Today's the Day

[Richard Tarleton]

John Aubrey (1626 - he lives over 72 years, which is pleasantly ironic)

Albeniz Asturias (Leyenda) Suite; Falla The Three-Cornered Hat excerpts.

Strictly speaking Asturias one of the 11 pieces in the Suite Española no.1.... I have heard Ms Hewitt play Asturias aka Leyenda in its original form on the piano, most commonly heard on the guitar it's one piece in the guitar repertoire I don't mind if I never hear again, as it's been done to death. Odd its being titled Asturias as it is purest Andalucía (strumming guitars, rasgueados) in mood (they play bagpipes in Asturias ).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Strictly speaking Asturias one of the 11 pieces in the Suite Española no.1....

- strictly corrected

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

March 13th

The Feast Day of St Gerald of Mayo - a late 7th-early 8th Century monk, born in Northumbria, brother (biologically as well as spiritually) of St Balin, and one of the monks who left Lindisfarne for Ireland with St Colmon after the latter's defeat at the Synod of Whitby (Streanæshalch) in 664. He became the first Abbot of the monastry at Mayo that Colman founded after the Saxon monks that had followed him from Lindesfarne got embroiled in quarrels with native Irish monks on the isle of Innishboffin in 668. To this day, Mayo Abbey is referred to as "Mayo of the Saxons".

Oh, and ... nearly forgot ... it's National Elephant Day in Thailand.

Also on this date: the Battle of Badr, Mohammad's most decisive military victory in the early years of Islam, conquering the Qurysh community, of which he was originally a member, but who vigorously opposed his new religion before this battle - three years after it, the entire community converted to Islam, and, as they had control of Mecca ... (624); the 80 Years' War begins with the Battle of Oosterweel (1567); Cambridge College, Massachusetts is renamed after, and in honour of, John Harvard (1639); William Herschel discovers what, for many months, he believes is a comet; when its orbit is shown to be too "circular", it's realized that it's a planet. Herchel names it "George Star" after his King (who rewards him with a healthy pension) - the French aren't happy with this, and initially call the new planet "Herschel" - a Swedish astronomer, preferring to keep to Roman gods, suggests "Neptune", which is popular in Naval Britain, but less so in the newly-founded United States, whose citizens suggest Planet McPlanetty-Face. A full year after Herschel's first sighting, German astronomer Johann Bode offers "Uranus", to the delight of puerile schoolboys of all ages ever since; the only Greek god-named planet in the Solar System, the name didn't become standard until the 1850s (1781); Cherubini's Medea is premiered in Paris (1797); Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto is premiered in Leipzig, with Ferdinand David soloist, and, because the composer is ill, Niels Gade conducting (1848); the character of Uncle Sam first appears in the New York Lantern (1852); the Paris revision of Wagner's Tannhauser is premiered in Paris, after a total of 164 rehearsals (1861); in the American Civil War, Union soldiers are ordered not to return escaped slaves (1862) and three years later, to the day, Confederate States press gang slaves into their armies (1865); fifteen-year-old Chester Greenwood receives a patent for his invention of earmuffs (1877); Tsar Alexander II is assassinated in St Petersburg (1881); the Siege of Khartoum begins (1884); the String Orchetra version of Grieg's "Holberg Suite" is premiered in Bergen (1885); the British take control of the Boer city during the Second Boer War (1900) - "refugee camps" for the women and children of the city are soon referred to as "Concentration Camps", the first use of the term; Mata Hari makes her first appearance as an "exotic dancer" in Paris (1905); right-wing insurgents attempt a takeover of the government of the Weimar Republic in Berlin - the Kapp Putsch fails after five days, when the legal government successfully calls on citizens to call a General Strike (1920); the Butler Act makes it illegal for teachers in Tennessee to teach Evolution (1925 - the Act is challenged in court the very next year in the famous Scopes Trial, but it is not repealed until 1967); Clyde Tombaugh notifies Harvard College Observatory of his discovery of a new planet (1930 - the following year, eleven-year-old Oxford schoolgirl Venetia Burney wins £5 [over £300 today] for her suggestion of the name "Pluto"); the Jewish Ghetto in Krakow is "liquidated" by the occupying Nazi forces: 2000 citizens are killed outright in the streets, and the survivors are deported to Labour/Extermination Camps (1942); Lerner & Loewe's Brigadoon premieres at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway (1957); students attempt an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista (1957); Hindemith and Wilder's opera The Long Christmas Dinner is premiered at the Juilliard School of Music (1963); Apollo 9 returns successfully to Earth (1969); 16 school children and one of their teachers are shot dead in the Dunblane Primary Scool Massacre near Stirling in Scotland (1996); and Jorge Mario Bergoglio is elected as Pope Francis (2013).

