Hair-Brained

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Among the many things that are better left to professionals—piloting a jet, performing almost any surgery, copy editing—cutting hair always should be included. I did not know this until the day I did.

It looks so easy. The professionals talk to you and amongst themselves while they are doing it, for crying out loud. How do they do that? If you interrupt me while I am merrily typing away, I will pretty much stop typing and begin to glare at you until you decide to ask someone else whatever it is you came to ask me. And how do you know where I live anyway?
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Today in History: April 13

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Alfred Mosher Butts of Poughkeepsie, NY, was born on this date in 1899. An architect who could not find work during the Great Depression, he decided to design a new type of game. His first game was called “Lexiko,” which he then renamed “Criss Cross Words,” and then, simply, “It.” Finally he sold the rights to a businessman who gave the game the name it still carries: “Scrabble.”

* * * *
The finals of the first-ever International Tchaikovsky Competition was held in Moscow on this date on 1958. When the unexpected happened and a young pianist who was neither a Soviet national nor a citizen of an Eastern bloc nation but was an American won over the audience—which gave him an eight-minute long standing ovation—the judges were flummoxed. “Can we award first prize to the American?” they telegraphed the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev wrote back: “Is he the best? Then give him the prize!” Van Cliburn was awarded first prize and remains perhaps the best-known winner, although Vladimir Ashkenazy and Mikhail Pletnev won it in future years.

Cliburn performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 to win (video of the performance below the fold):
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Dreamtime

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In one dream, a dream encountered once each month or so (last night!), a password to an email service or the passcode to the office desktop itself can not be remembered. His hands don’t work. Did they ever? Or interruptions prevent him from typing it in within a fifteen-second countdown, and the entire screen is taken up with 1-5, 1-4, 1-3 … .

He has been away from the office for so long—a decade—and he sees the voice mail light flashing on his phone, but he can not remember the four-digit access code. How many messages? he wonders.
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