The Daily Parker

What I did on my autumn vacation:

About once a year the Apollo Chorus does a day-trip to somewhere nearby. Yesterday we went to the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Champaign, Ill., on the University of Illinois campus. Fun but exhausting.

I wanted to call special attention to an article in Mother Jones I linked to earlier this evening. In it, Tim Murphy shows that the historical precedent for President Trump's impeachment isn't Richard Nixon, it's Andrew Johnson. Key paragraph:

The real tragedy of the trial wasn’t poor, pathetic Edmund Ross losing his seat. When the vote fails, Wineapple takes us to places that Kennedy never ventured in his book—churches in Charleston and Memphis where African Americans mourned what they knew they’d lost, steeling themselves for the fight to come. They knew what the impeachment was really about, and they knew who had won. As [Eric Foner, the nation’s foremost Reconstruction scholar,] put it at that panel, “Andrew Johnson was impeached over violating a fairly minor act of Congress, whereas his real crime was trying to deprive 4 million American citizens of all their rights.”

Or more succinctly: "The president was a white nationalist who was nullifying a war." Sound familiar?

I was busy today, and apparently so was everyone else:

• Umair Haque deplores the "age of the idiot" in which we now live.
• The Washington Post reports that President Trump has spoken with Russian president Vladimir Putin 16 times, more than with any other world leader.
• Tim Murphy thinks Trump is more Andrew Johnson than Richard Nixon.
• Andrew Sullivan says, since Trump wants to be impeached, let's do it now.
• Elizabeth Warren deftly smacked down a right-wing troll.
• Irish writer Susan McKay asks Boris Johnson how it feels now that Ireland has more power than the UK.
• An unusual bit of architecture in Lakeview (the North Side Chicago neighborhood containing Wrigley Field) will soon be demolished.
• The University of Edinburgh has produced an interactive map of historic witch hunts in Scotland.
• Curbed explores how Los Angeles became "the land of strip malls."
• The New York Times explores how New York taxi companies took over Chicago's taxis, shortly before Uber and Lyft bankrupted the industry.

I'm sure there was other news today. But this is what I have open in my browser for reading later on.

Apparently the impeachment inquiry now underway in the House has gotten to the president, as yet another world leader had to witness involuntarily:

An awkward handshake is really the least of their worries.

As President Trump continues to rage against impeachment — and the Democrats and whistle-blower he holds responsible for bringing it about — visiting world leaders are encountering a different kind of diplomatic mission.

It includes a welcome ceremony, a meeting with Mr. Trump and an invitation to sit stone-faced for an indeterminate amount of time on live television as the president accuses people of treason, lies and corruption. And sometimes the session is reprised a little later in a formal news conference.

That was what happened on Wednesday when President Sauli Niinisto of Finland became the latest foreign leader to strike a straight-lipped contrast to Mr. Trump as Mr. Trump defended himself and attacked his adversaries. Not once but twice.

The Post's Alexandra Petri imagines the feedback form President Niinisto filled out on his way out the door:

Please rate your visit on a scale from 1 to 5 stars.

3 stars

What were some highlights of your stay?

I enjoyed the museums very much. I visited several, and they were all well lit, clean and informative. I liked that they were free, just like the population is under democracy.

I do not think that either of those things should change. If possible, keep both aspects.

Do you have any feedback as to how your stay could be improved?

Well, I have to say, I would perhaps have done certain things slightly differently. For instance, it was clear that President Trump had many things he wanted to get off his chest, primarily about someone named Adam Schiff, but also about the governor of California? I found this unseemly emotional outburst off-putting.

Guardian correspondent David Smith opined "it was also just downright strange, even avant-garde. It was Samuel Beckett. It was Marcel Duchamp. It was John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s bed-in. Trump invited Niinistö to take a front row seat in his theatre of the absurd."

What do you do when your president has lost his mind?

Last night, Chicago set an all-time record for the warmest low temperature in October: 23°C, which feels more like mid-July than early-October, following the high yesterday of 30°C.

Not to fear, though. A cold front came through just after midnight, bringing the temperature down to 14°C by 8am. With drizzly rain.

Gotta love Chicago.

October began today for some of the world, but here in Chicago the 29°C weather (at Midway and downtwon; it's 23°C at O'Hare) would be more appropriate for July. October should start tomorrow for us, according to forecasts.

This week has a lot going on: rehearsal yesterday for Apollo's support of Chicago Opera Theater in their upcoming performances of Everest and Aleko; rehearsal tonight for our collaboration Saturday with the Champaign-Urbana Symphony of Carmina Burana; and, right, a full-time job. (The Dallas Opera put their video of Everest's premiere on YouTube.) 

We also have a few things going on in the news, it seems:

• President Trump has decided on a strategy of singing to the choir about his impending impeachment, almost exactly the opposite of the strategy President Clinton chose 21 years ago.
• Meanwhile, his followers continue to threaten violence if their Dear Leader is removed from office.
• Washington Post society columnist Roxanne Roberts takes a look at Justice Brett Kavanaugh's slightly-less-social life in Washington a year after his brutal confirmation hearings.
• ARCGIS has an interactive map showing where Chicago-area municipalities get their water. (I did not know how far out suburbs took water from Lake Michigan.)
• A study appears to show that eating beef isn't as bad for you as once thought; but it's still horrible for the planet.

I will now return to reverse-engineering a particularly maddening interface.