On perfection and Jay Xu’s diplomacy
“Remember when I told you my life is perfect?” a woman walking down Elizabeth Street asked the person with whom she was conducting a cell phone conversation. “Well, it’s not.”
Thank you to Stefan Gruenwedel for submitting that quote and thereby establishing today’s tone.
Best conversation of last week: “My toilet just flushed by itself downstairs,”
N.S. wrote on Facebook. To which L.P. responded, “Is your printer on?”
PBS’ “Civilizations” series starts showing next Tuesday, April 17, and in preparation for that, the network and San Francisco Film Festival showed some hometown supporters the second installment, “How Do We Look?,” the other day. That particular installment — on sculptural likenesses of people — was broadcast here, because it featured Asian Art Museum director Jay Xu talking about the terra cotta figures created in the third century B.C., to be buried with China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang.
In the program, Xu talks about the emperor’s positive accomplishments, the most major of which was unifying China. But he also describes him as “clearly an egomaniac. Everything he had was bigger than anyone else’s.”
This sounded familiar; do we know world leaders like that? Xu’s answer to that potentially political question proved that not only does he have museum executive skills but also superb diplomatic chops. The first emperor of Qin, he said, “created the Great Wall of China, but also boldly invested in enhancing infrastructure, like roads. And he standardized weights and measures, and the writing system, all essential for a unified empire. He succeeded in those unprecedented achievements as he matched his super ego with real intelligence, statesmanship and ability to inspire people from diverse backgrounds. He showed what the impact of being a uniter instead of a divider can be.”
In 2017, UNESCO added Neapolitan pizza to its “List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” Paying homage to that designation, the Italian Cultural Institute in San Francisco is celebrating the Week of Neapolitan Pizza from Tuesday, April 10, to Sunday, April 15. Many events are planned. For more information: http:// tinyurl.com/ycz2mtnp.
Scott Badler found himself in Tokyo during Passover, so he went to the Wise Sons’ new outpost there. “To suit the Japanese diet,” he emailed, “portions are chisai (smaller).”
This year’s Community Music Center gala, scheduled for May 12 at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco, will honor Frederica von Stade, who will be there with composer Jake Heggie and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. DiDonato, who is slated to sing at the Metropolitan Opera on May 11, will fly to San Francisco at dawn the next day, then fly from here to Barcelona on May 13.
When the center wrote to DiDonato asking whether she would join in the tribute to von Stade, she wrote back immediately saying she would be “happy and honored” to participate. Von Stade, upon hearing about it, “was over the moon,” said Julie Steinberg, the center’s executive director. DiDonato joining von Stade and Heggie at the benefit was a “testament to the kind of friendships that Flicka and Jake cultivate,” added Steinberg. More information: http://sfcmc.org.
Recent stories about pace-of-play rules intended to speed up baseball games have inspired reader John Brungardt of Rancho Cordova (Sacramento County). His suggestions:
(1) Two strikes, you’re out; (2) Three balls, take your base; (3) Broken bat, whether a hit or not, you’re out; (4) No beer sold after three innings; (5) In extra innings, a runner is automatically put on second base at the beginning of each inning (as in minor-league baseball); (6) That runner must be a woman; (7) If the score is tied after 12 innings, pitchers must lob all pitches underhand from 50 feet away from home; (8) Reminder: No beer sold after three innings. However, if you concealed any suds on entering, you are permitted to drink what you smuggled in; (9) No seventh inning stretch. This will mean no “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” which is a good thing because if it’s only “One, two strikes you’re out” — the whole rhythm of the song is interrupted; (10) The national anthem is played and sung at the last out because “no one in the stands knows the words” and they may as well flee before the dawn’s early light.
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “Try not to internalize your anxiety.” Father to two young boys, overheard near Trader Joe’s in Corte Madera by JoAnn Hartley