Mesocosm

Hey readers,

A couple quick notes. First, I want to quickly say how much I love being able to write and share my thoughts with you, and I’m grateful you take the time to come by and have a look. Please don’t hesitate to say hi in the comments and share your response, even if it’s “Man, you’re crazy, and here’s why.”

Ms. O’Cosm and I were prominently featured in the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. The front-page article describes some of the problems the city of San Francisco, like many other cities, is having with Airbnb and other businesses which broker short-term rentals of apartments or spare rooms. The explosive growth of the industry is creating a poorly-regulated network of untaxed pseudo-hotels.

I was contacted by the Chronicle‘s Carolyn Said on the strength of this blog post I wrote on Mesoscope, chronicling our ordeal. Perhaps that post hit a nerve – it got the most page hits of any post I’ve written by a large margin.

Yesterday also marked the last performance of the season by the SF Sinfonietta, an amateur chorus and orchestra led by the inimitable Urs Steiner. We performed Mozart’s Requiem mass in D-minor (K. 626) in its entirety. For an amateur like myself, it illuminates an entirely new dimension of music to go inside of it like this. Additionally, it was a profound experience to perform a requiem mass with the genuine intention of honoring those who have passed away.

I shared some of my reflections on Mozart’s Requiem in this post earlier this year. You can see us performing the Requiem at a benefit for Arts Benicia in the picture above.