Wednesday, April 23, 2025

News and Ideas Worth Sharing

Gabriel Lord Kalcheim

Gabriel Lord Kalcheim was born in New York, and grew up regularly attending theatre there, and classical music concerts over the summer at Tanglewood in the Berkshires. He studied Philosophy and Classics at the University of Chicago (BA 2013) where he reviewed theatre for the Chicago Maroon, and opera and classical music for Chicagocritic.com. He attended school in New York but has spent summers, and school holidays in the Berkshires where his mother grew up. Kalcheim is an amateur violinist and played in his university's symphony orchestra, and in various chamber groups.

written articles

KALCHEIM: Why I love the Stanmeyer Gallery and Shaker Dam Coffee House

What John Dryden, and Samuel Johnson, those famous denizens of the old London Coffeehouse, surely understood, was that man must exist socially just as much when he is engaged in serious consideration of the affairs of the day, as when he chooses to be frivolous; and all of this can happen quite naturally over coffee.

KALCHEIM: Superb performances at Close Encounters With Music

The Close Encounters with Music Chamber Music Series is a living embodiment of all the right ways to present classical music.

KALCHEIM: Two local churches at crossroads

What if St. Paul’s Stockbridge were to become something entirely different? What if it became the one and only Church in Berkshire County that would be proud to say the same prayers its ancestors said for hundreds of years before (which many of its congregants think they say at present but don’t).

KALCHEIM: Stupidity in foreign affairs knows no bounds

To these dangerous ignoramuses, blind tough-talking is always the answer. They actually believe that antagonizing Iran in perpetuity, a country of more than 80 million people, which is sure to develop a nuclear bomb some day, if it really wants to, actually enhances our national security.

Review: Musical counterpoints with the Avalon Quartet at ‘Close Encounters With Music’

You can imagine how the great Schubert C Major Quintet dominated the evening, especially with such a polished and musically sensitive performance as I have come to expect from the Chicago-based Avalon Quartet, which was joined by Yehuda Hanani as second cello, to fill out the Schubert Quintet.

KALCHEIM: Sexual assault on campus? No surprise

The more sexual relations are treated as a recreational activity, the less seriously we uphold a mode of conduct for engaging in them. When placed in conjunction with excess drinking, not merely for the sake of sociability (what we used to call conviviality), but only for the sake of getting drunk, the mix is toxic.

KALCHEIM: Why I like Rand Paul

Paul also has a good deal to say about the disturbing militarization of police and understands that the real problem with the so-called “War on Drugs” is that it disproportionately throws black people into prison while allowing the white and affluent to get high without any fear of the law.

KALCHEIM: Misplaced fervor over religious freedom law

The Old Left, had at least the right priorities: they fought against injustice and often won important reforms, many of which become, with the passage of time, accepted by people of all political stripes.

KALCHEIM: Nightmare scenario: Will 2015 be like 1939?

If we go one step further, and offer the Ukrainians a formal alliance, the result could be nuclear war. This past week, Putin revealed, in an interview with Russian television

KALCHEIM: The government’s diet fraud – and other deceptions

The minute establishment figures start calling anyone who questions them a loony, fringe thinker, who, for the sake of all of us, has to get with it, and adapt the accepted position on something, you should be very, very suspicious.  

KALCHEIM: Shameful lessons from Dresden 

During World War II in the European theatre, surely the Allied air forces of Britain and America would not have been so barbaric, and imprudent, as the Germans, so as to target civilian populations, all on the bogus precept of weakening enemy morale. Or would they?

KALCHEIM: The unlikely religious radicals

I challenge anybody to find a single church in Berkshire County that still uses the old King James Version of r he Bible.

KALCHEIM: Why do Republicans like war?

There is no more menacing, hypocritical force in American politics today than the so-called “moderate” wing of the Republican Party establishment, and their love for all things war-related.

KALCHEIM: About Ukraine, put yourself in Putin’s place

If history is any guide, the more we pressure and antagonize Russia with sanctions, EU and NATO expansion, and this proxy war, the less likely Russia will ever back down, and the less likely the deeply corrupt Moscow regime will begin to reform itself, and adapt basic western notions of political and economic freedom.

KALCHEIM: Albany boss is cuffed; stop whining about Citizens United

Instead of complaining about the power of the Koch brothers, why don’t liberals work at establishing more of a talk radio presence of their own to counter Rush Limbaugh, who, in my opinion, is much more influential than the Kochs.

KALCHEIM: The Pope’s sex problem  

Pope Francis would, I think, have been the ideal person to reframe his Church’s view on contraception because he has repeatedly shown himself capable of conciliatory gestures which, notwithstanding their great effect in changing popular attitudes towards the Church, have never actually deviated from traditional Roman Catholic teachings.
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