Thursday, September 17, 2009

Today and yesterday

Yesterday's big news for me, was the people going on about how culling a lamb for slaughter is so darn bad. The future of Britain (and the US) rests on farmers. Whether they are large conglomerates or small organic farmers, cattlemen, sheep farmers, whatever. The crying masses of idiocy came out against the culling of a lamb named Marcus yesterday, in Britain. A school has a program showing children how to raise and breed animals. All very well. That also includes taking said animals to slaughter, as the time arises, or else you will be a very poor farmer. The children prevailed over objections of parents and the assorted nutjobs that make up animal rights organizations, and sent Marcus to slaughter. Marcus didn't have very much of a future in front of him. He had already been cut, so he was useless for breeding. All that was left for Marcus, was to become lamb chops and stew. The children voted to send Marcus off, and they wanted to buy piglets with the money that they would get from the sale. Smart kids, they were doing the right thing, acting in common sense fashion. Now the whole program is up in the air, due to the animal rights nuts and parents who feel that the 'poor animules' should not go off to slaughter. How do they figure that the food gets on their plate? When they eat a chop, it used to be someones Marcus. Although probably not named, but if it was, it was still sent off to where it should eventually go. It doesn't look like a bright future for the farmers of Britain. Full story here.

As for today, we only subscribed to 6 of the 18 concerts at the Houston Symphony this year. So tonight is our first night out for that. Tonight's fare is:

Conductor: Hans Graf
Guests: Ingrid Fliter, piano
Programs:
W. Schuman: Showcase-A Short Display
Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5

I'm looking forward to Symphony #5. We sit in the front orchestra, to the left, so we get a great view of the pianists or whoever is playing a concerto.

One of the things we saw in the past couple of years at the symphony was Richard Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie in Bildern - photography by Tobias Melle. Its available on DVD at Amazon, and I intend to pick on up Sunday when I get my grocery money (ok so the computer desk keeps getting put off). The pictures are from the hike on the route that Strauss took to create this symphony. I highly recommend it. Here is the link to Amazon where it is. I think I may get it for my mother-in-law also, as a Christmas present. The pictures are amazing, the music sets it off to perfection. At least there are used copies now. Last I checked, it was only available from Tobias Melle's website.

The only thing I HATE about going to the symphony is the Houston traffic. Its a lot of idiot drivers out there, either creeping along at 55 in a 65 zone in the fast lane sometimes, or else doing 90 down the road in a pack. Usually not on Thursday nights at least. That's when we get the poky drivers out who imagine the speed limit is a suggestion that they actually put their foot on the gas pedal, especially on that area coming out of downtown Houston past the Fiesta and Sears. They just creep along doing 40 or 45. Drives me crazy.

2 comments:

  1. You gotta watch out for that Texas Ghostrider. About 9pm he is Southbound and down! Yep Houston drivers are the worst and yes they are either 40 in a 65 or 90 in a 65. One of these times you make Houston let me know and we can meet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Okie dokie - we ended up skipping the symphony because hub got off work late, and we decided to go out to dinner up there instead (I had a birthday dinner still pending) so we ended up going to the Olive Garden along 59. We usually just get into Richmond now that it's all built up.

    ReplyDelete