half in jest, I would not discount the weather as the main attraction of
the golden state...
me freezing
Kerem jojjenek maskor es kulonosen masho
palma, a paolo shaul םֹשׁ ְרֵגּ
On Sun, Jan 26, 2020 at 5:10 PM Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Slezkine in narrating in considerable detail the ten days that shook the
world at one point writes, “Meanwhile, Rachmaninoff was sitting in his
apartment on Strastnoy (Christ’s Passion) Boulevard, a short walk from
Skobelev Square. According to his wife, ‘he was busy revising his First
Piano Concerto and was concentrating on his work. Because it was dangerous
to turn the light on, the curtains in his study, which faced the courtyard,
were drawn, and he was working by the light of a single candle.’ As he
told his biographer in 1933, ‘I sat at the writing-table or piano all day
without troubling about the rattle of machine-guns and rifle-shots. I
would have greeted any intruder with the answer that Archimedes gave the
conquerors of Syracuse.’ Many people around him ‘were hoping that each new
day, would, at last bring them the promised heaven on earth,’ but he was
not one of them. ‘I saw with terrible clearness that here was the
beginning of the end – an end full of horrors the occurrence of which was
merely a matter of time.’ Three weeks later, he and his family left for
Petrograd. On December 20, he went to Smolny to request exit visas. On
December 23, he and his wife and two daughters arrived at the Finland
Station and boarded the Stockholm train (probably the same one that had
brought Lenin to Russia). He died in Beverly Hills, California, on March
28, 1943. . . .”
From Wikipedia: Following the Russian Revolution
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution>, Rachmaninoff and his
family left Russia; in 1918, they settled in the United States, first in New
York City <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City>. With his main
source of income coming from piano and conducting performances, demanding
tour schedules led to a reduction in his time for composition; between 1918
and 1943, he completed just six works, including *Rhapsody on a Theme of
Paganini <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_on_a_Theme_of_Paganini>*,
Symphony No. 3
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_(Rachmaninoff)>, and *Symphonic
Dances <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonic_Dances_(Rachmaninoff)>*.
By 1942, his failing health led to his relocation to Beverly Hills,
California <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Hills,_California>. One
month before his death from advanced melanoma
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanoma>, Rachmaninoff was granted
American citizenship.
He wasn’t here in California, I wouldn’t think, long enough to have
contracted melanoma in our bright sun-lit days but moving to California in
hopes of recovering from melanoma doesn’t seem like a reasonable thing to
do.
Slezkine moved here as well. What are our attractions other than good
weather? In Slezkine’s case it may have been a job opportunity. I’ve
lived here for almost all of my 85 years and live now within 100 miles of
the place where I was born and the town where I was raised – something
referred to as occurring mostly in earlier times or primitive places in the
world. I have sought to be a bit more “Mercurian” (to borrow Slezkine’s
term), wanting to move at various times to either Arizona or Idaho, but
those plans were thwarted by the need to take care of Susan. Now at 85
and on my own except for my dogs I haven’t utterly ruled out moving, but
moving to Northern Idaho (the logical location for me to move because of a
daughter who lives there) would seem a bit like moving to Moscow or
Smolny. I spoke about moving to my father years ago and he said he had
known many people who moved someplace else only to return years later
because the places they had moved to didn’t have the wonderful weather we
have here. Moving here was too late for Rachmaninoff, but certainly not
for Slezkine (although being a Mercurian he probably won’t stay here).
Meanwhile, at 07:55 in the morning here in San Jacinto, California, the sun
is out and it is very likely going to be a beautiful day. J
Lawrence