Birthdays today include: Emperor Joseph II (1741); Earl Grey (1764); Percival Lowell (1855 - he had taken photographs of Pluto before Tombaugh, but hadn't noticed the significance); Hugo Wolf (1860); Hugh Walpole (1884); Frtiz Busch (1890); L Ron Hubbard (1911); David Nobbs (1935); Hans-Joachim Hespos (1938); Geoffrey Hayes (1942); Wolfgang Rihm (1952); Caryl Phillips (1958); and Neil Sedaka is 80 today.

Final Days for: John Barbour (1395); Richard Burbage (1619); Susan B Anthony (1906); Cesar Cui (1918); Bruno Bettelheim and Karl Munchinger (both 1990); Krzysztof Kieslowski (1996); Lee Falk (1999); and Elizabeth Gilels (2008).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Monday, 13th March, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Boyce Symphony No 8 in D minor; Handel Concerto grosso in D, Op 6 #5; Milhaud Four Dances (Saudades do Brasil); Gade Symphony No 5 in D minor; Debussy "Le Vent dans la plaine" (Preludes, Book 1); Britten Four Sea Interludes.

Composer of the Week: Haydn (Symph #46; "Great Organ Mass" )

Music Ho! - the enthusiasms of Constant Lambert: Mozart Symph #24; Walton Facade II, a further entertainment; Lord Bemers Film music: "Nicholas Nickleby"; Borodin String Quintet in f minor; Boyce Overture #12 in G; Meyerbeer, arr Lambert Ballet: Les Patineurs; Liszt Les Jeux d'eau a la Villa d'Este: Warlock Serenade for Strings; Sibelius Suite: "Pelleas et Melisande"; Lambert Elegiac Blues.

BBCWSO conducted by Howard Williams: Haydn "Oxford" Symph; Sibelius Symph #6.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

March 14th

The Feast Day of St Curetan - a late Seventh - early Eighth Century Gaelic bishop based in Rosemarkie. Among his significant achievements, he was one of the withesses at the agreement of the Cain Adomnain; a Mediaeval "Geneva Convention" in which the Law of Patrick (which guaranteed protection of clerics in wartime) was extended to civilian women and children. (And there's a Bede connection - Curetan's King, Nechtan, was also a witness to the agreement, and he was in consultation with Ceolfrith, the Abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow, and the guardian of Bede in his childhood.)

It's also Pi Day, celebrating 3.1415926535897932384626433... (because the date is written as 3/14 in American). Apparently, 14th March, 1592, at 6:53am is regarded by some as "Ultimate Pie Day"!

Also on this date: Otto von Guericke completes his multi-volume study into the nature and properties of the Vacuum (1663); Eli Whitney receives a patent for his invention of the Cotton Gin (1794); Verdi's Macbeth is premiered in Florence (1847); Rossini's Petite Messe Solenelle is given its first private performance in the salon of banker Hyacinthe-Louis-Alexis-Constantin Pillet-Will and his wife Louise (1864); The Mikado is premiered in the Savoy Theatre, London (1885); Strindberg's Miss Julie is premiered in in Copenhagen (1889), as is Nielsen's First Symphony five years later (1894); Anne Miller, a thirty-three year-old woman with a fever which doctors believed would kill her, is the first patient in America to be injected with penicillin, after Orvan Hess, one of her doctors sees an article in Readers' Digest - she survives to the age of 90 (1943); Jack Ruby is found guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald (1964); Israeli troops invade and occupy parts of South Lebanon (1978); the South African National Party Government orders the bombing of the ANC Headquarters in London (1982); Space Probe Giotto gets 370 miles near to Halley's Comet taking photographs - so close that debris from the comet's tail knocks it off orbit for half-an-hour, and a later impact destroys the camera (1986); the Birmingham Six walk free after sixteen years in prison when their convictions are overturned (1991); and this time last year, NASA reveals that identical astronaut twins, Scott and Mark Kelly are ... no longer identical twins, as the amount of time they have spent in space has changed 7% of Scott's genes, so that they no longer match Mark's.

