Book completed

Good Talk, by Mira Jacob. Our book club book, and a graphic novel. Great! It was a series of conversations the author has had about race, over the course of her lifetime, really - so I guess it's a racial awareness memoir. She's from New Mexico and her ethnic heritage is Indian, the kind like our nearest neighbor M, whose ancestors were Christian long before mine were and whose native language is Mayalayam. Her husband is Jewish and white, and they have a son who idolizes Michael Jackson.

Day 187 / Day 11 wildfires

Despite yesterday's lovely evening respite, today the smoke was all bad again, and we spent most of the day in the "hazardous" zone. Even though it started raining promptly at 8 pm, as predicted, the rain hasn't yet helped all that much. And of course we're worried that the major thunderstorm we're now having will make things worse, fire-wise. Still, thunderstorms are fun.

Tonight's watch party by our symphony conductor, Francesco Lecce-Chong, was again very interesting. His guest was a young conductor, Angelica Negron, who does tremendously interesting things, often with a visual component - for example, touching vegetables to activate synthesizer notes. She's going to be our composer-in-residence someday, we're told, although I don't know how the pandemic affects the timing. Also, Francesco told us about a new book that seems tremendously relevant to the intersection of classical music and politics - do I have the energy to read a 700+ page book on the topic? I guess we'll see.