Hark! Hark! The Lark

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chalic'd flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With everything that pretty is,
My lady sweet, arise:
Arise, arise!

This is Shakespeare's song which was set to music by Schubert. I like it much better than the very long poem, "The Lark Ascending" by George Meredith. However, at the Cape Cod Symphony this afternoon I herd Ralph Vaughn Williams' tone poem The Lark Ascending preceded by a local wild life specialist telling us that our local larks are different than the English ones Vaughn Williams had in mind and that, indeed, many songbirds, among them larks seem to have local accents in their songs. The Cape Cod larks have somewhat different mating songs than the ones on Nantucket. And truly the local larks too ascend to about 200 feet, sing for some twenty minutes before coming back to earth. Such information I did not expect from going to a symphony concert.

The concert was a further educational experience because whale scientists, photographers and sound recorders were there and spoke of the 325 right whales that summer near here. They had put together a video of whales as well as recordings of their vocalizations which was played during a performance of Alan Hovaness' And God Made Great Whales. Amazing photography and sound!

The concert ended with Beethoven's beloved Sixth Symphony, the "Pastorale" in a heartfelt rendition with still photos illustrating the sections. The conductor seemed to be in his own state of bliss. Spring is at it's most beautiful here, too, with flowering trees and plants.

Saturday Summary #3

Saturday Summary #3

This week's odds and ends of information that caught my attention:

The recent earthquake in Chile moved the city of Conception ten feet westward, shortened earth days by 1.26 seconds and shifted the planet's axis by nearly 3 inches.

Serving sizes in images of The Last Supper have grown two-thirds larger since da Vinci painted his version. [see above] [No one ordered the "super size" as far as we known]

Words describing supercomputer speed in an article about a Chinese computer named Dawning Neubulae: computes at 1.27 petaflops, the equivalent of 1,000 trillion mathematical operations per second.

Approximately one million people in the U.S. between ages of 45 and newborn were conceived with donated sperm; most will never know who their father was.

Beethoven's and Schubert's bones were exhumed [their graves were near to each other] a few years ago. Multiple tests on pieces of Beethovan's skull have shown that he did NOT die of lead poisoning which was a favorite theory so no one knows yet what caused his many complaints and death. [People don't seem to be paying much attention to Schubert who died at a younger age but was less dramatic if no less talented]

A survey of 340,000 people in the U.S. 18-85 years old showed that middle age is the difficult part. Of 18 year olds 50% felt good about their lives, in the middle years over 50% felt bad about their lives, and people in the oldest set felt better about their lives than even the 18 year olds.

Parrots and cockatoos can and do spontaneously dance to rock music and have been videoed proving it is not incidental. No other animal [except humans] has been shown to have a spontaneous sense of rhythm.

An ice cream shop in Falmouth, Massachusetts has been serving lobster ice cream for several years. It has actual chunks of lobster in a butter based ice cream that they make in their shop. [Yum?]