It’s been an interesting month here in Lake Woebegon- for starters, yesterday we saw Prairie Home Companion in our own concert hall. It was a Busman’s holiday, and quite an enjoyable one at that. Nice to see what the hall looks like sold out; our concerts have been half full if that recently. Because the show needed to move in on Friday, our usual concert night, the Symphony concert got bumped to Thursday which didn’t help attendance much, to say the least. That’s been a big problem here, the city seems to have forgotten that the hall was built for the symphony had has decided that the purpose of the hall is to make money for the city. This makes it difficult, to say the least, for our management to make plans as the city does not want to commit to dates in the future.

This September, for example, we started late in the month instead of early in the month as usual as the city had promised the hall to a touring show- which canceled six weeks before their opening night. Sweet.

The reason I call this entry the curse of the symphony is because the curse has struck again- but just as last month when it struck and we ended up with someone better; same good luck this time. Yes, implausibly enough, another conductor became too ill to travel to Hawaii so we got some real all-star replacements: the Phillips brothers of the Orion Quartet are here. Great program, Vivaldi ‘Seasons’, Bach ‘Double’, Mozart ‘Sinfonia Concertante’. (Best of all, there’s no bassoon parts!) It’s unusual enough for one conductor to cancel- what are the chances of two cancellations in one month? The CURSE of the Symphony (NEE---nee---nee)

This gave me a chance to catch up with my house painting- this week I did the front bathroom- as well as work on a little drainage problem in the backyard. The project was finished just in time, as we had torrential rains the very next day. (This same storm system traveled via the so-called Pineapple Express and has caused a lot of flooding and mudslide problems in the Pacific Northwest.) Well, it caused a lot problems here also as there was a ginormous (I know, that’s not a real word) mud slide that covered the highway we use to get from Kailua, where we live, to town (Honolulu) - i. e. work. I’m talking about a huge amount of mud- it took 80 truckloads to clear off the road. In the interim, they turned the highway into a one-way contra-flow situation- town-bound in the morning, Kailua-bound in the evening. Kind of freaky, actually, heading up the mountain (very twisty, windy road) on the wrong side of the highway. The other options were to take one of the two tunnels that were open - or circle around the island.

http://starbulletin.com/2006/11/02/news/story01.html

http://starbulletin.com/2006/11/03/news/story02.html

Traffic here can really be a nightmare. In September some stupid Army subcontractor was taking a huge tractor down the highway. One big problem- it was over-height and didn’t have a permit. It left Pearl Harbor, and hit seven signs before striking a pedestrian overpass and coming to an instant stop. Long story short, traffic all over the island turned into gridlock, as they had to close down the highway so they could take down the pedestrian bridge. It looks really strange now, it’s still up on one side but goes to nowhere.

http://starbulletin.com/2006/09/06/news/story01.html

http://starbulletin.com/2006/09/07/news/story01.html


There are plans afoot now - AGAIN- they’ve been planning for at least 25 years now but have failed to achieve consensus- to put in some kind of mass transit- probably rail. Can’t come soon enough, if you ask me. We’ve got the highest gas prices in the country. And who doesn’t like a train ride?

And that’s the news from Lake Woebegon.

P. S. PHC fans will be amused with these stories, one of the local newspapers had a competition for local-kine Woebegon yarns.

http://starbulletin.com/2006/11/07/features/story01.html

http://starbulletin.com/2006/11/07/features/story02.html