This weekend the Decca 44-CD set of 20 Mozart operas is on sale at arkivmusic.com for $89.99. I’ve never owned recordings of 13 of the operas, and so the set is very attractive to me at the price.
July 31, 2009
Mozart operas
July 27, 2009
Horseneck Beach
I went to Horseneck Beach in Westport, Massachusetts today. The drive takes about an hour from my house, less time than it takes to listen to the first two acts of Manon Lescaut. The beach is on the southern coast of Massachusetts and resembles some of the beaches on the southern shore of Long Island. A difference is that there are no houses anywhere near the beach. A hurricane in 1938 destroyed hundreds of beach houses in that area and killed 22 people. Rebuilding of the houses was not allowed. The day was sunny, but the water was a little bit cold.
July 24, 2009
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Maria Callas as Violetta in La Traviata Photographic Print
Rogers, Houston
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July 23, 2009
Disorderly person in Massachusetts
However unpleasantly you speak to specific individuals in your own house, it is highly unlikely that your conduct could constitute the crime of being a disorderly person in Massachusetts.
In Alegata v. Commonwealth, 305 Mass. 287, 304 (1967), the Supreme Judicial Court quoted with approval the following language from Section 250.2 of the Model Penal Code (Proposed Official Draft):
A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he: (a) engages in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior; or (b) makes unreasonable noise or offensively coarse utterance, gesture or display, or addresses abusive language to any person present; or (c) creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor. `Public’ means affecting or likely to affect persons in a place to which the public or a substantial group has access.
However unpleasantly you may speak to a police officer who has come into your house, I do not see how one can make the legal argument that your conduct fits the above definition. Raising your voice or saying something that a police officer does not like does not amount to the crime of being a disorderly person.
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The above message is for discussion purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. It is not intended to guide people in the conduct of their own lives. Those in need of legal advice should consult a lawyer licensed to practice law in the particular jurisdiction involved.
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The Smoking Gun has a copy of the police report about the Gates incident. One might wonder, and of course I don’t know the answer, whether the police officer intentionally encouraged Gates to step onto the front porch so that the yelling would be overheard by passersby, thereby creating a conceivable justification for a disorderly person charge. The officer’s allegation that the acoustics in the house were unsatisfactory for him is not the most convincing rationale for asking Gates to step onto the front porch, is it?
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Over all, my impression is that the arrest should not have occurred, although Gates may technically have been guilty of the crime if his behavior on the porch was alarming to the people on the sidewalk. At the same time it seems to me that Gates manufactured the problem almost ex nihilo by being so quick to become agitated, to question the officers’ good intentions when there was no good reason to do so, and to shout about being a black man in America, and a very important one with connections, at that. If one is a hammer, one perceives problems as nails. Of course I don’t know exactly what happened. I’m just drawing inferences from the police report. But I have read thousands of police reports over the years and do think I can draw inferences from them.
July 20, 2009
Tomato plants
“A highly contagious fungus that destroys tomato plants has quickly spread to nearly every state in the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic, and the weather over the next week may determine whether the outbreak abates or whether tomato crops are ruined, according to federal and state agriculture officials.”–from article in New York Times
I have a few green tomatoes on my tomato plants. They don’t show any sign of fungus. But the plants themselves look very sad. I don’t think they got enough sun in June. Many of the leaves have turned yellow. The plants have been attacked by aphids. I sprayed some soapy water on the plants and the soil, but it doesn’t seem to have done much good, if any. And it looks as if an animal knocked over one of the plants last night, but the plant still seems OK.
July 4, 2009
Parade in Bristol, Rhode Island
I went to the Fourth of July parade in Bristol, Rhode Island, again this year. The parade this year did not have quite so many interesting marching bands as it did last year, and at times my interest flagged. One interesting feature this year was that during lulls in the parade some young people volunteered to lay down side by side in the street so that another young man could run and jump over them. He could jump over ten people successfully, but when he tried to jump over eleven, he had to veer off to the side to avoid landing on the eleventh person. (I think my counting was correct, but I’m not 100% sure.)
