"Good Luck"

Guest Blogger Dept.: Robert Benchley takes a gamble here to write about luck, our conceptions of which we can safely characterize as superstitions. If we’re lucky. Benchley portrait by Gluyas Williams.

                                                                                   

AND NOW they are trying to take away our superstitions from us. First they tax us until it is cheaper not to earn any money at all, then they force us to drink beer, and now they come along and tell us that we mustn't believe that if your nose itches you are going to have company.

I am not a superstitious man myself, but no Columbia University professor is going to sit there and tell me that if an actor (or anybody) whistles in a dressing room it doesn't mean bad luck for the person nearest the door. That's a scientific fact.

Neither will I be told that I must throw out all the little odds and ends of clothing and currency that I have accumulated during the past quarter of a century, each one of which has been certified by the United States Bureau of Standards as a definite good luck piece. I have proved their worth time after time (chiefly by not having had them with me when I had bad luck). I have an old green tie which I have worn so much that it now looks as if I were being led out to be lynched, and has that ever failed me? Never! I may not have always had good luck with it on, but it was because I forgot to wrap this long end around twice while tying it, or because I didn't have the ends even. The tie itself is sure-fire good luck, and I'll let no crack-brained theorist tell me different.

Backing Up, No Beeping

From the Tech Vault Dept.: Another of those mystery pieces that leap into my lap from time to time, in this case as I searched for something else in the depths of my computer archives. I would say this dates from about 2002, but I’m not going to go nuts finding out if it ever was published or not and if so, where. It’s about a technology that had its day, and caused a bunch of those oddball backup tapes to accumulate until the hardware went bad and orphaned my data.

                                                                                     

THE CENTURY TURNED, the lights stayed on. Your computer shrugged off the date change and you’re going to be sipping bottled water for a long, long time. How about backing up your data now?

What an unsexy subject! With all the inventive, colorful and just plain silly stuff out there competing for our time and money, backing up computer data is boredom itself. Unless you thought to shell out for the proper hardware when you bought your system (and it’s not a popular option), you have to pony up extra bucks for equipment that takes up space, requires costly media, gets in your way when you’re up late finishing a project, and then does nothing.

Until you lose a hard drive.

The question, as one backup software developer once put it, isn’t if your hard drive is going to fail – it’s when. You don’t get much warning, if any. And when it happens, you’ll enjoy an unbelievably sickening feeling as you realize just how much data – data you need! – was sitting on that hard drive. 

The Music Comes Round and Round

YOU WILL COME AWAY from this book with no doubt about Alex M. Stein’s love for his favored music. In fact, no matter how fervent a music-lover you may think yourself, the 40 essays contained herein may cause you to question your own depth of passion.

Stein’s talent has been realized and honed through years of professional writing and theater-making. He often performs his stories before an audience, and I’m guessing it’s this that gives his prose appealing contours of rhythm and an engaging mellifluousness. He uses judicious repetition of words and phrases which, along with such tools as assonance and alliteration, reveal the poetry lurking within these pieces.

There’s a commonality among those who obsess early on about music. At least those of, as we say, a certain age. Physical possession was important. If your obsession began in the LP days, you stockpiled records, both latest releases and elusive antiques. Your ears, ever-alert to nuance, treasured the differences a single song could display across a number of performances, even (or especially) by the same ensemble.

But most profound are the emotional associations created by the confluence of song and event. Stein’s musical universe, inadequately defined as “rock ‘n’ roll,” is far enough away from mine that I feared I’d have no commonality with his book. Until I read, in the Introduction, “If you’ve ever been dumped by someone and found you can no longer stand the music you associate with them, you’re definitely my people,” and realized that, no matter the music, we have grounds for bonding.

Speaking in Tongues

AS A LIFELONG CAT PERSON, I am most comfortable when my beast of the moment is snoozing on the nearby chair or prowling the house and yard for snacks, or just sitting nearby, staring into the middle distance. Whenever I catch her at that (and my cats, over the sixty-some years I’ve had them, almost always were female), she doesn’t even acknowledge my gaze by meeting my eye but busily commences grooming, often comically sitting on her haunches and bending into positions that cause my back to ache merely through looking. A few swipes of tongue over fur and then she glances my way, asking, “And what’s the big deal, Sparky?”

