I see that it's been a few weeks since I last posted something here. That doesn't surprise me very much as nothing particularly interesting has happened so far this month, and I've been under a great deal of pressure (or, quite possibly, created for myself the pressure). I have known for two weeks that there would be two difficult meetings in which I had to participate - one at home (kibbutz) and one at work; as it happened, they were held day after day. The meetings have now passed; I won't say that I came out of them unscathed, but at least they weren't as bad as I might have suspected.
Another weight on my mind has been my doctorate: specifically, a failure to chase after people in order to interview them. As it happens, yesterday I completed an interview with one of my (former) pupils then wrote up the interview. Apart from asking former pupils, I also send 'cold emails' to any Priority using company that orders from my company - I can see from their order form which program they are using. This morning I received an answer from one of these cold emails, that someone is prepared to be interviewed! I must follow this up and interview the person next week. I should point out for my readers that these interviews last for about an hour and are conducted by means of the telephone. I downloaded an app for my phone last week which automatically records telephone calls; this worked well yesterday. In the evening I copied the files (the interview was interrupted a few times) from the telephone to my computer; I then listened to the interview and filled out the written report, stopping the interview whenever necessary. I am also translating and paraphrasing as I write.
I have also been planning this year's holiday which will be in Greece: some time in Athens and some time in Andros, which is a very green island (as opposed to Santorini) which is close to the mainland (the ferry ride is 'only' two hours). After playing around with dates and flights, I was able to book the hotel which we wanted in Andros, but was unable to do so with my first and second choices of hotel in Athens. It seems that there is something important happening on May 22nd, because both hotels were full on that date but had rooms for the previous and following days. Anyway, I booked with a third hotel which looks reasonably good.
And somewhere in the background, I have been listening frequently to the song "We can be together" by Jefferson Airplane. I first heard this song some years ago after having downloaded the 'Volunteers' album but wasn't particularly impressed - the song shares the same opening riff with the song 'Volunteers'. Somehow recently my attention returned to this song and I've been listening to it closely in the past few days. I especially like the vocal harmonies of the 'chorus' and also appreciate the cognitive dissonance between the singing and the words, especially those of the second 'chorus' ("Up against the wall..."). There is a live version of this song on YouTube from the Dick Cavett show, broadcast the day after Woodstock (August 19, 1969) which is quite infamous, as the song was broadcast without censorship (listen and you'll hear why).
A very good article about this song can be read here. I listen to the music much more closely to the words and can see that the article mentioned above misses a few musical things. Musically, the live Cavett version is inferior to the studio version which is not too surprising as there are some very interesting rhythmic changes happening throughout the song, which get somewhat mangled when played live. Most of the song has a straight-forward 4/4 beat (and one clip shows drummer Spencer Dryden thumping his drums in a normal rock rhythm) but other parts have a slowed down, possibly 3/4, rhythm.
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