Tenors Behaving Badly

As I drove about my day today, the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast offered up Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini.  Puccini (1858 - 1924) wrote beautiful music.  He had patrons and commercial success.  He had his choice among the best possible stories, and the most talented librettists with whom to tell his stories.  Why did he single out lead roles for men behaving badly?  Tune in and listen to the glorious melodies.  Think about what is happening.  In Madama Butterfly U.S. Navy lieutenant B. F. Pinkerton comes ashore in Japan and succumbs to the ministrations of lovely geisha Cio-Cio San aka Madame Butterfly.  In a cruel deception, he marries her, understanding that there is no legal obligation associated with the union.  His lust for soft light, soft skin and a subservient sex partner overcome any self control he might have learned at the Naval Academy.  The union ends badly with a child whom he takes from the heart broken Butterfly who chooses honor over shame and eviscerates herself with her father's sword.  The world was introduced to this cad in 1904.  Eighteen years later Puccini outdid himself when he introduced Calef, exiled Prince of Tartary in Turnadot.  Calef falls in love with Turnadot, the cold, vengeful and very mixed up Princess of Peking. In the climax of Act III he stands by to watch his father's faithful servant Liu tortured because she would not reveal his name.  What kind of man would  do that?  He is so taken with himself and the mystery he has introduced into the court of Peking that he sings an ode to himself, "Nessun Dorma" (meaning "no one sleeps" in which he refers to the mad search for clues to his real name).  Ironically, this beautiful aria sung at the height of conceit by Calef, was sung by the most unassuming contestant on Britain's Got Talent in 2007.  If you missed Paul Potts, and the electrifying reaction to his voice, feast your ears and grab a hanky.

Britain's Bogs

A battle over bogs brews in Britain. A bog, or peat bog, accumulates because plants decompose slowly in waterlogged soil.  Bogs can spread widely.  Bogs burgeoned in the cool and humid lowlands of northern England and central and north east Scotland. Britain's bogs are thought to have developed 5,000 to 6,000 years ago.  Peat was cut and dried for centuries and used for fuel.  In modern times, peat has been praised as an ideal medium for growing and mulching gardens.   Advocates are passionate about the benefits to the soil.   Bogs build slowly, adding about 1/2 inch in 100 years. Today  there is widespread support for a ban on cutting in order to preserve the unique bog habitat. The British will manage this touchy issue.  After all, they managed to ban fox hunting.  I am willing to bet that the remaining bogs will be preserved.  That will be an ecological win, but with an unfortunate unintended consequence.  Out of the British bogs have come archaeological treasures.  The most astonishing was the discovery of the upper torso of a man buried in the deep Lindow Moss outside Manchester.  He turned up during a commercial peat harvest.  His body bore the clear signs of ritual sacrifice, and has been a goldmine of clues to the mysteries of Druid society.  There have been other similar finds, all well preserved in the oxygen-free acidic moisture of the peat.  If no more bogs are cut, no more mysteries will be revealed.  So. Indulge your curiosity.  Read about Lindow Man in this short, action packed book, "The Life and Death of a Druid Prince".  You will learn what he ate for his last supper, why he might have died and much more.  A first century thriller.

The Change of Life

I never heard my grandmother say anything about her personal health.  In my childhood women referred to "the change of life" in hushed tones with mild raising of the eyebrow.  Boys were brazen and cruel, with cutting remarks about girls "on the rag".  At school we called it the "curse".  In our "Health" class we were given a pamphlet with diagrams of ovaries, uterus and cervix.  The illustrations showed the thickening lining in the uterus each month and explained that it "sloughed off" .  A sanitary napkin was passed around.  This dry and clinical  information was for girls.  I have no idea what the boys were told.  It was inconceivable that we would talk to them about a woman's menstrual cycle.  We swirled around this issue in a cultural climate of confusion.

Today, we have unabashed public discussions and product advertising that were unthinkable just a decade ago.  Erectile dysfunction and low testosterone share the airwaves with Cheerios, investment trading,   incontinence and arthritis pain. But even in the rush of excitement about so many previously unspeakable maladies, the airwaves are largely silent with respect to menstruation.  Why?  Why do we still blush?  Do we somehow believe we are alone?  One-third of men and women ages 30-70 have experienced loss of bladder control at some point in their adult lives.  The nightly news sells their needs to advertisers and apparently has no qualms that viewers might be offended by cartoon-like figures fabricated from copper plumbing fixtures.  Every woman experiences the body and mind altering cycles of fertility. 100%.  From the onset of her periods at age 11 or 12, for the rest of her life, each woman learns that her equilibrium is easily put off kilter.  Menstruation lasts about 40 years.  Menopause lasts forever.  (Note to reader: don't believe "its just for a year or two")  For many women parts of the journey are unsettling, painful, even debilitating.  In polite society of even the recent past women were banished to insane asylums as they struggled with "the change".  Why isn't more known today?  Why so little research?  Do we still harbor aboriginal  taboos? When will we have the courage, or common sense, to bring it out of the closet?