Why the Mosquito?

A pentimento ... is an alteration in a painting, ... showing that the artist has changed his mind." I recalled this art term this morning from the dim depths of the past. I looked it up in Wikipedia and found that I had remembered the spelling almost exactly, give or take a vowel.
. Moving on to a seemingly unrelated subject, but comparing Creation to a work of art: I've always wondered about the purpose of the mosquito in the scheme of Nature. All I can think of is that it must be somebody's food (inasmuch as we appear to be its favorite food). We have adopted every reasonable measure to keep them away from us during mosquito season. This year that season has broken all records, continuing even to this week, about a month and a half past normal. This great continuous hatch is probably due to the "monsoon" we've had for most of the last three months. I despise these flying, humming annoyances so much I was thinking of building one of those bat houses in order to enlist the aid of our furry winged friends in doing them in.
. Today I realize that they are actually a mistake in the Creation.... . That statement is hard to prove except by inference, but I have it figured out. God never goes back -- being the Supreme One, after all. But God felt really bad about going too far in creating things that make humans miserable. So what he conceived of next is, by analogy, a pentimento. He gave us CHOCOLATE to try to make it up to us!

Channelling Rachmaninoff

. Big joy for me this fall. Finally my dream comes true of singing in a performance of Rachmaninoff's All Night Vigil a big, musically perfect, joyous and ethereal work for 8-part a cappella choir.
I did not know that it existed until I happened to came across the Shaw Festival Singers recording in my University's library. I have no idea what caught my eye about it. Just good fortune, I guess.
. Musical works may have different meanings to different people, I know. This piece rang something in my soul the first time I heard it and so I instantly fell in love with it. It is not frequently performed. I promised myself that when an opportunity came to sing in a performance I would willingly rearrange my life, travel to anyplace within 100 miles for rehearsals, even take a leave of absence from my Chamber Choir if there were a scheduling conflict in order to do this. I had tried to interest each of the choral conductors at the University to take it on. None yet. So I have waited patiently for a chance.
. Every once in a while I search the web for any mention of All Night Vigil (also simply but imprecisely called Vespers) in connection with Maine. After no such known opportunities in the past 15 years within the mentioned radius, one suddenly appears just as I am readying to retire and thus would have scheduling flexibility unprecedented in my prior life! Hmmm... The wheels of Coincidence seem to synchronize in unexpected ways. I thank God and the Vice-Goddesses of Music: Polyhymnia and Euterpe. The Catholics have Saints Cecilia and Gregory (as in Gregorian chant) right on their heels as close seconds. I thank them too.
. The piece is about an hour long and is sung without intermission and without instruments. The language is Church Slavonic which closely resembles Russian. It is the liturgical language for some Eastern Orthodox Churches -- sort of a parallel with the historical place of Latin in Western churches. Another little irony is that I just came across this first-person account about what it was like to produce that seminal recording that I am still so emotional about, and in fact am listening to as I post this.

"I was one of the 59 hand-picked voices that formed the 1989 Robert Shaw Festival Singers. The emotional intensity of making this recording with Shaw was so overwhelming that I had to distance myself from this music for nearly a decade. Only within the last five years have I begun to listen to the recording again, stunned at its power, overwhelmed by the artistry Shaw brought to it, and convinced that the spirit of Sergei himself was present in that 12th-century cathedral in Gramat, France, on that hot, late July evening 15 years ago, when we recorded this masterpiece in a mere four hours. Something, some guiding presence (besides the all-too-intimidating Shaw himself) was in the room, and all of us felt it."

. How's that for verification of the power of the work? So you can understand why I'm excited about this chance and willing to travel 4 hours round trip every Tuesday evening for rehearsals. And yes, as Murphy's Law would have it one of the two performances will occur on December 13, the exact day of my Chamber Choir's Advent concert. My director knows how much it means to me, kindly allowed a leave of absence and wished me well. . One more thing... Yes, I am taking a risk. The whole thing could be a disappointment for any of a number of reasons. But if we allowed ourselves to give in to worries like that we would never do anything worthwhile: safe but forever unfulfilled.

Slowing Down for the Thule Police

. In some circles "instinct" is a bad word as it implies something unmeasurable. How does one detect something that is basically a program built into a species? It may not have a physical locus that can be pointed to within its biological system. The demonstration is always situationally and environmentally triggered.
. At our former dwelling in town we kept "clandestine" chickens in a home-made coop on the back side of a building, completely shielded from off-property visibility, especially out of view of the city's Code Enforcement officer. (Our neighbors actually loved our having them. No problem there. "Oh, it's like the old days," gushed one of our next-door neighbors who remembered a time of more home-centered food production.) The project turned out to have unexpected benefits besides fresh eggs: a source of amusement, a first-hand lesson in zoology, and more to the point, numerous manifestations of instinct.
. Perhaps deep in the human constitution we too have an embedded image of what we need to hastily retreat from for our survival. The chickens provided a graphic example. In their little poultric (I just made that word up!) brains there must be a hard-wired fearsome picture like the one below left.

. I'll tell you something you might see as a sort of cruel joke, but it was a science education technique like no other, to get the concept across about hard-wired instinct. There were a couple of occasions when we'd pass a broom over the flock so that its shadow would fall in the chicken yard. Try to see this from the chickens' point of view. Instinct virtually says "Don't take chances, act right away, just in case." Is the shadow of a sagging old broom on the right a close enough resemblance to a hawk silhouette to motivate the hens, "just in case"?

. Now I might share something about my own instinctive silhouette of fearsomeness which I attribute to being stopped on the highway en route to the Woodstock Festival of 1969 for no crime other than having a beard and having friends riding along who had long hair. The state trooper was polite enough, but insisted on searching the car. We were innocent kids and had none of the stuff he was obviously looking out for. When he finished the search he made some small talk about "the jam in Sullivan County" and let us go.
. This is stupid, but ever since then my instinctive silhouette of nameless fear looks like the image above left. On the right is an unwitting imposter which, from a distance bears a striking resemblance to a police car. I instantly respond by slowing down my car even without looking at the speedometer to see if I may be driving at legal speed and need take no action. The roof racks made by Thule and other manufacturers have a heavy frame, and this is the kicker, have a clear space just below. When the stimulus approaches nearer I can discern the true nature of the rooftop device, and lo, realize I have just slowed down for the "Thule Police"!