Birthdays Today include: Georg Philipp Telemann (1681); Ludwig Emil Grimm [the "Zeppo" of the Grimm Brothers] (1790); Johann Strauss the Elder (1804); Victor Emmanuel [Re D'Italia] (1820); Isabella Beeton (1836); Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844); Casey Jones (1863); Albert Einstein (1879 - and they celebrate flippin' Pi Day!!!); Sylvia Beach (1887); Bill Owen (1914); Michael Caine (1933); Eleanor Bron (1938); Rita Tushingham (1942); Jasper Carrott (1945); Billy Crystal (1948); Francine Stock (1958); James Frain (1968); and Jamie Bell (1986).

Final Days for: Thomas Malory (1471); Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1803); Karl Marx (1883); Erwin Panofsky (1968); Busby Berkeley (1976); Margery Sharp (1991); Fred Zinnemann (1997); Tony Benn (2014); Peter Maxwell Davies (2016); and, exactly a year ago today, Stephen Hawking.


And what was Radio 3 offering on the Wednesday morning of the Centenary of Einstein's birth?

Your Midweek Choice: Gounod Petite symphonie in Eb; Schubert Der Hirt auf dem Felsen; Satie/Debussy Gymnopedies #1 & 3; Moszkowskl Caprice espagnol; Arnold Four Scottish Dances; Beethoven Consecration of the House; Ravel Mother Goose Suite;Kodaly Hary Janos Suite.
This Week's Composer: Haydn Divertimento in c; Great Organ Mass.
Music for Organ played by RA Megraw: Walther Chorale Partita: "Meinen Jesum, lass ich nicht"; Buxtehude Prelude and Fugue in f sharp minor; Mendelssohn 6th Sonata.
Song Recital: Beethoven Sechs Lieder von Gellert; Brahms 4 lieder.
Piano Music from New Zealand & Australia played by David Bollard: Alfred Hill Four pieces; Ronald Tremain Three Inventions; Don Banks Pezzo Dramatico (1956); John Exton "Give or take a few dB" [five pieces for pianist].
BBCSSO conducted by Rudolf Schwarz: Handel Concerto Grosso in E minor, Op 6 #3 ; Finzi Dies natalis, (with Duncan Robertson, Tenor); Mendelssohn Symphony No 5. in D major ("Reformation").

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

March 15th

The Ides of March!

The Feast Day of St Aristobulus, who was the first Bishop in Britain and the founder of Christianity in Britain. Reputedly, one of the Seventy(-two) Apostles/Disciples mentioned in St Luke's Gospel appointed by Christ to work in pairs spreading the Gospel and healing the sick; reputedly either the brother of St Barnabus or another name for Zebedee, the father of Saints James and John (an A-Z of early Christianity, then) - reputedly accompanied St Paul and/or assisted St Andrew - and reputedly either dying (in AD99) peacefully at Glastonbury, or martyred in "Wales" (which name didn't exist when he lived), possibly in AD56 - AND that he was the husband of Salome, the dancing daughter of Herodias!?!! Anyway, over 500 years before Gregory the Great sent St Augustine (and 400 before the English invaded), Aritstobulus was teaching Christianity to the native British.

It's also International Day Against Police Brutality, World Consumer Rights Day, World Day of Muslim Culture, Peace, Dialogue, and Film, World Speech Day, and World Contact Day, (where members of the International Flying Saucer Bureau telepathically send a Carpenters' song to the occupants of interplanetary craft).

Plenty of things to be doing today, then!

