I have been enjoying my solitude. I miss my wife, but the quiet is nice. Yesterday I attempted to repair the silverware drawer which has been falling apart or getting stuck. Very annoying. I laid around and did dishes and generally goofed off until my meeting with my boss/friend/colleague, Jen. It is such a blessing to have her for a boss. Came home and cooked: apple chutney, cucumber raita and potato pea curry. Mmmm. Somewhere in there I had a chat with my daughter in England. She and I traded links to plays and places to stay on our upcoming visit there. 

Waiting for Godot will be playing while we are there. Very tempting.

Choir rehearsal went well last night. I started later and had many more people arriving on time. I cut the rehearsal a bit short after we accomplished my goal to simply do note checks on  the upcoming pieces (holding interp to a minimum). Our tenor (who is one of the long standing members of the choir and a retired english prof) offered his home for our post rehearsal bachannal. Very gracious. 

During the day yesterday I watched/listened to part of Gordon Brown’s March 4th address to Congress. Roger Cohen in a recent NYT article (“Gordon to the rescue“) mentioned it as an example of statesmanship rhetoric. So far it’s a pretty good speech. I’ll listen/watch to the rest of today no doubt.

Not to clutter up my blog with NYTs links, but three articles in Wed’s NYT caught my attention. All three are examples of the struggle to break free of the shackles of governments.

In Afghanistan, the Supreme Court upheld an outrageous sentence of 20 years for Parwiz Kambakhsh, 24, for the blasphemy of his article on the role of women in Islam. Of course this was a reduction from the original sentence of death. 

Georgia (the country not the state) backed down in the face of censor and controversy about its entry into the Eurovision pop song contest. Apparently Putin was not amused by the lyrics of 3G’s song “Don’t want to Put In”. more info from the BBC

Finally, the Chinese have found a clever way around their own censors with a new craze for a children’s song about grass-mud-horses. The mythical creatures (who look suspiciously like alpacas) have a name which apparently is pretty close to a prohibited obscenity. The song also seems to be many clever puns and sound alike words that offend censors but render them helpless with their surface innocence. Well done.