This is the part that scares me the most...

emptywheel has written one of her typically lucid and terrifying columns:

“The mistake, in analyzing the Alaska meeting is not just about Ukraine.

Marcy Wheeler, of emptywheel

It’s about the United States.

It’s not just that Putin can bide his time in Ukraine.

It’s that the longer he holds out, the greater his true objective — turning Trump into his puppet and the United States into a dying kleptocracy that is child’s play to manipulate — comes into grasp.

Putin may still be fighting in Ukraine. But he has achieved far more than he probably hoped for in the US. He has all but defeated every nuisance the Main Enemy once stood for: rule of law, free trade, freedom of speech, science, human rights, reason.

It’s not just that Trump is welcoming a dictator on US soil. It’s that the dictator is coming to reclaim what Russia owns.”



"Great Men"

One day when our son was very little, we told him we needed to take our dog to the “dog doctor”. Gabe was strangely excited about this and very much wanted to go along. When we got to the vet’s office and the vet came out to meet Sirka, our son was clearly disappointed - it turned out he expected the “dog doctor” to be a dog.

I always wanted to meet a “great man”, who I thought could somehow answer life’s questions for me. I have come to suspect that there are no “great men” in that sense, and that the whole notion is a dangerous and fascist idea.

Indeed I have met a number of remarkable men and women, and some famous ones as well. But when you actually get to know someone, they turn out weirdly to be as human as everybody else (duh). This should be strengthening and comforting to us, I suppose.

I don’t mean that there aren’t people with exceptional gifts, talents, and abilities, and people who have life-histories that inspire reverence. But if you think anyone is better than you, you better think twice, because you are diminishing yourself in a needlessly damaging way.

As Dylan explains, “Each of us has his own special gift, and this was meant to be true. And if you don’t underestimate me, I won’t underestimate you.”

Marilyn Banner: New Work

Marilyn and I often work as a team to document and archive her work. Last night we added about 30 spanking new drawings to the Artwork Archive website. You can see them here.

#357

Program (redacted)

Program (redacted)

There is a weird phenomenon that I have noticed in the last few years: performers have stopped listing their program content in their PR for upcoming concerts. What does this mean?

Maybe they think that anything they mention is more likely to push people away than to attract them. Or that the audience has become so uneducated that they would not know one composer from another. Maybe they think that only the performers matter, with their stellar credentials. Who knows?

Hannah Baldwin

Our friend Hannah Baldwin has passed away. She was quite a heroic, remarkable, and delightful person! She and her husband Felipe Tejeda frequently attended our house concerts.

Here are some words from her obit:

Hannah Maxine Baldwin passed away on November 7, 2024, in Takoma Park Maryland, at the age of 78. The cause of death was congestive heart failure, which was a complication of her bone cancer from over 30 years ago.

Hannah was born in Stayton, near Salem, in Oregon. Her parents, Clarence Richard Baldwin father, and June Helen (Sophy) Baldwin mother, are both deceased, as is her beloved younger sister Rachel. She is survived by her husband Felipe Tejeda; her daughter Malado Francine Baldwin-Tejeda; her son Francisco Richard Baldwin-Tejeda; two brothers, Daniel and Samuel; and several nieces and nephews. She leaves behind several adopted African sons, daughters, brothers and sisters in Senegal, Guinea, Mali and Namibia, as well as African grandchildren bearing her name.

Ms. Baldwin, with a Ph.D (abd) from Indiana University’s Folklore Department, spent many years living and working world-wide as a development professional, focusing her time in Senegal, Mali, and Guinea as a USAID program director. She served as a director of training for diplomats in francophone studies at the US Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute, and in Namibia as Peace Corps Director.

Hannah met her husband Felipe in Senegal as Peace Corps Volunteers in 1969, and lived and worked there for seven years, gaining a passionate love for her new-found friends. She spoke French and Wolof well, loved mafe and yassa, and listened and danced to mbalax music.

Hannah came from a family of creatives and continued throughout her life to add to her repertoire of artistic talents. She was primarily a print maker, ceramicist, and painter.

Please consider donating to a Senegal-based NGO, Tostan (Tostan.org), which works in West Africa and was dear to Hannah’s heart.

