(1) On Saturdays, sometimes, I go the synagogue. I also go to the synagogue on many major and minor holidays. For example, tomorrow night I intend to go to Purim services to hear the Meggillah Esther read. (Yes, I have heard it before). And with it comes a Purim spiel – this year (I am sorry to say) it has to do with Barbie (the film I couldn’t sit through) and I guess I am supposed to wear pink. Luckily, I have a pink kippah; that may do it.

On Tuesdays, sometimes, I go to church. The church I go to must at some point have religious services. After all, it looks like a church and has the name Episcopal in its title, but I go because on Tuesdays at noon, they have concerts. My attendance used to be more often than it has been, because I often have other things to do on Tuesdays, and more often I just forget. But this Tuesday, I did go and heard concert performed by a trio consisting of a viola, a cello and (no, not a violin) a flute. It was interesting, I thought.

They played three pieces. The first by French composer Albert Roussel (1869-1937) is titled Trio pour flute, alto et violencelle, Op 40. It was commissioned by American music patroness Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, and was premiered in 1929. I found it an odd piece – a combination of nice lyrical music, but with an undertone of dissonance and unease. I didn’t like it all. Why did he write it?, I thought. But then it dawned on me. 1929. A time of openness and progress, in life in general and certainly in the creative arts, but all with a underlayment of uncertainty and fear of the future. If this is what Roussel had in mind, he got it just right.

The second piece was called Whirlwind Variations, by a contemporary composer, Zach Davis, written for this group of musicians. The two short movements are called “calm” and “chaos”, and that’s what they were. I thought this piece a real winner – but the title did confuse me. Doesn’t a variation have to be a variation of something? Here we had two distinct movements – neither really a variation of the other (unless there is something that my non-musical brain missed in its entirety)..

The third piece? Beethoven’s Trio for strings, Opus 9, Number 3, written for violin, viola and cello. The violin part was re-scored for flute. And? I think it worked. On the other hand, there was probably a reason Beethoven wrote it for violin, don’t you think?

The musicians were Robert Cart, Wade Davis and Ivan Mendoza. Nice.

(2) We did watch a film on On Demand last night. Picked it for no good reason. May have heard of it before, but don’t remember if I did. It’s called “Carol” and stars Cate Blanchett (who I have to remember is not Kate Winslet, although their names are 100% the same in my mind) and Rooney Mara (who must have been born feet first; otherwise, why isn’t her name Mara Rooney?).

‘It turns out that this 2015 film had virtually unanimous positive reviews, won a number of awards, and was nominated for many, many more. It takes place in the early 1950s, and involves a young, struggling aspiring photographer and a somewhat older and much wealthier aspiring divorcee, who find each other and, while I don’t know if they really fall in love, develop a relationship that doesn’t go over well with the one’s would be husband, and the other, a reluctant divorcee who wants full custody of his child. It’s steady and well done all around.’It turns out that this 2015 film had virtually unanimous positive reviews, won a number of awards, and was nominated for many, many more. It takes place in the early 1950s, and involves a young, struggling aspiring photographer and a somewhat older and much wealthier aspiring divorcee, who find each other and, while I don’t know if they really fall in love, develop a relationship that doesn’t go over well with the one’s would be husband, and the other’s husband, a reluctant divorcee who wants full custody of his child. It’s steady and well done all around.

One of the later scenes takes place at a diner with the odd name of Spare Time Diner. I looked to see if it was a real place, and there it was (I think it may have recently closed) in a Kentucky suburb of Cincinnati. Now, the film takes place in New York City, Chicago, and Waterloo Iowa. But when I looked up the making of the film, I learned that it all was filmed in Cincinnati.

If you have Paramount/Showtime as part of your cable subscription, you may want to watch Carol. It’s based on Patricia Highsmith’s book The Price of Salt, which she wrote under the name Claire Morgan. Wikipedia quotes someone as saying it was the first lesbian novel with a happy ending. I don’t know how the book ends, but does the film end happily? To me, the film’s ending was unambiguously ambiguous. Maybe the book ended differently.