Events

One of the pubs I've frequented in London has apparently re-imagined itself as a 19th-century public house. The Blackbird, in Earls Court, used to look like this (May 2015): Then it looked like this (Sept. 2018): (Notice all the building permits and the closed door.) This morning it looked like this: I mean, wow. That's quite a remodel. Plus, apparently they've converted the upper three floors to "beautiful bedrooms." I'm still staying at the hotel around the corner, and not at the Blackbird. But it's...

I remember the early evening of 9 November 1989. A bunch of us were hanging out on our floor in my college dorm when my roommate told us to come in and watch what was on TV. We saw Germans atop the Berlin Wall waving the Federal (West German) flag, and not getting shot. Today's Times has a good set of photos from the wall's construction in 1961 to its destruction in 1989. as does CNN. Berliner Zeitung has an interview with Andrei Gratchev, Mikhail Gorbachev's spokesman from then, about the relationship...

My 207-day streak of 10,000 steps per day ended, as I suspected it would, at midnight GMT tonight. Traveling from Chicago to London takes 6 hours out of the day, and it's hard to get enough steps before 7am to get to 10k by 6pm when most of that time is on an airplane. Anyway, I'm in the Ancestral Homeland, about to finish the book that inspired the opera I'm performing in next week. And then there's the other opera that requires I sing rapidly in Russian, without rushing. I brought the score for that...

It's bitterly cold (at least for November), but otherwise the weather is perfect for flying this morning. My destination, London, is just dreary today and probably will be tomorrow as well. This is what I expect; it's as it should be. Kudos, by the way, to the TSA. The Pre-Check line stretched back almost to Terminal 2, but the screeners managed to get me through in less than 10 minutes. Color me impressed. Next update from South Kensington.

Not bad: So, 25 million (recorded) steps in 1,840 days. And I'm currently on a streak—which will likely end today because of my long flight tomorrow—of 207 consecutive days of 10,000 steps or more.

Today's crop of articles: James Comey says the only law that matters in the impeachment proceedings is the one establishing the oath of office. Peter Osnos recounts the time when he edited one of Donald Trump's books. President Trump continues the American tradition, unknown in most democracies, of inciting vigilantes in support of formal political institutions. An anonymous British writer wrote a singular description of Trump. Speaking of blond-haired windbags, the UK election campaign has begun with...

We have pretty normal autumn weather in Chicago right now, in that it's gray and cold with temperatures about 3°C below normal. Friday morning, when I fly out, temperatures will fall to 10°C below normal and then 13°C below normal when I get back Tuesday. We have this ridiculous late-autumn chill because of climate change. Warm air over Greenland and the Grand Banks has distorted the circumpolar jet stream into an omega shape, bringing the Arctic to Canada and the central US and bringing California to...

I realized this morning that I've missed almost the entire season of The Good Place because I don't seem to have enough time to watch TV. I also don't have enough time until Friday to read all of these pieces that have crossed my desk only today: Writing in the New Yorker, Steve Coll worries how the public phase of the House's impeachment hearings will move the public. Meanwhile, Seinfeld screenwriter and New York native Peter Mehlman points out that Donald Trump "was always a joke" in New York. (I...

Remember, remember the 5th of NovemberGunpowder and treason and plot.Now Johnson and Tories will rend and will sunderWhat Fawkes in his madness could not.

After a few rounds of voting, (now former) Labour MP the Rt Hon Sir Lindsay Hoyle has been elected the 158th Speaker of the House of Commons. As Harriet Harmon said in her speech just before the first round of voting, of the 158, only one was female. In other news, Voyager 2 has become the second human spacecraft to check in from the other side of the heliosheath separating the solar system from interstellar space. One of these stories is probably a lot more important than the other...