Crisis in Our Neighborhood

We have lived in this lovely, friendly neighborhood of Takoma Park, just north of Sligo Creek, for 16 years. We are proud that many of our neighbors are former Peace Corps volunteers, who went on to jobs with USAID, VOA, or related NGO’s that took them overseas, to exotic, though sometimes difficult places - Honduras, Ghana, Mexico, Kenya, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and others. They speak multiple languages and are intimately familiar with an array of cultures and economies. All of these neighbors are suddenly unemployed, with no severance or safety net. Many have college age children and mortgages. Just on our block, there are three families we know in which BOTH parents lost their jobs, each family with two teenage children. Another couple are Haitian citizens, who cannot return to their country, but have nowhere else to go. One family across the creek had one partner with German citizenship, and so are emigrating to Germany with two teenage children.

This is serious, even tragic. We were somewhat in denial at first, like something will have to work out, but nothing has. I asked one neighbor what they will do, and they just don’t know. Maybe move in with a sister. Another thought maybe they can get certified to teach public school (after years of high level specialized employment in the government). It is like the great Depression here.

And it is not just USAID families. A tenured scientist at NIH who lives just down the street quit her job, because the NIH environment has become unbearable.

Our neighborhood has always been friendly, and is showing solidarity and support. We do not want to lose our friends and neighbors! It is good that people are talking with each other and aware of the challenges of the times. People walking their dogs stop to chat and share their lives. We find that the house concert/potlucks serve as a gathering place, giving meaning to the “right of assembly”. In person contact is vital right now, and we are all aware of that.

Zippy

Zippy

I have been reading Bill Griffith’s “Zippy” cartoon forever. In fact, when the Washington Post dropped the strip in 1988, I cancelled my subscription in protest (so I didn’t need to do it again after Bezos took over). I am amazed and grateful that Bill Griffith puts out a new and wonderful strip EVERY DAY!

Bored and impatient when I couldn’t practise this morning because Mar was still asleep, I finally took the plunge and said, wow (zow!) I could own one of these, so I ordered a print.

Here is the strip I ordered:

I think Griffith is about my age, and recently lost his wife, so mortality is up with us.

Update: Bill Griffith sent me a beautifully packaged, fabulous signed print! (Appropriately, it appears to be a randomly chosen one, not at all what I ordered - but I love it!).

Icons & Relationships

I have put together a collection of Marilyn’s recent drawings, from 2025, and called it “Icons & Relationships”, because that is what they mostly look like to me. Single figures appear to be like icons, and those with two or more figures suggest relationships.

Relationship 1: #325

Icon 2: #326

Relationship 2: #308

Icon 1: #314

My Solo Work

When I was a child, I was confident that I had a future as a touring concert pianist; but of course, life had other plans! Nevertheless, throughout my long life, I have derived considerable solace from the piano and its vast and profound literature.

For most of my musical life I have focused on ensemble music, chamber music to be precise. It is less lonely, more popular, and very satisfying! Times do change (as we septagenarians very frequently notice!), and it has become much more difficult (not just for me) to assemble a chamber music ensemble. I have more and more in recent years found myself with no other option than to perform solo.

Carl Banner, in Hawaii

But what is that old expression from Br’er Rabbit? “Please don’t throw me in that briar patch!”

Since the pandemic, I have performed 14 solo house concerts, almost all of them sold out, sometimes weeks in advance. This may have something to do with the associated potluck dinners, of course; but you know, if people didn’t like the music, they would probably rather just go out for a pizza.

Brooklyn Artist Dale Williams

Gowanus, to be precise! There are artists that other artists know and love, who are not yet internationally famous. We were fortunate to bump into Dale Williams at a Gowanus Artists Open Studio weekend last year.

Dale Williams, showing me a rare LP of Kenneth Patchen reciting his poetry, backed up by a fabulous jazz band!

Dale’s work is overwhelmingly strong. Marilyn posted some of it on Instagram.

Marilyn Banner: the New Work

Around the end of 2023, Marilyn’s encaustic paintings started creeping over the boundaries of her rectangular supports and becoming more sculptural. So she began making sculptures from sticks, bones, wax and plaster from images in her dreams, like little boats. She was also picking up wood chips and sticks and bits of pine cone and bones on our walks and putting them in a little canvas bag. Eventually she began drawing some of these small objects on scraps of old canvas that she had saved from when she painted large paintings. The images of sticks began to combine with the images from dreams and dolls, toys, and other items of childhood memorabilia, and a whole new body of work began to form. The old canvas took the ink in very interesting ways, which newer canvas does not do as well.