We fare well together, these cats and I. I make no big deal of this pet preference, having long believed it speaks for itself. Evidently, however, it hasn’t spoken to my daughter. 

Two years ago, Lily decided she needed a dog. Another dog, to put it correctly. The one that had been in residence for several year, a black Lab, had health-declined so badly so quickly that we had to pull the plug. A process I hate, yet one in which I’ve participated at the end of the life of nearly every pet I’ve had for the past forty-or-so years. 

“I’ve had enough of it,” I declared. “I’ve played Charon to too many of our four-legged friends.” Undermining my cause a little, I fear, because my daughter interprets any flowery language to mean that I’m out of my mind (or more so than usual) and not to be taken seriously. Seeing her skeptical moue, I reiterated: “No more dogs!”

Dinner at the Family Manse

From the Food Vault Dept.: It’s the 25th anniversary of the review posted below, a review of a restaurant in Amsterdam, NY, that had been in business in its current incarnation for 17 years, and has surpassed that by remaining in business today. I’m sad to report that Vittorio Valentino died in August, but the family continues to operate the restaurant, and re-reading the review has me excited to visit the place again. The hours given are the current ones; as always, don’t expect current pricing to be anywhere near what’s reported below.

                                                                                      

VITTORIO AND ESTER VALENTINO struck me as about the sweetest couple I’ve ever come across in this business. When we dined at their restaurant on a recent Friday night, they and one of their sons were running the whole show, as far as I could see, and Ester seemed to know everybody else who was dining there. By the time we were through, she knew all about us, too, and we’d had a tour of the place from Vittorio.

In many respects, this could typify your friendly neighborhood Italian restaurant. But there are a couple of major differences. First is the location: It’s in a mansion, with a striking-looking tower that gave earlier restaurants their names. Second is Vittorio’s training, which includes a stint at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, which he attended while working for a diplomat’s family. 

Difference number two is more subtle in the context of the menu, which is classically Italian-American. A few French specials once graced the menu but, as Vittorio explains, his wife was still learning English at the time and the task of explaining them was too daunting. Now they have a following solidly grounded in the Italian food that’s featured, so I suspect they won’t be straying much from that menu. But I may ask for something French the next time I visit.

A Gamut of the Emotions

EUGENE YSAŸE was one of last of the virtuoso violinist-composers who dominated the late 19th century, but unlike Wieniawski and Vieuxtemps, he didn’t produce much in the way of the tuneful, show-offish morceaux that typically ended the concert recitals of the era. His works were thornier, more in keeping with the changes in the compositional atmosphere wrought by post-Wagnerians. Ysaÿe lived from 1858 to 1931 and began his concert career at the age of 27. A year later, César Franck wrote for him, as a wedding present, his renowned Violin Sonata. 

A recital by Joseph Szigeti that featured Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G Minor for solo violin (one of six such pieces by Bach) inspired Ysaÿe to write his own set of six solo sonatas, which he finished in July 1923. They are comparatively short works, each of them dedicated to a different violinist of Ysaÿe’s acquaintance. While they aren’t aggressively tuneful, they reveal masterful writing, using the violin’s technical resources to the fullest. They probably are best appreciated by violinists, especially those courageous enough to take on the virtuosic demands. 

The sonatas usually are recorded as a set, which only makes sense, and there are over fifty such recordings. One of the latest features Roman Simovic, a visiting professor of violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London whose resume includes appearances with all the top orchestras in Europe as well as distinguished festivals galore. He directed the London Symphony String Orchestra on four albums for the LSO Live label, for which he also recorded Paganini’s 24 Caprices.

Have Another Look

Art Isn’t Easy Dept.: Just when you thought that the late John Updike had once and for all dropped his pen, along comes yet another weighty tome – this time a collection of Updike letters. But don’t be fooled by my glib nonsense: I’m looking forward to reading it, confident I’ll enjoy it, just as I’ve enjoyed every one of his previous books, all of which are on a nearby shelf in my house. Meanwhile, let’s revisit my review of one of his more unexpected literary ventures, that of art critic. The piece below explains the rest.

