Young Montalbano

We began watching the crime series, The Young Montalbano tonight. I've mentioned the original series, Inspector Montalbano on a couple of occasions recently, and how we've enjoyed it. The Young Montalbano has a different cast, of course, though some of the characters from the others series gradually make their way into this one, a decade or so younger than before. Montalbano has plenty of hair at this point; his older persona is close to bald. Michele Riondino in no way plays under the shadow of his future self; he's as confident in his role as Luca Zingaretti is in his.

It's a little weird trying to match up a different set of actors in your head, but you find you quickly become attached to these ones too, because the series has been as well cast as the original, and the opening episode had plenty of verve and energy, along with the typical sharpness of mind that characterizes Montalbano; the delight in seafood; the craziness of Catarella (younger, but no less dense and no less frenetic); the bending of the rules to make sure justice prevails, and those wonderful old Italian faces that seem as true to their situation as if they were brought in off the street to play themselves.

Tenors and Judith Collins

It's a curious thing that we have so many touring singing groups who consist of nothing but tenors.  Is there something special about the tenor voice that makes it prime?  The trend perhaps started with the Three Tenors (men who really could sing, and didn't just do classical-pop), but since then we've had a rash of tenors in various numberings: Eleven Tenors, Seven Irish Tenors, and so on.  Where are the Sixteen Sopranos, the Bunch of Basses and the Eight Altos?

Judith Collins is perpetually in the news these days, usually for the wrong reasons.  As Minister of Justice you hear her talking very little about actual justice, and a great deal about what Judith Collins thinks.  As per today, when she ranted on about the lack of consensus amongst the politicians regarding changes to MMP:
"I'm not actually a party leader. I am the Minister of Justice, and if they need me to organise the kumbaya sessions of party leaders to get together and work out what it is they agree on, then there's something very wrong.
"My job is to receive the information and see if we can get a bill together.
"If these parties want changes they should come and talk to each other. It's not my role for bloody sake.
"I'm not their nanny.
"I'm not in charge of these other parties, I'm not in charge of eight parties in Parliament, plus the independent Brendan Horan."

I'm not sure what a 'kumbaya session' is, nor am I familiar with the expression 'for bloody sake.'  And doesn't the second statement contradict the first?  She doesn't want to organise the parties, yet she says her job is to receive the information and get a bill together.  Well, how is she going to get that to happen unless she organises the parties?  Time for a new Minister of Justice, methinks, one who actually knows the meaning of the word.

Arundhati Roy

Roy purposely throws out the split infinitive...but says a good deal in the process:

The only dream worth having ... is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead ... To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or to complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

- Arundhati Roy
From her book, The Algebra of Infinite Justice

Rudyard Kipling

C S Lewis discussing Rudyard Kipling and his writing, makes this observation:

If all men stood talking of their rights before they went up a mast or down a sewer or stoked a furnace or joined an army, we should all perish; nor while they talked of their rights would they learn to do these things. And I think we must agree with Kipling that the man preoccupied with his own rights is not only a disastrous, but a very unlovely object; indeed, one of the worst mischiefs we do by treating a man unjustly is that we force him to be thus preoccupied.
But if so, then it is all the more important that men should in fact be treated with justice. If we all need ‘licking into shape’ and if, while undergoing the process, we must not guard our rights, then it is all the more important that someone else should guard them for us.

From They Asked for a Paper, a collection of various papers produced by Lewis over the years. This address was given to the English Association.

As always, Lewis discusses the subject with intensity and ease, with insight and detail, and, as always, he manages to produce some clear statements of his own that stand outside the subject.

Ms P H again

Well, Paris Hilton is back in jail - or gaol - or both. I only wanted to make a note of this to show that I keep up with the news...
Actually, I haven't been keeping up with the news as much. About a month ago we stopped getting a newspaper at home because we weren't getting the time to read it - and I was reading some of it at work. We don't watch tv news much because it's so often just magazine-style material and not real news at all. And since I only listen to the Concert program - when I do listen to the radio - I don't hear much news on there either.
So, how did I hear about P H?? I'm staying at my daughter's at present, and the tv is always on. Sometimes the news makes it into the room, and so tonight the re-arrest of Ms H was on, and given a good deal more importance than the deaths of 25 people in the floods in the Middle East, or even the deaths of a whole family in floods in Australia. Oh, dear, how we do delight in thinking that so-called celebrities are important.

Ms P Hilton

I thought New Zealand was supposed to be the home of tall-poppy-cutting-down, but when it comes to celebrities, the US of A well and truly holds its own. The cries of 'Jail Paris Hilton' rang loud and clear throughout the land, and have gotten even louder since she's been released on home detention after just a few days in jail. The whole thing is absurd, and once again shows how the American system of justice can be so easily undermined. Celebrities don't appear to get their just desserts, but neither do people who have none of the wealth and power. They are more likely to make up the time that the celebrities don't have to do. You might say that balances things out, but of course that's hardly the point.