By now she has made over 300 of these drawings, and has run out of old canvas, so she may be coming to the end of this series. Who knows? She titles them by (roughly) consecutive numbering and signs them on the back. About 100 of them were shown at Ceres Gallery NYC and at the 2025 Outsider Art Fair (“OAF”) in NY, where they generated some interest, but no sales. Later, two of them sold at M. David & Co. in Brooklyn. Now 32 of the drawings are at Susie Nielsen’s “Farm Projects” Gallery in Wellfleet MA, where Susie says they are receiving “a lot of love”, but so far no sales. Pricing is difficult, as it is for all art. Prices were high at the OAF, which is a prestigious (and expensive) venue. Susie has priced them almost painfully low, but that is the current art market.

Here are a few of the selections at Farm Projects:

#274

#129

#149

#2

#188

A Visit to the Kreeger Museum

In the 1940’s and 50’s, my Aunt Thelma and Uncle Izzie had a weekly chamber music gathering at the their house on Fern Pl NW in Takoma Park. One of the violinists who occasionally played in their quartets was David Kreeger.

Marilyn and I had never been to his museum, so we went yesterday. There is a lovely concert hall with a 9 foot grand piano, but the art on the walls is really the knock-out. Degas, van Gogh, Picasso, Braque, Monet, Chagall paintings, as well as a few contemporary pieces.

One fabulous piece was this Miro. It was great to get up close and see that he had glued nails, string, sand, and all kinds of stuff to it.

Miro, detail

Miro, detail

The European View

Our friend Ruthanne sent this link to a rousing and intelligent speech by a French senator, Claude Malhuret, about the future of Europe and the United States.

Claude Malhuret

Europe is at a critical turning point. The American shield is vanishing, and it seems that Ukraine may be abandoned and Russia strengthened.

Washington now looks like the court of Nero, with a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fuelled buffoon in charge of purging the civil service. This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States.

The message from Trump is that there is no point in being his ally: he will not defend you, he will impose higher tariffs on you than on his enemies, and he will threaten to seize your territory while at the same time supporting the dictatorships invading you. The ‘king of the deal’ is demonstrating the art of the submissive deal. He thinks he will intimidate China by prostrating himself before Putin; Xi Jinping, however, seeing his subservience, is probably speeding up preparations to invade Taiwan.

Never has any President of the United States surrendered to the enemy, nor supported an aggressor against a US ally. None has trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, at a single stroke dismissed senior military staff, weakened all the checks and balances, and taken control of social media. Worse than an illiberal drift, this president is initiating a capture of democracy. We should remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.

Read the rest here.

Random Thoughts, Day before Concert

I knew an artist who, when he said “painting”, elongated the diphthong so much that it sounded like an extra syllable. Painting was that important to him. Young pianists in NY in the early 1960’s had a peculiar accent that was hard to place. It sounded vaguely European, but was actually an affectation peculiar to this subculture. My own speech may or may not have picked it up, but often people ask about my accent. I answer that I just have a thick tongue. But it may also be that the sound of my own words circulates through my head rapidly before it comes out of my mouth. This may be due to having been ridiculed for my speech in early life. I may also have picked up a Boston accent, before moving to Maryland, where I was continually ribbed by my friends for being a “Yankee”. And then of course there was a little St. Louis drawl acquired later.

It often happens that I cannot practise in the days before a concert. It is as if my work goes into a kind of eclipse, and needs to stew in the dark for a few days. This of course causes some anxiety, but I have come to accept the process. This week I have tried to focus on future programs: an all-Brahms program, and especially a Chopin group. I am especially excited about the Chopin, as I feel I have acquired a key to my own relation to this music. I think Chopin wanted every note to be beautiful.

emptywheel

Marcy Wheeler, independent journalist

I support independent journalism by reading Marcy Wheeler’s blog “emptywheel”. Here are a couple of quotations posted by “Rayne”, an editor/contributor to the blog.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

― Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History

 

Either we have hope within us or we do not.

It is a dimension of the soul and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world.

Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are going well or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not because it stands a chance to succeed.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.

It is hope, above all which gives the strength to live and continually try new things.

― Vaclav Havel

Art Song with Rhonda Buckley-Bishop, saxophone

Rhonda Buckley-Bishop

I am thrilled to be preparing two new song cycles with saxophonist Rhonda Buckley-Bishop: Gabriel Fauré’s “Bonne Chanson” and Franz Schubert’s “Die Schöne Müllerin”. In previous concerts we have performed Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” and “Liederkreis”, Beethoven’s “An die ferne Geliebte”, Franz Schubert’s “Auf dem Strom” and “Schwanengesang”, and many songs by Johannes Brahms. It is like working with a great soprano, only it is soprano saxophone. We will perform the new cycles this fall!