The Daily Parker

Yesterday I had a full work day plus a three-hour rehearsal for our performance of Stacy Garrop's Terra Nostra on Monday night. (Tickets still available!) Also, yesterday, the House began its public hearings about the failed insurrection on 6 January 2021. Also, yesterday was Thursday, and I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

• Walter Shapiro believes the January 6th committee might "have the goods."
• Slate's Dan Kois describes the efforts of L.A.'s Crosswalk Collective and the UK's Tyre Extinguishers, two groups using minor acts of civic disobedience to protect pedestrians in urban areas.
• KPFA-Berkeley reporter Brian EdwardsTiekert lays out how the Chesa Boudin recall has absolutely nothing to do with national politics. James Fallows expands on EdwardsTiekert, calling out journalists for describing "politics as professional wrestling."
• Molly White slaps her forehead in disbelief at how one cryptocurrency project has solved the problem of how to spend Bitcoin: they printed scrip!
• Dylan Byers navigates through the weird Twitter feud that just cost Washington Post reporter Felicia Somnez her job.
• The Guardian goes into the history of Justice Amy Comey Barrett's (R) faith group and its fundamentalist, vaguely creepy practices.

Finally, Wired takes a look at the law of war, and how Ukrainian civilians may cross the line into belligerents by using apps to report military intelligence to the Ukrainian army.

Tonight our chorus has its (sold out!) fundraiser. This will be the first year since I joined the chorus that I won't be performing, and the second where I'm not running the event. I finally get to just enjoy the night.

Except one of the co-chairs has Covid. And the reason I'm not performing is that one of the ensemble I put together also has Covid, and another got called up for his Army Reserve weekend unexpectedly.

But, hey, it's going to be fun...and did I mention we sold out? We did find a couple last-minute tickets, though, so if you're in town, come on down.

Now that I've got a few weeks without travel, performances*, or work conferences, I can go back to not having enough time to read all the news that interests me. Like these stories:

• The Economist examines how Putin might be punished for war crimes in Ukraine.
• Max Boot wonders why Tucker Carlson still loves his old Uncle Vlad.
• The IPCC says we have eight years to cut greenhouse emissions by 50% or the planet will pass the 1.5°C warming threshold no matter what else we do. Welp.
• Via Bruce Schneier, criminals have started phishing data providers for sensitive information by pretending to be law enforcement.
• Michelle Goldberg wonders why Republican politicians are suddenly afraid of...furries?
• Tom Scott explains how Britain knows what time it is, and a British comedy show takes Denmark to task for not pinning their clocks to UTC.
• As part of his promotional tour for his new novel Kaiju Preservation Society, John Scalzi has given us the short story "Grizzly Bear Conflict Manager."

Finally, Michelin has handed out its 2022 stars for Chicago. Nothing surprising on the list, but I now have four more restaurants to try.

* Except that I volunteered to help a church choir do five Messiah choruses on Easter Sunday, so I've got two extra rehearsals and a service in the next 12 days.

Bonus update: the fog this morning made St Boniface Cemetery especially spooky-looking when Cassie and I went out for her morning walk:

The Apollo Chorus performed last night at the Big Foot Arts Festival in Walworth, Wis., so I haven't done a lot of useful things today. I did take a peek at the other weather archive I have lying around, and discovered (a) it has the same schema as the one I'm currently importing into Weather Now 5, and (b) it only goes back to August 2006.

Somewhere I have older archives that I need to find... But if not, NOAA might have some.

We're about to get back on the road for our 700 km drive back to Chicago. Before leaving, I just wanted to highlight Ravinia Festival's upcoming 2022 season. In particular, note who they're partnering with for these performances of La Clemenza di Tito and Don Giovanni.

Oh, yes, I will be there.