                                                                             

THE RANKS OF WELL-KNOWN cartoonist-writers include James Thurber and Lou Myers, but unlike Robert Hughes, who moved from cartooning to art criticism, or Ad Reinhardt, whose cartoons were criticism, John Updike never professionally pursued his own drawing ability. In that regard, he’s like the early-20th-century writer Booth Tarkington, whose sketches livened the horrible penmanship of his letters.

Both of them wrote about art late in their respective careers. Tarkington’s Some Old Portraits (1939) paid gossipy but insightful tribute to a selection of 18th-century works; the 23 essays in Updike’s first collection, Just Looking (1989), introduced us to a novelist unafraid to summon beautiful language to examine his relationship with the pre-Abstractionist world. From Vermeer in the 17th century to the still-living Richard Estes, the collection also gave a nod to cartoonists like Ralph Barton and fellow writer-cartoonists like Goethe, Poe, Oscar Wilde and Flannery O’Connor.

Another collection, Still Looking, followed in 2005, focusing on American art and covering such painters as Copley, Homer, Whistler, Hopper, Pollock and Warhol as well as photographer Alfred Stieglitz. After Updike died in 2009, enough uncollected essays remained for a final celebration. As a title, Always Looking tops the first two with its comforting, if Olympian, declaration of continuity; as an essay collection, it’s broader-based, but also solidifies the range of Updike’s favorites.

That Was the Tech That Was

From the Tech Archives Dept.: I found this pair of pieces in my archives and had a terrific laugh at the enthusiasm with which I celebrated what’s now obsolete in the first piece. The second is slightly less dated, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any of those mom-and-pop mail-order computer stores any more. 

                                                                                 

Format Wars

SMALL USUALLY WINS when you talk home electronics. Just as the cassette conquered reel-to-reel, so has the half-inch videocassette triumphed over the bulky open-reel jobs. Surprisingly, though, the tiny 8-millimeter format never caught on—or has yet to. It wasn't impressive enough its first time out to sway the market; whether any refinement lurks is as yet unpromised.

Navigating the shoals of videotape formats is a confusing proposition, especially for the novice. There are five or six of them to consider, depending how you wish to count, and each has its share of enthusiasts.

To get the abbreviations straight, a VCR is a video cassette recorder: it can record from and playback through a television. They start at about $200, discounted, although you can save a few bucks by buying a video cassette player, which has no record capability. You’re then at the mercy of your local video rental store.

The Stokowski Nobody Knew

HAVING TOILED IN THE TRENCHES of journalism for over forty years (albeit the more rarefied trenches of classical music, theater, and other cultural events), I like to think that I can manage sufficient objectivity to deal with anything I’m asked to cover. I may have strong opinions, sure, but I try to position myself as an open-minded audience representative. 

But I can promise no such objectivity in dealing with Nancy Shear’s new book I Knew a Man who Knew Brahms, and I’ll explain why after some introductory matter.

Nancy Shear Arts Services, founded in 1978, provides career consulting and public-relations services to musicians, and have worked and continue to work with a very distinguished roster. Shear herself has taught at New York University and The New School, been orchestra librarian with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Curtis Institute, and has worked with a number of publishing companies in different capacities. She’s also a broadcaster who has been heard on WNYC, WHYY, and NPR, in the course of which she has conducted hundreds of interviews with star musicians.

Her memoir, however, chronicles her life in the years before she founded her agency, and it’s a fascinating, superbly written coming-of-age saga. It pulled me along not just through her skill at telling a good story but also because of the compelling commonality I discovered.

In 1960, Leopold Stokowski led a Philadelphia Orchestra concert at the Robin Hood Dell, an outdoor amphitheater in Philadelphia (now known as the Mann Center for the Performing Arts). Fourteen-year-old Nancy Shear, a resident of suburban Philadelphia, attended the event. She was enthralled by every aspect of it, from the orchestra tuning, to the sight of Stokowski waiting in the wings, to the program itself, which featured major works by Berlioz, Ravel, Debussy, and Shostakovich, among others.

Just Some Songs at Twilight

THE MAVERICK CHAMBER ORCHESTRA CONCERT is an annual event that recently welcomed the Caroga Arts Ensemble as its resident ensemble, a fitting acknowledgment of the quality of music-making going on in New York’s Fulton County each summer. The Maverick Concert Hall itself is in Woodstock (or Hurley, depending on your geographic preference), about a hundred miles south of Caroga Lake. The rustic hall in which the concerts take place was built in 1916, from an era in the area’s history when music and art and love were celebrated with no inkling  that another type of music festival, decades later, would put Woodstock on the map.

