bookofjoe

'Tabula Rasa' — Arvo Pärt

Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker that the Estonian composer's concerto for two violins was the favorite piece of terminally ill patients in a Scottish hospice.

Wrote Kate Molleson in the Guardian: "The music contains two voices, slowly dropping in register and eventually dropping off. Pärt doesn't give us the final note of the scale, but leaves four bars of written silence."

More, from a 2010 New York Times in-depth profile of the composer: "Although Pärt's music is often compared to the Gregorian chant in a monastery or the early polyphonic music of the Renaissance, you could just as easily liken it to the abstract paintings of Mondrian."

Upside-down Mondrian

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For the last 77 years Piet Mondrian's famous artwork "New York City I" has been hanging upside down.

It will probably remain an "everlasting mystery" how it came to that, said the curator of an upcoming Mondrian exhibition, Susanne Meyer-Bueser, on October 28, 2022 in Duesseldorf, Germany.

A superb deep dive into the mystery by Julia Jacobs appeared in her October 31, 2022 New York Times article.

Long story short: no one will ever know for sure how the artist wanted it to be displayed.

SCOJO Ultra-Lightweight Reading Glasses

My usual readers carry the Dr. Dean Edell label.

I've been using them exclusively for at least 15 years and I must have 10 pairs scattered around my house, in every room where I might possibly find myself wanting to read something.

I happened on SCOJO New York Gels (the clear ones in the video up top) and took a flutter: yes, they're over four times the price of Dr. Edell's, which start at $9.99, but for running at 11 minutes/mile x 3-5 miles on the treadmill while reading on my computer screen, they're better because they're so light — 0.35 oz vs. 0.45 oz for Dr. Edell's as you can see in the video — and almost unnoticeable in my visual field.

My choice from SCOJO's rainbow of available colors is Crystal: the absence of all color along with their feather-light weight makes them seem to disappear while wearing them.

$42.