Also on this date: Julius Caesar is assassinated (44BCE); around 2000 French troops invade South Coast towns and villages, including Winchelsea, butchering the inhabitants (1360); Christopher Columbus arrives back in Spain after his first expedition to find an Western route to the Indies (1493); Charles II signs the Royal Declaration of Indulgence, granting greater freedoms to Catholics and non-conformist Christians (1672 - his parliament compel him to withdraw the Declaration eleven months later); Cesar Franck's Les Djinns premieres in Paris (1885); Rolls-Royce Ltd becomes a private company (1906); Finland becomes the first European country to enfranchise women (1907); Ravel's Eapsodie Espagnol is premiered in Paris (1908); Woodrow Wilson gives the very first official Prediential Press Confernece (1913 - he'd been expecting just to chat with a few reporters, but so many turned up, he had to give a speech); Tsar Nicholas II abdicates, ending the Romanov dynasty - and the Tsarist regime - in Russi (1917); the first women's University Boat Race btween Oxford and Cambridge is held on the River Isis in Oxford (1928); Hitler informs Czech president Emil Hacha that he is about to launch an invasion of his country unless Hacha allows the Wehrmacht entry - Hacha suffers a heart attack, but is kept awake by doctors until he capitulates: Nazi troops move into Czechoslavakia later that morning (1939); Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady premieres on Broadway (1956); George Brown, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, resigns after a "tired and emotonal" argument with Harold Wilson (1968); Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather premieres in New York (1972); Stockhausen's Donnerstag aud "Licht" premieres at La Scala, Milan - mostly: the Third Act is omitted because of a strike by the chorus (1981); Symbolics.com becomes the first ever .com registered internet domain name (1985); the Syrian Civil War begins (2011); and this time last year, Slovakian President Robert Fico resigns and his government is dissolved following the murder of 28-year-old journalist Jan Kuciak, who had been investigating corruption.

Birthdays today include: St Nicholas of Myra - singing "God be glorified!" (270); Andrew Jackson (1767); Eduard Strauss (the Zeppo of the Strauss family [except that Zeppo didn't destroy his Groucho's work after he died] 1835); Augusta, Lady Gregory (1852); Colin McPhee (1900 - or, according to some sources, 1901); Samuel John "Lightnin'" Hopkins (1912); Richard Ellmann (1918); Eddie Calvert (1922); Benjamin Burwell Johston (1926); Robert Nye (1939); Phil Lesh (1940); Mike Love (1941); David Cronenberg, Sly Stone, and Lynda La Plante (all 1943); Isobel Buchanan (1954); and Ben Okri (1959).

Final Days for: Julius Caesar (44BCE); Luigi Cherubini (1842); Joseph Bazalgette (1891); HP Lovecraft (1937); Lester Young (1959); Miles Malleson (1969); Aristotle Onassis (1975); René Clair (1981); Rebecca West (1983); Alexander Zemlinsky (1942); Dr Benjamin Spock (1998); Thora Hird (2003); Terry Lightfoot (2013); Clarissa Dickson Wright (2014); and both Sylvia Anderson and Asa Briggs (2016).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Wednesday, 15th March, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Liszt Piano Concerto #2; Verdi La forza del destino Ovt; Albeniz "El albaicin" (Iberia); Sibelius Autrefois: Scene pastorale; Novak Slovak Suite.
This Week's Composer: Haydn (Piano Sonata #39; Salve regina in g minor; S4tet Op20 #4.
Mozart: Two arias by a small boy and a symphony by a young man of 18. A Berenice; Per pieta; Symphony #29.
Beethoven: "Archduke" 3o
Midweek Choice: Respighi Belkis, Queen of Sheba Suite; Mayerl Shallow Waters; Song of the Fir Tree; Sibelius Karelia Suite;
Beethoven Horn Sonata; Handel Pastoral ode: "L'allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato" (Part 1)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

March 16th

The Feast Day of St Finbar the Leper, a 6th Century Irish bishop (younger contemporary & compatriot of St Abban, who is also celebrated today) who was a follower of St Columba, and the founder of the church and abbey of Innisfallen, on Lough Leone in County Kerry. He got his soubriquet by contracting leprosy whilst curing a boy afflicted with the disease.