Photo courtesy Maverick Concerts

Saturday, August 23 was as perfect a day as you could desire in the middle of summer, which added to the fairy-tale aspect of this event. With its vaulted ceiling and decorative windows, the concert hall is a chapel where the faithful assemble to worship good music, a reasonable object of veneration. 

Seating is on padded benches arrayed in rows, flanked by lines of similar benches along the side walls. The large rear doors open onto a contained area with several more padded benches and, as I learned from arriving early enough to witness some rehearsal, there’s no compromise of the sound and the view. 

The hall was sold out for this concert, and that included the outdoor seating. While the second-half feature, Philip Glass’s Piano Concerto No. 3, performed by Simone Dinnerstein, was the draw, let’s wait to assess it. There’s a remarkable first half to consider.

A Fable

Mark Twain Dept.: Twain tinkered with storytelling techniques throughout his life as he transitioned from scrappy journalist to grand old moralist. Here; a trifle in the latter mode. The illustration is by Thomas Landseer.

                                                                                               

ONCE UPON A TIME an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror. He said, “This doubles the distance and softens it, and it is twice as lovely as it was before.”

The animals out in the woods heard of this through the housecat, who was greatly admired by them because he was so learned, and so refined and civilized, and so polite and high-bred, and could tell them so much which they didn't know before, and were not certain about afterward. They were much excited about this new piece of gossip, and they asked questions, so as to get at a full understanding of it. They asked what a picture was, and the cat explained.

“It is a flat thing,” he said; “wonderfully flat, marvelously flat, enchantingly flat and elegant. And, oh, so beautiful!”

That excited them almost to a frenzy, and they said they would give the world to see it. Then the bear asked:

“What is it that makes it so beautiful?”

“It is the looks of it,” said the cat.

Martinů: Magical and Mysterious

THE PORTRAIT OF BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ that emerged during a day of Martinů-related events at Bard College was uniquely unusual. He was a Czech-born composer who spent more time in France and America than in his native country. He lived from 1890 to 1959, thus placing his productive years in the midst of a time of great musical unrest. Yet he remained apart from it, absorbing much and transmuting it into a variety of forms. The portrait, therefore, eludes canvas and words: his music is the portrait.

“Martinů and His World” is the title of Bard’s 35th annual music festival. Each of the festivals has been dedicated to examining a composer not only through significant and lesser-known works but also alongside works by others of influence. I attended the three events presented on Saturday, August 9, 2025.

To truly explore the breadth of Martinů’s influences probably would demand many weeks of effort. As scholar-in-residence Michael Beckerman wrote, “Martinů provides us with an almost inexhaustible collection of works, approaches, and ideas. His fascinations, with such things as madrigals, Stravinsky, the Virgin Mary, jazz, Baroque music, Bartók, surrealism, neoclassicism, Byzantine chant, medieval miracle plays, and the folk cultures of Czechoslovakia, give his works shadings both subtle and powerful.” 

Longtime NYU prof Beckerman is about to become dean of the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA. A Czech-music specialist, he also was scholar-in-residence for Bard’s festivals centering on Dvořák (1993) and Janáček (2003).

Toothsome Haven

From the Food Vault Dept.: It’s the time of year when I should be schlepping to the Berkshires to frolic amongst the theaters and eateries that strew the landscape, but it’s not about to happen this summer. I may get a visit to Mass MoCA on the autumn calendar, but for now, let’s revisit a piece I wrote in 2013, a review of a restaurant that’s still thriving in Lenox. And, after re-reading this, I have to go back there sooner than later. Remember: All quoted pricing has changed in the intervening years. But you knew that. (Photos by B. A. Nilsson)

                                                                                                 

BECAUSE OUR EXOTIC VACATIONS are annoyingly few, my teenaged daughter and I play a game in which we imagine ourselves, at various moments, to be somewhere overseas. We typically end up in a European locale that combines Tuscany’s rural beauty with the urban indifference of Paris, where we just might have to bully through an inscrutable menu in order to tame our appetites at a picture-book café. 

