At this point, I should mention that I am not particularly hung up on audio quality when listening in the car.  I don’t drive a high-end automobile – my spouse and I are Honda loyalists – one CR-V and one HR-V.  There is a certain amount of road noise that makes information heavy formats like FLAC a waste of thumb drive space.  I go with MP3s and find they are adequate for use in the car. 

I use a Dell laptop, so when I rip the CD I use Windows Media Player.  Usually the track and album information (known as metadata) auto-populate.  Sometimes the provided metadata will contain mistakes or anomalies: Chopin albums described as Early Music, titles questionably spelled, occasionally with Japanese characters.  I usually correct these before I tick on the “rip” indicator – it’s faster fixing up front than addressing later.  

If you don’t verify and correct the metadata in advance, it can be changed later.  Here’s how to do so:

MP3 titles are shown in two places: the file name and the title within Properties.  To open Properties, right-click on the file name, select Properties, and the box will appear.  Select the Details tab and enter the appropriate information into the available fields.  When adding/modifying the track title, consider the character limit.  I noticed this early on when one of my files neither played nor was viewable in the track list: “03 Sonata for piano in B-flat major, D. 960: III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace con delicatezza – Trio”.  I shortened the file name to read “03 Sonata in B-b major, D.960: III”, copied it over to the title field within Properties, and that did the trick.  That’s all the title information I need and considering the way track info is displayed on my car’s audio display, this format made the most sense.  (Subsequently I determined that for me, Schubert’s heavenly last sonata is not the best music for driving, considering road noise and the need to stay alert.)

Track/file names are automatically numbered: starting with 01, 02, et cetera.  If you’re fine with the tracks playing in the same sequence as on the CD, you don’t need to change it.  If you want to change the order, simply right-click on the file, select “rename”, and change the leading numbers on the file names to create the playing sequence you prefer.    The files in an album will be played in this order, unless they were changed in a different order.  Thus, if you modify a file, it will be moved to the end of the track list.  You can restore the desired order by opening Properties, clicking Select All, changing some random information (like album artist or album title), and applying the change – you can always change the info back if you don’t like it.  (Changing the track number via the “#” field in the Properties box will not work, as I learned the hard way.)

WMP will usually create a folder for the album artist/performer when you rip the CD, and you can organize those as you please.  The default for organizing performers is first name, then last name.  I rename these folders to show last name, first name for ease of indexing. 

The first time I played music from my thumb drive, I was surprised to see the album cover on my car’s display.  Some albums showed the correct art, some had none, and some had the wrong art – e.g., from other albums including other performers’ recordings of the same music.  This can be overridden, although it can be time consuming.  If you have the CD and a printer, scan the cover to your computer, and edit the scan to remove excess border and correct other issues.  It may be easier to find a copy of the cover online, so I generally try that first.  Once done, open the photo, right-click and select “copy”, then manually paste it onto the album in WMP – voila, your album will display the correct art. 

Now I’m ready for a nice long drive.  Where to go?

 

Wilhelm Kempff on Deutsche Grammophon

Deutsche Grammophon has issued an extensive, but by no means complete, edition of pianist Wilhelm Kempff's recordings with that label and Decca - a trove of recordings made from 1920-1980.  Click here to read my review.

 

George Szell Complete Angel/EMI/Warner recordings

Warner Classics, formerly known as EMI and before that Angel, has released a 14 CD boxed set of George Szell's recordings with that label.  Click here to read my review.