We had two incredible performances of Bach's Johannespassion this weekend. (Update: we got a great review!) It's a notoriously difficult work that Bach wrote for his small, amateur church chorus in Leipzig the year he started working there. I can only imagine what rehearsals were like in 1724. I'm also grateful that we didn't include the traditional 90-minute sermon between the 39-minute first part and the 70-minute second part, and that we didn't conclude the work with the equally-traditional pogrom against the Jews of Leipzig.

It's still a magnificent work of music.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world:

• A leaked document from the Kremlin advises Russian propaganda channels to feature Tucker Carlson in their reports on the war.
• Radio Free Europe wonders about the Russian intelligence failures leading up to the war.
• Francis Fukuyama, who predicted the end of history in the 1990s, now predicts the Russians will lose their war against Ukraine. One can hope he bats .500 at least.
• Londoner Geoffrey Wheatcroft explains how London became "Londongrad."
• Josh Marshall, who studied history before taking up blogging in the wake of the 2000 election scandal, outlines the linguistic and geographical mish-mosh of Central and Eastern Europe.
• The UK government has ordered all crypto-currency ATMs in Britain to shut down.

Finally, Rachel Feltman lists five myths about Daylight Saving Time. Our annual tradition of questioning it without changing anything will continue, of course.

And it's about 16°C outside, so it's time to take Cassie on her third half-hour walk of the day.

Even as the East Coast gets bombed by an early-spring cyclone, we have sunny skies and bitter cold. But the -12°C at O'Hare at 6am will likely be the coldest temperature we get in Chicago until 2023. The forecast predicts temperatures above 10°C tomorrow and up to 16°C on Wednesday, with no more below-freezing temperatures predicted as far out as predictions can go.

Meanwhile, I'm about to leave for our first of two Bach Jonannespassion performances this weekend. We still have tickets available for tomorrow's, so come on down!

Two weeks from today, the Apollo Chorus will join with the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra for their performance of Bach's St John Passion. Our performance is the next day in Lakeview, Chicago. Today we had a 2½-hour special rehearsal, after which I needed to do some shopping, then give Cassie a bit of exercise.

I will now nap. Tomorrow will be easier.

Winter officially has another week and a half to run, but we got a real taste of spring in all its ridiculousness this week:

Yesterday the temperature got up to 13°C at O'Hare, up from the -10°C we had Monday morning. It's heading down to -11°C overnight, then up to 7°C on Sunday. (Just wait until I post the graph for the entire week.)

Welcome to Chicago in spring.

Elsewhere:

• Republicans in New York and Illinois have a moan about the redistricting processes in those states that will result in heavily-skewed Democratic legislatures and House delegations, even while acknowledging that we've agreed to put down our gun when they put down theirs.
• The pillowmonger we all know and love, who rails on about unauthorized, disease-carrying immigrants to our country, got all pissy with Canada when they kicked him out for being an unauthorized, disease-carrying immigrant.
• The pillowmonger's friend the XPOTUS had a no good, very bad, rotten week that he totally deserved.
• Voters roundly ejected the president and vice president (plus another divisive member) of the San Francisco School Board that the Editor in Chief of Mother Jones says was for incompetence, not politics.
• Alaska Airlines has a new subscription deal for California that could become more common with other carriers if it takes off.

Finally, if you're in Chicago and want to hear a free Apollo Chorus concert tonight, leave a note in the comments. We perform at Harris Theater at 8pm.

When I got home from our Messiah performance yesterday, my car ended up here:

If you don't have International System conversion factors ready to hand, just know that one statute mile is 1,609.344 meters. So right before I got to my garage last night, my car hit 10,000 miles exactly. And how about that average fuel economy? For the luddites, 2.2 L/100 km is about 105 MPG.

If you recall, I bought the car just shy of 3 years ago. So in three years, I've driven about 10,000 miles and filled up the car 12 times with about 350 liters (93 gallons) of fuel for just over $240. That works out to an operating cost of 2.9¢ per kilometer (4.6¢ per mile). Not bad.

Oh, and I also got this shortly after walking in (and walking out and walking back in and feeding her):

Not a bad way to end Messiah week.