And it's the national Day of the Book Smugglers in Lithuania, commemorating those who defied a ban on books using the latin alphabet by the ruling Russians between 1864 & 1904 who wanted to impose the Cyrillic alphabet on Lithuania's literature.

Also on this date: the Clifford's Tower massacre in York, 1190; where the Jewish population of the city fled to this tower hoping to escape the townspeople who had been easily convinced that Richard I had ordered the Jews to be killed. Rather than surrender to the mob, 150 people chose to commit suicide - those who did surrender, promising to convert, were murdered by the crowd anyway. In 1244, following the 10-month siege of Montsegur, 210 Cathars were burnt on a bonfire for refusing to renounce their faith. Samoset, chief of the Native American Abenaki people, surprises the recently-arrived Pilgrim Fathers of the Plymouth Colony, by walking into their settlement and greeting them in their own language with "Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset." This is the first recorded encounter between the native people and the new settlers [although Samoset had met transient English speakers before, which is how he had begun to learn the language] (1621); King Gustav III of Sweden is shot at a Masked Ball at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm; he dies 13 days later (1772); Freedom's Journal, the first newspaper edited and staffed by African Americans, is first published (1827); Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is first published (1850); Joseph Lister publishes the first of his studies into antiseptic surgery in The Lancet (1867 - it is not universally appreciated; six years later, The Lancet itself suggests that its readers need not take Lister's ideas very seriously); the very first FA Cup final is held, at Kensington Oval, between Wanderers [a team made up of ex-Public Schoolboys] and the Royal Engineers [young soldiers - still going strong] (1872 - the result was Look Away Now a 1 - 0 victory for the ex-schoolboys ; Massenet's Thais is premiered in Paris (1894); Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer are premiered in Berlin by the BPO conducted by the composer, with Dutch baritone Anton Sistermans (1896); Robert H Goddard makes the first successful launch of a liquid-powered rocket at his Aunt Ellie's farm in Auburn, Massachusetts - it rises 41feet into the air, and travels 185feet in two-and-a-half seconds (1926); Hitler defies the Versailles treaty and orders the re-armament of Germany, and the expansion of its army using conscripted troops (1935); Martinu's opera Julietta is premiered in Prague (1938); 82-year-old Alice Herz publicly self-immolates in Detroit in protest against the Vietnam War; she dies of her wounds 10 days later (1965); the My Lai massacre, in which between 347-501 unarmed Vietnamese citizens (including children) are murdered by US troops (1968); Bruno Maderna's Satyricon is premiered in The Hague (1976);
Italian Prime Minister Aldo Mori is kidnapped by the Red Brigade - he is murdered 2 months later (1978); the Amoco Cadiz, a Shell Oil supertanker, runs aground off the coast of Brittany; it splits into three and leaks 221 metric tonnes of crude oil (1979); Mississippi abolishes slavery (1995 - it is the last State to ratify the 13th Amendment of 1865); and 23-year-old Rachel Carrie is killed by an armoured bulldozer driven by Israeli soldiers to demolish the house she was trying to protect in Rafah (2003).
(WIKI also suggests that the first version of Tchaikovsky's Romeo & Juliet Ovt was premiered on this date, too - but I'm sure i've mentioned this event before - maybe somthing to do with the different calendar? A pity - all the other Music premieres have been by composers whose surname begins with "M", which must be a coincidence!)

Birthdays today include: Caroline Herschel (1750); Anna Atkins (1799); John Butler Yeats (1839); Sydney Chaplin (1885); Leo McKern (1920); Jerry Lewis (1926); Christa Ludwig (1928); Teresa Berganxa (1935); Bernardo Bertolucci and Keith Rowe (both 1940); Claus Peter Flor and Isabelle Huppart (both 1953); Jimmy Nail (1954); Aisling Bea (1984) - and Roger Norrington is 85 today.

