TPFH's Journal: Monica Huggett vs Barbara Honegger

A few months ago I decided to sell some of my DVDs that were redundant, in order to justify buying some music. These days, I'm getting more and more into classical music and I wanted to look for more music from Monica Huggett.

The first album I purchased of hers is Sonatas & Partitas of JS Bach. It is solo violin and very good in my opinion. She was born and raised in the UK, formally trained in London, but lives in Portland Oregon. At the time I purchased the double CD I was told she was president of the Oregon Baroque Society (or something) (she might still be president). I had since purchased another CD that she was a part of, and download another album when I was on emusic.com, but I wanted more. She both plays violin as well as conducts and I was interested in getting anything new that she was a part of.

Now, here comes the funny story. For some reason I made a weird dyslexic mistake and replaced the name Monica Huggett with Barbara Honegger. Monica and Barbara both have 3 Syllables, and their last names both start with an H. Other than that, there is nothing that I know of that they have in common. Barbara Honegger is not a musician, or at least, that is not what she is known for.

Barbara Honegger is a research analyst. She was part of the Reagan-Bush Presidential, and made part of Reagan's cabinet. In 1983 she resigned from that possition because of moral problems she had with the administration. In 1989 she released a book, October Suprise, that documented what happened with Iran Contra. There is also a book with the same subject, and the same title by Gary Sick, but my political science teacher when I bought the book many years ago prefered Barbar Honegger's account because she was not personally involved in the issues at hand, and because she is a true conservative, and thus not just spreading conspiracy theories out of partisan BS.

To be honest, I only got a little more than a hundred pages into it. It is pretty dry reading. But it has been on my mind for the past few months because the upcoming election, and the rumors of another October Surpise. This year the expected October Suprise was supposed to be the announcement that Osama bin Ladin was captured, even though he was supposidly captured a year ago or something. It didn't really have anything to do with the October Suprise of 1980, but I was still thinking I ought to read it before election time.

Well, too late now. And since tomorrow is election day I think it is too late for an October Surpise this year. But that's probably why I confused Monica Hugget and Barbara Honegger.

Note, that this is not intended as a political JE. I do do those of course but this is more just a funny story while everyone is so tense about "the most important election in our lifetime."

I'll probably write a more politically oriented JE tomorrow, explaining why I put that in quotes. For now, just read this and laugh. Laughter is good medicine.

Listening to Bach is also good medicine. Go online and buy Sonatas & Patitas, it is good.

(For obvious reasons, the clerk I asked for help finding violin music by Barbara Honegger had never heard of her.)