The menu at Lenox’s Haven Café is in English, of course, and the downtown environment is unmistakably affluent New England. But, once seated at one of the polished wooden tables in the sun-warmed dining area, we decided that, with the addition of a thatched roof or two, we as easily could be in Cockington Village in Devon.

Not that any Cockington eatery would be offering grilled polenta topped with pesto ($14.50) or a $10 beet, apple and almond salad over arugula. Faced with the offerings for a Haven lunch, we were whisked back to Lenox and still found ourselves in a relaxing place. 

Not Every Rake Is Rescued

POOR TOM RAKEWELL! He’s a lazy fellow looking for easy money, trying to hang onto his fiancée Anne Trulove even as her father disparages his indolence. He makes a wish; the wish comes true. He has fallen into a fortune. And fallen is the word: The fortune comes with devilish strings attached. 

Adrian Kramer as Tom Rakewell, Marc 
Webster as Trulove, and Lydia Grindatto 
as Anne Trulove. Photo credit: Kayleen 
Bertrand/The Glimmerglass Festival

The Glimmerglass Festival debuted its first-ever production of Stravinsky’s only opera, and it’s a knockout. Adrian Kramer is a Tom who manages to be endearing in spite of his obvious self-involvement; Lydia Grindatto beautifully sings the rather thankless role of Anne, the role having been here written more as a 1950s TV wife than a 1730s bawd. But it’s Aleksey Bogdanov, as the evil, delightful Nick Shadow who steals the show. He almost can’t help it: villainous baritones usually are the most charismatic of the cast, but Bogdanov brings an extra dimension of vocal agility to his performance, to my ears edging out the Shadows I grew up hearing on recordings (viz., Mack Harrell, John Reardon, and Samuel Ramey).

William Hogarth’s series of eight paintings known collectively as “The Rake’s Progress” were completed in 1734 and immediately followed by a series he made of nearly identical engravings, the better for public distribution. It’s essentially an eight-panel cartoon strip, each panel advancing the plot of the decline of Tom Rakewell (as he was named in the series) alongside busy visual commentary driving home the attendant moral message. Eighteenth-century England reveled in misbehaving and then regretting such behavior; Hogarth’s satiric paintings thus were greatly popular.

Back to the Land

YOU’RE SAVVY ENOUGH to wish to dine responsibly. You visit farmers’ markets in season; perhaps you cultivate a vegetable plant or two. You’ve restructured your personal menu to allow those vegetables more opportunity to shine, and you may even be paying the price for locally sourced meat. Or you’re on the brink of discovering all this, and would like to know where to begin.

Let me recommend Origins Café. Located in the wilds of Cooperstown, New York, far enough from the village to bring nothing baseball-related into view, this seasonal restaurant has been successfully operating for 14 years. And if you didn’t know that everything they serve is carefully chosen and good for you, you’d be lulled into enjoying it as just another fine restaurant.

It was founded by sisters Kristen and Dana Leonard, who grew up on this property. “Forty-two years ago, our parents started a little greenhouse here,” says Kristen, “basically a small nursery in a little hoop house in a place that evolved to be the café. We literally grew up there, in a little crib in the corner of the greenhouse. And then like anyone who grows up in a small town, you want to get out and travel as much as you can. So we went off to school and studied environmental sciences. And that's actually how we got into food. It was through more of an environmental sustainability lens.”

A House of Her Own

PUBLISHED IN 1984, the novel The House on Mango Street became a best-seller for author Sandra Cisneros, selling over six million copies and becoming a classic for readers in casual and academic settings. It’s an episodic books, its 44 chapters running anywhere from a sentence or two to several pages, the first-person account of a 12-year-old Chicana living in a changing Chicago neighborhood.

The 2025 Glimmerglass Festival world premiere 
production of "The House on Mango Street." 
Photo Credit: Kayleen Bertrand/
The Glimmerglass Festival

The tone of each story is provocative but charming at the start; soon darkening as the stories proceed. We follow Esperanza, the narrator, as she comes to terms with evolving social and sexual challenges. How does a book that’s become a schoolroom classic translate to the opera stage? As we learned from its world premiere at the Glimmerglass Festival, it couldn’t be more timely and compelling. 