Final Days for: the Emperor Tiberius (37); [Queen]Anne Neville (1485); Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1736); Aubrey Beardsley (1898); Vaclav Talich (1961); Thomas McGreevy (1967); Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1968); Bebe Daniels (1971); Roger Sessions (1985); Vilem Tausky (2004); and Frank Thornton (2013).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Sunday, 16th March, 1969 were:

What's New? - new & recent records, this week featuring Alfred Brendel, and the Zagreb Soloists.
Haydn Piano Trios: 11th of 12 programmes featuring the Oromonte Pno3o: Trios in Eb and D, H.XV.11 & 16
Your Concert Choice: Records
Music Magazine: articles on Penderecki, Martha Mödl, and Slavonic Music.
Bach: "The 48", book 2 #13-18

[Richard Tarleton]

Samoset, chief of the Native American Abenaki people, surprises the recently-arrived Pilgrim Fathers of the Plymouth Colony, by walking into their settlement and greeting them in their own language with "Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset." This is the first recorded encounter between the native people and the new settlers [although Samoset had met transient English speakers before, which is how he had begun to learn the language] (1644);

? This rings a bell.

English settlers had been in Plymouth, Mass. for a while by 1644. My 9x great grandfather John Hadaway (who was born in Symondsbury, Dorset) arrived on the "Blessing" in late 1635, aged 18, with 32 others. He seems to have been a bit of a tearaway - he was in trouble with the settler court in 1637 for an unspecified offence. In the 1640s he was up before the Plymouth court again, this time for "lending a gun to an Indian" . So there was clearly some communication going on. I'd love to know your source, ferney - apart from documents accessed through Ancestry.com., my main narrative source is "Genealogical Notes" by Amos Otis, published in the "Barnstaple Patriot" in the late 19thC. Subsequent Hadaways were pillars of the community, I hasten to say!

There was clearly a close network of settler families who intermarried - and whose descendants have also been tracing their origins prior to emigration. So I have a surprising amount of information about a few of my 2,048 9xgreat grandparents!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

<eek> - mea culpa: the date should have read (as it will as soon as I've edited it!) 1621. Sources are exclusively WIKI-based, particularly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoset

The story of "Pocahontas" is earlier than that of Samoset, so Native American communication with English speakers shouldn't've struck me as quite so unusual.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I know what I've done: I've held the "44" from the date of the Cathars massacre over!

[Pulcinella]

I know what I've done: I've held the "44" from the date of the Cathars massacre over!

You've clearly got a problem with 44s, ferney!
Julius Caesar has a 7 slipped into his first mention yesterday (so it should be 44 not 474!).

[Richard Tarleton]

<eek> - mea culpa: the date should have read (as it will as soon as I've edited it!) 1621. Sources are exclusively WIKI-based, particularly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoset

The story of "Pocahontas" is earlier than that of Samoset, so Native American communication with English speakers shouldn't've struck me as quite so unusual.

I was going to speculate that perhaps Samoset's next words were "...and could I possibly borrow a gun?", to which my ancestor may have replied "Of course, my dear chap", thus earning the opprobrium of his fellows.

Here are a couple of his direct descendants


first, my great-great-great grandfather, who was a timber and coal merchant and is also recorded as working in the Custom House - he was clearly a pillar of the community, being the Treasurer of the First Baptist Church in Chelsea, Mass., and President of the Winnisimmet Benevolent Society - and his son, my great-great grandfather, who was a bookkeeper and statistician and wrote libretti for musicals in his spare time. His son followed a very different trajectory, one reason I'm here (and not there) today .

[LMcD]

The 1st FA Cup Final was apparently played on this day in 1872 in front of 2000 spectators.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You've clearly got a problem with 44s, ferney!
Julius Caesar has a 7 slipped into his first mention yesterday (so it should be 44 not 474!).

I came, I saw, I conked out. (It's even "corrected" in the "Funal Days for" section! )

I know what happened there, too - I'd written "47", checked the date and saw my mistake, added the extra 4, but didn't wallop the "delete" button hard enough.
Corrected now.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The 1st FA Cup Final was apparently played on this day in 1872 in front of 2000 spectators.

- duly added.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

His son followed a very different trajectory, one reason I'm here (and not there) today .

Well, thank goodness for different trajectories, then!