In August 1945 atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Around 120,000 people, of which 95% were civilians, were killed outright. It is estimated that a further quarter of a million died from the after effects of the explosions. Six days after the second bomb was dropped Japan surrendered unconditionally, removing the requirement for an invasion of the Japanese mainland by Allied forces , an engagement that would undoubtedly have resulted in dreadful casualties on both sides. Hopefully the music community, as well as the world, will remember 2005 as the sixtieth anniversary of these terrible events, as well as the year of the premiere of an opera by John Adams . My attempts to understand the almost incomprehensible events of 1945 led me to the recently published 109 East Palace by Jennet Conant . This is the story of the extraordinary secret community of allied scientists at Los Alamos in New Mexico that, in a race against the clock, created the t
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You are of course right - my error entirely.
I've now amended the post.
It is now 11.20pm in Norfolk and we've just returned from a concert. The sky is completely clear of cloud, and we have probably the best view we've ever had of a lunar eclipse.
And an awful lot of people are arriving On An Overgrown Path via Google searches for 'lunar eclipse'. I hope they enjoy the theremin story, and return for more.
Theremin and variations on the moon
There's no lunar eclipse in this entry.
Oops. I guess now there is.
By the way, I'm still not sure that the guy sitting with Varese is James Seawright. Jim is known now more for his kinetic sculpture.
It was 50 years ago, but it doesn't look like him, so it could have been some smartly dressed Phillips engineer. I've seen that photo so many times, but I always assumed it was Jim, whom I met in the mid 60's when I lived in NYC and made some visits to the Columbia-Princeton studio. I'll probably research it further until I've satisfied my curiosity.