Cisneros, who co-wrote the libretto with composer Derek Bermal, preserves her slyly evocative literary style, in which a simple description can be colored by an unexpected simile or metaphor. “Sally is the girl with eyes like Egypt and nylons the color of smoke,” runs one description; “At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth,” is another. The novel presents as a memoir; the opera turns it into a memory play.

Art Isn’t Easy

THE 1985 PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING MUSICAL “Sunday in the Park with George” makes its Glimmerglass Festival debut in a handsome, enthusiastic, but flawed production. It inspired the theme of the current season, “The Art of Making Art,” which is drawn from a lyric in the show.

An amazing cast fuels this production. John Riddle and Marina Pires carry the show through two challenging acts, and though I detected some first-night nerves at the top of the opening-night performance, they quickly settled into the world of the piece with virtuosic aplomb. Riddle is George. In Act One, he’s the painter George Seurat; Act Two returns him as the painter’s (fictional) great-grandson, also named George, who is an artist using laser technology.

John Riddle as George and Marina Pires as Dot (far R) 
with the ensemble. Photo by Brent DeLanoy/
The Glimmerglass Festival.

Pires is Dot, the audaciously named model who adores George but bristles at his offhand treatment of her. She and Riddle carry the bulk of the musical numbers, alone or in duet; a lively ensemble picks up the rest.

Inspired by George Seurat’s pointillistic painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” the first act follows the obsessive artist’s challenge of capturing an idyllic pastoral scene on an oversized canvas as he splits his time between plein-air sketching on the island itself and applying, in his studio, the thousands of colored dots that make up the work.

The Desire That We Love

JEALOUSY AND DESIRE: Two emotions that provoke nearly all the pain we suffer and the pain we inflict. Each is a confluence of component emotions, making them hard to put into self-aware words. But they’re easily reflected in music, the abstract nature of which carries it deep into our emotional core. Put words to that music and the feelings those words provoke become much more compelling. 

Greer Grimsley as Baron Scarpia, Kellan Dunlap as Spoletta, 
Yongzhao Yu as Mario Cavaradossi, with Jabari Lewis and 
William Predmore, members of the ensemble. 
Photo Credit: Brent DeLanoy/The Glimmerglass Festival

Puccini’s “Tosca” was criticized by its premiere critics for being too haphazard in structure, too ghastly in subject matter, and even too musically ugly. Wrote a Boston critic: “The composer shows a well-nigh diabolical ingenuity in massing together harsh, ill-sounding timbres.” Added the New York Sun: “Both eye and ear are often offended by the consecutive fifths, raw harmonic progressions, and alterations of the tawdry with the solemn.” And a London critic concluded: “Should this opera prove popular it will scarcely indicate a healthy or creditable taste.”

Blues with a Feeling

MANY OF THE SONGS we choose to sing spring to our lips because they’ve been drilled into our brains by corporate profit-fueled repetition, clogging airwaves and streaming channels. But there are other songs, songs that speak to our dreams and disappointments, songs that offer reassurance. Those are songs we have to seek out, parting the waves of noise to get to these underheard jewels.

Annie, Hannah, and Jonny Rosen
Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Those are the songs that Annie Rosen sings. She offers her selections in a carefree manner, but it’s clear that she’s living the material, drawing from it a power and joy that help shepherd each song into the hearts of her hearers. In one way, it’s the work of a mystic. In another – and this is probably what her Caffè Lena audience felt – it’s a rollicking good time.

Annie and the Hedonists is a family group, anchored by Annie and her husband, guitarist Jonny Rosen; many of the other performers have been working with them long enough that it wouldn’t surprise me to see them together at the Thanksgiving table. And there was a special guest vocalist at this particular show – daughter Hannah, who sang with her mother on “Here in California,” a Kate Wolf song, to the accompaniment of Dad’s guitar. 

O, Say: Can You See?

Happy Independence Day. As we continue to move through the most fraught, dangerous era in American history, let me offer some advice culled from Timothy Snyder’s excellent and more-appropriate-than-ever book “On Tyranny.” (Tim Duggan Books, New York, 2017). I recommend that you buy a copy for yourself as a handbook for the resistance that is so badly needed today.

                                                                                                  

Defend institutions: It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about—a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union—and take its side.

Beware the one-party state: The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office.

Be wary of paramilitaries: When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the
system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.

Stand out: Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.